Twenty years ago, while I was president of our humanistic discussion group here in Greenville
The Lion‘s Den, I debated a young ministerial student over the truth of the Bible (one of a number of debates I did back in the 80’s). This nice you man published very well written a monthly apologetic newspaper he entitled:
The Bible Trumpet.
With regards to our debate, he asked me if his wife could help in defending his conservative position on Biblical truth. I told him I would welcome her input. The debate did not fair well for them and they left disappointed..
A year later, he excitedly told me that he was going to attend an apologetic Bible conference where the famed Gleason Archer (The International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties) and the renowned conservative Old Testament scholar, Walter Kaiser would be leading a major conference on the defense of the Bible.
Dr. Archer's topic was: What Proof Do We have That Moses Wrote the Pentateuch?
Dr. Walter Kaiser’s topic was: The J E D P Documentary Hypothesis Exploded
After both apologetic lectures, Drs. Archer and Kaiser would debate several Moslem scholars in order to exposed the Qu’ran as a false historical record (A debate I thought was like the pot calling the kettle black!).
My young friend told me he had been in touch with Dr. Archer who challenged him to have me write down any facts which I felt proved Moses did not write the Pentateuch. My friend said he would personally give them to Dr. Archer at the conference who he claimed “would put me in my place“.
My editor friend told me that he was very excited about Dr. Archer’s challenge to me and he could not wait to give me my irrefutable apologetic answers. So I wrote down five hard facts which I felt proved Moses did in fact not write the Pentateuch.
A week later my ministerial friend returned, but seemed put out. After all, he had used his short vacation time off from his night job (as he was a full time college Bible student during the day), plus he paid all his expenses to and at the conference.
When I asked him what irrefutable evidence did Dr. Archer provide to prove my facts wrong, he told me he did not know what happened. He said he gave Dr. Archer my questions, who studied them for a short time, then he threw them on the conference table and exclaimed: “Whose this nut?” before walking off.
That’s right! Your’s truly was declared an official declared a “nut” by the editor / author of The International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (sounds a lot like JP Holding).
However, I had the last laugh since, the funny thing is, it only took a “nut” to stump the great Gleason Archer!
Sad to say, about 3 years later I heard form my apologetic ministerial friend again. Since I work in electronics, he wanted me to show him how to hook up a motion controlled camera to catch him wife cheating on him after he went work at night while she stayed with the kids. He told me he had already caught her once and that it had upset him so, he quit writing his apologetic paper.
I gave him the information and wished him well. That was seventeen years ago and sadly, I never heard from him again.
Jeff Carter responds to my chapter on the problem of evil. He wrote:
Suffering allows for the proving and demonstration of courage, faith, stamina, perseverance, determination, spirit, triumph, glory, heroism, overcoming. Thus, while motives of an individual may be malicious, the condition of meaningless suffering is not evil to God - it is the backdrop against which the godly qualities of life are manifested and made clear.
My question is why these virtues are important to God since in heaven for the saints they will be completely irrelevant in an eternal bliss without any pain or suffering. See what you think.
Buses around London are now driving about sporting ads like this:
More
here,
here, and
here.
That's what I would do. And my book is being attacked quite a bit on Amazon. There are three poor reviews of it from Christians who never even read it, one calling me a "liar" simply because I deny the existence of God. On the 17th of this month my book was ranked around 3,000th but a Christian placed an image there and slowly it dropped to 22,000th by today. The image? This one with the related caption:
You can find it here. Then we read a caption that said:Are you sure you want to go down the path John chose? Eternity is a very long time, you do understand? Your choice, the religion of atheism or follow the Creator of all called Christianity.
I reported it to Amazon by clicking on the "report abuse" button. Please do so as well.
Fear tactics. That's what it is. Scare people into not reading my book. Scare 'em with hell. You already know the truth. There is nothing to learn from me. The only thing that might happen if people read it is they will likely doubt their faith. Doubt is bad. Faith is good. Ask Christian people to put their faith in you. Have them trust you when you tell them this is not a good book. You know. John doesn't. Don't buy this book.
To read some superb reviews of my book follow this link.
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Edit: the image was taken down finally.
With respect to some of the comments I’ve read to my posts that as a former Christians John and I are often told we never knew what Christianity was. In light of this claim, would some Christians care to give the posters here at DC a working definition of Christianity? Or is there really no standard definition believers can agree on?
Statements like “It’s a belief in God” or “It’s a belief in Jesus” are so vague that the character Satan could be a Christian too. And again, statements like “It’s trusting Jesus Christ for salvation.” fails too in that hundreds of denominations who believe this attack one another as false religions (some weird oxymoron isn‘t it?).
A case in point:
A so called “Christian” commenter here at DC who goes by the name Jason tells me there are no righteous dead in Heaven be they Enoch, Elijah, or Moses, neither are there any wicked / unsaved dead in Hell, nor is there any Great White Throne Judgment where the lost or cast into a Lake of Fire.
If Jason can deny clear orthodox Biblical teachings and still be a Christian, exactly how much of the Bible can one deny and still be “saved” or salvation just a subjective term that can have over 20,000 sectarian or denominational meanings which make it basically meaningless?
Jason has stressed in comments to my posts that the “saved” or “righteous” dead or just like the “lost” or “unsaved” dead; in their graves. So be you Christian or atheist, your fate at death is the grave.
By rejecting historical orthodox dogma as traditional historical Christianity has always felt the Bible clearly teaches, is Jason a Christian while John and I never were?
In short:
A. What makes one a Christian?
B. How much of the Bible can one deny and still be a Christian?
C. What is the difference between historical orthodox doctrinal denial and Biblical denial?
All comments welcomed.
This post is a further reflection on the debates that ensued from my claim that
Jesus was a historical person.
I have made the point, contrary to the Christian claim, that if God revealed himself in the historical past then he chose a poor medium and a poor era to do so. Historical studies are fraught with all kinds of difficulties when it comes to what happened in the past. History does not give up its truths easily. What we have are glimpses and hunches and guesses about a great majority of questions concerning what happened in the past, along with how we can best understand the writings of the past. This is quite evident in what has transpired when it comes to whether Jesus was a historical person who was a failed apocalyptic prophet behind the myths surrounding him. This is obvious to me.
It is NOT the case then, that God has confirmed his revelation in the past. Even if God did so to the people in the past, this confirmation does nothing for us living in the present. We do not know what to believe even about the most fundamental question for the Christian set of beliefs, i.e., whether or not a historical person named Jesus even existed in the first place. I think he did. But I could be wrong, as I said.
I claim it's patently false to say that if someone comes to a different conclusion he is motivated by some sort of desire to reject God. Historians dispute the conclusions of other historians on a host of mundane questions which have nothing to do with the desire to reject God. They just want to know what probably happened, that's all. And since this is the case about mundane questions, it provides strong evidence that it's also the case when it comes to whether or not Jesus existed. Historians who disagree on this question merely disagree, and that's all there is to it.
Furthermore, if we can reasonably doubt this fundamental non-miraculous question about the existence of Jesus (which it is) then how much more so will we have doubts about the claims of the miraculous in the past. We dispute the miraculous claims of the present, so how much more is it the case that we doubt the miraculous claims of the past. God has not confirmed to people living in today's world his revelation in the past, period. As an omniscient God he should know better. Is he stupid, or what?
How does the Christian reconcile his or her claim that God is omniscient with the fact that God was stupid with regard to confirming his revelation in the past? I know my answer.
One Christian answer is that I have made an unreasonable demand upon God. That “God doesn’t do what I want.”
In one sense this is true, but I’d rephrase it differently, I’d say God doesn't do what is needed for people like me to believe. The past is irretrievable for the most part. Believers seek merely to confirm what they were raised to believe, including the Mormons, and Muslims. But I need sufficient reasons and sufficient evidence in today's world to believe. This is who God supposedly created me to be as an intelligent human being. I am a person who needs sufficient reasons and evidence to believe.
So, in order to satisfy the demands I have for reasons and evidence as a thinking person, God should’ve met my so-called “demands.” In the first place, either God should've created humans with a greater intelligence to better figure out the mysteries of the faith, like why there is intensive evil if he exists, or how Jesus could be 100% God and 100% man without anything leftover, or how Jesus' death actually atones for our sins....OR he could've explained these mysteries in a "mother of all philosophical papers."
