Where David Marshall Goes Wrong, Part 3
This is Part 3 of my response to David Marshall's criticisms of the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). Part 1 can be read here, with a link to Part 2.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Convert or die. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Convert or die. Sort by date Show all posts
Avalos Contra Weikart: Part I: General Problems With Dr. Weikart’s Methods
Dr. Hector Avalos responds to Dr. Weikart in what follows:
One of the main goals of Intelligent Design creationists is to undermine the theory of evolution by arguing that it can have catastrophic human consequences. This, of course, involves a fallacious logical argument from consequences. Whether a theory has good or bad consequences is irrelevant to whether that theory is true.
But, this logical fallacy has not deterred Intelligent Design creationists who use it to instill fear of evolution in the public. One of the latest attempts in this fear-mongering effort is the pro-Intelligent Design propaganda film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which paints Darwinism as the main, or only, factor in the Nazi Holocaust.
One of the main goals of Intelligent Design creationists is to undermine the theory of evolution by arguing that it can have catastrophic human consequences. This, of course, involves a fallacious logical argument from consequences. Whether a theory has good or bad consequences is irrelevant to whether that theory is true.
But, this logical fallacy has not deterred Intelligent Design creationists who use it to instill fear of evolution in the public. One of the latest attempts in this fear-mongering effort is the pro-Intelligent Design propaganda film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which paints Darwinism as the main, or only, factor in the Nazi Holocaust.
Green vs Engwer: Defending Visions
On this blog, I have put forth an essay series on the visionary origins of Christianity. I have decided to make it a five-part series, beginning with an essay on visions and four subsequent posts defending objections to my visions. Jason Engwer of Triablouge has seen fit to compose a rebuttal of what I have written on the subject of visions. In what follows will be a point-by-point rebuttal to what Mr. Engwer has written.
How to Avoid the Question: Lessons from Professor Rauser
Don't get me wrong. I like Professor Randal Rauser. I think he's creative, intelligent, and a nice guy to boot. But he doesn't seem to care at all that Anne Askew was tortured and burned at the stake even though God had a multiple number of ways to keep that from happening. I wrote about Anne here.
So far he does not want to deal with her case. He wants me to chase him down the rabbit hole of definitions about what kind of a revelation God should have produced, sort of like following a Socratic method, which would end up being more interesting to him than the particular case before us. He'd rather play Pharisee by discussing what it means to work on the Sabbath day rather than help someone in need. I'd rather discuss concrete examples, people, good people who suffered because his God was inept. He doesn't get it. He's far too gone as the brainwashed person he is. He cannot be helped, not by me. So I write for other people who are reading this exchange. I do this quite a bit, really. Here then is the problem he fails to see with regard to the Anne Askew's of this world.
So far he does not want to deal with her case. He wants me to chase him down the rabbit hole of definitions about what kind of a revelation God should have produced, sort of like following a Socratic method, which would end up being more interesting to him than the particular case before us. He'd rather play Pharisee by discussing what it means to work on the Sabbath day rather than help someone in need. I'd rather discuss concrete examples, people, good people who suffered because his God was inept. He doesn't get it. He's far too gone as the brainwashed person he is. He cannot be helped, not by me. So I write for other people who are reading this exchange. I do this quite a bit, really. Here then is the problem he fails to see with regard to the Anne Askew's of this world.
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 5 of 6
How Viral Ideas Hook Us
Did you know that Temple Baptist Church was built on land that sold for 57 cents, the amount saved by a little girl that had been turned away from their Sunday school? Did you hear about the guy who died in his sleep, killed by his own farts? Can you believe that racist jerk Elvis Presley once said: "The only thing a nigger can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." And,guess what--Scholars at the Smithsonian have found Nostradamus predictions that relate to Barack Obama!
As you may have guessed, the above statements are false. But that hasn't kept them from circulating the internet for years. Each of them is part of a viral email message, which means that each has some quality that makes people forward it, over and over and over.
The first is a kind of message commonly known as "glurge," too-sweet-to-be-true stories that give people a warm feeling or even chills. The second makes us laugh and piques our sense of curiosity. The third plays with our contradictory fascination with celebrities, which includes a desire to tear them down. The fourth appeals to our yearning for magic. These stories all are drawn from the urban legends fact-finding site, Snopes.com. What is the common theme? Emotional arousal.
Comparing religion to chain mail seems crass, but the kinship is real. And as Francis Bacon said, "The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances."
Viral email has a variety of reproductive strategies. Like computer viruses, many chain mail messages contain explicit "copy-me commands." Some promise us good luck if we forward the message to ten people before the day is up - or a week of happiness, or even prosperity. Some threatens us with bad luck if we don't. Some tries to shame us: "If you care about your friends, you'll send this information about cervical cancer/visa fraud/brown recluse spiders . . ." But most viral emails simply contain something that makes us want to pass them on. They may make us laugh or feel validated and righteous. Many delight us. A few tap our sense of magic or mystery or transcendence.
The term "viral marketing" has itself gone viral recently, popularized by books like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, or Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Corporations have discovered that their best sales staff are satisfied customers, and they've been experimenting. Can we figure out the formula for starting a fad? Can we seed the virus with a few hired hands who create buzz? The Heath brothers offer communications professionals a simple formula which they call the "Six Principles for SUCCESs:" SIMPLE UNEXPECTED CONCRETE CREDIBLE EMOTIONAL STORIES. Look at the formula. Now think back about what I said regarding the boundaries of supernaturalism and the born again experience. The fit is remarkably tight.
In the field of medicine, epidemiologists study patterns of contagion. They might track, for example, how an influenza virus spread across one region and how it jumped from country to country in the bodies of specific carriers. Based on the way infections fan out, they may even be able to identify the “epicenter” of a disease. Some of the tools of epidemiology are now being applied to study the spread of viral ideas. But whereas diseases spread passively, meaning people rarely try to infect each other, viral ideas, also known as “memes” spread by harnessing the human desire to share what we know and to learn from each other. Memes get transmitted through established social networks. They spread horizontally within a generation, and vertically from generation to generation. That is why specific religions are concentrated in one part of the world or another and children tend to have the same religion as their parents.
For developmental reasons, children are particularly susceptible to simply accepting the ideas of their parents and community. If a parent says stoves burn you, cars can squish you, and bathing keeps you from getting itchy, kids tend to do best if they simply trust what their parents say. Nature has designed children to be "credulous." This allows them to learn from the mistakes of their elders. It makes them more efficient in acquiring valuable information and adapting to cultural norms. It is also why evangelical parents are encouraged to convert their children. Research on identity development shows that if children can be contained within an enveloping religious community through their transition into young adulthood, few will ever leave. Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
A successful religion needs to have the qualities of a successful virus. In a changing environment, this means it must have the ability to mutate and adapt. In the past, religions were spread largely by edict and conquest. This is how Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and into the Americas. Today, though, religion is perceived as an individual choice and religions must gain share by attracting adherents. This is why, today, the religions that are gaining mindshare are those that have good marketing, high birthrates, and what economists call “appealing club goods”. In the current environment, Christianity has been able to produce offshoots that need no edict or conquest.
Significantly, the religions that are growing right now are ones with strong copy-me commands. Evangelical Christianity is centered on what Christians call the Great Commission: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost." In addition, just as the Roman church latched onto the strategy of competitive breeding (keep women home, sanctify a high birth rate), so Evangelicals have begun to explicitly add this form of copy-me command to the mix. By contrast, modernist Christianity is more often centered on what Christians call the Great Commandment: "Love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul and mind, and . . . love your neighbor as yourself." In a straight up competition, the copy-me command wins out, and in fact, evangelicals are gaining mindshare, while modernists are losing it.
One of the fastest changing aspects of our world is the growth of information. As knowledge grows, some varieties Christianity accept new scientific or historical findings and reinterpret their sacred texts and traditions in light of our best understanding of the world around us. Tangentially, this is the approach taken by Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th Dalai Lama has said, "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview." This kind of adaptation is common for forms of Christianity that, like Buddhism, are more centered in praxis (practice) than belief. For those that are centered in belief, adapting to new knowledge is more difficult, and the survival strategy more often is a sort of fundamentalist retrenchment. Karen Armstrong's book, The Battle for God, describes this retrenchment in the Abrahamic religions.
The need to adapt may seem at odds with the recent success of fundamentalism, but in actual fact, fundamentalism is an adaptation to a changing world. Rather than revising dogmas, fundamentalists develop stronger defenses against external threats to a traditional homeostasis. An extreme example of this can be seen in the case of the Amish or Hassidic Jews: the belief system sustains itself relatively unchanged by engaging people to re-create an ancestral environment in which the belief system emerged.
But most theological fundamentalists have a more hybrid approach. They protect their children from external influence by home schooling or parochial schools, but don't mind accessing creationist materials from interactive websites. They expand in-house social services that include pop psychology. They promote hierarchy and sexism but are willing to have women and children as spokespersons for these views. They play up the risks of inquiry and doubt and use scientific findings and follies to make their arguments convincing. Fundamentalist populations resist ideological change, but they have learned to exploit popular culture, best business practices, new technologies, and even scholarship itself to maintain the survival of their beliefs.
Since a virus and host fit together like a lock and key, understanding viral ideas helps us to understand the human mind, and vice versa. Retro-viruses and influenza mutate rapidly, which makes it hard to develop immunizations against them. On the spectrum of religions, Christianity shows a similar flexibility, regularly spinning off new sects, denominations, and even non-denominational renegades. And yet each of these taps a familiar range of emotions and social mechanisms and is constrained by the cognitive structures that place bounds on human supernaturalism. Christianity has adapted to a broad range of human minds and cultures, a strategy that has resulted in success beyond the wildest visions of the patriarchs.
Learn More:
Memetic Lexicon
Richard Brodie - Virus of the Mind
Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick:Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House, 2007), 253-257.
If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to vt at valerietarico.com and request to be added to her weekly articles list. Missed 1-4? Past articles can be found at www.spaces.live.com/awaypoint.
Did you know that Temple Baptist Church was built on land that sold for 57 cents, the amount saved by a little girl that had been turned away from their Sunday school? Did you hear about the guy who died in his sleep, killed by his own farts? Can you believe that racist jerk Elvis Presley once said: "The only thing a nigger can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." And,guess what--Scholars at the Smithsonian have found Nostradamus predictions that relate to Barack Obama!
As you may have guessed, the above statements are false. But that hasn't kept them from circulating the internet for years. Each of them is part of a viral email message, which means that each has some quality that makes people forward it, over and over and over.
The first is a kind of message commonly known as "glurge," too-sweet-to-be-true stories that give people a warm feeling or even chills. The second makes us laugh and piques our sense of curiosity. The third plays with our contradictory fascination with celebrities, which includes a desire to tear them down. The fourth appeals to our yearning for magic. These stories all are drawn from the urban legends fact-finding site, Snopes.com. What is the common theme? Emotional arousal.
Comparing religion to chain mail seems crass, but the kinship is real. And as Francis Bacon said, "The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances."
Viral email has a variety of reproductive strategies. Like computer viruses, many chain mail messages contain explicit "copy-me commands." Some promise us good luck if we forward the message to ten people before the day is up - or a week of happiness, or even prosperity. Some threatens us with bad luck if we don't. Some tries to shame us: "If you care about your friends, you'll send this information about cervical cancer/visa fraud/brown recluse spiders . . ." But most viral emails simply contain something that makes us want to pass them on. They may make us laugh or feel validated and righteous. Many delight us. A few tap our sense of magic or mystery or transcendence.
The term "viral marketing" has itself gone viral recently, popularized by books like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, or Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Corporations have discovered that their best sales staff are satisfied customers, and they've been experimenting. Can we figure out the formula for starting a fad? Can we seed the virus with a few hired hands who create buzz? The Heath brothers offer communications professionals a simple formula which they call the "Six Principles for SUCCESs:" SIMPLE UNEXPECTED CONCRETE CREDIBLE EMOTIONAL STORIES. Look at the formula. Now think back about what I said regarding the boundaries of supernaturalism and the born again experience. The fit is remarkably tight.
In the field of medicine, epidemiologists study patterns of contagion. They might track, for example, how an influenza virus spread across one region and how it jumped from country to country in the bodies of specific carriers. Based on the way infections fan out, they may even be able to identify the “epicenter” of a disease. Some of the tools of epidemiology are now being applied to study the spread of viral ideas. But whereas diseases spread passively, meaning people rarely try to infect each other, viral ideas, also known as “memes” spread by harnessing the human desire to share what we know and to learn from each other. Memes get transmitted through established social networks. They spread horizontally within a generation, and vertically from generation to generation. That is why specific religions are concentrated in one part of the world or another and children tend to have the same religion as their parents.