Short of doing that he should've given us sufficient present-day evidence to believe. The location of Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt, would still be miraculously preserved and known by scientific testing to have traces of female DNA in it. There would be non-controversial evidence that the Israelites lived as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, conclusive evidence that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and convincing evidence that they conquered the land of Canaan exactly as the Bible depicts. But there is none. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
So I don't think this is an unreasonable request at all.
Another Christian response is that God hides himself…he’s a hidden God. Well, if so, he’s doing a great job of this given the numbers of people who are not Christians.
But why should I believe in a God who hides himself in the bushes, so to speak, and then who will punish us if we don't find him? And how does he expect us to find him if he’s hiding from us. If he fails to show us his true love and we reject him because of the presence of the massive amount of suffering in the world, then we have merely rejected a caricature of him and not the real God. How can he be upset with us for this?
One last Christian answer to this problem is that God reveals himself, not through the historical evidence, but through the “inner witness of the Holy Spirit. I’ve recently dealt with this answer here, here, and here. But let me summarize what I’ve said and offer a dilemma for the Christian.
What propositional content does this inner witness provide the Christian with?...that Jesus was born of a virgin as a historical person living in the 1st century AD? William Lane Craig claims Christians do not need any other evidence but the inner witness of the Spirit, and that it's rational to believe even if the evidence is against it. Convenient, eh, especially when the Mormons claim the same thing with regard to their faith.
The best that Alvin Plantinga can say is that IF Christianity is true THEN it's rational to believe. But how does he make the case that Christianity is true? He doesn't even attempt this as far as I can see. Craig does, of course, but his actual case doesn't hold up to the evidence (a subject for another time). But to show Christianity to be true requires dealing with the historical evidence, for no one can come to the conclusion that Jesus was born of a virgin via philosophical argument. This then, is the problem for such an argument. At least that's what I think.
Again, the best that Plantinga can show us is that IF Christianity is true THEN it's rational to believe. But what if his arguments concerning the proper basicality of the God-hypothesis were found to be circular, uninteresting and trivial, or false? Then what? Would you as a Christian still maintain your faith? Does your faith now depend upon his arguments or not? If so, then you believe based upon an argument after all! If not, then what basis do you have for believing?
Lets look at this famous Gospel tract evangelical verse cited in the late Gospel of John in light of the older Bible traditions themselves.
First the verse:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
Deception 1: For God so loved the world, (1 John plainly states: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” So, on the one hand we are told God loves the world only to be again told for Christians not to love the world. Since, in both cases the Greek word here is κόσμον, one is feed a flat out contradiction especially in light of the statement of Jesus “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Perfection is not contradiction!
Secondly, if God really loves the world, he would not have destroyed it in the flood of Noah. Love and destruction are totally antonyms.)
Deception 2: …that He gave His only begotten Son, (In Genesis 6:2 we are clearly told: “that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.” Just as the Hebrew states: בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים וַיִּרְאוּ God already had “sons” plural! So one must wondered, even if the Hellenistic Greek writer of John did not understand the Hebrew text, he surly had the LXX which clearly states “οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ”. While Christians get all choked up about God giving his only son, Jesus, they need to read and believe their Bibles more!)
Deception 3: …that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, (The problem posed here is the fact that orthodox Christian dogma states ( as based on Jesus and the New Testament) that the soul of the non-believer will suffer for eternity in the fires of torment. The Greek word here is “ἀπόληται” clearly means “to destroy fully (reflexively, to perish, or lose), literally or figuratively -- destroy, die, lose, mar, perish”. So which is it? The dead according to both atheists and Jehovah Witnesses are simply fully destroy meaning no eternal soul / nothingness. So, we could say that John 3:16 supports the ahteist view of life too!)
Deception 4: …but have eternal life. (The propaganda sold in this verse is to an ancient world where the average person making it to the age of 30 was considered old where a simple abscessed tooth could mean certain death, to work miracles and not die was to be like the gods themselves (to argue that “ζωὴν αἰώνιον” means that the dead believer lives forever in Heaven is not only a contradiction of terms, but really begs the question all over again as to what not being destroyed and living forever plainly means). When one considers the older Hebrew stories of Enoch, Moses and Elijah along with the Greek story of the miracle worker Apollinus of Tyana who is claimed also to have never died. The false claim in eternal life in John 3:16 is given even more credence as it was preached to the superstitious and mostly literate masses of the Greco-Roman empire to gain fast converts in a ancient world that swam in a sea of religions and promises of hope. End the end, it was Christianity which out sold its fellow religions with verses like John 3:16 which gave more hope to its superstitious world.
Finally, we must understand that hope need not be true; it only needs to be hope; thus John 3:16!
Apart from the hobby / fellowship nature of Christianity and apart from the apologetic mental gymnastics believers use to keep this ancient concept of reality spinning on the modern stick of logic; just what does Christianity offer over and above that the basic secular world does not give?
The stimulus for this post was a church bulletin I saw announcing “Flu Shots” and listed the times Christians could receive their secular protection from this virus. But why would God fearing, Jesus believing, Bible claiming church members need the same secular protection just as the non-religious / anti -religious secular world would?
I’m an atheist who, as a former Christian, overtly has renounced both God and the Bible. I work with sincere Christians who received free flu shots given at work while I refused it. Over the course of last winter, a number of these Christians became sick with the flu (both those who got the shot and those who did not) and were out of work for a week while this non-believing secular atheist never even got a cold that year.
Paul states in 1 Corinthians 11:30 (For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.) as a supernatural reason why many believers at Corinth were sick and even died was that it was a curse from God for misusing the Lord’s Supper. (This Biblical “Fact” implicitly states that God was active in either attacking his own faithful or, as in the case of Job, used Satan to do his dirty work.)
In short we are told that God actively engages the health of his “children” (remember, he is the Dad…”Our Father who art in Heaven…”) as proof he exists even to the point of sickness and death.
So just what good is Christianity other than a mental apologetic argument used to peddle magical promises to uninformed people understood as “Lost" or "Unsaved” to the believers.
Preachers (ordained and endorsed by an ecclesiastical authorities and lead by the Holy Spirit ) and Christians are arrested for sex crimes, thefts, murders, frauds and just about any and everything the worst anti-Christian could be arrested for even though most minsters make a very good living announcing (preaching) the “absolute truths” of God.
In conclusion, Christians are given a Great Commission by Jesus to tell both the wrong religion and the non-religious world that they are indeed wrong and must submit to the promises of God (as stated in the Bible). If one rejects the Gospel of Jesus, then God will also attack the non-Christian (just as he attacked or allowed the Christian to be attacked in Corinth) at the Great White Throne Judgment; this despite the fact that Biblical promises for Christians for the here and now are failures (just as I’ve pointed out above) .
Now Christians, it’s time to pull the only strings you have to make God appear logical and loving…use your apologetic mental gymnastics and to tell us at DC just why the reality we live with everyday is not the truth and that that mountain Jesus tells us can really be moved and cast into the sea can be done if only we have the oh-so-pure Christian faith (but the size of a mustard seed).
And finally, if the Bible has promises which, in order to keep them true, must be understood as allegories, exactly what is the difference between an allegory and a flat out lie? Or, to put it another way, if God and the Bible are caught with their proverbial pants down, can you apologetic defenders now convince us at DC that you and your God of absolute truth have the gift of deception…that the Bible REALLY does not say what it means?
I'm having a discussion with a Christian named Drew, who has a B.S. in philosophy, which can be read
here. Let me summarize some of the main arguments so far concerning what I've previously called
The Most Asinine Christian Argument I've Probably Ever Heard...
I have argued that the more often Christians have to resort to background beliefs—the more often they have to resort to their overall religious worldview to defend a particular tenet of faith—then the less likely their faith is true. I realize we all retreat to background beliefs here and there to support a weak plank in our worldviews, an anomaly, so to speak. But the more one has to do this then the weaker his whole position is. And I claim that on any given issue I wrote about in my book, one after another, a Christian cannot defend that issue on its own terms. Instead he must resort to his background beliefs to do so, time after time, after time. THAT'S why I say my case should be judged as a whole. It's because it will become crystal clear that the Christian cannot fall back on any background belief since I attack each and every major background belief he has, one after another, from the existence of God, to miracles, to the resurrection of Jesus.
When it comes to the problem of evil I made an argument that a Christian must deal with based upon what he believes, not upon what I believe. Based upon what he believes about God and this world he must reconcile the two on its own terms. It’s an internal problem to his belief (not mine) about the existence of a perfectly good God given the massive amount of suffering there is in this world.
Here is my argument:If God is perfectly good, all knowing, and all powerful, then the issue of why there is so much suffering in the world requires an explanation. The reason is that a perfectly good God would be opposed to it, an all-powerful God would be capable of eliminating it, and an all-knowing God would know what to do about it. So the extent of intense suffering in the world means for the theist that either God is not powerful enough to eliminate it, or God does not care enough to eliminate it, or God is just not smart enough to know what to do about it. The stubborn fact of intense suffering in the world means that something is wrong with God’s ability, or his goodness, or his knowledge. I consider this as close to an empirical refutation of Christianity as is possible.
Is this a logical argument? Yes, even though it's written for the average college student and not for the professional philosopher. Is it an evidential argument? Yes, since I'm looking at the evidence in this world. This whole distinction between a logical and evidential argument is blurred.
The way Drew describes an "internal critique" means I must show his beliefs to be logically impossible by use of deductive logic based solely on the things he believes. And he maintains that an "external critique" depends on my having ultimate standard for objective morals (a separate problem I have dealt with head-on without skirting the issue). So Drew thinks he has me choosing between two horns of a dilemma where I reject BOTH horns. It's a false dilemma. On the one hand, I reject the claim that my logical argument (above) must show his beliefs to be logically contradictory. That's a near impossible standard that isn't required of most ideas we reject. On the other hand, I reject his notion that by offering a so-called "external critique" of his present beliefs means I must have some sort of ultimate standard for objective morals to do so as an atheist, since my argument is not an atheist argument at all; it doesn’t led to atheism. It's an argument that Drew needs to consider in reconciling all that he believes, since he believes God is the author of all truth. Regardless of whether as an atheist I press this argument against him or not, and regardless of whether he agrees with me or not, he must still consider my argument to reconcile his beliefs. This is evidenced by Christian thinkers who have become process thinkers.
This stuff is elementary to me. I think he's been informed by ignorant people who feel the need to justify ignorant beliefs.
Drew said: While both approaches can be affirmed by a single atheist, they are separate critiques and cannot logically be combined into one argument.
Yes they can! I use a cumulative case argument that uses both approaches to come to the same conclusion. As I said, it’s one argument, a comprehensive one, utilizing many other arguments, both logical and inductive. Yes, each one is separate argument. That’s correct. But since no single argument can topple your whole worldview, or anyone’s for that matter, these separate arguments, while seemingly defective on their own terms, present a comprehensive and cumulative whole case.
Drew said: Note: If the atheist says of the Christian’s definitions, “Those definitions are just wrong. Christians have defined God (evil/gratuitous/greater good) incorrectly,” then the atheist has entered evidence outside the Christian worldview, and has therefore switched to an external critique.
What you must remember, is that the argument from intensive suffering is not an atheist argument. An atheist uses it, of course. But since it does not lead to atheism, it’s not an atheist argument at all. Process theologians, deists and pantheists can look at that argument, agree with it, and conclude that the Christian conception of an Omni-God is improbable while retaining some belief in God.
And it's just false to say that as an atheist I’ve entered into an external criticism of your faith by arguing with you about the correct definitions of God and evil. Because every single argument I offer has been considered by a thoughtful Christian who wants to reconcile his own conception of God based on the evidence of suffering. Some of these thinkers will remain Christians after having thought through this, while others have become process thinkers and/or atheists.
As I’ve argued on page 58 in my book, it is a solid Christian principle that “all truth is God’s truth.” Experience, for instance, has always been a check on Biblical exegesis and theology, whether it comes to Wesleyan perfectionism, perseverance of the saints, second coming predictions, Pentecostal miracle workers, and so on. While experience is not the test for truth, the Christian understanding of the truth must be able to explain personal experience. The whole science/religion discussion is an attempt to harmonize the Bible with what scientists have experienced through empirical observations of the universe. My contention is that other disciplines of learning, including experience itself, continually forces the believer to reinterpret the Bible and his notion of God, until there is nothing left to believe with regard to either of them. Is this external? It cannot be. For according to a Christian “all truth is God’s truth.” He's supposedly the creator, so he must be the author of all truth! No Christian can possibly say that all truth—all truth—is found in the Bible. Is rocket science found in the Bible? So my argument is neither an external one, nor is it an atheist argument.
What exactly is an external argument given the Christian view of truth? If an external argument is merely one that the Christian doesn't accept at the present time then that’s irrelevant, for Christian theology has adjusted itself numerous times by arguments and evidence that the previous generation did not accept. Christians should adjust their views here too, just like they’ve done with a rigorously literal view of the Genesis creation accounts in the light of modern science. They should adjust, just like they've adjusted to liberal views on women when compared to Christians of earlier centuries. They should adjust, just like they've done by condemning racism and slavery, unlike Christians who justified these things in the American South. They should adjust, just like they do with their liberal views of hell when compared to the Middle Ages. They should adjust, just like they do with regard to their liberal and heretical ideas of a free democracy when compared to earlier times of the divine rights of kings. They should adjust, just like Christians have done who no longer think the Bible justifies killing people who disagree. If these previous Christians replied to the evidence, as you do now, that such arguments are external to their faith, you'll see my point. Since Christians have historically changed their views based on this so-called “external evidence,” what they believe is now considered to be internal to their faith.
Drew said: If the atheist is making an external-evidential critique, then the atheist’s worldview must account for that evidence.
At some point, yes, and I think I have. But I do not need to make that argument before I make my case based upon the suffering in this world.
Drew said: Overall, it looks like the internal critique, but he refers to the “extent of intense suffering”.
If I cannot force the believer to look at what we find in the world itself to show his beliefs wrong, then that believer lives in la la land. You might as well be a solipsist. You MUST look at the world that exists and reconcile it with your beliefs about God. This problem, even though I point to the world that exists, is still an internal one for your beliefs.
I am distinguishing what I think about evil from what a Christian thinks. I’m claiming intensive suffering is a problem for the Christian theist. This is not my problem. It’s yours. I’m arguing that this kind of suffering is what you should consider an “evil.” That’s what this debate is all about at this point. I’m trying to argue that it is an evil from YOUR perspective. What counts as a moral evil from MY perspective can and is much different. For instance, the law of predation is not considered by me to be a moral “evil” at all. This is what I expect given evolutionary biology. But I’m arguing that it is an evil from your perspective. I think it’s you who is confused here about that which I’m arguing about.
If I cannot convince you that your faith is improbable then that does not matter. I claim it is. I use your standards to do so. Why you don’t see it is strange to me. As I former Christian I became persuaded of these things, so why is it impossible for you to do so? The answer is that it is not impossible for you to see that you’re wrong, just like I did. That’s how we change our minds, and we all do. Who knows, you might end up a panentheist after further considerations of these arguments. Who knows, right? THEN what will you say about my arguments? You will say they helped you to see the improbability of your prior beliefs.
You cannot answer YOUR problem by skirting the issue. You cannot say “you too” when you must answer an argument that you must deal with even if NO ONE pressed it against you! You must think about this problem for your faith on your own. The beliefs of a person who makes this or any argument are absolutely and completely irrelevant to the problem you yourself face. Again, if you believe all things can be reconciled by your faith then you and you alone must do the reconciling. You can say you have done so all you want to, but since human beings have an overwhelming tendency to intellectually defend those beliefs they have been brought up in, and since they treat those things they believe with an insider perspective, they must come to grips with the arguments of outsiders just to test what they believe.
I’ll have to admit Drew is tenacious, something that’s both annoying and at the same time rewarding. It’s annoying that I have written so much about the internal/external problem without any success with you. It’s rewarding because it forces me to go deeper and deeper with him.