For developmental reasons, children are particularly susceptible to simply accepting the ideas of their parents and community. If a parent says stoves burn you, cars can squish you, and bathing keeps you from getting itchy, kids tend to do best if they simply trust what their parents say. Nature has designed children to be "credulous." This allows them to learn from the mistakes of their elders. It makes them more efficient in acquiring valuable information and adapting to cultural norms. It is also why evangelical parents are encouraged to convert their children. Research on identity development shows that if children can be contained within an enveloping religious community through their transition into young adulthood, few will ever leave. Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
A successful religion needs to have the qualities of a successful virus. In a changing environment, this means it must have the ability to mutate and adapt. In the past, religions were spread largely by edict and conquest. This is how Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and into the Americas. Today, though, religion is perceived as an individual choice and religions must gain share by attracting adherents. This is why, today, the religions that are gaining mindshare are those that have good marketing, high birthrates, and what economists call “appealing club goods”. In the current environment, Christianity has been able to produce offshoots that need no edict or conquest.
Significantly, the religions that are growing right now are ones with strong copy-me commands. Evangelical Christianity is centered on what Christians call the Great Commission: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost." In addition, just as the Roman church latched onto the strategy of competitive breeding (keep women home, sanctify a high birth rate), so Evangelicals have begun to explicitly add this form of copy-me command to the mix. By contrast, modernist Christianity is more often centered on what Christians call the Great Commandment: "Love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul and mind, and . . . love your neighbor as yourself." In a straight up competition, the copy-me command wins out, and in fact, evangelicals are gaining mindshare, while modernists are losing it.
One of the fastest changing aspects of our world is the growth of information. As knowledge grows, some varieties Christianity accept new scientific or historical findings and reinterpret their sacred texts and traditions in light of our best understanding of the world around us. Tangentially, this is the approach taken by Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th Dalai Lama has said, "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview." This kind of adaptation is common for forms of Christianity that, like Buddhism, are more centered in praxis (practice) than belief. For those that are centered in belief, adapting to new knowledge is more difficult, and the survival strategy more often is a sort of fundamentalist retrenchment. Karen Armstrong's book, The Battle for God, describes this retrenchment in the Abrahamic religions.
The need to adapt may seem at odds with the recent success of fundamentalism, but in actual fact, fundamentalism is an adaptation to a changing world. Rather than revising dogmas, fundamentalists develop stronger defenses against external threats to a traditional homeostasis. An extreme example of this can be seen in the case of the Amish or Hassidic Jews: the belief system sustains itself relatively unchanged by engaging people to re-create an ancestral environment in which the belief system emerged.
But most theological fundamentalists have a more hybrid approach. They protect their children from external influence by home schooling or parochial schools, but don't mind accessing creationist materials from interactive websites. They expand in-house social services that include pop psychology. They promote hierarchy and sexism but are willing to have women and children as spokespersons for these views. They play up the risks of inquiry and doubt and use scientific findings and follies to make their arguments convincing. Fundamentalist populations resist ideological change, but they have learned to exploit popular culture, best business practices, new technologies, and even scholarship itself to maintain the survival of their beliefs.
Since a virus and host fit together like a lock and key, understanding viral ideas helps us to understand the human mind, and vice versa. Retro-viruses and influenza mutate rapidly, which makes it hard to develop immunizations against them. On the spectrum of religions, Christianity shows a similar flexibility, regularly spinning off new sects, denominations, and even non-denominational renegades. And yet each of these taps a familiar range of emotions and social mechanisms and is constrained by the cognitive structures that place bounds on human supernaturalism. Christianity has adapted to a broad range of human minds and cultures, a strategy that has resulted in success beyond the wildest visions of the patriarchs.
Learn More:
Memetic Lexicon
Richard Brodie - Virus of the Mind
Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick:Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (New York: Random House, 2007), 253-257.
If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to vt at valerietarico.com and request to be added to her weekly articles list. Missed 1-4? Past articles can be found at www.spaces.live.com/awaypoint.
A Calvinist Contemplates Walking Away From Faith
[Written by John W. Loftus] The following comes from the minutes of a freethought association meeting concerning Calvinist professor and author of 14 books, Dr. Ruth Tucker, here. I was struck when she said, "(I am a) heathen in my reason and a Christian with my whole heart." A Calvinist, Dr. Tucker believes in a "sovereign God" that assumes doubt and faith equally. Her faith is more a matter of "God's grace" than "personal will. Here's a Calvinist who thinks that reason does not support her faith but that God decrees her to believe anyway, or so it seems. Interesting, eh? This is a personal example of what I have argued for here.
Anyway, there is much she said that is good fodder for discussion.
Anyway, there is much she said that is good fodder for discussion.
Here are the minutes:
Thanks to Ed Babinski for pointing this out to me.
Our topic for this meeting was "A Calvinist Contemplates Walking Away From Faith" and was presented by Dr. Ruth Tucker, professor at Calvin Seminary, and author of 14 books. Dr. (Ruth) Tucker, noting the good attendance for this meeting (approx.55 ppl.), quipped that she hoped people had not confused her with the famous speaker on sex topics, Dr. Ruth W. One of Dr. Tucker's books, "Walking Away From Faith," regards those who, like Dan Barker, were once devoutly religious believers but who broke from this perspective to one of non-theism. The content of this book and her personal anecdotes and observations formed the basis of this presentation.----------------
Tucker, who is the Associate Professor of Missiology, first felt her call to mission at age 13. The middle child of 5, she was the only one who becameimmersed in the faith that her siblings had all walked away from. She began to harbor festering doubts about certain doctrinal content, however, with the Canons being the biggest instigator of skepticism. What ultimately was included in this body of ecclesiastical laws, she knew, had been decided on by fallible men. There was room for error and what if the "wrong books" had been inserted, she wondered.
Professor Tucker disclosed that she had had no other doctrinal doubts or peripheral problems with biblically revealed truths. Rather, her main uncertainty zeroed in directly on the heart of the matter: the existence of God Itself. Findings by science seemed to continually push back this Being from a personal, proximal one-to a less and less involved entity far off somewhere on the outskirts of the deep vastness of space. Its heavenly home tucked away somewhere among the billions of galaxies. These "Night Sky" ponderings made her wish to live in the old, pre-scientific times, with the attendant beliefs of geocentrism and a small, personal system of an Earth lit by the greater and lesser lights of Sun and Moon, all for the benefit of Man. She had begun to teach religious tenets, but it wasn't until she stopped and really critically investigated the subject matter that she discovered sharp challenges to her religious beliefs and practices.
The next big blow to test her faith was the death of her mother in an auto accident. Her mother, while a believer, never prayed aloud or made any formal testimony to her faith. Had she gone to heaven? Had Ruth failed her, by not saving her soul before her untimely demise? This single, acutely painful event jelled her more nebulous doubts, powerfully challenging her belief in an All-Powerful God. She had witnessed a portrayal of a court trial of God for the events of the Holocaust. Tucker conducted her own trial of the Deity before her students, charging God with "manslaughter." To her at this time, the heavenly Father who sees every sparrow that falls had essentially "killed" her blameless mother.
It was the "silence of God" that was most disturbing to Dr. Tucker. She had a friend who heard God's voice routinely but Ruth, herself, found only a mute deity that she could not closely connect with. Along these lines, Dr. Tucker mentioned that about half of the Psalms deal with the apparent indifference and apathy of a God hidden from humanity. After quoting some examples, she said that very few Christian writers have dealt with the negative side of doubt. Instead, they generally designate it as a "gift" along with belief.
This forms the basis of her book; the progression from faith to unbelief, with many accounts of those who have left the fold feeling liberated and joyful in their departure. Professor Tucker said that she understands this, but that she, herself, will not leave her faith. In an interesting phrase, she said: "I would be doomed if my faith depended upon my belief."
For Dr. Tucker, this "concoction of men" and "belief in something you know ain't true" to quote others regarding faith, is not based on reason and critical examination of doctrines but more upon tradition and more numinous, anagogical associations. She readily admits to the emotional aspects of her faith, feeling that reason can take one only so far. She summed this state up by another quote: "(I am a) heathen in my reason and a Christian with my whole heart." Dr. Tucker also gave us a few quotes and examples of the now buoyed, now sinking quality of faith and its analogy to a "life preserver of the heart" that one clings to all the harder as the stormy seas of reason buffet it. "God does not depend on (her) faith or (her) doubt," she asserted.
Professor Tucker listed five myths about people who have abandoned their faith:
1) "They are angry and rebellious."
She found virtually no evidence for this. Rather, people felt sorrow, initially. They experienced pain, not anger.
2) "They can be argued back into faith." Because the person leaving his/her faith has carefully and painstakingly dissected the reasons behind this major worldview change, the Christian who proffers apologetics is more likely to convert into non-belief in such an exchange.
3) "Doubters can find help at Christian colleges and seminaries." This is not seen to be the case.
4) "They abandon their faith so that they can go out and sin freely." Our presenter pointed out that too many people who profess faith sin more often than non-believers and that this argument was not a motivational issue in de-converting from faith.
5) "They were never sincere Christians to begin with." She has come across example after example of the most earnest and devout of evangelical, fundamentalist believers who became non-theists. Dan Barker was mentioned as just one of these erstwhile believers.
She then listed some actual reasons given for "losing faith in faith." Science and philosophy has eroded the faith of many former believers. The sense of absence of any caring God was another. Another reason was the myth-shattering experience of the critical examination of the scriptures. Disappointment in God (Its apparent apathy or antipathy to Its creation) and the hypocrisy of Christians were two other reasons listed. And finally, the perception of a dogmatic anti-feminist and anti-homosexual stance of fundamentalist Christianity was given for why some relinquish their faith.
A Calvinist, Dr. Tucker believes in a "sovereign God" that assumes doubt and faith equally. Her faith is more a matter of "God's grace" than "personal will." The meaning, purpose, comfort and fulfillment she derives from the story of Jesus, his death and resurrection is a key part of her life and who she is, going directly to her emotional/affective state of being.
Codifying once again. Dr. Tucker gave examples of responses to the issue of belief and non-belief: Christian faith is not proven by rational proofs and apologetics. The faithful base their beliefs on a celebration of the "mystery of the Christian faith." It is the poetic, not the noetic sensibilities that are called up. Faith is a response to the tensions and challenges in life, not a means to solve them. Tucker, borrowing from Flannery O'Connor, spoke of the naturalness of unbelief and how the assault on a young mind from advanced education can displace the faith instilled in childhood, but that they are too young to decide on unbelief. She offered thoughts on the "winteriness" of faith that stands alongside the atheist in finding a silent God but with this cooler search uncovering a faith nonetheless, opposed to the "summery plaudits" of those whose faith runs warmer. Professor Tucker talked cogently about the sense of community and familiar traditions-the hymns, stories and rituals that ensconce faith and the connection with ancestors and future bridges built with younger relatives as being important elements in faith. And she talked about the necessity of the apostate turning his skepticism on unbelief to the same degree as he does on belief.
There was a marvelous writing by Stephen Dunn that Dr. Tucker shared with us called "At the Smithville Methodist Church" that speaks, in part, of outgrowing faith intellectually but subsuming it emotionally. One line from it reads: "Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes. / You can't say to your child/ 'Evolution loves you.' The story stinks/ of extinction and nothing/ exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have/ a wonderful story for my child/ and she was beaming. All the way home in the/ car she sang the songs, / occasionally standing up for Jesus/ There was nothing to do/ but drive, ride it out, sing along/ in silence."
There was a discussion following Dr. Tucker's presentation. Bishop Shelby Spong and his book "Why Christianity Must Change or Die" were mentioned and his dilemma of being in his official role in an Episcopal church, yet seeing folly in many faith claims. We discussed the importance of the institution-the structure- to believers. We can't change the institution, so we must change ourselves, or else walk away from it.
A psychologist in our group talked of the psychological needs that are met by faith. He said that non-believers can't say: "I'll pray for you" or other comforting (if devoid of meaning to the atheist) words. We can feel the sense of peace that a hymn offers but not honestly believe the message or have this message to impart to others. We have a harder time creating a sense of community, and have no deep traditions to hang onto.
The issue of predestination was brought up by one group member and how to reconcile this Calvinist tenet with genuine ethical considerations. Tucker spoke of finding peace from a sovereign God and placing a high priority on "good works." When talking of the sense of praying to a predetermining God, she said that one does not so much alter the plan of the Creator as one creates changes in him/herself. "We are in a partnership with God," Dr.Tucker stated.
Some other thoughts and questions posed to Dr. Tucker were regarded how she defined "faith" as opposed to "belief," the evil done out of emotional faith to uncritical acceptance of religious doctrines (such as was seen on September 11 and all throughout human history), is faith itself a "good" thing? Or is it only faith in what the given believer thinks is the one "true" belief system? Is it a false dichotomy to set up faith as either a belief in God or not? Is there value in group prayer even if there certainty of a divine listener? Tucker spoke of the sense of community and shared caring focused toward a person or issue and the intrinsic value therein. Does the believer hope his faith is true, or does he believe it on faith?