Drew responds by saying…An internal argument assumes the truth of the worldview, position, or argument in question in order to derive a contradiction from that assumption. Loftus is completely incapable of supporting [his arguments] with anything other than either (1) evidence of evil that is external, or (2) some other evidence against God that is unrelated to the problem of evil. If Loftus chooses option (1), then he must account for that evidence on his own worldview. If he chooses option (2), then he’s making a tacit admission that his position is weak [per what I, John, argued above with regard to retreating to background beliefs supporting a weak plank in what we believe]. The point is, explanation of how the Christian worldview accounts for certain facts is not in any way “presupposing” what one is trying to prove. If it is, then Loftus is guilty of the same thing every time he explains some feature of his worldview in order to defend it.
Loftus then argues against hell, attempting again to do it internally. His basic argument is that the “punishments don’t fit the crimes”. (p. 256) He also says that the reality of the majority of people suffering in hell is “incompatible with the theistic conception of a good God.” (p. 256)
I had to read that statement a couple times. The Christian theistic conception of God holds that He does condemn some people to hell. What “theistic conception of a good God” is Loftus talking about here? It’s not the Christian one. If the Christian conception of a good God conflicts with Loftus’ conception of a good God, or anyone else’s for that matter, so what? I know he’s trying to make it an internal argument by claiming there’s an incompatibility, but he keeps jumping outside the Christian worldview when he says things like, “the punishment doesn’t fit the crimes.” I have to ask, “by what standard?” Not the Christian one, so which one? And why is that standard true?
Here’s the problem Drew.
My particular argument in chapter 12 is not directed at the Calvinistic conception of God, per se. As I’ve already admitted, I dismiss such a Calvinistic conception of God. And it’s not supposed to be a defeater of the whole Christian worldview, since my case is a cumulative case, even if I say it’s an “empirical refutation” of such a God (which is rhetoric, although I believe it). Nor is it a logical disproof of the theistic God, although it is a logical argument. Therefore, your criticisms of my arguments are not aimed properly against that which I am arguing against. In that sense there should be several occasions where you would be found saying: “Yes, John is absolutely correct, given the nature of that which he’s arguing against.”
Even at that, I take a swipe at your conception of God when I shared John Beversluis’s argument: “If the word ‘good’ must mean approximately the same thing when we apply it to God as what it means when we apply it to human beings, then the fact of suffering provides a clear empirical refutation of the existence of a being who is both omnipotent and perfectly good. If on the other hand, we are prepared to give up the idea that ‘good’ in reference to God means anything like what it means when we refer to humans as good, then the problem of evil can be sidestepped, but any hope of a rational defense of the Christian God goes by the boards.”
As I said, there is no real distinction between an internal and external criticism given that you believe all truth is God’s, for you must still account for the external evidence of intense suffering in this world. Besides, in any deductive argument ABOUT THE WORLD (in contrast with abstract entities) there is always an appeal to induction from the evidence found in the world, while in any inductive argument there is always some deduction that must be concluded from the evidence.
Reductio ad absurdum arguments can either be used to show what you believe is logically impossible or they can be used to show that your beliefs commit you an improbabilities. I’m saying something like this, “Let’s suppose you are right. If so, these are the absurd consequences. My argument is that your beliefs commit you to accept improbably absurd consequences. I’m not arguing that your beliefs are internally contradictory. Now let’s say you deny or reject the consequences that I point out. Okay. Fine. That does not mean I haven’t used a reductio ad absurdum argument. It’s clear that I have. But in order to reject my arguments you must retreat into other background beliefs to do so, and that’s when I say “the more you retreat into background beliefs the less likely your faith is true.” When it comes to the problem of intense suffering I maintain this is just another example of you retreating to these background beliefs. Once I make this point let’s move on to the next chapter, and the next and the next, until I make my whole case that you have no probable background beliefs from which to fall back on.
And so I find it completely ignorant for you to still maintain that the force of a particular argument depends on the beliefs of the one making it. Just show me one other argument that depends on the beliefs of the one making it. There is a widely accepted strategy called “the Devil’s Advocate” in which the arguer merely argues for the sake of seeing how someone responds. It would do absolutely no good once it’s realized that someone was playing the devil’s advocate to dismiss his objections at that point, for his arguments must still be met and dealt with.
Finally, as I have said, no single argument can debunk a whole Christian worldview. Yet you claim that “an internal critique must assume one's worldview at the outset for the sake of argument.” The argument I’m making in my chapters about suffering is narrowed to this problem alone. I am not taking on your whole worldview at this point. Given the nature of worldviews I can’t do that…no one can. I’m dealing strictly with one aspect of your worldview. Other chapters, such as the arguments for the existence of God, are dealt with elsewhere. If I had to abide by your rule and assume your whole worldview with everything in it, then you have given me an impossible task when dealing with any single belief in your worldview.
Worldviews, anyway, are almost but not quite incommensurable, if you know what I mean. They are elusive to an outsider’s criticisms. They account for nearly everything within it as insiders. That’s why I also argue for the “Outsider Test for Faith.” To use the insider language of a whole worldview would make it near impossible to offer any outsider criticisms of that worldview. Have you ever tried to critique pantheism as an insider? Try it. In the meantime read what Christian philosopher James Sire said about it in his book The Universe Next Door. Here’s a snippet: “What can Westerners say? If they point to its irrationality, the Easterner rejects reason as a category. If they point to the disappearance of morality, the Easterner scorns the duality that is required for the distinction. If they point to the inconsistency between Easterner’s moral action and amoral theory, the Easterner says, ‘Well, consistency is not virtue except by reason, which I’ve already rejected.’…If the Westerner says, ‘But if you don’t eat, you’ll die,’ the Easterner responds, ‘So what? Atman is Brahman. Brahman is eternal. A death to be wished.’ It is, I think, no wonder Western missionaries have made so little headway with committed Hindus and Buddhists. They don’t speak the same language, for they hold almost nothing in common.”
That’s exactly how I feel with you. We live in different worldviews. I cannot critique your whole worldview by criticizing one issue, and we don’t speak the same language. You must simply “See” things differently. If I cannot help you to see things differently then I’ve still done the best I can. I do the best I can to bridge the worldview gap between us that I think is possible, despite your insistence that my arguments are not consistently internal (or inside) to that which you believe. I maintain they are the best that an outsider can do (they are the best I can do anyway).
Let me put this into perspective, Drew. You say God is sovereign and can do whatever he wants to with us as human beings because we’re sinners deserving of hell. This does not make him less than perfectly good, you maintain. He’s perfectly good. We deserve what he sends our way as punishment. We have done this to ourselves.
That, in brief, if I understand it properly, is your Calvinistic position…your theodicy. Granted there is much more to it, okay?
I have already argued that since we cannot behave differently, or desire to do to differently, or even believe differently than what we do, this defeats the whole notion of the God you believe. But leaving that insurmountable problem to the gerrymanderers, since it seems perfectly clear we do not deserve the treatment God punishes us with, there's more to say about this.
How then can I make you see the improbability of your beliefs? It reminds me of James Sire’s discussion above with a pantheist. You see the problem now? We see things differently. To assume this whole explanation of yours as a basis for my argument about intense suffering in this world is to assume too much for one argument. I dispute these other assumptions of yours in other parts of my book. I dispute the existence of God. I dispute the claim that we alone are responsible for our sins because God supposedly created us. And I dispute the whole notion that our sins deserve punishment in such draconian ways as we experience on earth and later in hell. I dispute the concept of hell. I dispute the concept of Satan. I even argue that you should approach your faith as an outsider.
All of these arguments converge against you when attempting to dispute my rejection of Christianity, plus more.
It’s the best anyone can do. It is certainly the best I can do.
So it’s simply false that I must assume your whole worldview (an impossible task) when disputing any single tenet insider your worldview. Such a task cannot be done when looking at any single tenet inside your worldview. But I have examined each major tenet you believe in the many other chapters in my book, all which converge to make the over-all case that your faith is delusionary.
As I said, you must continually retreat, over and over, on each and every issue I write about, to background beliefs to defend a weak plank in your worldview. You must do it for each chapter I write about. You’re doing this here on the problem of suffering. You will do it when it comes to the resurrection (since you will say miracles are not impossible if God exists). You will do it when it comes to the existence of God (since I cannot prove God does not exist). You will do it with regard to my chapter on miracles (since if God exists this would not be impossible for him). And so on and so on.
Have I made my case about the problem of suffering and the existence of God? I think so, as an outsider. But whether you think so will depend on what you think of my whole over-all case against Christianity. As I said, you must deal with my book as a whole. Maybe you’ll do that, I don’t know. But what I’ll look for is how many times you must retreat to background beliefs to support the each and every chapter in my book, beliefs which I debunk in subsequent chapters, one after another. The more you do this then the more circular your approach becomes and the less likely it has explanatory power in defending what you believe.
Staring at a metronome, wondering if and when his name would ever appear in lights, Christian composer Wolfgang Sivori almost gave up trying to make it in the Christian music industry. After composing countless songs and albums, and with over twenty years of experience in creating enchanting Christian melodies, Sivori was just about to give up.
He wasn’t happy with the way his career was going. This gifted composer/conductor/songwriter/singer/trombone player had seen what he felt was only mediocre sales and impact from his work. But on bended knee, he went to the Lord in prayer and asked for guidance. Upon standing again, he realized that he had at least one more song left in him.
“The Lord promised me that if I would just let go and speak his word in my last song, that it would be a hit and many people would be led to the truth of Jesus Christ. I had faith, and the prayer was answered.” Sivori said. That song is now a Christian classic, which also proved to be Mr. Sivori’s last work before succumbing to pneumonia complications in his Baton Rouge apartment and dying last Thursday evening. The song was called Water From a Jawbone, based on the life of Samson.
With permission from Saving Mythology Records, the lyrics of this short-but-powerful Christian hymn are reprinted below…
Between Zorah and Eshteal was a strong man, a strong man.
Between Zorah and Eshteal was a man given to lust and whores, lust and whores.
Oh, sun man Samson!
Oh, sun man Samson!
He killed many men and bragged about it, slew them without thinking about it.
Oh, sun man!
Oh, mighty sun man!
Just like Hercules, a product of mythologies.
Oh, sun man Samson!
Oh, sun man Samson!
He slew a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, and then God gave him water to last.
Oh, oh, oh, water from a jawbone!
There was water from a jawbone!
When he was alone, there was water from a bone!
There was water from a jawbone, saving water from a jawbone!
Amennnnnnnnnnnn!
The song was a huge success. Many Christians praised it. It went triple platinum within the first month of its release. But while the majority of the Christian world praised the work, there were some disgruntled voices that could be heard in their midst.
The first criticism was that Sivori was dishonoring God by associating the story of Samson with paganism. Sivori defended the song thusly: “God is an inclusive God. His grace works among the pagans as well as us. This is why there were a number of virgin-born savior-god-men, like Hercules and Perseus, well before Christ’s time. Church father Justin Martyr even admits this in his work Apologia I. The name ‘Samson’ actually means ‘sun man’, meaning his character was brought over from paganism. He was a sun god made into a man, but God wanted the story in the Bible to show how inclusive he can be. Besides, the Bible is a book that is 95 percent mythology. The very first book of the Bible has angels getting boners for earth girls (Genesis 6:1-4). With such silly heathen myths found all throughout our holy book, how can we but be diligent in using these occurrences to demonstrate to the pagans that Jesus Christ died for their sins?”
And what of the charge that his song denigrates God and puts him on the level of a violent thug? Mr. Sivori says: “There’s really not much I can say about that. All one has to do is pick up the Bible and open it to absolutely any page and they can see for themselves somewhere on that page just how vicious, vindictive, and openly violent God is. God was happy having Samson carry out his divine will by slaughtering a thousand men and then bragging about it (Judges 15:15-17). One has to be pretty stupid to miss the fact that the most righteous men in the Bible are unequivocally the bloodiest. Take David, for example; he was God’s favorite Old Testament saint, but even he had so much blood on his hands that Father God decided that he couldn’t build his house for him” (I Chronicles 22:8).
Mr. Sivori went on to say…
“The lesson is, instead of finding fault with God and trying to change him, as I had tried to do in my earlier songs, we need to accept his character and who he really is. Jesus Christ is the most merciful side of God there can be, but the savior with outstretched arms himself is more than willing to cast us into a lake of fire where there ‘shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 13:50). For years, I gave it my all, like so many Christians do, to make God look more presentable, to make him look nicer. But that was wrong of me. God is not nice. Nobody needs to hear about John 3:16 and lovey-dovey passages that falsely portray God as some gentleman with a beard and a timepiece. No, God is a mauling warrior, with sinews for bootlaces and skulls for beverage containers, and he must be portrayed as such (Exodus 15:3).
Having left us a rich musical treasure chest of angelic tunes, Mr. Sivori is now resting in the sweet bosom of Jesus. His music mentor was another great composer, that sweet singer of Israel, King David, who was arguably God’s first big-time music maker...
“Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah.” (Psalm 59:13)
(JH)
Steve Hays has a great post up on
Triablogue. I couldn't agree more.
Don't get me wrong here. I like Bill; very much so. And I respect him as a person. I don't mean to pick on him. It's just that he is one of the world's leading apologists for the Christian faith and he writes something each week on his website, some of which is worthy of further consideration by me. I have challenged Christian apologists to do what I did in the opening chapter of my book, to tell us the initial conditions and reasons why they became Christians in the first place. Bill does so
right here. Let me comment...
I'm thankful for his openness and honesty with this. I've argued that people who first choose to believe do not initially have sufficient reasons to do so. I've argued that the initial choice to believe is like putting on "God Glasses," from which all other evidence is subsequently viewed and forced to fit, much like a person who has been brainwashed.
It was only later after having examined my faith more thoroughly that I realized these initial reasons were not good ones to believe. From reading his story I don't think Bill had good initial reasons to believe either. What do you think?
Notice in his personal story his need for happiness, love, genuineness, significance and meaning. Notice also the fact that he read the Bible uncritically along with some Christian books. But think about this. How does someone properly investigate whether a claim is true or not? A person doesn't do it by only reading the literature of the people who advocate it. He does so by also reading the best critiques of the people who disagree with it, and Dr. Craig now knows this. By now he also knows there is a lot of hypocrisy and unhappiness among church people. He was personally "shocked" when a particular pastor friend of a church he attended was caught in adultery nearly 20 years ago, or so. As a Christian I was unhappy for periods of time, and also hypocritical. Surely this has been Bill’s experience as well. It's a human problem that Christianity does not solve. That's why people come to church weekly to get an emotional boost. They come because they are unhappy and hypocritical. Does this subsequent experience of his cause him to doubt the initial youthful rush of friends and the happiness he felt at the time? I suspect so, or it should. By now he also knows the need for significance and meaning isn't a good reason for believing a religious story, since there are many to choose from. He also knows that the Bible was pieced together from several different authors and sources. I'll bet he also can pick up those very same Christian books he first read and find several large holes in their arguments, since apologists disagree with themselves.
So the question I have is whether Bill would've believed in the first place if he knows what he does now. Remember, back then he didn't have any “God Glasses” on, so he was merely investigating the Christian faith as "an outsider." The difference is that the “God Glasses” he now has on provide him with a presumption which causes him to view all of the evidence from that presumption.
I dare say that if he knew what he does now and hadn't already chosen to put on the “God Glasses” he would not have chosen to believe in the first place.
Dr. Craig responds to similar questions I've raised about his claim that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit "trumps all other evidence"
in his recent Q & A. Remember, I had claimed he was an
Epistemological Solipsist and as such, similar arguments against both viewpoints apply.
I made my argument here. Let me further comment on what he just wrote...
Dr. Craig wrote:...most of our beliefs cannot be evidentially justified. Take, for example, the belief that the world was not created five minutes ago with built-in memory traces, food in our stomachs from meals we never really ate, and other appearances of age. Or the belief that the external world around us is real rather than a computer-generated virtual reality. Anyone who has seen a film like The Matrix realizes that the person living in such a virtual reality has no evidence that he is not in such an illusory world. But surely we're rational in believing that the world around us is real and has existed longer than five minutes, even though we have no evidence for this.