As she stated earlier, the solving of vexing challenges to one's faith is not the core concern, rather it is the giving in to the mystery and giving one's doubts and even unbelief to a sovereign God." With my naked intellect I cannot believe." Professor Tucker was forthcoming in stating that she swam the shallow waters-enjoying the play of tensions, struggles, etc., on the surface, rather than trying to plumb the murky depths. Talk arose of one's faith emanating from an "accident of birth(place)." How could all the diverse belief systems just in Christianity, let alone other faiths, all have it right? "There is truth in all religions but only one path to Christ," was our speaker's response. As to all the harm done out of dogmatic belief, Tucker quoted another writer who spoke of how Christians have turned many away by their bludgeoning use of faith and would garner more sympathetic supporters if they "…didn't make Christianity so darned unattractive." Another quip was that just one week with Southern Baptists would ensure no new conversions.
Thanks to Ed Babinski for pointing this out to me.
A Slave to Incompetence: The Truth Behind David Marshall’s Research on Slavery by Dr. Hector Avalos
Since the rise of the “New Atheism” there have been many Christian apologists who think that they have defeated the arguments of the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. A few of these apologists are seasoned theologians and scholars. Others are what I call “hack” writers, who basically cut-and-paste material found in secondary sources, but who do not: 1) check the accuracy of the secondary sources; 2) have the competence to check those sources independently and directly, even if they wish to do so. The goal of hack writing is to publish something quickly and with little effort and so these books are often very thin bibliographically.
Such a hack writer is David Marshall, author of The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity
(Eugene Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 2007). To illustrate our point, we shall examine almost every sentence in a section titled, “Jesus Frees Slaves,” and found on pages 144 to 148 of that book.
Such a hack writer is David Marshall, author of The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity
(Eugene Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 2007). To illustrate our point, we shall examine almost every sentence in a section titled, “Jesus Frees Slaves,” and found on pages 144 to 148 of that book.Arguments Against God: 10, 20, 30, 50, and Counting!
Christianity’s unfortunate embrace of incoherence
Following the publication of my book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Faith six years ago, one of the most common questions I got from atheists was, “What, only ten?” Of course, there are far more, and I explain that I sorted the many problems into the ten categories. There’s a certain appeal of top ten lists. But others have taken a different approach. In 2014, Armin Navabi published his book, Why There Is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God. Guy P. Harrison has a good brand going with these titles, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God, 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True, 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian.
All of these books are included in the Cure-for-Christianity Library I have been building since the publication of my 2016 book. There are now more than 525 titles, most published since the year 2000. The devout may be wondering—if they even know about this surge in atheist/secular publishing— “Why do these heretics keep writing?” From behind their high stacks of frothy, sentimental devotional books, churned out year after year, they cast contemptuous glances at atheist books that might come to their attention. They may wonder how there is anything more to be said against god and believers.
"Atheism Was Not the Reason Hitler Killed So Many People" by Dr. Hector Avalos from The Christian Delusion
I've been thinking about posting whole chapters of my books. At Dr. Avalos's suggestion here's one of them from The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, edited by John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), pp. 368-95, used with permission. No reproduction of this chapter is permitted outside of this post under copyright laws. You may reasonably quote from it and link to it though.
This is an extended chapter of what you'll find in Avalos's book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence. At the present time Avalos is doing a revision of that book, which will almost certainly update the chapter you're about to read, so look for it.
Avalos explains why atheism was not the cause of the Holocaust, especially dealing with the arguments of Dinesh D'Souza, and including other apologetic attempts to distance Christianity from the Holocaust. If you love this chapter as I do, there are many others in my anthology you'll love as well.
This is an extended chapter of what you'll find in Avalos's book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence. At the present time Avalos is doing a revision of that book, which will almost certainly update the chapter you're about to read, so look for it.
Avalos explains why atheism was not the cause of the Holocaust, especially dealing with the arguments of Dinesh D'Souza, and including other apologetic attempts to distance Christianity from the Holocaust. If you love this chapter as I do, there are many others in my anthology you'll love as well.
David Marshall’s Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Émile Durkheim and Australian Aborigines
 |
| Émile Durkheim |
In his
recent debate with
Richard Carrier, David Marshall made the following claims (Debate video):
“Not only is Christianity reasonable in that it
makes practical sense to believe it, and that Christians have always reasoned
to and for their faith. There are also good reasons to believe -- good
evidences -- that Christianity is true. Let me give three, briefly. (1)
Miracles. (2) Anthropology, a God that transcends particular cultures. (3) New
Testament criticism -- the person of Jesus” (apx. 10:18-10:32 on
YouTube video).
For
his anthropological evidence, Marshall principally cites the claims of Émile
Durkheim (1858-1917), the putative father of modern sociology, on the religion
of Australian aborigines.
Having
received my undergraduate degree in anthropology, and having undertaken a year
of graduate work in anthropology, at the University of Arizona, I was curious
to see what Marshall’s powerful “anthropological” argument would be.
Not
surprisingly, I found that Marshall blatantly misrepresented Durkheim. In addition, his discussion of Durkheim
shows that he is poorly read in the anthropological debates surrounding the
nature of the religion of Australian aborigines.
In
particular, I will show that:
A.
Durkheim did not claim that all cultures believe in a Supreme being.
B.
Durkheim did not even claim that all Australian cultures believed in a
Supreme Being.
C.
Durkheim’s interpretations were challenged from the beginning, and are now
widely rejected.
D.
Christianization or misinterpretation of native terminology remains a viable
explanation for the reports quoted by Durkheim that show any belief in a
“Supreme God.”
E.
Multiple cultures, or even all cultures, having similar concepts of God does
not demonstrate the perception of some transcendent reality.
Most Skeptical Thought Is But A Footnote to Robert G. Ingersoll
Everyone should know something about Robert G. Ingersoll, who helped produce what's been described as the Golden Age of Freethought (ca. 1856-1899), an era that might be seen akin to the modern so-called "New Atheism" but eventually ended (will our era be overtaken once again sometime in the future by superstition? I doubt it.) There are tons of his masterful lectures to be found in several volumes, which are extremely erudite and insightful, prefiguring much of what skeptics are arguing for today. In fact, it could be said that most skeptical thought is but a footnote to Ingersoll, aside from the continued findings of science, the different historical realities, and the continued retreat of believers who have refashioned their theology based on the skeptical onslaught. One difference about Ingersoll with some of the New Atheists is that he understood the Christianity of his day as well as most theologians did. I have excerpted the following paragraphs from a debate he had with a Mr. Black on "The Christian Religion," the full text of which can be found here. You will enjoy this, I guarantee it:
Are Miracles Proof of God? Don’t. Go. There.
Yet more theological incoherence
What Would Convince Me Christianity is True?
[Written by John W. Loftus] I have been asked what would convince me Christianity is true. Let me answer this question.
In the first place, the question is akin to asking what it would take to believe that any cult leader’s claim is true. There is a man in Texas who claims to be Jesus. What would it take you to believe that he’s Jesus? Sound ridiculous, right? That may not exactly be on a par with the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, but such a claim is simply unbelievable to every thinking person, correct? There are other types of questions that are similar in kind. What would it take to convince you that the Holocaust never happened? What would it take to convince you that aliens built the pyramids? What would it take to convince you that Islam, Buddhism, or Satanism is true? Quite a bit, right? That’s because these beliefs are outside of that which we consider real possibilities. I could just as easily ask Christians what it would take to convince them that atheism is true. Given the Christian responses I see at DC, I dare say probably nothing would convince them otherwise. Atheism is outside of that which Christians consider real possibilities. It would take a great deal to change our minds across this great debate, no matter what side we are on. Although, since people convert and deconvert to and away from Christianity there are circumstances and reasons for changing one’s mind. Here at DC we have changed our minds, and we offer reasons why.
In the second place, Christianity would have to be revised for me to believe that Jesus arose from the dead, since if Jesus arose from the dead then the whole Bible is probably true as well. But many Biblical beliefs are outside of that which I consider real possibilities for the many reasons I offer on this Blog. I see no reason why a triune eternal God is a solution to any of our questions. I see no reason why God should test Adam & Eve, or punish them and their children and their children’s children with such horrific consequences for such a mistake. I see no good reason for the animal pain caused by the law of predation in the natural world if a good God exists, either. Nor do I see why God should send a flood to kill practically all human beings. I can no longer believe in the bloodthirsty God of the Bible. He’s a barbaric God. I no longer see the Bible as an inspired book since it contains absurdities and contradictions, being as it were, written by an ancient superstitious people before the rise of modern science. I see absolutely no way to understand what it means to say Jesus is “God in the flesh”, nor how his death on the cross does anything for us, nor where the human side of the incarnation in Jesus is right now. I see no intelligent reason why God revealed himself exclusively in the ancient superstitious past, since it was an age of tall tales among the masses at a time when they didn’t understand nature through the laws of physics. I see no reason why this God cares about what we believe, either, since people have honest and sincere disagreements on everything from politics to which diet helps us lose the most weight.
[About this someone asked me: "John, you say we must follow the evidence, but haven't you said elsewhere that even if you were to admit that Christianity were proved to your satisfaction that you would not follow it? Could you explain how that is following the evidence." Gladly. The belief system that the initial evidence supports is to be considered part of the evidence itself, and as such, it should be included when examining the whole case. If, for instance, the evidence supported accepting militant Islam, where I am called upon to kill people who don't believe, then I must make a choice between the initial evidence that led me to believe and that belief system itself. And such a belief system, even if the evidence initially supported it, renders that evidence null and void. I would have to conclude that I misjudged the initial evidence, or that I'm being misled, or something else. In other words, a rejection of such a belief system like militant Islam trumps the evidence, for I cannot conceive of believing it unless the evidence is completely overwhelming, and there is no such thing as overwhelming evidence when it comes to these issues].
But let’s say the Christian faith is true and Jesus did arise from the dead. Let’s say that even though Christianity must punt to mystery and retreat into the realm of mere possibilities to explain itself that it is still true, contrary to what my (God given?) mind leads me to believe. Then what would it take to convince me?
I would need sufficient reasons to overcome my objections, and I would need sufficient evidence to lead me to believe. By “sufficient” here, I mean reasons and evidence that would overcome my skepticism. I am predisposed to reject the Christian faith and the resurrection of Jesus (just as Christians are predisposed to reject atheism). So I need sufficient reasons and evidence to overcome my skeptical predisposition.
When it comes to sufficient reasons, I need to be able to understand more of the mysteries of Christianity in order to believe it. If everything about Christianity makes rational sense to an omniscient God, then God could’ve created human beings with more intelligence so that the problems of Christianity are much more intellectually solvable than they are. I would need to have a better way of understanding such things as the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and why a good God allows so much intense suffering even to the point of casting human beings into hell.
Short of God creating us with more intelligence to understand his “mysteries,” God could’ve explained his ways to us. He could’ve written the “mother of all philosophical papers” by answering such problems as, “why there is something rather than nothing at all?”, why people deserve to end up in hell, and questions about the atonement, the trinity, divine simplicity, the incarnation, the relationship of free-will and foreknowledge, and how it’s possible for a spiritual being to interact with a material world. He could’ve explained why there is so much intense suffering in this world if he exists. He could’ve explained why he remains hidden and yet condemns us for not finding him in this life. He could’ve helped us understand how it’s possible to want all people to be saved and yet not help people come to a saving knowledge. Christians born into their faith inside an already Christian culture may claim God has explained the things necessary, but for most people in the world he didn’t explain enough. Because he has not done enough to help us understand these things, he is partially to blame for those who do not believe, especially if he knew in advance that people wouldn’t believe unless he had done so.
Short of helping us to understand these “mysteries,” the only thing left is to give us more evidence to believe, and less evidence to disbelieve. Let me offer some examples of what I mean.
Scientific evidence. God could’ve made this universe and the creatures on earth absolutely unexplainable by science, especially since science is the major obstacle for many to believe. He could’ve created us in a universe that couldn’t be even remotely figured out by science. That is to say, there would be no evidence leading scientists to accept a big bang, nor would there be any evidence for the way galaxies, solar systems, or planets themselves form naturalistically. If God is truly omnipotent he could’ve created the universe instantaneously by fiat, and placed planets haphazardly around the sun, some revolving counter-clockwise and in haphazard orbits. The galaxies themselves, if he created any in the first place, would have no consistent pattern of formation at all. Then when it came to creatures on earth God could’ve created them without any connection whatsoever to each other. Each species would be so distinct from each other that no one could ever conclude natural selection was the process by which they have arisen. There would be no hierarchy of the species in gradual increments. There would be no rock formations that showed this evolutionary process because it wouldn’t exist in the first place. Human beings would be seen as absolutely special and distinct from the rest of the creatures on earth such that no scientist could ever conclude they evolved from the lower primates. There would be no evidence of unintelligent design, since the many signs of unintelligent design cancel out the design argument for the existence of God. God didn’t even have to create us with brains, if he created us with minds. The existence of this kind of universe and the creatures in it could never be explained by science apart from the existence of God.