I find these examples to be strange ones, very strange. So let’s see if I can put this into perspective. He's arguing that since it’s rational to believe we’re not in The Matrix or that we have not been created five minutes ago, it’s also rational to believe in God without evidence. Is there truly no evidence against our beliefs that we were not created five minutes ago or that we're not living in The Matrix? These examples are bandied about among philosophers as if they are self-evident, including the evil demon and dream conjectures of Rene Descartes. We are told there is no evidence for what we believe about such things AND we are told by Reformed Epistemologists like Plantinga and Craig that these examples parallel their belief in the “great truths of the gospel.” Let’s look at these things in turn.
First, I think there is evidence to suggest we were not created five minutes ago, depending on what we mean by evidence. Evidence in its broadest conception includes anything and everything used to demonstrate the truth of a claim, which includes our arguments based on the things we’ve experienced. What we believe will be based on the probability of the evidence, all of it, as broadly defined. As such, I think there is evidence against the existence of a creator God. The arguments for the existence of God are not persuasive. I do not think such a God could create the first moment in time if he is somehow “outside of time.” And I do not think a spiritual Supreme Being could create a material world. Even if a creator God exists I find no evidence that he would create us into such a massively deceptive world five minutes ago anyway. Therefore there is evidence against our having been created five minutes ago. Now, could it be possible that we were created five minutes ago? Maybe. But if so, this is an very very slim possibility given the evidence.
The demon hypothesis of Rene Descartes, in which there might be a demon who is deceiving me right now, fails because of the same evidence just mentioned above with regard to God creating us five minutes ago. Descartes uses his extreme method of hypothetical doubt like a massive sword. The mere possibility that there is such a demon was enough to cast doubt on his knowledge about the external world. But why must we base what we believe or don’t believe on a mere possibility?
When it comes to the question of whether I’m dreaming right now a good case has been made by Norman Malcom [in his book Dreaming and Skepticism], and Bernard Williams [in his book Descartes], that there is a difference between dreams and our waking experience. The fact that we can distinguish between them presupposes we are aware of them both and of their differences. It’s only from the perspective of being awake that we can explain our dreams. Hence we can only make sense of this distinction if we are sometimes awake. And since this is the case, all of our experiences throughout our entire lives cannot be made up merely of a sequence of dreams.
What about the world depicted in The Matrix film? There are several responses to such a radical scenario which would upstage most every belief we have about our existence in this world. Such a scenario is a mere possibility, if it is possible at all, and a very unlikely one at that. I’d have to refresh myself on the story line but the story is just implausible. I see no reason why there would be any human resistance or knowledge of the Matrix at all by people living in the Matrix, since it determines all of their experiences…all of them. I also see no reason why a pill or a decision by Neo could make any difference at all while inside the Matrix. Apart from the story line itself I see no reason for the Matrix in the first place, and I see no reason why our bodies are better at fueling it than other sources. I’d have to watch the movie again to say more about it.
As David Mitsuo Nixon argued, “The proper response to someone’s telling me that my belief could be false is, “So what?” It’s not possibility that matters, it’s probability, So until you give me a good reason to think that my belief is not just possibly true, but probably false, I’m not changing anything about what I believe or what I think I know.” [“The Matrix Possibility” in The Matrix and Philosophy, ed. William Irwin (p. 30)]
So even if the Matrix is a possibility, it’s an extremely unlikely one. To overturn nearly everything we believe in order to believe it would be to go against the overwhelming evidence (as defined above) about that which we claim to know. In fact, it would be self-defeating to believe it, for if we did come to believe in the Matrix then how do we know that THAT world isn't just another kind of Matrix? That is, if the belief in the Matrix leads us to distrust most everything we experience, then what reason would Neo have for trusting the experiences he had while supposedly outside the Matrix in the so-called “real world?” When it comes to Neo knowing the real world in distinction from the Matrix he has been given no reason to think one world is real and the other is illusionary. The red pill could have been nothing more than a hallucinogenic drug, for instance. So Neo would have no basis for trusting those experiences supposedly outside the Matrix in the real world, and as such he would end up as an “epistemological solipsist,” not having any reason for trusting there is a world outside his mind, something I accuse William Lane Craig of being.
Here’s what Professor Craig additionally said…Plantinga does not to my knowledge clearly commit himself to the view that the witness of the Holy Spirit is an intrinsic defeater-defeater. Such a thesis is independent of the model as presented. But I have argued that the witness of the Spirit is, indeed, an intrinsic defeater of any defeaters brought against it.
It is in this sense that I argue Craig is an epistemological solipsist. He claims that no other evidence can convince him or any other believer that they are wrong…none...apart from this so-called inner witness of the Holy Spirit, which always serves as an intrinsic defeater-defeater to this evidence.
Craig also wrote…Many of the things we know are not based on evidence. So why must belief in God be so based? Belief in God and the great truths of the Gospel is not a blind exercise of faith, a groundless leap in the dark. Rather, as Plantinga emphasizes, Christian belief is part of the deliverances of reason, grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, which is an objective reality mediated to me from God.
Notice the impossibly huge leap Craig makes here. From the fact that we cannot be absolutely certain
(a) that we were not created five minutes ago, or
(b) that we are not living in a Matrix,
Craig claims,
(c) we can know with some real assurance that the Christian God exists and that the gospel is true.
I think a proper conclusion from what he’s argued can only lead him to conclude that since it’s possible that (a) and (b) obtains, it’s therefore possible that (c) obtains. But this is extremely problematic. As I’ve argued in my book, Christians repeatedly retreat to the position that what they believe is “possible,” or “not impossible,” rather than what is probable. When they do this they are admitting the evidence is not on their side. They’re trying to explain the evidence away. Just because all of these things are possible he cannot conclude that what he believes is probable. A possibility is not a probability. How he slips in a probability because of a possibility is beyond me. The inference does not follow. It's a huge non-sequitur.
Just look at the analogous belief he thinks he has assurance about. In my debate challenge I asked what a potenital Christian opponent would like to defend. Here is what Craig must be assured of, depending on how he answers each question:Would you like to defend the existence of the social Trinitarian God (versus an anti-social Trinitarian God) of the Bible (which had a long process of formation and of borrowing material from others) who never began to exist and will never cease to exist (even though everything we experience has a beginning and an end), who never learned any new truths, who does not think (for thinking demands weighing temporal alternatives), who is not free with respect to deciding his own nature, who revealed himself through a poor medium (history) in a poor era (ancient times), who condemns all of humanity for the sins of the first human pair, who commanded genocide, who allows intense suffering in this world (yet does not follow the same moral code he commands believers to follow), whose Son (the 2nd person of the trinity) became incarnate in Jesus (even though no one has ever made sense of a person who is 100% man and 100% divine) to be punished for our sins (even though there is no correlation between punishment and forgiveness) who subsequently bodily arose from the dead (even though the believer in miracles has an almost impossible double-burden of proof here) and now lives embodied forever in a “spiritual” human body to return in the future, who will return to earth in the parousia (even though the NT is clear that the end of all kingdoms and the establishment of God's kingdom was to be in their generation), who sent the 3rd person of the trinity to lead his followers into "all truth" (yet fails in every generation to do this), who will also judge us based upon what conclusions we reach about the existence of this God and what he has done (paralleling the ancient barbaric thought police), and who will reward believers by taking away their freedom and punish the dammed by letting them retain their freedom?
Interesting hypothesis, if so. This is such a large claim. The larger the claim is, the harder it is to defend it.
In my book I marshal a great amount of evidence against that which Craig believes. I think I have more than adequately debunked any claim he has to believe AND ALONG WITH IT any degree of assurance that he has an inner witness of the Holy Spirit. What will he do with that evidence? Argue against it, of course. But what if he cannot argue against me on any issue that undermines a key belief of his? Will he continue to believe against it, despite the evidence? He claims he can and he will continue to believe. I think he should follow the evidence by rejecting his so-called inner witness of the Spirit.
Lastly Craig does say something about the evidence, when he writes:What is true is that evidence, as it is defined in these discussions, plays a secondary role compared to the role God Himself plays in warranting Christian belief. Should we, then, ignore strong evidence if it shows that our faith is probably false? Of course not! My work as a philosopher exemplifies the effort to confront objections to Christian belief squarely and to answer them. But most Christians in the world don't have that luxury. For them they may have to hold to their Christian belief even though they lack an answer to the alleged defeater. What I insist on is that, given the witness of the Holy Spirit within them, they are entirely rational in so doing.
In essence what Dr. Craig is saying is that the inner witness of the Holy Spirit gives him all the evidence anyone needs to believe, even if he cannot show this evidence leads to God, and as I argued earlier, even if he cannot sufficiently defend the whole concept of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit (which I find extremely puzzling, but this follows from what he says, because this so-called inner witness trumps even his own attempts to argue sufficiently on its behalf). So, does Craig ignore the other evidence? No. But this other evidence is "secondary." He believes that the other secondary evidence confirms what he already knows to be true by the primary evidence of this so-called inner witness of the Holy Spirit. When it comes to this other evidence, believers do not need it to believe, period, even if this other evidence does not support the Christian witness of the Spirit. No Christian needs supporting evidence to believe, not him…not anyone. That’s his position and why I claim again he’s an epistemological solipsist.
Dear Sarah,
As a former fundamentalist, I'd like to call you on what you are doing.
The media has found you "opaque" about your religion. Why? You have not been honest about the most important thing about you: the fact that you are a born-again charismatic on a mission from God. Most people who have never been entrenched in the subculture of fundamentalist Christianity may not understand what this really means, but I do. Like you, I was raised in the Assemblies of God and I was a zealous part of the Jesus Movement. Like you, my life was consumed with seeking God's will for my life and awaiting the imminent return of Jesus.
Former fundamentalists like me know that your worldview is so encompassing, authoritarian, and powerful that it defines who you think you are, the way you view the world, history, other people, the future, and your place in the world. It defines you far more than hockey mom, wife, woman, hunter, governor, or VP candidate.
You believe that every bit of the Bible is God's perfect word. You have a supernatural view of reality where Satan is a real entity. You believe that alongside our material plane of existence, there is a more important spiritual plane where good and evil beings are engaged in "spiritual warfare" (Ephesians 6:12). As a leader in the war against evil, you believe that God has "called" you and "anointed" you to do his will. This is why you have accepted blessing for office through the "laying on of hands" and prayer to protect you from witchcraft.
So what does this mean for governing? What could Americans expect with you at the helm?
You cannot affirm basic human decency or capability, because according to your dogma, we are sinful, weak, and dependant on God. And so, your decisions would not be based on expert advice or even your own reasoning, but on your gut-level, intuitive interpretation of God's will. This would allow you to do anything and claim you were led by God.
Your thinking necessarily is black or white. People and policies are either good or bad. After all, Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30). Under your leadership, diplomacy and cultural nuance would be less important than not blinking. In a spiritual war, you don't negotiate with the devil.
Regarding social policy, as a believer in individual salvation, you would have an individual approach emphasizing morality and responsibility, not a community approach emphasizing structural solutions. You would be judgmental and controlling of personal behavior like sex, reproductive choice, and books borrowed from the library instead of addressing global warming, poverty, and world peace. Your belief in eternal hell-fire, your deference to a literally perfect Bible despite its cruelties, and your indoctrination to disbelieve your own compassionate instincts, may leave your moral core numb. You might recall the verse, "If a man will not work he shall not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10). However, faith-based initiatives would be okay because they would use caring to evangelize.
How about science? As it has in your governorship, your interpretation of the Bible would trump scientific scholarship and findings. You would deny the human role in global warming because God is in control. More importantly, you would not make the environment a priority because you do not expect the earth to last.
International affairs? Since your subculture has identified the establishment of Israel in 1948 as the beginning of the end, you would see war, epidemics, climate change, natural disasters, and water shortage, all as hopeful signs of Jesus' return. You would be a staunch supporter of Israel and deeply suspicious of countries like Russia identified with the antichrist in the end times literature. (You have publicly said that you expect Jesus to return in your lifetime and that it guides you every day.)
The Christian fundamentalism that has shaped your thinking teaches that working for peace is unbiblical and wrong because peace is not humanly possible without the return of Jesus (1 Thess. 5:2,3). Conflict, even outright war is inevitable, for Jesus came not to bring peace but a sword (Matt: 10:34-37). Like millions of fundamentalist Christians, you may actually find joy in global crises because these things portend His return (Luke 21:28).
But all of this certainty and fantasy in today's complex world is dangerous, Sarah. There was a time when all of humanity thought the world was flat. Today, the stakes for such massive error are much higher.
My message for you, Warrior Princess for God, is from all of us who know what you are about. How dare you presume to take responsibility for our country and our planet when you, in your own mind, do not consider this home? I mean home for the long haul, not just until your rescue arrives from space. How dare you look forward to Christ's return, leaving your public office empty like a scene from the movie, Left Behind?
What if you are completely wrong and you wreak havoc instead with your policies? If you deny global warming, brand people and countries "evil," support war, and neglect global issues, you can create the apocalypse you are expecting. And as it gets worse and worse, with worldwide crisis all around you, and you look up for redemption, you just may not see it. What then? In that moment, you and all who have shared your delusion may have the most horrifying realization imaginable. And it will be too late. Too late to avoid destruction and too late to apologize to all the people who tried to turn the tide and needed you on board.
And you, John McCain, how dare you endanger all of us for the sake of your politics? How dare you choose a partner who is all symbol and no substance, preying on the fears of millions of Americans. Shame on both of you.
Leave this beautiful, fragile earth to us, the unbelievers in your fantasy. It's the only heaven we have and you have no right to make it a hell.
Sincerely,
Marlene Winell
October 15, 2008
Marlene Winell is a Bay Area psychologist who specializes in recovery from fundamentalist religion. She is author of Leaving the Fold: A guide for former fundamentalists and others leaving their religion. She is the daughter of Assemblies of God missionaries.
I'm having an interesting discussion on this topic with a person named Drew Lewis
here,
here and also
here. See how I responded to him in the comments section and judge for yourself what you think.
In the coming weeks, I intend to show that if we posit a null hypothesis about the Bible and we evaluate the quality of data and information in the Bible, the hypothesis that humans alone were sufficient to create the Bible is supported very well by the Data which effectively refutes the hypothesis posited in 2 Timothy 3:16.
Brief Introduction to Data and Information Quality
I recommend reading the following link on Wikipedia, Data Quality. Its a good overview of how Data and Information Quality got its start as an aspect of computer science.
Data and Information have an intrinsic value
While historically, the desire for accurate information has always been important, especially to Kings and Generals, the perceived need for principles to manage data quality arose from the realization of businesses that databases which accurately reflected the state of the world, namely customer information and inventories, saved money. Over the years, as computing became less expensive the technology was adopted by individual consumers and the amount of information available online grew from diverse sources such as companies, governments and individuals. It became apparent that some way to evaluate the quality of information was needed(1). It should be obvious that some data is accurate and reliable and some data is not. To ensure data is accurate and reliable, it needs to be profiled, cleaned, parsed, matched, moved, analyzed, reconciled and reported on(8). In the past two decades metrics for determining the relative quality of information from a given source have been derived. Measuring the quality of an information source is an inexact science but using principles of probability, its relative quality can be measured(12).
Data Quality Dimensions
Data Quality is a term used to describe characteristics or dimensions attributed to data or information. Much of the research on Data Quality is carried out at The MIT Total Data Quality Management Program where Richard Y. Wang has led the effort since the 1990's. There are several approaches to data quality research that depend on how the data will be used, and they all have their own values for criteria or "dimensions". The approaches can be categorized as "Intuitive" (based on what the researcher believed is important), "Theoretical" (how data becomes deficient during the production) and "Empirical" (data gathered from consumers to see what is important to them). Most data studies fall into the "Intuitive" category, however they all contain a core set of "dimensions" and one data dimension that has a consistently high value in all lists is "Accuracy". Another highly valued core dimension from the intuitive approach is "reliability". Some highly valued core dimensions from the Theoretical approach are "Accuracy, Relevance, Correctness, Currency, Completeness" and from the Empirical approach are "Accuracy, Relevancy, Believability, Valued-added, Interpretability" and "Ease-of-understanding" (11). The different dimensions will have higher and lower values to different organizations depending on the context in which they are used. I will elaborate more on the data production and the data consumer dimensions as I explore how they apply to the Bible in later articles.