Biblical Evidence. Someone could’ve made a monument to Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden that still exists and is scientifically dated to the dawn of time. There would be overwhelming evidence for a universal flood covering "all" mountains. Noah’s ark would be found exactly where the Bible says, and it would be exactly as described in the Bible. The location of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, would still be miraculously preserved and known by scientific testing to have traces of human DNA in it. There would be non-controversial evidence that the Israelites lived as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, conclusive evidence that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and convincing evidence that they conquered the land of Canaan exactly as the Bible depicts. But there is none. I could go on and on, but you get the point. That is, there would be evidence of miracles, and not just that the particular places and people described in the Bible existed. Plus, there would be no Bible difficulties such that a 450 page book needed to be written explaining them away, as Gleason Archer did.
Prophetic Evidence. God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters (if he didn’t have the power to create a better world which lacked them). He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could've told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it (if he didn’t create it haphazardly as I suggested earlier). He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.
Present Day Evidence. God could visit us in every age, and do the same miracles he purportedly did in Jesus. If this causes people to want to kill him all over again and he doesn’t need to die again, he could just vanish. Also, Christians would be overwhelmingly better people by far. And God would answer their prayers in such distinctive ways that even those who don’t believe would seek out a Christian to pray for them and their illness or problem. Scientific studies done on prayer would meet with overwhelming confirmation. We wouldn’t see such religious diversity which is divided up over the world into distinct geographical locations and adopted based upon when and where we were born.
Evidence specific to the resurrection. There would be clear and specific prophecies about the virgin birth, life, nature, mission, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus in the Old Testament that could not be denied by even the most hardened skeptic. As it is there is no Old Testament prophecy that is to be considered a true prophecy that points to any of these things in any non-ambiguous way. Many professed Christian scholars think these Old Testament prophecies do not predict anything specific about Jesus and/or do not point specifically to him. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection would all be the same, showing no evidence of growing incrementally over the years by superstitious people. The Gospels could've been written at about the same time months after Jesus arose from the dead. And there would be no implausibilites in these stories about women not telling others, or that the soldiers who supposedly guarded the tomb knew that Jesus arose even though they were asleep (how is that really possible?). Herod and Pilate would've converted because they concluded from the evidence that Jesus arose from the grave. Setting aside their respective thrones, both Herod and Pilate would've become missionaries, or declare Christianity the new religion of their territories. Such evidence like a Turin Shroud would be found which could be scientifically shown to be from Jerusalem at that time containing an image that could not be explained away except that a crucified man had come back to life. But the evidence for it doesn't exist.
Now, I wouldn’t require all of this to believe. I cannot say how much of this I might need to believe. But I certainly need some of it. If it were offered, I'd believe. However, if I was convinced Christianity is true and Jesus arose from the grave, and if I must believe in such a barbaric God, I would believe, yes, but I could still not worship such a barbaric God. I would fear such a Supreme Being, since he has such great power, but I'd still view him as a thug, a despicable tyrant, a devil in disguise; unless Christianity was revised.
In the first place, the question is akin to asking what it would take to believe that any cult leader’s claim is true. There is a man in Texas who claims to be Jesus. What would it take you to believe that he’s Jesus? Sound ridiculous, right? That may not exactly be on a par with the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, but such a claim is simply unbelievable to every thinking person, correct? There are other types of questions that are similar in kind. What would it take to convince you that the Holocaust never happened? What would it take to convince you that aliens built the pyramids? What would it take to convince you that Islam, Buddhism, or Satanism is true? Quite a bit, right? That’s because these beliefs are outside of that which we consider real possibilities. I could just as easily ask Christians what it would take to convince them that atheism is true. Given the Christian responses I see at DC, I dare say probably nothing would convince them otherwise. Atheism is outside of that which Christians consider real possibilities. It would take a great deal to change our minds across this great debate, no matter what side we are on. Although, since people convert and deconvert to and away from Christianity there are circumstances and reasons for changing one’s mind. Here at DC we have changed our minds, and we offer reasons why.
In the second place, Christianity would have to be revised for me to believe that Jesus arose from the dead, since if Jesus arose from the dead then the whole Bible is probably true as well. But many Biblical beliefs are outside of that which I consider real possibilities for the many reasons I offer on this Blog. I see no reason why a triune eternal God is a solution to any of our questions. I see no reason why God should test Adam & Eve, or punish them and their children and their children’s children with such horrific consequences for such a mistake. I see no good reason for the animal pain caused by the law of predation in the natural world if a good God exists, either. Nor do I see why God should send a flood to kill practically all human beings. I can no longer believe in the bloodthirsty God of the Bible. He’s a barbaric God. I no longer see the Bible as an inspired book since it contains absurdities and contradictions, being as it were, written by an ancient superstitious people before the rise of modern science. I see absolutely no way to understand what it means to say Jesus is “God in the flesh”, nor how his death on the cross does anything for us, nor where the human side of the incarnation in Jesus is right now. I see no intelligent reason why God revealed himself exclusively in the ancient superstitious past, since it was an age of tall tales among the masses at a time when they didn’t understand nature through the laws of physics. I see no reason why this God cares about what we believe, either, since people have honest and sincere disagreements on everything from politics to which diet helps us lose the most weight.
[About this someone asked me: "John, you say we must follow the evidence, but haven't you said elsewhere that even if you were to admit that Christianity were proved to your satisfaction that you would not follow it? Could you explain how that is following the evidence." Gladly. The belief system that the initial evidence supports is to be considered part of the evidence itself, and as such, it should be included when examining the whole case. If, for instance, the evidence supported accepting militant Islam, where I am called upon to kill people who don't believe, then I must make a choice between the initial evidence that led me to believe and that belief system itself. And such a belief system, even if the evidence initially supported it, renders that evidence null and void. I would have to conclude that I misjudged the initial evidence, or that I'm being misled, or something else. In other words, a rejection of such a belief system like militant Islam trumps the evidence, for I cannot conceive of believing it unless the evidence is completely overwhelming, and there is no such thing as overwhelming evidence when it comes to these issues].
But let’s say the Christian faith is true and Jesus did arise from the dead. Let’s say that even though Christianity must punt to mystery and retreat into the realm of mere possibilities to explain itself that it is still true, contrary to what my (God given?) mind leads me to believe. Then what would it take to convince me?
I would need sufficient reasons to overcome my objections, and I would need sufficient evidence to lead me to believe. By “sufficient” here, I mean reasons and evidence that would overcome my skepticism. I am predisposed to reject the Christian faith and the resurrection of Jesus (just as Christians are predisposed to reject atheism). So I need sufficient reasons and evidence to overcome my skeptical predisposition.
When it comes to sufficient reasons, I need to be able to understand more of the mysteries of Christianity in order to believe it. If everything about Christianity makes rational sense to an omniscient God, then God could’ve created human beings with more intelligence so that the problems of Christianity are much more intellectually solvable than they are. I would need to have a better way of understanding such things as the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and why a good God allows so much intense suffering even to the point of casting human beings into hell.
Short of God creating us with more intelligence to understand his “mysteries,” God could’ve explained his ways to us. He could’ve written the “mother of all philosophical papers” by answering such problems as, “why there is something rather than nothing at all?”, why people deserve to end up in hell, and questions about the atonement, the trinity, divine simplicity, the incarnation, the relationship of free-will and foreknowledge, and how it’s possible for a spiritual being to interact with a material world. He could’ve explained why there is so much intense suffering in this world if he exists. He could’ve explained why he remains hidden and yet condemns us for not finding him in this life. He could’ve helped us understand how it’s possible to want all people to be saved and yet not help people come to a saving knowledge. Christians born into their faith inside an already Christian culture may claim God has explained the things necessary, but for most people in the world he didn’t explain enough. Because he has not done enough to help us understand these things, he is partially to blame for those who do not believe, especially if he knew in advance that people wouldn’t believe unless he had done so.
Short of helping us to understand these “mysteries,” the only thing left is to give us more evidence to believe, and less evidence to disbelieve. Let me offer some examples of what I mean.
Scientific evidence. God could’ve made this universe and the creatures on earth absolutely unexplainable by science, especially since science is the major obstacle for many to believe. He could’ve created us in a universe that couldn’t be even remotely figured out by science. That is to say, there would be no evidence leading scientists to accept a big bang, nor would there be any evidence for the way galaxies, solar systems, or planets themselves form naturalistically. If God is truly omnipotent he could’ve created the universe instantaneously by fiat, and placed planets haphazardly around the sun, some revolving counter-clockwise and in haphazard orbits. The galaxies themselves, if he created any in the first place, would have no consistent pattern of formation at all. Then when it came to creatures on earth God could’ve created them without any connection whatsoever to each other. Each species would be so distinct from each other that no one could ever conclude natural selection was the process by which they have arisen. There would be no hierarchy of the species in gradual increments. There would be no rock formations that showed this evolutionary process because it wouldn’t exist in the first place. Human beings would be seen as absolutely special and distinct from the rest of the creatures on earth such that no scientist could ever conclude they evolved from the lower primates. There would be no evidence of unintelligent design, since the many signs of unintelligent design cancel out the design argument for the existence of God. God didn’t even have to create us with brains, if he created us with minds. The existence of this kind of universe and the creatures in it could never be explained by science apart from the existence of God.
Biblical Evidence. Someone could’ve made a monument to Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden that still exists and is scientifically dated to the dawn of time. There would be overwhelming evidence for a universal flood covering "all" mountains. Noah’s ark would be found exactly where the Bible says, and it would be exactly as described in the Bible. The location of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, would still be miraculously preserved and known by scientific testing to have traces of human DNA in it. There would be non-controversial evidence that the Israelites lived as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, conclusive evidence that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and convincing evidence that they conquered the land of Canaan exactly as the Bible depicts. But there is none. I could go on and on, but you get the point. That is, there would be evidence of miracles, and not just that the particular places and people described in the Bible existed. Plus, there would be no Bible difficulties such that a 450 page book needed to be written explaining them away, as Gleason Archer did.
Prophetic Evidence. God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters (if he didn’t have the power to create a better world which lacked them). He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could've told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it (if he didn’t create it haphazardly as I suggested earlier). He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.
Present Day Evidence. God could visit us in every age, and do the same miracles he purportedly did in Jesus. If this causes people to want to kill him all over again and he doesn’t need to die again, he could just vanish. Also, Christians would be overwhelmingly better people by far. And God would answer their prayers in such distinctive ways that even those who don’t believe would seek out a Christian to pray for them and their illness or problem. Scientific studies done on prayer would meet with overwhelming confirmation. We wouldn’t see such religious diversity which is divided up over the world into distinct geographical locations and adopted based upon when and where we were born.
Evidence specific to the resurrection. There would be clear and specific prophecies about the virgin birth, life, nature, mission, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus in the Old Testament that could not be denied by even the most hardened skeptic. As it is there is no Old Testament prophecy that is to be considered a true prophecy that points to any of these things in any non-ambiguous way. Many professed Christian scholars think these Old Testament prophecies do not predict anything specific about Jesus and/or do not point specifically to him. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection would all be the same, showing no evidence of growing incrementally over the years by superstitious people. The Gospels could've been written at about the same time months after Jesus arose from the dead. And there would be no implausibilites in these stories about women not telling others, or that the soldiers who supposedly guarded the tomb knew that Jesus arose even though they were asleep (how is that really possible?). Herod and Pilate would've converted because they concluded from the evidence that Jesus arose from the grave. Setting aside their respective thrones, both Herod and Pilate would've become missionaries, or declare Christianity the new religion of their territories. Such evidence like a Turin Shroud would be found which could be scientifically shown to be from Jerusalem at that time containing an image that could not be explained away except that a crucified man had come back to life. But the evidence for it doesn't exist.
Now, I wouldn’t require all of this to believe. I cannot say how much of this I might need to believe. But I certainly need some of it. If it were offered, I'd believe. However, if I was convinced Christianity is true and Jesus arose from the grave, and if I must believe in such a barbaric God, I would believe, yes, but I could still not worship such a barbaric God. I would fear such a Supreme Being, since he has such great power, but I'd still view him as a thug, a despicable tyrant, a devil in disguise; unless Christianity was revised.
Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
[20090617. Added References] This article explores the Social Impact of Poor Biblical Information and Data Quality focusing on two of the sixteen IDQ dimensions, Understandability and Interpretability and provides a method for scoring them relative to other fields.
How does one measure the success of a Philosophy or Religion?
There are "positives" and "negatives" to almost everything, including philosophies. I will consider Religions philosophies because they are methods of deriving, among other things, how we should behave and what we should value. Philosophies can be measured by their success. Their success should be measured by how "trustworthy" and "reliable" they are. Measurements of their "reliability" and "trustworthiness" should be dependent upon how consistent or reproducible the results are. Some philosophies have become so reliable that they have become a science and some have splintered, become obsolete, and neglected. I agree with some who say that Epistemology is one the neglected philosophies. However, in my view, Epistemology is one of the most important endeavors humans can undertake, and I think it is thriving under other names, such as Law, Statistics, Measurement, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Informal Logic and Information and Data Quality Research.
How Recipes are similar to Religions and Philosophies.
Virtues, Morality and Truth Seeking are areas where Religion and Philosophy overlap. It can be summed up as "What is the right way to live?". We can rephrase this question to derive an analogy as "What is the right way to do something?". This is how Recipes, Religions and Philosophies are similar. Once someone has an Epiphany, or a "Good Idea" or a "Good way to make a sauce" they can write it down so it can be learned, reproduced and used as a basis for other things. Once it gets recorded once, it will be read (consumed), interpreted and acted upon to behave in a certain way. The measurement of how successful the Recipe, the Religion or the Philosophy should be is how easy it is reproduce the results or how well it consistently reflects real world states.
The success of Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depends on how easy they are to Understand and Interpret.
My Grandmothers cooking was widely regarded as being some of the best cooking in the area. Not only the family loved her cooking, the Church "Pot-Lucks" eagerly awaited what she was going to contribute next. In her last years, we tried to get her recipes written down, but we were largely unsuccessful. She didn't use recipes. She used her intuition. When she said to add something as a "pinch", "little bit", "dash" etc. it meant nothing to us. When she said "do this until it makes a noise like...", it meant nothing to us. Her terms were too ambiguous for any of us to take a recipe dictated by her and recreate what she cooked. One person, a neighbor, was successful in getting some recipes made from her and built a local catering business out of it. She sold it when she wanted to retire.
Christianity is split up into an heirarchy of denominations and one explanation for that could be that it has a low score in the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability.
Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depend on concepts, described by language. It is possible for a word to describe a concept, but sometimes the word depends on the context. Sometimes when you are translating concepts between languages, some languages don't describe a concept in the same way as another language and some languages are missing words for concepts that exist in another language. When this happens, then error creeps into the understanding and interpretation of concepts. A word is used to generally approximate a concept and then it is read (consumed) by another mind through a network of cognitive biases and prior knowledge and stored away categorically in biological storage media, the brain. There is a lot of room for error and ambiguity which leads to poor understandability and interpretability. Interpretability depends on Understandability, so if the information is hard to understand, it will be hard to interpret.
What does Understandability and Interpretability Mean?
The definitions of "Understandability" and "Interpretability" from the Total Data Quality Managment literature are as follows.
Understandability (Ease of understanding):
The extent to which data is easily comprehended.
Interpretability
The extent to which data is in appropriate language, symbols, and units and the definitions are clear.
Interestingly, intepretability plays a very important role in Imaging. I got the following defininion of "interpret" from the field of Military Imagery from answers.com
Military Imagery
"(DOD, NATO) Suitability of imagery for interpretation with respect to answering adequately requirements on a given type of target in terms of quality and scale.
a. poor -- Imagery is unsuitable for interpretation to answer adequately requirements on a given type of target.
b. fair -- Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target but with only average detail.
c. good--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in considerable detail.
d. excellent--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in complete detail."
["interpret." Military and Associated Words. US Department of Defense, 2003. Answers.com 04 Jun. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/interpretability]
And from Data Warehouse Literature
"the extent to which the data warehouse in modeled effectively in the inforamtion repository and how well maintained the Data Lineage (where the data come from)", "Fundamentals of data warehouses" By Matthias Jarke, Maurizio Lenzerini, Yannis Vassiliou, Panos Vassiliadis
- How easy the queries can be posed? How successful are they?
We all know what an Interpreter is.
When you don't speak the language you need an Interpreter, but "interpret" also has specific definitions in other fields such as Mathematics and Logic.
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the Information and Data Quality dimensions are organized into four categories. The catagories are
- Intrinsic IQ,
- Contextual IQ
- Representational IQ:
- Accessibility IQ:
Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Most of the IDQ dimension have clear cut metrics and methods for deriving a score but Understandability and Interpretability are more subjective and require surveying people and analyzing their answers using weighted averages and whatever is common between them. For example if there are two witnesses to a crime.
Witness 1: It was a Black Car.
Witness 2: It was Blue Car.
Using a what is common between them, we can say it is a car. Using a weighted average, without further questioning, we can say that it was more likely a car than a truck so we can give more weight to the car.
1. Car
2. Truck
and we can say that the blue car from witness two was probably a darker shade of blue so we give more weight to darker colors.
1. Dark Blue
2. Light Blue
An example using Christianity is that they all believe in Jesus Christ.
How they define Jesus is another topic.
Quantifying The Understandability and Interpretability Score For Christianity
Since I don't have a survey prepared and don't have the time to randomly select 1000 Christians from random points around the world, It seems to me that one ROUGH way to quantify the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability would be to assume that a Christian denomination represents an interpretation of Christianity and to take the total number of Christian denominations and use that as the denomenator, and use the number one to represent Christianity in the following manner.
Just to keep it simple, lets say that there are only two denominations of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant (but we really know there are more)
Christianity/Total Number of Denominations = some percent or score.
so plugging numbers into that, it would be
1/2 = .5 or 50%
So Protestants and Catholics each get a score of .5 out of 1.
Note, that if there were only one denomination of Christianity, the score would be 1. So one is the perfect score. Also note that this method can be used for other things besides Christianity to enable COMPARING the relative scores of Interpretability and Understanding in different fields. If we were a sociology class, we could do it with a newspaper article and survey students about it. Additionally and more importantly, this type of thing is done as part of the reading comprehension portion of some standardized tests.
To derive a score for each denomination of Catholicism and Protestants you could do the same thing, and the number would come out even smaller as you would then have a percentage of a percentage. For example, taking the score for Protestants, and plugging it back into the equation, and assuming a ridiculously small number of protestant denominations would give us a formula as follows
Protestant Score/Total Number of Protestant denominations = Protestant denomination score
so lets assume only two protestant denominations and plug that into the formula as follows
.5/2 = .25
So now each protestant denomination gets a score of .25 out of 1. The more denominations there are the lower the score becomes, justifiably.
As we can see, the scores for Understandability and Interpretability come out pretty low, and that is reflected by the fact that only ~33% of the world is christian and that ~33% is subdivided into smaller denominations.
Who has the right Understanding and Right Interpretation? Who Knows? How are any of them Justified in saying they know anything about "What is the Right Way To Live?".
They are NOT justified, yet they act as if they are, and make decisions that impact society as a whole.
The key problem with information that is not easily understood and interpreted is Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is derived from poor definitions of terms, leading to unreproduceable results. The information is not mapped properly to real world events and objects. The information does not accurately represent the real world.
There are plenty of examples in the real world that depend on non-ambiguous information to produce consistent results.
Mapping
Medicine
Safety
Logistics
Engineering
Recipes
Mathematical models
United nations
and I'm sure you can think up a lot more on your own.
So now, without further delay, I present to you.....
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF POOR BIBLICAL IDQ
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
[Wikipedia should not be considered authoritative but it is a good place to start.]
Inhumane Treatment Of Others
- Anti-abortion violence
- Torture as means to a Justifiable End
-- Torture in the Past
-- Church Attendance And Torture Approval, Valerie Tarico
- Witch hunts
-- Children Are Targets Of Nigerian Witch Hunt, Lee Randolph
-- Causes and Sociology of Witch Hunts, Wikipedia
-- The Terrible Christian Legacy of the Witch Hunts, John Loftus
- Exorcism
-- Exorcism, Wikipedia
-- A Call For The Scientific Investigation of Exorcism, Lee Randolph
- Mental Illness in the Middle Ages
--History Of Mental Disorders, Wikipedia
- Slavery
-- Christianity And Slavery, Wikipedia
-- Slavery And Religion, Wikipedia
- Address To The Colored People, Robert Ingersoll
- Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!
- Manifest Destiny, Exploration and Conquering
-- Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia
-- The Protestant Atrocities: Manifest Destiny and Slavery, John Loftus
- Heresy, Blaming the victim, Wrong Interpretation, "Not Real Christians" when obviously, if they don't get it, its not their fault. The information is of poor quality.
-- Christian Heresy, Wikipedia
-- List Of People Burned As Heretics, Wikipedia
-- Arianism, Wikipedia
--- Inquisition
--- Inquisition, Wikipedia
--- Words From the Inquisition: "Convert or Die!, John Loftus
- Crusades
-- Crusades, Wikipedia
- Behavior, Sin, Biological Bases of Behavior.
-- Link to Many Articles on this topic by Lee Randolph
DENIAL OF ESTABLISHED KNOWLEDGE
- Human Origins and or Evolution
-- Twenty Reasons Why Genesis and Evolution Do Not Mix, Answers in Genesis
-- Answers in Creation, Christian site that generally refutes Answers In Genesis
-- Debunking Creationism
- Faith Healing
-- Court Rules Faith In God And Prayer As Child Abuse, Harry McCall
UNHEALTHY PSYCHOLOGY
Self-Esteem
-- Is Self-Esteem Contrary to Christianity, Christian Article
- Martyr Syndrome
-- Overcome Martyr-Syndrome, WikiHow
- Co-Opts Humans Natural Flawed Reasoning Algorithms
-- List Of Cognitive Biases
MORE ABOUT THE IDQ DIMENSIONS
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the IDQ dimensions are categorized as follows. Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Intrinsic IQ:
Accuracy (Free-from-error), Objectivity, Believability, Reputation
Contextual IQ:
Relevancy, Value-added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of Information
Representational IQ:
Interpretability, Understandability, Concise Representation, Consistent Representation
Accessibility IQ:
Access, Security
"Quality Information and Knowledge", page 43. Huang, Lee, Wang. Prentis Hall PTR
IDQ REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ), Newest to oldest
* Journey to Data Quality, 2006, from Amazon
* Data Quality Assessment, 2002
* Information Quality Benchmarks: Product and Service Performance, 2002
* Quality Information and Knowledge, 1999, from Amazon
* AIMQ: A Methodology For Information Quality Assessment, 1997,
Direct Download, may not work
Download from link on the site
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers, 1996
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations, 1996
//////////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied To The Bible, oldest to newest
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible
8. Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
9. As You Celebrate The Horror of Easter
10. Where is Jesus's Diary? Information As A Product, Not A Byproduct
11. Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
///////////////////////////////////
Triangulation, oldest to newest
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia
///////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied, oldest to newest
* National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
* Thank Sully!
* Information Professionals Caught Not Checking Sources
//////////////////////////////////
Rebuttals to Criticism of its application to assessing the Bible, oldest to newest
* IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit
* Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles
* Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
* Christians Must Be Agnostic
How does one measure the success of a Philosophy or Religion?
There are "positives" and "negatives" to almost everything, including philosophies. I will consider Religions philosophies because they are methods of deriving, among other things, how we should behave and what we should value. Philosophies can be measured by their success. Their success should be measured by how "trustworthy" and "reliable" they are. Measurements of their "reliability" and "trustworthiness" should be dependent upon how consistent or reproducible the results are. Some philosophies have become so reliable that they have become a science and some have splintered, become obsolete, and neglected. I agree with some who say that Epistemology is one the neglected philosophies. However, in my view, Epistemology is one of the most important endeavors humans can undertake, and I think it is thriving under other names, such as Law, Statistics, Measurement, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Informal Logic and Information and Data Quality Research.
How Recipes are similar to Religions and Philosophies.
Virtues, Morality and Truth Seeking are areas where Religion and Philosophy overlap. It can be summed up as "What is the right way to live?". We can rephrase this question to derive an analogy as "What is the right way to do something?". This is how Recipes, Religions and Philosophies are similar. Once someone has an Epiphany, or a "Good Idea" or a "Good way to make a sauce" they can write it down so it can be learned, reproduced and used as a basis for other things. Once it gets recorded once, it will be read (consumed), interpreted and acted upon to behave in a certain way. The measurement of how successful the Recipe, the Religion or the Philosophy should be is how easy it is reproduce the results or how well it consistently reflects real world states.
The success of Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depends on how easy they are to Understand and Interpret.
My Grandmothers cooking was widely regarded as being some of the best cooking in the area. Not only the family loved her cooking, the Church "Pot-Lucks" eagerly awaited what she was going to contribute next. In her last years, we tried to get her recipes written down, but we were largely unsuccessful. She didn't use recipes. She used her intuition. When she said to add something as a "pinch", "little bit", "dash" etc. it meant nothing to us. When she said "do this until it makes a noise like...", it meant nothing to us. Her terms were too ambiguous for any of us to take a recipe dictated by her and recreate what she cooked. One person, a neighbor, was successful in getting some recipes made from her and built a local catering business out of it. She sold it when she wanted to retire.
Christianity is split up into an heirarchy of denominations and one explanation for that could be that it has a low score in the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability.
Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depend on concepts, described by language. It is possible for a word to describe a concept, but sometimes the word depends on the context. Sometimes when you are translating concepts between languages, some languages don't describe a concept in the same way as another language and some languages are missing words for concepts that exist in another language. When this happens, then error creeps into the understanding and interpretation of concepts. A word is used to generally approximate a concept and then it is read (consumed) by another mind through a network of cognitive biases and prior knowledge and stored away categorically in biological storage media, the brain. There is a lot of room for error and ambiguity which leads to poor understandability and interpretability. Interpretability depends on Understandability, so if the information is hard to understand, it will be hard to interpret.
What does Understandability and Interpretability Mean?
The definitions of "Understandability" and "Interpretability" from the Total Data Quality Managment literature are as follows.
Understandability (Ease of understanding):
The extent to which data is easily comprehended.
Interpretability
The extent to which data is in appropriate language, symbols, and units and the definitions are clear.
Interestingly, intepretability plays a very important role in Imaging. I got the following defininion of "interpret" from the field of Military Imagery from answers.com
Military Imagery
"(DOD, NATO) Suitability of imagery for interpretation with respect to answering adequately requirements on a given type of target in terms of quality and scale.
a. poor -- Imagery is unsuitable for interpretation to answer adequately requirements on a given type of target.
b. fair -- Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target but with only average detail.
c. good--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in considerable detail.
d. excellent--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in complete detail."
["interpret." Military and Associated Words. US Department of Defense, 2003. Answers.com 04 Jun. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/interpretability]
And from Data Warehouse Literature
"the extent to which the data warehouse in modeled effectively in the inforamtion repository and how well maintained the Data Lineage (where the data come from)", "Fundamentals of data warehouses" By Matthias Jarke, Maurizio Lenzerini, Yannis Vassiliou, Panos Vassiliadis
- How easy the queries can be posed? How successful are they?
We all know what an Interpreter is.
When you don't speak the language you need an Interpreter, but "interpret" also has specific definitions in other fields such as Mathematics and Logic.
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the Information and Data Quality dimensions are organized into four categories. The catagories are
- Intrinsic IQ,
- Contextual IQ
- Representational IQ:
- Accessibility IQ:
Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Most of the IDQ dimension have clear cut metrics and methods for deriving a score but Understandability and Interpretability are more subjective and require surveying people and analyzing their answers using weighted averages and whatever is common between them. For example if there are two witnesses to a crime.
Witness 1: It was a Black Car.
Witness 2: It was Blue Car.
Using a what is common between them, we can say it is a car. Using a weighted average, without further questioning, we can say that it was more likely a car than a truck so we can give more weight to the car.
1. Car
2. Truck
and we can say that the blue car from witness two was probably a darker shade of blue so we give more weight to darker colors.
1. Dark Blue
2. Light Blue
An example using Christianity is that they all believe in Jesus Christ.
How they define Jesus is another topic.
Quantifying The Understandability and Interpretability Score For Christianity
Since I don't have a survey prepared and don't have the time to randomly select 1000 Christians from random points around the world, It seems to me that one ROUGH way to quantify the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability would be to assume that a Christian denomination represents an interpretation of Christianity and to take the total number of Christian denominations and use that as the denomenator, and use the number one to represent Christianity in the following manner.
Just to keep it simple, lets say that there are only two denominations of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant (but we really know there are more)
Christianity/Total Number of Denominations = some percent or score.
so plugging numbers into that, it would be
1/2 = .5 or 50%
So Protestants and Catholics each get a score of .5 out of 1.
Note, that if there were only one denomination of Christianity, the score would be 1. So one is the perfect score. Also note that this method can be used for other things besides Christianity to enable COMPARING the relative scores of Interpretability and Understanding in different fields. If we were a sociology class, we could do it with a newspaper article and survey students about it. Additionally and more importantly, this type of thing is done as part of the reading comprehension portion of some standardized tests.
To derive a score for each denomination of Catholicism and Protestants you could do the same thing, and the number would come out even smaller as you would then have a percentage of a percentage. For example, taking the score for Protestants, and plugging it back into the equation, and assuming a ridiculously small number of protestant denominations would give us a formula as follows
Protestant Score/Total Number of Protestant denominations = Protestant denomination score
so lets assume only two protestant denominations and plug that into the formula as follows
.5/2 = .25
So now each protestant denomination gets a score of .25 out of 1. The more denominations there are the lower the score becomes, justifiably.
As we can see, the scores for Understandability and Interpretability come out pretty low, and that is reflected by the fact that only ~33% of the world is christian and that ~33% is subdivided into smaller denominations.
Who has the right Understanding and Right Interpretation? Who Knows? How are any of them Justified in saying they know anything about "What is the Right Way To Live?".
They are NOT justified, yet they act as if they are, and make decisions that impact society as a whole.
The key problem with information that is not easily understood and interpreted is Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is derived from poor definitions of terms, leading to unreproduceable results. The information is not mapped properly to real world events and objects. The information does not accurately represent the real world.
There are plenty of examples in the real world that depend on non-ambiguous information to produce consistent results.
Mapping
Medicine
Safety
Logistics
Engineering
Recipes
Mathematical models
United nations
and I'm sure you can think up a lot more on your own.
So now, without further delay, I present to you.....
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF POOR BIBLICAL IDQ
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
[Wikipedia should not be considered authoritative but it is a good place to start.]
Inhumane Treatment Of Others
- Anti-abortion violence
- Torture as means to a Justifiable End
-- Torture in the Past
-- Church Attendance And Torture Approval, Valerie Tarico
- Witch hunts
-- Children Are Targets Of Nigerian Witch Hunt, Lee Randolph
-- Causes and Sociology of Witch Hunts, Wikipedia
-- The Terrible Christian Legacy of the Witch Hunts, John Loftus
- Exorcism
-- Exorcism, Wikipedia
-- A Call For The Scientific Investigation of Exorcism, Lee Randolph
- Mental Illness in the Middle Ages
--History Of Mental Disorders, Wikipedia
- Slavery
-- Christianity And Slavery, Wikipedia
-- Slavery And Religion, Wikipedia
- Address To The Colored People, Robert Ingersoll
- Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!
- Manifest Destiny, Exploration and Conquering
-- Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia
-- The Protestant Atrocities: Manifest Destiny and Slavery, John Loftus
- Heresy, Blaming the victim, Wrong Interpretation, "Not Real Christians" when obviously, if they don't get it, its not their fault. The information is of poor quality.
-- Christian Heresy, Wikipedia
-- List Of People Burned As Heretics, Wikipedia
-- Arianism, Wikipedia
--- Inquisition
--- Inquisition, Wikipedia
--- Words From the Inquisition: "Convert or Die!, John Loftus
- Crusades
-- Crusades, Wikipedia
- Behavior, Sin, Biological Bases of Behavior.
-- Link to Many Articles on this topic by Lee Randolph
DENIAL OF ESTABLISHED KNOWLEDGE
- Human Origins and or Evolution
-- Twenty Reasons Why Genesis and Evolution Do Not Mix, Answers in Genesis
-- Answers in Creation, Christian site that generally refutes Answers In Genesis
-- Debunking Creationism
- Faith Healing
-- Court Rules Faith In God And Prayer As Child Abuse, Harry McCall
UNHEALTHY PSYCHOLOGY
Self-Esteem
-- Is Self-Esteem Contrary to Christianity, Christian Article
- Martyr Syndrome
-- Overcome Martyr-Syndrome, WikiHow
- Co-Opts Humans Natural Flawed Reasoning Algorithms
-- List Of Cognitive Biases
MORE ABOUT THE IDQ DIMENSIONS
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the IDQ dimensions are categorized as follows. Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Intrinsic IQ:
Accuracy (Free-from-error), Objectivity, Believability, Reputation
Contextual IQ:
Relevancy, Value-added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of Information
Representational IQ:
Interpretability, Understandability, Concise Representation, Consistent Representation
Accessibility IQ:
Access, Security
"Quality Information and Knowledge", page 43. Huang, Lee, Wang. Prentis Hall PTR
IDQ REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ), Newest to oldest
* Journey to Data Quality, 2006, from Amazon
* Data Quality Assessment, 2002
* Information Quality Benchmarks: Product and Service Performance, 2002
* Quality Information and Knowledge, 1999, from Amazon
* AIMQ: A Methodology For Information Quality Assessment, 1997,
Direct Download, may not work
Download from link on the site
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers, 1996
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations, 1996
//////////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied To The Bible, oldest to newest
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible
8. Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
9. As You Celebrate The Horror of Easter
10. Where is Jesus's Diary? Information As A Product, Not A Byproduct
11. Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
///////////////////////////////////
Triangulation, oldest to newest
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia
///////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied, oldest to newest
* National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
* Thank Sully!
* Information Professionals Caught Not Checking Sources
//////////////////////////////////
Rebuttals to Criticism of its application to assessing the Bible, oldest to newest
* IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit
* Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles
* Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
* Christians Must Be Agnostic
Exbeliever's Swan Song
Because of other obligations (e.g. finishing my thesis, moving across the country, starting a new PhD program, etc.), I've decided to resign my membership in this wonderful blog.
During my time here, I repeatedly asked Christians to give some kind of reason for their faith. I asked them to supply some kind of argument that ends in "therefore, god exists." This challenge was repeatedly ignored. Instead, the Christians' strategy was to point out philosophical problems that have been studied by philosophers for centuries and say that somehow a term "God" was the answer to all of them. When an atheist had an understandably difficult time resolving a difficult problem, the Christian would declare himself the winner because of his "answer"--which really is a non-answer.
A couple of months ago, Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick engaged in an on-line debate published on The Secular Web.
Below, I respond to Wanchick's opening statement. I decided that I would only read his opening statement in the debate and respond to it without reading Carrier's rebuttals or Wanchick's answers. It is possible, then, that Wanchick later clarified his statements and a further response would be necessary. I'm satisfied, however, with my responses.
Leibnizian Cosmological ArgumentWanchick's first premise is "Every substance has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature."
It seems reasonable to believe that every substance has an explanation for its existence: it was either caused by something else, or exists necessarily (it cannot not exist). This premise is evidently more plausible than its denial, for if confronted with a new substance, everyone would assume it has an explanation before they assumed it didn't. Absurdly, if the latter presumption were equally plausible, we could justifiably pronounce everything to be a brute given, making science, philosophy, etc. frivolous. Indeed, the general assumption that objects have explanations has been successfully confirmed so often that those wishing to reject it must provide good reason for doing so.
Additionally, if we have an adequate explanation for an object, it would clearly be unreasonable to conclude instead that that object was unexplained. Again, explanation is prima facie more reasonable than nonexplanation. Thus, Quentin Smith, the foremost atheist expert on cosmological arguments, admits that if naturalism cannot explain the universe like theism can, that is evidence for theism over naturalism.
Now, interestingly, the universe itself is a substance having properties: density, temperature, etc. Therefore, like all substances, it has an explanation. Indeed, scientists have long assumed this in cosmological studies, as they've developed myriad theories as to how the universe exists.
Thus, we construct this argument:
1. Every substance has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature.
2. The universe is a substance.
3. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence either in an external cause or in the necessity of its own nature.
4. The universe does not exist necessarily.
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe is an external cause.
This conclusion follows from the premises. I've justified 1 and 2 above. Premise 4 requires little argument, since the universe appears obviously contingent. Scientists even tell us that it had a beginning and will end somewhere in the future. Being non-necessary, then, it finds its explanation in an outside cause.
This cause can exist timelessly and spacelessly, since it can cause the space-time universe. Moreover, it must be immaterial, since it is nonspatial. And it must also be a mind, since only minds and abstract objects can exist timelessly and immaterially, and only the former can cause anything. Furthermore, the only two types of explanation are natural/mechanistic and personal; and since there was no nature prior to the universe, its cause is personal.
Moreover, the ultimate cause cannot itself be a contingent reality. As Charles Taliaferro notes, "If contingent object A is explained by B which is explained by C and so on into infinity, we will never get a complete or fully satisfactory explanation of A." Thus, the explanation of the universe must be a metaphysically necessary, uncaused being.
My first argument therefore proves the reality of a transcendent, timeless, and spaceless mind that exists necessarily and has the ability and know-how to cause and sustain the universe.
How does one know this to be true? Wanchick attempts to substantiate his claim when he writes, ". . . for if confronted with a new substance, everyone would assume it has an explanation before they assumed it didn't."
In other words, this claim is true because of induction. Everything that we have observed that exists has an explanation for its existence. I certainly agree with this claim, but I wonder how it can be extrapolated and used to describe the existence of the universe.
Let me explain. Every existing thing that we have observed has been observed in a physical universe acted upon by physical laws. These physical laws certainly affected the "substances" observed.
How is it, then, possible to confidently assert that, in the absence of our physical laws, the universe (even if we allow the dubious claim that the universe is a "substance" and not "the set of all substances") must have an explanation of its existence? In other words, Wanchick is applying an inductive argument that is true under one set of conditions to an entirely different set of conditions that he knows nothing about. Scientists agree that, in the earliest stages of the beginning of the universe, the laws of physics break down. There are no physical laws that we know of that can exist when the universe is at infinite mass and space time is bent infinitely.
Perhaps an analogy would help. Let's say that I make the claim, "In every case in which I weigh a person and then strap 20 lbs of Styrofoam to their waists, their weight increases by exactly 20 lbs." This is a very reasonable claim under what we consider "normal" conditions (e.g. they are in a doctor's office on a true scale). Now, imagine that I am weighing people in a pool of chest-high water. When I strap the 20 lbs of Styrofoam to their waists, their weight would actually decrease, because the Styrofoam is buoyant and would lift them off the scales. The exact opposite effect would occur.
In the same way, Wanchick is taking an inductive claim made under a specific set of conditions and applying them to a situation in which the conditions are completely unknown. In fact, we know that the conditions of the earlier universe in a singularity are very different from the conditions of our current universe. Why should we accept his claim, then, that we can apply the same inductive argument that we have observed under specific conditions to "a substance" that did not come about in those same conditions. How do we know that the universe does not exist in conditions that are exactly the opposite of all of the substances we observe within the universe? How can we say that this first premise holds in different conditions?
Wanchick's first premise cannot be substantiated and his argument fails before it begins.
Kalam Cosmological Argument
Like the universe's existence, its origin too needs explaining. Leading philosophers and scientists confirm that the universe came into existence from nothing. Currently, the big bang model leads the pack among cosmological theories and entails a definite beginning of space-time. Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking admits, "almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang." Carrier concurs.
An eternal universe is disconfirmed philosophically, too, for it implies that there are infinite past events. But it would be impossible to reach the last event in this series--i.e., the present. We could literally never reach the end of infinity; no matter how many events we traversed, there'd always be infinite to go. But since we have reached the end, the set of past events must be finite.
Moreover, an infinite set of things entails metaphysically impossibility. If we have infinite things numbered 1 through infinity and subtract all even ones, we would have an infinite number remaining. But if we subtract only those marked over #5, we would be left with 5. Since it is metaphysically impossible to subtract equal quantities and get contradictory answers, it must be impossible for an infinite to exist. Thus, the number of past events in the universe is finite. The universe had a beginning.
This is significant, since, as we all know, objects cannot just pop into being from nothing, uncaused. Imagine finding a whale or a stadium simply appearing willy-nilly on your doorstep! David Hume even announced, "But allow me to tell you that I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that anything might arise without a cause."
Inductively, of course, no one in all of history has witnessed an object leap into reality this way. If this is possible, it's strikingly curious that it's never occurred.
Indeed, the inductive evidence simply accords with sound metaphysics, for if nothing existed without the universe, then not even the potentiality for it existed. But how can something come into existence if there was no potential for it? Carrier's own view is that "things exist potentially wherever the elements necessary to form them exist." But since nothing existed without the universe given naturalism, neither did its potential, thereby ruling out its actuality on that view.
Thus:
6. Every substance that begins to exist has a cause.
7. The universe began to exist.
8. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Premise 6 and 7 are more reasonable than their negations, as argued above. And since the argument is valid, the conclusion follows unavoidably.
As noted in the prior argument, the cause of the universe will be an uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and nonphysical mind. However, other significant qualities come through here: its incomprehensible power and knowledge. This creator has the awe-inspiring power and knowledge to create whole universes from nothing. It's hard to see, then, what power or knowledge he lacks.
This cosmological argument fails in exactly the same place that the previous one did. The first premise states, "Every substance that begins to exist has a cause." Even if we grant that the universe is a "substance" and not "the set of all substances," this is still an inductive claim made within conditions in which the universe itself does not exist.
Wanchick explicitly states that his is an inductive argument. He writes, "Inductively, of course, no one in all of history has witnessed an object leap into reality this way. If this is possible, it's strikingly curious that it's never occurred."
Again, however, everyone "in all of history" has only witnessed objects coming into existence within the physical universe. The universe itself does not exist within the physical universe, so it is impossible to extract an argument that relies on the conditions within the universe and apply it to the universe itself which does not exist within the universe.
The statement, "Every substance that begins to exist has a cause." Is a statement that is true because of the physical laws of the universe. All of the physicists that I am aware of admit that physical laws break down if there is no physical universe. We simply can't know if those laws apply outside of the universe.
Wanchick cannot maintain his first premise, therefore, the argument fails to prove anything.
Design of/in the Universe
In the past 30 years, science has revealed the razor thin conditions that make life in our universe possible. The universe is "fine-tuned" for life. Indeed, there are dozens of factors that must be set precisely in order for life to exist here. With their slightest alteration, life would be impossible. Thus, while there are millions of ways the universe could physically be, very few of them are life-permitting. Robin Collins sums up the scientific consensus:Scientists have increasingly come to realize how the initial conditions of the universe and the basic constants of physics must be balanced on a razor's edge for intelligent life to evolve.... Calculations show that if the constants of physics--such as the physical constant governing the strength of gravity--were slightly different, the evolution of complex, embodied life forms of comparable intelligence to ourselves would be seriously inhibited, if not rendered impossible.
But the unimaginably precise fine-tuning appears more epistemically probable given theism than it does given naturalism. For because conscious life is good, it's not surprising that God would make a world containing it. But why would we ever expect the world to have life-permitting conditions if naturalism were true? Indeed, this appears wholly improbable, since the possible universes that disallow life incomprehensibly outnumber those that allow it. It's like picking the prize-winning white marble out of a barrel of black ones. Thus:
9. Fine-tuning is not improbable given theism.
10. Fine-tuning is improbable given naturalism.
11. Thus, fine-tuning is more probable on theism than naturalism.
In other words, fine-tuning provides evidence that theism is more probable than naturalism.
This seems, to me, a particularly bad design argument, but I'll address it as is.
Wanchick writes, "But the unimaginably precise fine-tuning appears more epistemically probable given theism than it does given naturalism. For because conscious life is good, it's not surprising that God would make a world containing it. But why would we ever expect the world to have life-permitting conditions if naturalism were true?"
The addition of God to this "problem" does nothing to solve it. If a god existed, he would have available to him an infinite number of options in creating the universe. There were as many possible universes without conscious life available to a god as there are available to chance. Why should we believe that a god would be compelled to create one with life? Could he not have just as easily created a universe that did not sustain life?
Wanchick tells us it is more probable that a god would have created a universe supporting life because "conscious life is good." Well, that's interesting. I don't think of conscious life as "good" or "bad," I simply believe it "is." What reasons are there for me to believe that conscious life is "good"? Would it be "bad" if life didn't exist? If a god did eternally exist, was it "bad" until life was created?
I do not see how existence can be labeled "good" or "bad." Existence is a precondition of moral judgments. It simply makes no sense to make a moral judgment about a precondition of moral judgments.
It does not matter, then, that ". . . the possible universes that disallow life incomprehensibly outnumber those that allow it." This is true whether if chance is responsible for the universe or if a god freely chose to create. Both chance and a god would have the same number of possible universes. That this universe exists the way it does is no less statistically "miraculous" whether by chance or by a god with infinite possibilities.
Knowability and Discoverability
Additionally, many things within the universe indicate a God-like designer. Scholars have documented that our universe is not only fine-tuned for sentient life, but also for scientific discovery and knowability. The universe is structured in just the right way to allow the study of natural laws and phenomena, greatly adding to our scientific knowledge. Such features make sense if God wants us to discover and enjoy creation; but why would these features exist on naturalism?
Same problem. If a god existed, he would be able to create any number of universes in which laws and phenomena are not knowable or discoverable. Chance is no different. There are the same number of options available to both chance or a god.
Beauty
Collins notes that "beauty is widely recognized by physicists as being an important characteristic of the laws of nature, one which has served as a highly selective guide to discovering the fundamental laws of nature in the twentieth century." Moreover, the laws of nature (and many things in nature) exhibit simplicity, harmony, and elegance. It wouldn't be surprising for a creator to make such a universe, but, again, why would this be so if naturalism is true?
This, of course, assumes that "beauty" is universal. Aesthetic judgments, however, are notoriously subjective. Beauty has no universal properties. The very property that makes one thing beautiful makes another thing ugly (e.g. the curve of a "beautiful" vase could be the reason that vase is beautiful, but the same curve in another vase with different properties could be the reason that vase is ugly).
Additionally, this argument falls prey to the same problems listed above. Both chance and any supposed "god" would have the same number of possible universes. Why would a god be any less likely to choose one over another? Maybe an uglier universe would have better fulfilled a purpose this god had.
Evil
Typically, if an object is undesigned or serves a purpose only accidentally (e.g., a hillside serving as a stage), we conclude that it cannot be used correctly or incorrectly. Design or intention appears to be a necessary condition for proper function. A bike can be used properly; a fallen meteor cannot.
It's interesting to apply this insight to sentient beings. Can they be misused? The obvious answer is 'yes.' Humans shouldn't be used as slaves, for instance; doing so is evil. Indeed, the misuse of beings seems to be a necessary and sufficient condition for evil. Evil events involve a patient out of its proper state.
So evil is a departure from the way things ought to exist. But this contradicts naturalism, wherein every living thing is like the hillside: accidental byproducts having no design plan, no proper state.
Objectors might hold that if we used the hillside as a stage long enough, this would become its conventional function, and to stop doing so would seem a misuse. Thus, objects can acquire proper function accidentally over time. But this seems false for at least sentient beings, for no matter how long humans are enslaved, they should never be used as such. Their function is inherent rather than conventional.
Evil obviously exists; think of child pornography or rape. And since evil entails that the universe and its inhabitants have a specific function or purpose, it follows that they were designed by an intelligent being having the knowledge, ability, and intention to build a world with purposeful and moral dimensions.
Wanchick asserts that "Evil obviously exists. . ." Actions certainly exist, and people certainly call some actions "evil" sometimes, but does something called "evil" obviously exist? I can't taste, hear, touch, see, or smell it. How is this obvious?
Also, how is it that objects can be improperly used? It is true that a bicycle has a design function, but what if I don't want a bicycle for the function for which it was designed? Is that an "improper" use of it?
Say that I am a set designer for a movie production. My company is making a horror film set in an old cabin in the woods. I have to decorate that cabin, and I want to hang a rusty, non-functional bicycle from the wall. For me, a brand new mountain bike is a "bad" bike. A rusty, old, non-functional bicycle, however, is a "good" bike for my purposes. That this bike does not do what it is designed and intended to do is exactly what makes it "good."
Wanchick states, "Humans shouldn't be used as slaves, for instance. . ." I agree, but others don't. Some people believe that others should be enslaved. They believe it is "good" that people are enslaved.
I would certainly fight to keep people free from slavery, but that doesn't mean that I believe it is universally "wrong." It is, however, wrong according to my moral framework, and my moral framework forces me to fight against slavery with all of my power (and within my ethical guidelines). Whether I believe it to be "universally" immoral is irrelevant.
The "power" of this argument is its emotional appeal. Most people agree that slavery is evil, but they feel that it lessens the immorality of it if it is not "universally" so. I will deal with this more in the next argument.
[As an aside, it is interesting to me that Wanchick argues for the immorality of slavery when the Christian god is quoted as saying, "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life. . ." (Leviticus 25:44-46) and "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property." (Exodus 21:20-21). If slavery is "evil" and the Christian god calls it "good," then is the Christian god "evil" or is slavery "good"?]
Moral Argument
But what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, "a human being is a biological animal," as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn't exist. It wouldn't, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.
Paul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: "every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess." The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.
Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth. Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc. But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.
But since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren't natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.
The moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.
I've dealt with the issue of morality at length before. I believe that moral judgments are relative to moral frameworks.
***
But are all relative judgments invalid?
Consider motion. Imagine sitting next to me in a bar when I suddenly begin screaming, "My Guinness is moving! Sweet Lola, save me, my Guinness is moving!" You look at my glass, however, and say, "Man, atheism is really rat poison to the intellect! Your Guinness isn't moving; it's perfectly still."
Is it both possible that my Guinness is moving and that my Guinness is not moving? Of course it is!
I could respond to your skepticism, "Isn't this continent drifting, the earth rotating and revolving, our solar system spinning in a pinwheel galaxy, and our galaxy speeding away from others in the universe? How can you say my Guinness isn't moving?!"
At the same time, you could have said, "Look EB, there is a spot on the bar next to your glass and we can tell by this ruler that your glass is neither moving towards that spot nor away from it. Your glass is stationary."
Both contradictory statements are correct, but are relative to specific spatio-temporal frameworks. From certain spatio-temporal frameworks, my Guinness is stationary; from others, it is moving. The "fact" of the motion of my Guinness is relative to the spatio-temporal framework that is adopted. There is no one, "true" spatio-temporal framework that truly determines whether something is "really" moving or not, there are only different frameworks from which to judge.
But though my Guinness' motion is relative, it is still "objective." You would certainly admit the validity of my statement that my Guinness is moving from any of the other spatio-temporal frameworks that I mentioned as justification. I would certainly admit the validity of your statement from the spatio-temporal framework that you mention. Both statements are correct, but are so relative to specific spatio-temporal frameworks.
Now, what if the same could be said of moral judgments? What if I could say objectively that it is morally wrong of P to D (I'm stealing all of this from Princeton's Gilbert Harman if you are wondering), but had to qualify my statement that it was morally wrong according to a specific moral framework? My judgment would be objective, but not universal.
If morality is not universal, though, must I accept everyone's moral judgments as equally valid? Of course not. For one thing, it is certainly possible that someone makes a moral judgment that does not fit the moral framework they use to justify it [Just like it would be possible for someone to say that something is stationary from a framework in which that judgment is inconsistent].
Secondly, acknowledging that a belief may be justified by reference to another moral framework does not mean that I have to abandon my own moral framework. For example, I believe that it is morally wrong to rape someone. If I were to happen upon a man trying to rape a woman, my moral framework demands that I do whatever action is permissible according to that framework to prevent that action from taking place. I may acknowledge that the action is permissible according to the rapist's moral framework, but that does not mean that I must ignore what is demanded by my own moral framework.
Moral relativism, then, does not necessarily lead to moral nihilism.
Anyone familiar with Foucault's work on power structures will know that, if he is correct, social ideas and morality are shaped by power. There is nothing called "madness" out in the world. One cannot catch "madness" in a bucket and paint it pink. It is an idea that must be defined. Originally, the church and the family were the primary power structures that made this definition. The church needed a way to distinguish between God's directions to his people through the Holy Spirit and the babblings of a madman. People that had certain heretical "visions" and "promptings" from God were considered "mad." Now, it is the physicians who define these kind of terms. Whatever the age, though, power is the driver behind these definitions.
In the case of morality, then, power will be the stabilizing (or destabilizing) force behind societal morality. Obviously, that does not mean that one must accept society's morality (both the Christians here and myself reject our current society's morality, but for drastically different reasons). For example, though most of current, American society opposes same-sex marriage, I adamantly support it. I do not have to accept the majority opinion even if I acknowledge that that opinion is justified by reference to a certain moral framework. I can exert my power (however limited it is) to try to change societal opinion. I can also point out that denying homosexual couples marriage is inconsistent with other, primary societal values like equal treatment under the law.
Just like one can make objective statements about motion even though the statements are relative to spatio-temporal frameworks, so I can make objective statements about morality that are relative to specific moral frameworks. So, contrary to Bahnsen's argument, I can be outraged by the Holocaust and not have a universal morality to do so. Does someone else have to agree with my outrage? Certainly not, but I will exert every power available to me via my moral framework (which excludes violence) to make others see things my way. Morality, like every idea (according to Foucault) is a power struggle.
***
Wanchick writes, "Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth. . . But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight."
Well, this is certainly a passionate assertion! It is only that, though, an assertion. If it is "obviously false" that humans do not have a "unique inherent worth," why didn't Wanchick demonstrate its falsity? All he did was follow it up with rhetoric.
That humans are capable of feeling a stronger attachment to our fellow humans is not surprising given the nature of our brains and our evolutionary history, but other animals also experience loss and pain at the death or injury of another animal. That a human life is more significant to us, humans, is no surprise. That we feel a unique bond to other humans is no surprise. This is mirrored (to a lesser extent) in the animal kingdom as well (i.e. some animals "value" the lives of other of their kind more than they "value" the lives of other animals).
Ontological Argument
Philosophically, to say something can possibly exist is to say it could exist in at least one 'possible world' (PW). PWs (including our own) are simply possible total states of affairs. (These are not necessarily possible universes--e.g., God existing alone is a PW excluding any universe.)
By definition, a necessary being is one existing in all PWs. Obviously, if such a being were found in our (actual) world we would know that it exists in all PWs. The reverse also holds. Label our world X and another PW Y. Assume Y holds a necessary being. Inhabitants of Y would know that that being would exist in X too, since it would exist in all PWs. Thus, if any PW holds a necessary being (i.e., if that necessary being is possible), then that being must exist in the actual world, too.
Some theists have seen God as a necessary being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good. He is maximally great (MG). But then if God is possible, He is actual. Theists have developed this ontological argument:
12. It is possible that an MG being exists.
13. If it is possible that an MG being exists, then an MG being exists in some PW.
14. If an MG being exists in some PW, then it exists in all PWs.
15. If an MG being exists in all PWs, then it exists in the actual world.
The argument is valid. The question is, why think an MG metaphysically possible?
First, nothing about this being seems impossible: He appears compatible with our modal intuitions. Much of mankind has indeed thought He exists. In the absence of a defeater, there seems no reason to reject our intuitions.
Moreover, my prior arguments establish 12. The Leibnizian argument proves a necessary mind who caused the universe. This being is seemingly omnipotent and omniscient given the kalam and design arguments. And He is the necessary source of moral goodness and truth, as shown in the moral argument. So my case reveals the reality and thus the possibility of an MG being. Indeed, even if the arguments aren't sound, their conclusions appear at least metaphysically possible. One doesn't simply look at the conclusion and see its obvious falsity; quite the opposite. The beings entailed appears possible, and thus the argument must be evaluated. But if the beings in those arguments are possible, then why is it impossible for one being with all those properties to exist? Since this surely does seem possible, then that person must actually exist. The MG God is a reality.
Ontological arguments suck. Fight fire with fire, though, I guess. Here is my ontological argument:
P1: It is possible that a possible world in which a god does not exist exists.
P2: If it is possible that a possible world in which a god does not exist exists, then a possible world in which a god does not exist exists.
P3: If a possible world in which a god does not exist exists, then a god would not exist in every possible world.
P4: If a god does not exist in every possible world, then it is possible that a god does not exist in the actual world.
P5: A god does not exist in a possible world in which a god does not exist.
C: Therefore, it is possible that a god does not exist in the actual world.
Theists assert that a god does exist in the actual world. It is their responsibility, then, to demonstrate this.
I'll give my argument the same support that Wanchick gave his above:
The argument is valid. The question is, why think a possible world in which a god does not exist possible?
First, nothing about this possible world seems impossible: It appears compatible with our modal intuitions. Much of humanity has indeed thought it exists. In the absence of a defeater, there seems no reason to reject our intuitions.
Moreover, my refutation of Wanchick's prior arguments establish that it is possible that a god does not exist. My refutation of his Leibnizian argument disproves a necessary mind who caused the universe. Given my refutation of the kalam and design arguments, there is no reason to believe an omnipotent and omniscient being exists. As shown in my refutation of the moral argument, it is not true that a god is the necessary source of moral goodness and truth. . .
Resurrection of Jesus
Despite media rumors, there is wide agreement among New Testament specialists regarding the events surrounding Jesus' death. Even a minimal list of almost universally affirmed facts among liberal and conservative scholars provides sufficient evidence that Jesus really was resurrected.(a) Jesus died by crucifixion around 30 AD. Even radically liberal Crossan confesses, "That [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be."
(b) The tomb where Jesus was buried was empty days after His death. There are almost two dozen arguments for this: (i) If the tomb weren't empty, Christianity would've been defeated in Jerusalem by Jewish authorities revealing so. (ii) Women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb. However, women's testimony in Jesus' culture was considered generally unreliable and far inferior to that of men. If the empty tomb story were fabricated, why insert women as the primary witnesses? (iii) The empty tomb is noted by Paul in the 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 creed originating within three years of Jesus' death, far too early to be legend. (iv) The Jewish denial of the empty tomb implies its reality. Why concoct stories accounting for a tomb that's full? (v) The story is benignly straightforward, unlike legendary stories of Jesus' era.
(c) Jesus appeared visually to various people days after His death, as independently attested in early creeds, Paul, the Gospels, and nonbiblical sources. Paul tells of his and the other disciples' appearances in 1 Corinthians 15, explaining his personal verification of their accounts. Lüdemann concludes, "It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."
(d) James and Paul both believed Jesus was resurrected after seeing Him postcrucifixion. These appearances must have vividly occurred for such dedicated opponents of Christ to convert. Paul went from the main persecutor of Christianity to its main apostle! And James turned from confirmed skeptic to an early church pillar.
If the Resurrection occurred, this series of facts can be explained plausibly and coherently. But what coherent natural explanation can be offered?
Moreover, without the Resurrection, how does one account for Christianity's origin? A lone resurrection of an executed Messiah was utterly foreign to pre-Christian Jews and blatantly contradicted their Messianic expectations. It seems impossible that any would've conceived of, let alone invented, the resurrection account.
There were various other Messianic movements before and after Jesus, but they uniformly died with their founders. Only Jesus was claimed to have risen. Only His followers, who saw Him afterwards, turned from a failed group to a vibrant movement proclaiming resurrection unto death. Something remarkable must've occurred to motivate the transformation. Only the Resurrection seems sufficient.
Again, these facts are affirmed among virtually all scholars, Christian or liberal. As Craig notes, in denying any of them or that resurrection is their best explanation, Carrier will have to "believe that the majority of the world's historians who have studied the life of Jesus are mistaken about the historicity of his empty tomb, postmortem appearances, and the origin of the Christian Way, or else embrace some naturalistic explanation of these facts which has been overwhelmingly rejected by historical scholars."
But since men cannot rise from death naturally, the Resurrection must've had a supernatural cause. And since Jesus claimed allegiance with the Old Testament God, the most plausible cause of Jesus' rising is precisely He.
In answer to a - d above:
(a) I agree that a man named Jesus was crucified around 30 CE.
(b) I do not know whether or not Jesus' tomb was empty days after his burial. All I have to go on are works written by biased followers years after the event. (i) There is no indication that the Jewish authorities felt threatened enough by the Christian sect as to desire to disprove their claims. Plus, if the first record we have of an empty tomb was written 3 years after the burial of a body, there would be nothing left of that body to disprove the Christian claim. The Jewish authorities would be helpless to defeat Christianity because the body would have been unrecognizably decomposed (maybe completely so). (ii) Who knows why the biblical writers wrote what they wrote. As a team member recently pointed out, there are many inconsistencies with the gospel stories. Maybe the gospel writers were idiots. (iii) Legends can appear much faster than 3 years. (iv) By the time the Jews "denied the empty tomb" the body would have decomposed. They would have been denying that it was empty because of the resurrection. (v) How a story about a person miraculously raising from the dead can be considered "benignly straightforward" is beyond me. If this is straightforward, what is a "legend" to this man?
(c) Why should anyone believe the writers of the Bible and church creeds are attempting to give an honest historical account?
(d) This assumes that the conversion stories of James and Paul are not also made up. How do I know they are not?
Wanchick writes, "If the Resurrection occurred, this series of facts can be explained plausibly and coherently. But what coherent natural explanation can be offered?"
Jesus was buried in a tomb and his body decomposed before people started claiming he was resurrected. The gospel writers were people of faith who believed what they wanted to believe much like the Heaven's Gate cult. They were so convinced that they were willing to die, just like Marshall Applewhite, the founder of the Heaven's Gate cult. The conversion stories of Paul and James were embellished to make it sound better.
As to the argument for the Christian god. The arguments above do not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, so there is no need for a supernatural cause of an event that cannot be proven to have occurred.
Collectively, then, I've demonstrated the reality of a transcendent, immaterial, uncaused, metaphysically necessary, and morally perfect mind of unsurpassable power and knowledge who has revealed Himself in Jesus. My arguments, in effect, demonstrate the reality of not only God, but, alas, the God of Christianity.
Every one of Wanchick's arguments have been refuted above. The case for a god is unproven and must be rejected until some valid evidence is given.
I've collected all of my other posts on this blog here. I consider the following to be my best entries:
An Evidentialist Challenge, Restated--A post in which I answer the two most popular presuppositionalist's questions, "Without the Christian God, how can you account for universal laws of logic and morality?" I also issue a challenge for Christians to demonstrate the validity of their faith.
Step into My Vortex--Discussing the vastness of the universe and our insignificance in it. Has a cool link that shows how big (and small) the universe is.
Life After the Vortex (An Existentialist Reading)--My philosophy for living a full life in light of our insignificance in the universe. Discusses Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.
Presuppositionalism: Arguments 4, Supports 0--Argues that all presuppositionalists arguments are unsupported, that presuppositionalism is trickery, not a valid argument.
*I will respond to comments on this particular post until they die down in a few days. After that, I will fade away into the sunset.
It has been a true pleasure.
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