Do you think data and information quality important?
Would you be satisfied with a metaphorical record in the following situations or would you prefer a record that accurately represents real world events?
- Reading or watching the news
- Textbooks that you are required to purchase for your University courses
- Studying the only record of the Abrahamic God that exists.
- Producing or reading a business report
- Grocery shopping
- Reviewing your bank statement
- Reviewing the charges for your utilities, such as electric, phone, water, trash, television etc
- Paying your Taxes
- Purchasing a car
- Taking inventory
- Purchasing insurance
- Reviewing your shipping invoice, what you received versus what your ordered and how much you paid.
- Your check at the restaurant
and so on.
Why is data and information quality important?
So what happens when data and information quality is poor? "Poor data quality can have a severe impact on the overall effectiveness of an organization"(3) and "Poor data quality can have substantial social and economic impacts"(11). Subsequently there is a high value placed on information quality as evidenced by how much people are willing to spend to obtain it. There is an industry built on data quality concepts(4) and professional certifications available(5). The reliability of such things as inventory, medical records, medical research, military and civilian logistics, market research, consumer safety, education, consultant reports, work requests, billing reports, status reports, technical manuals and intelligence reports depend on data from verifiable sources that are produced with the goal of accurately representing elements of the real world. One recent example of what happens when there is poor quality information and data is the decision by the United States to invade Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that Iraq possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction"(6) which turned out to be false. Because of the demonstrable importance of assessing data quality, the industry of Data Quality Management has developed(4).
Who uses Data Quality and Information Quality Dimensions?
Short list of organizations promoting Information Quality Principles
* US Government,
- Data Quality Act,
- Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies
* Data Quality Management Industry, DMReview, an industry magazine.
* Education Professionals,
- The Quality Information Checklist,
- Robert Harris's "VirtualSalt",
- East Tennessee State University
* Legal Industry, Evaluating the Quality of Information on the Internet
* Medical Industry,
- Journal of Medical Internet Research,
- Medical Billing
* US Army Logistics, "Data Quality Problems in Army Logistics", By Lionel A. Galway, Christopher H. Hanks, United States Army, Rand Corporation, Arroyo Center
and many more.
The Book As A Database: The justification to apply data and information quality metrics to evaluate the Bible
A book can be a data source. It can be treated like a database. It can be profiled, cleaned, parsed, matched, moved, analyzed, reconciled and reported on. Examples are an atlas, a history book, generally speaking a text book and The Bible. In fact, over the years, to facilitate ease of study, the Bible has been formatted and cross-referenced very similarly to a database.
If we have a lot of individual pieces of information sources we can collect them, profile them, sort them, categorize them, spell check them, look for exceptions, reconcile them, clean them, parse them, match them, move them, and create a report about them. Then they can be put together into an anthology. Once they are into an anthology, they can be further organized into volumes, chapters, pages, paragraphs, sentences, and if necessary even further still into parts of sentences (to separate two distinct ideas in one sentence for example) and verses. This is what happened to the Bible.
Over centuries early Jewish religious leaders initiated the transcription of oral tradition, then later accumulated individual pieces of scripture, evaluated them and combined them into the Tanakh. Generation after Generation went to great effort to maintain the integrity and quality of the Bible by attempting to ensure, at least in theory, that it remained unchanged during copying. When Christianity had generated their own scriptures, and translated the Tahakh from Hebrew, a similar process happened. In the 13th century Stephen Langton of Magna Carta fame created the chapter and verse system later adopted by Jews during the harsh persecution of the Spanish Inquisition(9) and widely in use today in modern Bibles. Obviously the Bible was considered and treated as a source of information about real events in the world whose integrity and quality were given a very high priority and importance.
So how accurate should we expect the Word of God to be?
In the Bible 2 Timothy 3:16 says that "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness". Jesus describes himself as "the way" and goes on to further describe himself as a kind of "Model" to show what God is like. Later, in 325 CE, Church Fathers formally adopted a creed which described him as being "one substance" with God. Jesus confirmed the Old Testament was the word of God by referring to it as such and referred back to it frequently. If Jesus was God incarnate, he verified that Scripture was his word. He mapped Scripture to God and to Himself and verified that Scripture mapped to real world events. Therefore we should expect some measurable difference between scripture and a book not inspired or endorsed by God .
If we use a weighted raking we can get a rough idea of how accurate we can expect the Word of God to be. 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 than if he were working alone.
1. Man alone is less accurate
2. Man is more accurate with Gods help than without it
3. God is more accurate than man
That should serve as a rough guideline and the first metric in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of the Bible(7).
The following is a list of human endeavors that apparently were not divinely inspired, so when using the weighted ranking scale in evaluating how the Bible compares to human endeavors it should be reasonable to expect the following.
- It should be at least as brilliant as the ancient theories of knowledge, reason, truth, nature, mathematics, logic, knowledge of nature, and the use of mathematics to describe nature which continue to inform the practice of science to the present day resulting in theories such as Germ theory, Relativity, Genetics, Atoms, Quantum Theory all of which have been applied to generally reduce the amount of suffering in the world.
- It should at least be as accurate as a history book where it talks about history
- It should at least be as accurate as a science book where it talks about the world
- It should at least be as accurate as a manual where it gives instructions
- It should at least be as accurate as a scientific theory where it gives predictions
If not, then there is no reason to think that its inspiration is anything different than any other type of inspiration.
A Null hypothesis is any hypothesis that is evaluated for its ability to explain a given set of data. If the hypothesis is not sufficient to explain the data, then there is reason to pursue an alternate hypothesis. While it is not without it criticisms, particularly compared to Bayesian Inference(10), it is a useful heuristic to form an initial opinion about an idea about its probability or plausibility, or to get a "feeling" about something.
In the coming weeks, I intend to show that if we posit a null hypothesis about the Bible and we evaluate the quality of data and information in the Bible, the hypothesis that humans alone were sufficient to create the Bible is supported very well by the Data which effectively refutes the hypothesis posited in 2 Timothy 3:16.
REFERENCES
1. Wikipedia, "Data Management"
2. Information Quality at MIT
3. Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations
4. DMReview, Data Management Review
5. IQ-1 Certificate Program
6. Wikipedia, 2003 Invasion of Iraq
7. How Accurate Is The Bible?
8. Datalever.com
9. Wikipedia, Tanakh
10. Wikipedia, Null Hypothesis
11. Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers
12. IQ Benchmarks
Just For Fun
Tomorrows History, A snapshot of whats going on in the world today.
- Jacob Zuma of South Africa still a mystery
- Pirates Seize Tanker Off African Coast
- Kim Jong-il Health: Still A Puzzle
- Three Jewish rioters hurt, Arab home set ablaze in latest Acre ...
- Terrorist Suicide attacks a growing threat in Pakistan
- Bomb in Pakistan capital, air strikes on militants
- How Malaysia's PM fell from grace
- Sri Lankan troops kill 18 rebels
- Bush to sign landmark US-India nuclear legislation
- Will the Afghan Taleban join peace talks?
- Japan objects to US N Korea move
- IMF chief hails 'first' global coordination on financial crisis
- The global economy players: Which organization does what?
- McCain supporters face uphill climb in blue Jersey
- Maine now on McCain radar
- McCain inches closer in Saturday's Gallup
- Concern in GOP After Rough Week for McCain
- Florida Republicans cast blame as McCain trails in polls
- On the trail to the White House
- Obama Thanks McCain for Urging Supporters to be Respectful
I am honored, of course, in having a scholar like Dr. Haught write a response to my review. There have been five parts to it:
Part 1;
Part 2;
Part 3;
Part 4; and
Part 5. Here is his response in full:
