Tim McGrew's reply to Drange's Argument from Confusion
Tim McGrew put a couple of responses up to Drange's two arguments against Christian theism, the argument from confusion and the argument from biblical defects. Since they seem to be buried in the previous post, I thought I would put them front and center here. This is the first one
There are multiple problems with AC. To start with, the plausibility of A2 is inversely proportional to the level of detail packed into “G-beliefs.” If the beliefs about the nature of God are to include the metaphysics of a Chalcedonian formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, then A2 is obviously false. And something similar goes for the details of the fate of the wicked in the afterlife, for discursive knowledge of the requirements for salvation (as what is important is, presumably, that one meets them, not that one be able to discourse about them), for the precise details of the metaphysics of the eucharist or the mode of baptism (since again, clearly, what is important on the human end is that one in fact be obedient and take the eucharist and be baptized, by whatever mode), and for the details of one’s theory of inspiration, belief in which is nowhere in scripture made a requirement for one’s having a relationship with God—for the good and sufficient reason that the first Christians at Pentecost predate the writing of the New Testament.
In each of these cases, one can back up to a far more minimal conception of what is required. But then it is very difficult to go anywhere with the argument in its subsequent steps. If B can be accepted only in a fairly minimal sense, then it is not at all obvious that D is true. Conversely, in the sense in which D is obviously true, A2 and B are just as obviously false. So the argument gains no traction.
To say this is not to say that it would not be desirable for Christians to have better, fuller knowledge on some of these points; nor is it to say that such knowledge is not available. But the hinge of the argument is the claim in A2 that Christians would need a set of G-beliefs in order to have a personal relationship with God. And Drange gives no good reason to think that this claim is both (a) true and (b) substantive enough to support his subsequent chain of reasoning.
In each of these cases, one can back up to a far more minimal conception of what is required. But then it is very difficult to go anywhere with the argument in its subsequent steps. If B can be accepted only in a fairly minimal sense, then it is not at all obvious that D is true. Conversely, in the sense in which D is obviously true, A2 and B are just as obviously false. So the argument gains no traction.
To say this is not to say that it would not be desirable for Christians to have better, fuller knowledge on some of these points; nor is it to say that such knowledge is not available. But the hinge of the argument is the claim in A2 that Christians would need a set of G-beliefs in order to have a personal relationship with God. And Drange gives no good reason to think that this claim is both (a) true and (b) substantive enough to support his subsequent chain of reasoning.
Jason Pratt begins a series at Cadre on the Problem of Luke and Josephus
This is just the first post, but it promises to be interesting.
Talbott's Original Reply to Beversluis on the Problem of Evil
Originally published in Christian Scholar's Review in 1987. One of the first replies to Beversluis's book to be published after the first edition was published, and one that connects Lewis's The Problem of Pain to more recent developments (as of the time the paper was written), with respect to the argument from evil.
BOOK EXCERPT - FROM THE NOVEL IN PROGRESS "THE PETERSON INVESTIGATION"
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING NOVEL "THE PETERSON INVESTIGATION". The story is basically about a D.C. Homicide detective who grew up in Huber Heights, Ohio; who retires in 1995 and is asked by one of his boyhood friends, who is now the Chief of the Huber Heights Police, to return and command the HHPD Criminal Investigation Division. He accepts, thinking he is in for a laid-back (compared to DC) post=retirement gig. But three weeks after he is sworn in he is confronted by a horrendous murder that is a stone 'whodunit".
In the scene below, Detective Sergeant John Philip Waterman and Chief (Colonel) Kyle David Meadows are on a drive through the City of Huber Heights so that Waterman can see the various changes to the territory since he left town for the Air Force. They are on Rip Rap Road and are passing an enclave called Miami Villa when the conversation triggers a memory for Waterman about a tragic illegal drag race in 1969, which will have a major bearing on the plot later.
This is FICTION. Any resemblance of any character to any real person, living or dead, is purely co-incidental. Copyright 2010 by F. Allen Norman, Jr.; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
A few miles later we arrived at Miami Villa. "The Villa" was and is a community of mostly very blue-collar folks. Back in the day, they were nowhere nearly as well-off as the middle-class families living in what was then called "Huber Homes". They constantly dealt with flooding, as the community is hard by the Great Miami and the river overtops the levee from time to time. The houses mostly use propane for heating and cooking. But they are very well kept up, and the driveways and yards are home to boats and some of the best, fastest, and most well-maintained "muscle cars" in the region. The kids attend City schools, and in our day they were called the "Villa Rats" (but never to their faces unless the caller wanted an ass-kicking.) They were some of the toughest kids I have ever known. These folks were mechanics and machinists, mostly. They were salt-of-the-Earth people, but they were fiercely independent. If they could have issued passports to their community, they would have done so. "Generally' Kyle said, 'We don't go in there unless they call us or unless we have business there. They like to take care of their own problems, so unless someone gets killed or something we sorta let them be. But they've given us a couple of good cops. Jimmy Lawson, the guy you replaced, he's from the Villa. Remember Johnny Lawson, the Villa boy in our class who got killed in that drag race? Jimmy is his kid brother."
Johnny Lawson was a Villa kid who was known for his 1957 Chevy Bel-Air. He had worked for that car from the age of thirteen, raking leaves and shoveling walks, weeding gardens, whatever he had to do to get the money. When he was 15 he bought it, and it sat in the family carport while he kept working every chance he got. Weekends he might be found working on it with a clutch of older boys, souping up the engine and drive train, or sanding down the body by hand for the paint job he wanted for it. The day he got his driver's license, he celebrated by driving the primer-coated monster into Vandalia for painting.
What emerged from A&L Body and Paint was a 1957 Chevy sedan with full-moon hubcaps, a chrome air scoop on the hood, a tachometer installed outside the windshield, and a four-speed floor mounted Hurst shifting setup. The interior was as plush as a New Orleans whorehouse with black crushed velvet seats and chrome trim galore. The beast had been painted metallic "Candy-Apple Red" with a gloss-black racing stripe running from front to rear on the hood, roof, and trunk. The rear end was jacked up as high as State law allowed, and the engine sang through fiberglass- packed "Thrush" mufflers muting the twin exhaust. It sounded like a hungry tiger, and Johnny soon became king of the local street-racing circuit.
A section of Rip Rap Road that was arrow-straight had for years been marked with "START" and "FINISH" lines. It was uniquely suited to illegal street racing because this particular stretch of the road was entered at the south from Wagner Ford Road via a bridge over the Great Miami River. After a slight bend, the road went as straight as a rifle shot for a mile before bending again and re-crossing the Miami to continue north. This enabled the posting of lookouts, and during the summer drag-racing on Rip Rap was a popular - and dangerous, not to mention highly illegal- pastime. Johnny won a lot of money there. He also won two "title-for-title" races and sold the cars for a good profit. I realized as we drove along that it was on this same day and the same road we were on that Johnny Lawson lost his life.
He had been racing a Northridge boy who was driving a Chevy El Camino. It turned out later that two of the Northridge boy's pals and he were out for vengance, since Johnny had taken the title to a cousin's car in a race. The Montgomery County Sheriff's investigators had found that the other two Northridge boys had stood among the other spectators and thrown roofing nails into Johnny's path. Johnny hit those nails going at least 150 MPH. His right front tire blew, shredded, and his car left the road, rolling over at sickening speed ; then hit a tree on the riverbank and ejected him into the swollen Great Miami River. The next day I had gone to see the County rescue squad dragging the river with grappling hooks as the Lawson family watched and wept. I suddenly realized that the 10-year-old blond boy who was clinging to his father weeping that day must have been Jimmy. I sighed and - although I am not Catholic - crossed myself. Little did I know that this 1969 case of aggravated manslaughter would come roaring back with awful consequenses here in 1995, fully 26 years later. "Hey' Kyle said, 'turn up Fishburg. See that bar on the corner?............
In the scene below, Detective Sergeant John Philip Waterman and Chief (Colonel) Kyle David Meadows are on a drive through the City of Huber Heights so that Waterman can see the various changes to the territory since he left town for the Air Force. They are on Rip Rap Road and are passing an enclave called Miami Villa when the conversation triggers a memory for Waterman about a tragic illegal drag race in 1969, which will have a major bearing on the plot later.
This is FICTION. Any resemblance of any character to any real person, living or dead, is purely co-incidental. Copyright 2010 by F. Allen Norman, Jr.; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
From "THE PETERSON INVESTIGATION"
Chapter II
The Territory
(Copyright 2010 F. Allen Norman, Jr. All rights reserved.)
A few miles later we arrived at Miami Villa. "The Villa" was and is a community of mostly very blue-collar folks. Back in the day, they were nowhere nearly as well-off as the middle-class families living in what was then called "Huber Homes". They constantly dealt with flooding, as the community is hard by the Great Miami and the river overtops the levee from time to time. The houses mostly use propane for heating and cooking. But they are very well kept up, and the driveways and yards are home to boats and some of the best, fastest, and most well-maintained "muscle cars" in the region. The kids attend City schools, and in our day they were called the "Villa Rats" (but never to their faces unless the caller wanted an ass-kicking.) They were some of the toughest kids I have ever known. These folks were mechanics and machinists, mostly. They were salt-of-the-Earth people, but they were fiercely independent. If they could have issued passports to their community, they would have done so. "Generally' Kyle said, 'We don't go in there unless they call us or unless we have business there. They like to take care of their own problems, so unless someone gets killed or something we sorta let them be. But they've given us a couple of good cops. Jimmy Lawson, the guy you replaced, he's from the Villa. Remember Johnny Lawson, the Villa boy in our class who got killed in that drag race? Jimmy is his kid brother."
Johnny Lawson was a Villa kid who was known for his 1957 Chevy Bel-Air. He had worked for that car from the age of thirteen, raking leaves and shoveling walks, weeding gardens, whatever he had to do to get the money. When he was 15 he bought it, and it sat in the family carport while he kept working every chance he got. Weekends he might be found working on it with a clutch of older boys, souping up the engine and drive train, or sanding down the body by hand for the paint job he wanted for it. The day he got his driver's license, he celebrated by driving the primer-coated monster into Vandalia for painting.
What emerged from A&L Body and Paint was a 1957 Chevy sedan with full-moon hubcaps, a chrome air scoop on the hood, a tachometer installed outside the windshield, and a four-speed floor mounted Hurst shifting setup. The interior was as plush as a New Orleans whorehouse with black crushed velvet seats and chrome trim galore. The beast had been painted metallic "Candy-Apple Red" with a gloss-black racing stripe running from front to rear on the hood, roof, and trunk. The rear end was jacked up as high as State law allowed, and the engine sang through fiberglass- packed "Thrush" mufflers muting the twin exhaust. It sounded like a hungry tiger, and Johnny soon became king of the local street-racing circuit.
A section of Rip Rap Road that was arrow-straight had for years been marked with "START" and "FINISH" lines. It was uniquely suited to illegal street racing because this particular stretch of the road was entered at the south from Wagner Ford Road via a bridge over the Great Miami River. After a slight bend, the road went as straight as a rifle shot for a mile before bending again and re-crossing the Miami to continue north. This enabled the posting of lookouts, and during the summer drag-racing on Rip Rap was a popular - and dangerous, not to mention highly illegal- pastime. Johnny won a lot of money there. He also won two "title-for-title" races and sold the cars for a good profit. I realized as we drove along that it was on this same day and the same road we were on that Johnny Lawson lost his life.
He had been racing a Northridge boy who was driving a Chevy El Camino. It turned out later that two of the Northridge boy's pals and he were out for vengance, since Johnny had taken the title to a cousin's car in a race. The Montgomery County Sheriff's investigators had found that the other two Northridge boys had stood among the other spectators and thrown roofing nails into Johnny's path. Johnny hit those nails going at least 150 MPH. His right front tire blew, shredded, and his car left the road, rolling over at sickening speed ; then hit a tree on the riverbank and ejected him into the swollen Great Miami River. The next day I had gone to see the County rescue squad dragging the river with grappling hooks as the Lawson family watched and wept. I suddenly realized that the 10-year-old blond boy who was clinging to his father weeping that day must have been Jimmy. I sighed and - although I am not Catholic - crossed myself. Little did I know that this 1969 case of aggravated manslaughter would come roaring back with awful consequenses here in 1995, fully 26 years later. "Hey' Kyle said, 'turn up Fishburg. See that bar on the corner?............
END OF EXCERPT.
Thomas Talbott replies to John Beversluis
Tom Talbott wrote one of the critiques of John Beversluis's critique of Lewis shortly after Beversluis's book came out in 1985. Beversluis responded in his revised edition, but Talbott thinks Beversluis missed his central points. Here is his response.
Ridicule is not an argument: responding to Loftus
May I simply note the complete absence of argument in your response. Yes, God could have eliminated the pretext that was used to justify religious war by Christians. And what other massacres might have happened in a world where those pretexts were missing? I don't know, and neither do you. This is one side of the argument from evil.
Christians who have had the power to use force to promote their doctrines have done so, with bad consequences. Christians, however, are the ones who eventually learned their lesson and separated church and state. If atheists become sufficiently powerful politically to force their nonbelief on others, will they do so? The only examples we have of governments where atheists had sufficient power to impose atheism do not give us much cause for optimism. Oh, maybe there won't be burnings at the stake. Maybe just insane asylums for the incurably religious. After all, they were brainwashed to begin with, so what could possibly be wrong with brainwashing them into being right-thinking folks? I don't think atheists have cause for self-righteousness about such things. It is human nature that leads us to kill one another, and we will use anything we care deeply about as a pretext. Including atheism.
Your arguments raise serious questions for Christians. But the rhetorical noise level in what you write doesn't help us discuss those questions.
I mean, I do not have a specific answer for why God didn't make certain issues that became points of contention in the wars of religion clearer. And for that I am to abandon my beliefs and accept what? A world where the very pains that form the basis for the problem of evil are difficult to explain? A world where there are no objective moral values, and therefore the value of tolerating people you think caught in a delusion is also not objective? A world which is at its core irrational, but produced rational beings smart enough to do the math and science necessary to put a man on the moon? A world where a great religion grows which, all told, does more good than any other movement in the history of mankind, (and I do believe this, in spite of all the problems), but which is based, in the last analysis, on hallucination and legendary distortion? A world where those who inflict unjust suffering get the same fate as those who suffer it? A world where getting all of this right just puts you in the same kind of grave as those who fell into the great Christian delusion? A world that is, in the last analysis, completely without hope?
I alluded to the complete lack of argument in your response. As passionate as you are about your unbelief, your noisy rhetoric will increasingly play only in the echo chamber of convinced atheists, the mutual admiration society you call Debunking Christianity. The questions you ask are good ones, but you don't support your work by fostering real dialogue, the kind of dialogue that goes on every day at Dangerous Idea. People on the other side who try to post and generate real discussion on your site are ridiculed and shouted down. Even atheists who question the way you go about defending your views are banned. Your constant self-promotion is tiresome, as is your incessant repetition of The Emperor's New Clothes. (I'm partial to Danny Kaye's version, myself). You tell people they are ignorant if they haven't read this or that book of yours, when your ideas are all out there for everyone to see on your website.
You think you understand Christians perfectly because you were once one. Sorry, but understanding positions you disagree with takes constant effort. Atheism, all too often, is defended with a large dose of intellectual pretentiousness, with ad hominems and proof surrogates where the argument is supposed to be.
You think that you are suddenly liberated from confirmation bias and sociological pressure by deconverting. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. People play follow the leader in the atheist community, too, as is evidenced by the popularity of the Jesus Myth.
It is interesting how much ideological passion today's atheists have. I think I have seen it somewhere before. Oh, now I remember. At meetings of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Christians who have had the power to use force to promote their doctrines have done so, with bad consequences. Christians, however, are the ones who eventually learned their lesson and separated church and state. If atheists become sufficiently powerful politically to force their nonbelief on others, will they do so? The only examples we have of governments where atheists had sufficient power to impose atheism do not give us much cause for optimism. Oh, maybe there won't be burnings at the stake. Maybe just insane asylums for the incurably religious. After all, they were brainwashed to begin with, so what could possibly be wrong with brainwashing them into being right-thinking folks? I don't think atheists have cause for self-righteousness about such things. It is human nature that leads us to kill one another, and we will use anything we care deeply about as a pretext. Including atheism.
Your arguments raise serious questions for Christians. But the rhetorical noise level in what you write doesn't help us discuss those questions.
I mean, I do not have a specific answer for why God didn't make certain issues that became points of contention in the wars of religion clearer. And for that I am to abandon my beliefs and accept what? A world where the very pains that form the basis for the problem of evil are difficult to explain? A world where there are no objective moral values, and therefore the value of tolerating people you think caught in a delusion is also not objective? A world which is at its core irrational, but produced rational beings smart enough to do the math and science necessary to put a man on the moon? A world where a great religion grows which, all told, does more good than any other movement in the history of mankind, (and I do believe this, in spite of all the problems), but which is based, in the last analysis, on hallucination and legendary distortion? A world where those who inflict unjust suffering get the same fate as those who suffer it? A world where getting all of this right just puts you in the same kind of grave as those who fell into the great Christian delusion? A world that is, in the last analysis, completely without hope?
I alluded to the complete lack of argument in your response. As passionate as you are about your unbelief, your noisy rhetoric will increasingly play only in the echo chamber of convinced atheists, the mutual admiration society you call Debunking Christianity. The questions you ask are good ones, but you don't support your work by fostering real dialogue, the kind of dialogue that goes on every day at Dangerous Idea. People on the other side who try to post and generate real discussion on your site are ridiculed and shouted down. Even atheists who question the way you go about defending your views are banned. Your constant self-promotion is tiresome, as is your incessant repetition of The Emperor's New Clothes. (I'm partial to Danny Kaye's version, myself). You tell people they are ignorant if they haven't read this or that book of yours, when your ideas are all out there for everyone to see on your website.
You think you understand Christians perfectly because you were once one. Sorry, but understanding positions you disagree with takes constant effort. Atheism, all too often, is defended with a large dose of intellectual pretentiousness, with ad hominems and proof surrogates where the argument is supposed to be.
You think that you are suddenly liberated from confirmation bias and sociological pressure by deconverting. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. People play follow the leader in the atheist community, too, as is evidenced by the popularity of the Jesus Myth.
It is interesting how much ideological passion today's atheists have. I think I have seen it somewhere before. Oh, now I remember. At meetings of Campus Crusade for Christ.
WHY DON'T WE PAY OBAMA ONE BILLION DOLLARS TO RESIGN?
REALLY. WE ARE BEING COMPLETELY SERIOUS HERE. Look at how much money this shithead ignorant "president" has spent in the name of "saving the economy"; only to see things get WORSE.
Not only this, but look what he and First Lady Michelle are doing: Jetting off to exotic locations, stuffing their faces with the finest grub, and living LARGE, baby, LARGE! When everone in the country is feeling the misery of these financial woes, Barack and Michelle live as though they were a pair of Alabama trailer park denizens who just hit the Powerball for half a billion dollars.
So I say, give Barack Obama and Michelle one billion dollars, on the condition that Barack resign the Presidency. That is half the cost of a B1 bomber, and among other benefits this stipend might help assure we never have to use a B1 in a war with a nuclear armed Iran. Not to mention he won't be ordering up new "entitlement spending" and otherwise throwing away money willy-nilly like Micheal Jackson at the FAO Schwartz toy store.
Not only this, but look what he and First Lady Michelle are doing: Jetting off to exotic locations, stuffing their faces with the finest grub, and living LARGE, baby, LARGE! When everone in the country is feeling the misery of these financial woes, Barack and Michelle live as though they were a pair of Alabama trailer park denizens who just hit the Powerball for half a billion dollars.
So I say, give Barack Obama and Michelle one billion dollars, on the condition that Barack resign the Presidency. That is half the cost of a B1 bomber, and among other benefits this stipend might help assure we never have to use a B1 in a war with a nuclear armed Iran. Not to mention he won't be ordering up new "entitlement spending" and otherwise throwing away money willy-nilly like Micheal Jackson at the FAO Schwartz toy store.
William Ramsay's book on Acts
A lot of the archaeological confirmations of Acts come from archaeologist Sir William Ramsay. Here is a link to his book, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen.
Sometimes I think there should be an outsider test for Bible scholars. Would anyone consider for two seconds a next-generation date for a book that has been this heavily supported by archaeological evidence, if that book didn't have to be in the Bible? It is as if the claim that Luke was a companion of Paul is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
Sometimes I think there should be an outsider test for Bible scholars. Would anyone consider for two seconds a next-generation date for a book that has been this heavily supported by archaeological evidence, if that book didn't have to be in the Bible? It is as if the claim that Luke was a companion of Paul is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
Roger Pearse on how not to evaluate evidence
Among other things, on the abuse of the slogan "Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence."
The Arguments from Confusion and Biblical Defects
Given the great similarity between the thesis of John Loftus's essay "What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate," and the thesis of this essay by Theodore Drange, I am a little surprised that John didn't help himself to this essay, especially since Drange provides a numbered-premise argument.
This is the Argument from Confusion (AC).
(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then:
(C) Thus, if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would probably prevent Christians from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.
(D) But some Christians are confused about such matters.
(E) And many Christians disagree with one another about such matters.
(F) Therefore [from D & E], Christians have not been prevented from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.
(G) Hence [from C & F], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.
The Argument from Biblical Defects (ABD) is as follows:
(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then the Bible would be God's only written revelation.
(B) Thus, if that deity were to exist, then he would probably see to it that the Bible is perfectly clear and authoritative, and lack the appearance of merely human authorship.
(C) Some facts about the Bible are the following:
(E) Hence [from B & D], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.
What do you guys think of these arguments? I suspect that Catholics (who comprise the majority of professed Christians in the world) would recognize these arguments, not as arguments against Christianity or theism, but against Protestantism.
This is the Argument from Confusion (AC).
(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then:
- He would love all Christians and want a personal relationship with them.
- People would need to have G-beliefs (among other things) in order to have the sort of relationship with God that he would want them to have.
(C) Thus, if the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then he would probably prevent Christians from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.
(D) But some Christians are confused about such matters.
(E) And many Christians disagree with one another about such matters.
(F) Therefore [from D & E], Christians have not been prevented from becoming confused or conflicted about matters that are the subject of G-beliefs.
(G) Hence [from C & F], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.
The Argument from Biblical Defects (ABD) is as follows:
(A) If the God of evangelical Christianity were to exist, then the Bible would be God's only written revelation.
(B) Thus, if that deity were to exist, then he would probably see to it that the Bible is perfectly clear and authoritative, and lack the appearance of merely human authorship.
(C) Some facts about the Bible are the following:
- It contradicts itself or is very unclear in many places.
- It contains factual errors, including unfulfilled prophecies.
- It contains ethical defects (such as God committing or ordering atrocities).
- It contains interpolations (later insertions to the text).
- Different copies of the same biblical manuscripts say conflicting things.
- The biblical canon involves disputes and is apparently arbitrary.
- There is no objective procedure for settling any of the various disputes, especially since the original manuscripts of the Bible have been lost and there has been no declaration from God that would help resolve any of the disputes.
(E) Hence [from B & D], probably the God of evangelical Christianity does not exist.
What do you guys think of these arguments? I suspect that Catholics (who comprise the majority of professed Christians in the world) would recognize these arguments, not as arguments against Christianity or theism, but against Protestantism.
Living in the Gorge
I love the mountains. They speak to me. Often when I've thought of their beauty, I imagined I would have to live in them to appreciate them.
My internship site is in the valley, the Monongahela Valley to be precise. It's also referred to as the gorge. But do you know what surrounds this valley? Mountains! Whether I'm driving or visiting someone at the hospital or nursing home, I see the mountains.
This morning, Pr. Larry, my supervisor, and I visited several people in the hospital. At the end of one of the corridors was a door to the outside. On each side of the door were narrow rectangular windows, giving us a wonderful view of those mountains.
Google picture
Tim McGrew on Carrier's treatment of Luke and Josephus
Tim's comments are italicized. The Carrier essay is linked.
The list of “generic parallels” between Luke and Josephus is so generic that I was surprised he left out “Both Luke and Josephus mention the existence of Rome.” The list of “story parallels” is even worse, since in many cases it involves torturing the notion of a parallel. Just run through the list and note some of the (non)parallels that he either vastly overrates or twists ’round:
* In Josephus, the census under Quirinius is the beginning of something bad. In Luke, it isn’t. Therefore, this is a parallel where Luke “transvalues” the message of the census, changing “bad” into “good.”
(Um, ... standards ...?)
* Josephus says that there were many men who led revolts, and he names three prominent ones. Luke has passing references to three persons with the same names, though it is not clear that Luke’s “Theudas” is the same as Josephus’s. One of the men is called “the Egyptian” by both Josephus and Luke; Luke links him with the sicarii, whereas Josephus does not. Therefore, Luke was copying from Josephus.
(The argument that this must be copying because there were thousands of Egyptians in Palestine at the time is beyond ridiculous. It would work equally well against two independent references to Jimmy the Greek. (“How many millions of Greeks,” etc.))
* Luke and Josephus both recount the death of Agrippa I in some detail, speaking of his brilliant robe, his acceptance of adulation as a God, and his immediate demise. There are also some details that differ in the two stories. Therefore, Luke must have borrowed it from Josephus.
(It couldn’t just be a notorious fact? Why not?)
* Josephus mentions a rumor that there was an incestuous relationship between Agrippa II and Bernice; Luke does not. Therefore, Luke is inspired by Josephus and intends the entire scene in Acts 25 as comic sarcasm.
(Does it seem like sarcasm? Can it by any legitimate stretch of the imagination be read that way?)
* Josephus reports that Drusilla abandoned her husband for Felix. Luke (Acts 24) portrays Paul as speaking to Felix about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix becomes uncomfortable. Therefore, Luke must be using Josephus.
(It isn’t enough of an explanation that Drusilla’s obvious abandonment of her husband for Felix was notorious?)
* Josephus portrays Felix as sending priests, “excellent men,” to Rome for trial on petty charges. Luke portrays Paul as demanding to be sent to Rome. So perhaps Luke was using Josephus as a model.
(Huh?)
* Luke and Josephus both mention Lysanius, tetrarch of Abilene.
* Luke records a parable about a hated king who is really a good guy; Josephus talks about Herod, an actual hated king who was really a bad guy.
* Luke contains a prophecy involving the slaughter of children in a siege of Jerusalem; Josephus talks about a mother who cannibalizes her own infant during the actual siege of Jerusalem.
* Both Luke and Josephus mention a famine in the reign of Claudius.
* Luke reports an attack by Pilate on some Gailieans; Josephus reports an attack by Pilate on some Samaritans.
Forgive me, but as I read through this I am irresistibly reminded of an exchange from Sleeper:
Luna: “Do you know that ‘god’ spelled backwards is ‘dog’?”
Miles: “So?”
Luna: “Makes you think!”The obvious point, which I made in a previous thread, is that Josephus's area of concern seems to have been Judeo-Roman relations. So he's not going to explain the kind of rich, detailed knowledge of Asia Minor, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta that Luke demonstrates, information that would have been difficult to come by in the second century. See Tim's discussion here.
It is completely unclear to me why it should be assumed that some similarity between Luke and Josephus has to be explained in terms of Luke using Josephus.
The most detailed defense in recent times of Luke's accuracy is, to my knowledge, Colin Hemer's The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, reviewed here. That would be the book to set up against Pervo. Price, not surprisingly, declares Pervo to be the winner.
It is refreshing to see Pervo spill the insides of apologists Ben Witherington III and Colin Hemer, who otherwise manage to receive way too much serious regard. When Pervo is done with them, they sag like empty piñatas, only his blows reveal that neither donkey ever possessed any candy inside. Just one example: Pervo shows the gross inconsistency between believing on the one hand that Acts’ author knew Paul personally and on the other that he was not familiar with Paul’s letters.
I'd like to see that argued. No one that I know, even in my immediate family, is familiar with all my letters, except, of course, for those addressed to them. Why should Paul be any different?
Jesus was a false prophet--So What!
According to C. S. Lewis in The World's Last Night. Apparently he read one of Loftus' chapters in the Christian Delusion, and prepared this response decades in advance.
I'm not necessarily endorsing this move. But it is worthy of consideration.
I'm not necessarily endorsing this move. But it is worthy of consideration.
ex-apologist: On a Common Apologetic Strategy
This piece, by exapologist, is one that I have been meaning to answer for some time, as one of the primary defenders of an anti-naturalistic apologetic argument. I should point out, first, that C. S. Lewis never took his argument as an immediate inference from an argument against what he calls naturalism (which might be identified as some conservative form of naturalism) to the conclusion that God exists. Lewis bought the argument in the course of discussion with the anthroposophist Owen Barfield, and it was the springboard for his conversion, not to theism, but to absolute idealism. So, in my most recent treatments of the Argument from Reason, I start by asking a fundamental question: are the basic causes of the universe mentalistic or non-mentalistic. There are surely other possible mentalistic world-views that are mentalistic but not traditionally theistic, but we are going to have to see what thsoe are.
Next, I identify four features of the mental: intentionality, purpose, subjectivity and normativity. Admission of any of these into the basic building blocks of the universe (as opposed to system by-products at the level of, say, brains), has to be excluded on any view that can be reasonably called naturalistic.
In fact there are three doctrines of what I would call a minimal naturalism: mechanism at the basic level, which means exclusion of the four features of the mental, the causal closure of the basic level, and the supervenience of at least anything in causal connection upon what is on the basic level.
What this does with abstract objects is interesting. It doesn't rule them out by definition. However, since the physical has to be causally closed, they can't have anything to do with anything that goes on in the world or, in particular, what goes on in the mind or brain. Otherwise, either the basic level isn't mechanistic, or the basic level isn't causally closed. If this minimal naturalism is true, then it seems like, even if there are abstract objects, I couldn't know that they exist.
Now, why should naturalistic accept this kind of picture? Well, think about it. The world began, if it did, with a big bang. Nothing mental was going on. Matter moved around and obeyed the laws of matter. Then "the mental" emerged. Now, a traditional naturalist will just say that the mental is a system by-product of the physical. I maintain that, if that were so, there would be some logical entailment from the non-mental to the mental. But, as I have argued at some length, there isn't. All the non-mental information, in however much detail it is given, has to leave the mental, at best, indeterminate. And yet there have to be determinate truths about what we mean when we say things.
If we now put the "mental" into the basic building-blocks, what happens? If Mind really is behind everything, you can avoid the notion of the personal God of theism, but you have knocked out some pretty significant options, and theism, among other doctrines, at the very least, gets to pick up some of the probabilistic slack.
ex-apologist: On a Common Apologetic Strategy
Next, I identify four features of the mental: intentionality, purpose, subjectivity and normativity. Admission of any of these into the basic building blocks of the universe (as opposed to system by-products at the level of, say, brains), has to be excluded on any view that can be reasonably called naturalistic.
In fact there are three doctrines of what I would call a minimal naturalism: mechanism at the basic level, which means exclusion of the four features of the mental, the causal closure of the basic level, and the supervenience of at least anything in causal connection upon what is on the basic level.
What this does with abstract objects is interesting. It doesn't rule them out by definition. However, since the physical has to be causally closed, they can't have anything to do with anything that goes on in the world or, in particular, what goes on in the mind or brain. Otherwise, either the basic level isn't mechanistic, or the basic level isn't causally closed. If this minimal naturalism is true, then it seems like, even if there are abstract objects, I couldn't know that they exist.
Now, why should naturalistic accept this kind of picture? Well, think about it. The world began, if it did, with a big bang. Nothing mental was going on. Matter moved around and obeyed the laws of matter. Then "the mental" emerged. Now, a traditional naturalist will just say that the mental is a system by-product of the physical. I maintain that, if that were so, there would be some logical entailment from the non-mental to the mental. But, as I have argued at some length, there isn't. All the non-mental information, in however much detail it is given, has to leave the mental, at best, indeterminate. And yet there have to be determinate truths about what we mean when we say things.
If we now put the "mental" into the basic building-blocks, what happens? If Mind really is behind everything, you can avoid the notion of the personal God of theism, but you have knocked out some pretty significant options, and theism, among other doctrines, at the very least, gets to pick up some of the probabilistic slack.
ex-apologist: On a Common Apologetic Strategy
We Love it Here/Timing is Everything
Tuesday night at a meeting, I had the opportunity to hear more of this church's history. Over the years the people have grown in so many ways. Today I started teaching adult Bible study and preached my first sermon for Grace. Grace is such an appropriate name for this community of faith.
Here is the sermon I preached this morning:
How often have we heard or used the phrase “Timing is everything?” We might think of this in the middle of hearing funny stories or jokes. Two people can tell the same story using the same words, but one is a good story teller and the other may not tell it as well, with the right pauses and cadence. Then there are some people that have instant comebacks in a conversation that are perfect while there are others like myself who only think of the great response about a week later. Yes, timing is everything.
It was the sabbath, a holy time set apart for rest, for worship. God gave it as a gift. Over the centuries however, oral laws and rules were added which were deemed as binding as God’s own commands regarding sabbath. In Jesus’ day, what was meant as a gift and blessing became a burden. Just as in last week’s gospel God was turning everything upside down by toppling the powerful and lifting up the weak, so this week Jesus is at it again. This sabbath would be different.
Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. That’s pretty ordinary so far. “And just then there appeared a woman…” (Luk 13:11 NRS). The Greek is more dramatic about this than the English. The Greek translates, “And look! See! Behold! a woman…” This is meant to be an attention getter.
What kind of woman was she? Why should we look and see? She had endured a long term, chronic illness that she was probably used to. How difficult must it have been for her-- so bent over that she was powerless to straighten up. How hard must her journey have been to the synagogue? What effort must it have taken just to look up to make sure she wouldn’t crash into someone on the way there? We don’t know if she experienced any compassion whatsoever. Would anyone ever intentionally look her in the eyes or engage her in any way other than that of annoyance as they went around her to get to where they needed to go? She was a suffering, marginalized Jewish woman, a daughter of Abraham.
Perhaps she slipped into the synagogue unnoticed. Who would want to get close to her, to really notice her? If she was really living right and was blessed by God she wouldn’t be in this condition, would she? In our day, just as in Jesus’ the victim is blamed for the situation they’re in. Haven’t we heard that if we only prayed harder, had more faith, said the right words that we would find relief?
The gospel says, “Look! Pay attention!” Something is going to happen. Are you ready? This will be no ordinary sabbath. Jesus notices this suffering woman. But how? She didn’t call out to him requesting healing like others did.
How would Jesus react to the Father’s timing for healing? It was the sabbath after all…but come to think of it, Jesus seems to delight in stirring things up. She is healed in two stages. First, Jesus declares she is set free from her affliction. It happened. It was happening and it was going to happen. It was not something she did to or for herself, but it was done to her. Secondly, it isn’t until Jesus lays hands on her that the healing is manifested for all to see.
This woman’s affliction made her unclean by the standards of the Jewish law. By Jesus touching her, he not only restored her to health, but restored her socially as a daughter of Abraham to her community of faith. Everyone would be gathered together on the sabbath. Was there any better time to reestablish her in the faith life of Israel?
How did this woman respond to God’s timing to heal her? How do you think you would? Maybe you’d cry out, “YIPPEE!” or “WOO HOO !” She praised God, not just once, but continually and repeatedly. When we experience God’s blessings, we may praise and thank God, but do we do so repeatedly, continually? She did.
How did the leader of the synagogue react to God’s timing? He was indignant. We are often quite hard on this man, but remember he was supposed to be in charge. Everything had to be done in good order, at the right time. Healing was considered work and one was not to work on the sabbath. He kept reminding them, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." Can’t you hear him saying this over and over in the background to no avail as Jesus heals the woman anyway? He wasn’t against the woman being healed per se, but the issue was timing. She wasn’t dying. Why couldn’t she just come back the next day, after the sabbath, at the right time? Professor and author Christine Pohl suggests:
It wasn’t wrong for the leader to want to protect the Sabbath day and worship from intrusions of regular work. But in the context of this miracle, the leader appears silly and [small]; being indignant at mercy and goodness looks ridiculous. What is missing is a delight in God’s mercy, in Jesus’ power, in the Sabbath, in a restored sister. In attempting to protect
what was holy, the leader misses a transforming encounter with Jesus, the Holy One. And in trying to protect the holy, he sees the broken woman as an intrusion.
When is the right time for God’s healing power to reign over human suffering? Remember God likes to upset the status quo, to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it.
It is ALWAYS the right time for the kingdom of God to break through, coming at an unexpected hour. God is God and we are not. The woman’s disease was not life threatening, but Jesus recognized her suffering and released her from bondage.
What about us? Many of us have suffered in various ways throughout our lives. Maybe we’re suffering even now. Sometimes we think our problems are too insignificant, too small for God to notice or care about. There are so many people with far greater needs, we may think. The woman wasn’t dying, but Christ cared deeply about her pain. He cares deeply about our pain too.
Further in the gospel, Jesus debates with the synagogue ruler. People take care of their animals on the sabbath. If it’s ok to do that kind of work, shouldn’t it be ok to do the work of healing? Jesus makes a play on words here as he compares the two issues. Concerning animals, the Greek is translated untie and concerning the woman it is translated set free but it’s the same word that’s used in each case. So…“If you untie your animals, shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham be untied?” or “If you set free your animals shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham be set free?” If it was the right time to for the one, certainly it was the right time to free a daughter of Abraham.
“Well Jesus, if you put it that way…” Jesus opponents were routed while the crowd rejoiced. That was their reaction to this in breaking of God’s kingdom. They rejoiced, not once, not twice, but continually and repeatedly. The powerful rule makers were brought low, while the powerless that had to keep those rules were lifted up.
God has lifted you all up too. Tuesday night you recounted some of your history; that a bishop said your church should close. But God had other things in mind and turned everything around. Grace Lutheran has stayed open and is growing. God makes churches that should be closing healthy and flourishing--all because of God’s grace, work, and timing—making this indeed a place where “grace matters.”
By allowing God to be God, by not boxing him in, God works in unexpected ways, at unexpected times. If we really believe that grace matters, that should impact us individually and as a church. Are we ready for the next step God has in mind? Are we ready for God’s timing, for the next phase of ministry to each other, to the community, to the world? Listen to this challenge from Christian singer/songwriter, Ken Medema:
If this is not a place, where tears are understood, where can I go to cry?
And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly?
If this is not a place where my questions can be asked where shall I go to seek?
And if this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard, where shall I go to speak?
If this is not a place where tears are understood, where shall I go, where shall I go, to fly?
And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly?
If this is not a place where my questions can be asked where shall I go to seek?
And if this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard, where shall I go to speak?
If this is not a place where tears are understood, where shall I go, where shall I go, to fly?
Selling the Farm, or the Price is Right
Walter: I love your Robert Price quote:
For what can it profit a man if he gets all the local titles and offices right, if what he is trying to prove is that people in these locations healed the sick with their snot rags, survived the bites of poisonous serpents, brushed themselves off unhurt following fatal stonings, resurrected teenagers their sermons had bored to death, blinded some and killed others merely by a word of power?
I'm afraid that getting an 'A' on an ancient civics test is of no real help in vindicating these wonder stories.
First of all, what this doesn't give us is an explanation as to how Luke got an A on his ancient civics test. He didn't have a civics textbook. He didn't have a library with all that information in it. He couldn't have looked it up in the Encyclopedia Romanica. He didn't have the benefit of modern archaeology, which is how I know that he got so many things right. Steven, (and notice that Price is admitting that he does merit an A in ancient civics). He couldn't look up the information on the internet. Everyone who studies the Book of Acts in Sunday School knows that it's the book that's all over the map. Luke has to know civics and geography from Jerusalem to Malta, and it's the civics of the time, not of 50 years later. So, how'd he do it? He either was an actual companion of Paul, or he had a lot of contact with Paul later, or he got it through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is what you're stuck with if you, like Pervo, Price and Carrier, want to put Acts in the second century.
I have yet to see any of these people explain this evidence. You say Bruce is dated. That's chronological snobbery, a rampant disease in modern biblical studies. Well, evidence is not dated. How do they deal with the evidence? How do they explain how all this accurate information got into Acts? Disparaging comments like this don't explain anything.
And why does Price think "passing a civics test" does not profit? Because he can't believe what Luke reports. Why can't he believe what Luke reports? Because Miracles Do Not Happen. Hume, not the inductive evidence, is wagging the dog. I have already admitted that people have different priors. What is sufficient evidence for some is not sufficient evidence for others. But Price has virtually admitted that he would reject any ancient evidence in favor of the miraculous, even if it bit him in the nose.
Bruce says "accuracy is a habit of mind." You don't "ace the civics test" without being a) being very interested in accuracy, and b) having access to the necessary information. Compare Luke's score on a civics test with that of Philostratus in his account of Appollonius of Tyana, who has Appollonius doing his thing in Nineveh centuries after it was destroyed. You don't find ancient annals riddled with supernatural wonders on the one hand, and accurate geography and civics on the other. If Christianity, at its founding, was attended with miracles, then we should expect the books recording its founding to be of just the character. If it all happened naturalistically, if miracles do not and did not happen, then how do we get work laden with miracle reports with so much accurate information about so many things?
In short, I think the character of Luke's work gives us very strong inductive evidence that Luke was "on board" with Paul. It also provides significant evidence in support of Luke's claims concerning the miraculous. Whether you think this evidence is sufficient depends on the prior probabilities you bring to the discussion.
For what can it profit a man if he gets all the local titles and offices right, if what he is trying to prove is that people in these locations healed the sick with their snot rags, survived the bites of poisonous serpents, brushed themselves off unhurt following fatal stonings, resurrected teenagers their sermons had bored to death, blinded some and killed others merely by a word of power?
I'm afraid that getting an 'A' on an ancient civics test is of no real help in vindicating these wonder stories.
First of all, what this doesn't give us is an explanation as to how Luke got an A on his ancient civics test. He didn't have a civics textbook. He didn't have a library with all that information in it. He couldn't have looked it up in the Encyclopedia Romanica. He didn't have the benefit of modern archaeology, which is how I know that he got so many things right. Steven, (and notice that Price is admitting that he does merit an A in ancient civics). He couldn't look up the information on the internet. Everyone who studies the Book of Acts in Sunday School knows that it's the book that's all over the map. Luke has to know civics and geography from Jerusalem to Malta, and it's the civics of the time, not of 50 years later. So, how'd he do it? He either was an actual companion of Paul, or he had a lot of contact with Paul later, or he got it through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is what you're stuck with if you, like Pervo, Price and Carrier, want to put Acts in the second century.
I have yet to see any of these people explain this evidence. You say Bruce is dated. That's chronological snobbery, a rampant disease in modern biblical studies. Well, evidence is not dated. How do they deal with the evidence? How do they explain how all this accurate information got into Acts? Disparaging comments like this don't explain anything.
And why does Price think "passing a civics test" does not profit? Because he can't believe what Luke reports. Why can't he believe what Luke reports? Because Miracles Do Not Happen. Hume, not the inductive evidence, is wagging the dog. I have already admitted that people have different priors. What is sufficient evidence for some is not sufficient evidence for others. But Price has virtually admitted that he would reject any ancient evidence in favor of the miraculous, even if it bit him in the nose.
Bruce says "accuracy is a habit of mind." You don't "ace the civics test" without being a) being very interested in accuracy, and b) having access to the necessary information. Compare Luke's score on a civics test with that of Philostratus in his account of Appollonius of Tyana, who has Appollonius doing his thing in Nineveh centuries after it was destroyed. You don't find ancient annals riddled with supernatural wonders on the one hand, and accurate geography and civics on the other. If Christianity, at its founding, was attended with miracles, then we should expect the books recording its founding to be of just the character. If it all happened naturalistically, if miracles do not and did not happen, then how do we get work laden with miracle reports with so much accurate information about so many things?
In short, I think the character of Luke's work gives us very strong inductive evidence that Luke was "on board" with Paul. It also provides significant evidence in support of Luke's claims concerning the miraculous. Whether you think this evidence is sufficient depends on the prior probabilities you bring to the discussion.
The Amalekites, the Creation Hymn, and the Hebrew Learning Curve
Wagner said: Victor, it seems that you believe in some form of inerrancy.But how do you reconcile inerrancy and a "evolving moral consciousness"? Could you please recommend some essential reads about this problem?
With respect to inerrancy, I start by saying I don't especially like the term, and am not sure quite what is supposed to count as an error. I've covered the Amalekite massacres before here, and my view is that they strike me as morally unacceptable per se from a moral standpoint, suggesting that either there is something I don't understand about the situation, or the actions are wrong, and Scripture reflects what we now know to be an inadequate moral awareness.
It could turn out that, given where the Hebrews were on the moral learning curve, and given their proneness to be influenced by the more agriculturally sophisticated Canaanites, the best thing for God to tell them was to kill everybody in those tribes, even though someone with a better developed moral sense could not be told to do such a thing. It was an essential part of God's plan to sustain a nation of people dedicated to monotheism, and perhaps, under the circumstances, that's what God had to do. It is hard for me to imagine that someone who absorbed the message of the Good Samaritan, which teaches us essentially that there are no national boundaries on neighborness and hence no national limits in the requirement to love our neighbors, could engage in that type of conduct. What is worrisome to us about this is partly the fact that, even if the Amalekites and Canaanites were immoral people, God orders children to be killed, who could not possibly be responsibe for the evils of the tribes. But even the notion of individual moral responsibility doesn't come out of the chute immediately for the ancient Hebrews. It gets clearly articulated in Ezekiel 18, but I am not sure where before that.
The link didn't work about my holding to some version of inerrancy, so I'm not sure what I said. I think there is a lot of vagueness attached to the term. Interpreted broadly enough, I'm sure it's true, but I know those who use it have a more precise meaning in mind, and some, in the name of inerrancy, impose hermeneutical constraints that proscribe interpretations that I would accept. I know that there are passages in the Bible that sound as if they teach the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished on earth, but then Job and Ecclesiastes come along and deal with the fact that, so far as we can see, that ain't happening.
The creation hymn in Genesis seems appropriate to an early stage on the scientific learning curve, and I see it's message as metaphysical (the monotheism of the hymn vs. the polytheism of the Enuma Elish), rather than scientific. I don't think its literal words need to be defended vis-a-vis modern science.
In saying all this I am sure I am profoundly disappointing both the inerrancy police (putting your moral intutitions ahead of the Bible, tsk tsk), and the skeptics among you.
Of course, it is surely open for the skeptic to say that God could, and should, have given the Hebrews a faster learning curve, both morally and scientifically. That's, I suppose a version of the argument from evil. Why didn't God dispel scientific and moral ignorance more quickly than he did. I don't subscribe to a theodicy sufficiently fine-grained to give an answer to that question.
With respect to inerrancy, I start by saying I don't especially like the term, and am not sure quite what is supposed to count as an error. I've covered the Amalekite massacres before here, and my view is that they strike me as morally unacceptable per se from a moral standpoint, suggesting that either there is something I don't understand about the situation, or the actions are wrong, and Scripture reflects what we now know to be an inadequate moral awareness.
It could turn out that, given where the Hebrews were on the moral learning curve, and given their proneness to be influenced by the more agriculturally sophisticated Canaanites, the best thing for God to tell them was to kill everybody in those tribes, even though someone with a better developed moral sense could not be told to do such a thing. It was an essential part of God's plan to sustain a nation of people dedicated to monotheism, and perhaps, under the circumstances, that's what God had to do. It is hard for me to imagine that someone who absorbed the message of the Good Samaritan, which teaches us essentially that there are no national boundaries on neighborness and hence no national limits in the requirement to love our neighbors, could engage in that type of conduct. What is worrisome to us about this is partly the fact that, even if the Amalekites and Canaanites were immoral people, God orders children to be killed, who could not possibly be responsibe for the evils of the tribes. But even the notion of individual moral responsibility doesn't come out of the chute immediately for the ancient Hebrews. It gets clearly articulated in Ezekiel 18, but I am not sure where before that.
The link didn't work about my holding to some version of inerrancy, so I'm not sure what I said. I think there is a lot of vagueness attached to the term. Interpreted broadly enough, I'm sure it's true, but I know those who use it have a more precise meaning in mind, and some, in the name of inerrancy, impose hermeneutical constraints that proscribe interpretations that I would accept. I know that there are passages in the Bible that sound as if they teach the righteous are rewarded and the wicked punished on earth, but then Job and Ecclesiastes come along and deal with the fact that, so far as we can see, that ain't happening.
The creation hymn in Genesis seems appropriate to an early stage on the scientific learning curve, and I see it's message as metaphysical (the monotheism of the hymn vs. the polytheism of the Enuma Elish), rather than scientific. I don't think its literal words need to be defended vis-a-vis modern science.
In saying all this I am sure I am profoundly disappointing both the inerrancy police (putting your moral intutitions ahead of the Bible, tsk tsk), and the skeptics among you.
Of course, it is surely open for the skeptic to say that God could, and should, have given the Hebrews a faster learning curve, both morally and scientifically. That's, I suppose a version of the argument from evil. Why didn't God dispel scientific and moral ignorance more quickly than he did. I don't subscribe to a theodicy sufficiently fine-grained to give an answer to that question.
The Shipwreck and the Amityville Horror
One element of the biblical record that I have paid some attention to is the accuracy of, in particular, the Book of Acts. Let me review the claim I want to defend on behalf of the Gospels, which I would certainly also want to defend on behalf of Acts of the Apostles:
Well, I would argue that in the Gospels we have four books written by people who at worst were in a position to talk to those who had seen and known Jesus, and who claimed to have seen him resurrected. They may have had theological aims, but they did their work with a concern to correctly preserve the facts concerning the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There are, of course, four such records, and as such if they agree with one another that something happened, that is at least some evidence that it indeed did happen. Evidence, mind you, that we might end up having to reject, but evidence nonetheless. Of course, the idea that the Gospels represented an attempt to get things right, as opposed to being a record of some out-of-control legends, will have to be argued for, but it is a conclusion I think is supported by the evidence.
In short, I am interested in what I would call general reliability, as opposed to inerrancy. Let's look at the evidence first, and let those who are concerned about inerrancy sort it out later.
Now, what relevance is it that aspects of Bible can be shown to be factual. That which can be shown to be reliable in the New Testament is not typically the supernatural element. Luke, for instance, seems to know the titles of various officials in the cities where Paul is supposed to have gone on his missionary journeys. In this book, which was featured in the Library of Historical Apologetics site, James Smith shows that, indeed, the Maltese Shipwreck story in Acts had to have been factual, based on real a real experience of sailing and being shipwrecked.
But should these facts impress us? Chris Hallquist thinks not.
He writes:
The "amazing accuracy"line of apologetics involves compiliing long lists of details of the gospels confirmed in outside sources: John the Baptist existed, the book of Acts uses terminology correctly, et cetera, finding as many examples as they can (a recent Norman Geisler book boasts 140 allegedly confirmed details). Now, there's an obvious (well, not to the apologists) point that needs to be made here: just because some details of an account are correct does not mean that the entire thing is correct. Case in point: when I read The Amityville Horror I had not trouble identifying some somewhat obscure factual points: there really was a parapsychologist named J. B. Rhine, there really are a pair of ghost hunters named Ed and Lorraine Warren. Further reading revealed that the hoax was built around a real murder case in a real house which a family named the Lutzes really moved into, only to leave a month later. The Warrens really participated in a seance at the house, and the character of Father Mancuso was based on a real priest in the Rockville Center Diocese (the name was not real, though he was one of those people whose name was "changed to protect their privacy) as per a statement in the original book). The fact that some of the details in The Amityville Horror are true did not keep its fantastic supernatural claims from being false.
Chris Hallquist, UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God, (Reasonable Press, 2008). p. 34,
But there are some problems with using this parallel. First, this is was a hoax, as Hallquist indicates on p. 28 of his book. His theory of how Christianity arose doesn't involve a hoax, it involves hallucinations and legend. So while the creators of the hoax could have put the fact and the fiction together, it has to happen rather differently through hallucination and legend.
Second, it is easy to understand how the people who wrote The Amityville Horror came by their information. Someone familiar with the world of the paranormal would know the factual information necessary to put the hoax together. And if not, a trip to the library would have given the hoaxters all the information they needed. On the other hand, I see no way that Luke could possibly have known what he knew without actually having been a companion of Paul. When we take a close look at what Luke had to know to write his book, I don't see how he could have gotten that knowledge third hand. It's not as if he could have found all the information he needed to know by going to the local library and reading the Encyclopedia Romanica. It seems evident to me that he had access to people involved in the founding of Christianity, that he was there for the missionary journeys, (and by the way those stories do include miracles). It simply boggles my mind that people like Richard Carrier and Robert Price keep putting the date of Acts into the second century. And, if you can't date Acts late, you can't date the Synoptics late, either.
Well, I would argue that in the Gospels we have four books written by people who at worst were in a position to talk to those who had seen and known Jesus, and who claimed to have seen him resurrected. They may have had theological aims, but they did their work with a concern to correctly preserve the facts concerning the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There are, of course, four such records, and as such if they agree with one another that something happened, that is at least some evidence that it indeed did happen. Evidence, mind you, that we might end up having to reject, but evidence nonetheless. Of course, the idea that the Gospels represented an attempt to get things right, as opposed to being a record of some out-of-control legends, will have to be argued for, but it is a conclusion I think is supported by the evidence.
In short, I am interested in what I would call general reliability, as opposed to inerrancy. Let's look at the evidence first, and let those who are concerned about inerrancy sort it out later.
Now, what relevance is it that aspects of Bible can be shown to be factual. That which can be shown to be reliable in the New Testament is not typically the supernatural element. Luke, for instance, seems to know the titles of various officials in the cities where Paul is supposed to have gone on his missionary journeys. In this book, which was featured in the Library of Historical Apologetics site, James Smith shows that, indeed, the Maltese Shipwreck story in Acts had to have been factual, based on real a real experience of sailing and being shipwrecked.
But should these facts impress us? Chris Hallquist thinks not.
He writes:
The "amazing accuracy"line of apologetics involves compiliing long lists of details of the gospels confirmed in outside sources: John the Baptist existed, the book of Acts uses terminology correctly, et cetera, finding as many examples as they can (a recent Norman Geisler book boasts 140 allegedly confirmed details). Now, there's an obvious (well, not to the apologists) point that needs to be made here: just because some details of an account are correct does not mean that the entire thing is correct. Case in point: when I read The Amityville Horror I had not trouble identifying some somewhat obscure factual points: there really was a parapsychologist named J. B. Rhine, there really are a pair of ghost hunters named Ed and Lorraine Warren. Further reading revealed that the hoax was built around a real murder case in a real house which a family named the Lutzes really moved into, only to leave a month later. The Warrens really participated in a seance at the house, and the character of Father Mancuso was based on a real priest in the Rockville Center Diocese (the name was not real, though he was one of those people whose name was "changed to protect their privacy) as per a statement in the original book). The fact that some of the details in The Amityville Horror are true did not keep its fantastic supernatural claims from being false.
Chris Hallquist, UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God, (Reasonable Press, 2008). p. 34,
But there are some problems with using this parallel. First, this is was a hoax, as Hallquist indicates on p. 28 of his book. His theory of how Christianity arose doesn't involve a hoax, it involves hallucinations and legend. So while the creators of the hoax could have put the fact and the fiction together, it has to happen rather differently through hallucination and legend.
Second, it is easy to understand how the people who wrote The Amityville Horror came by their information. Someone familiar with the world of the paranormal would know the factual information necessary to put the hoax together. And if not, a trip to the library would have given the hoaxters all the information they needed. On the other hand, I see no way that Luke could possibly have known what he knew without actually having been a companion of Paul. When we take a close look at what Luke had to know to write his book, I don't see how he could have gotten that knowledge third hand. It's not as if he could have found all the information he needed to know by going to the local library and reading the Encyclopedia Romanica. It seems evident to me that he had access to people involved in the founding of Christianity, that he was there for the missionary journeys, (and by the way those stories do include miracles). It simply boggles my mind that people like Richard Carrier and Robert Price keep putting the date of Acts into the second century. And, if you can't date Acts late, you can't date the Synoptics late, either.
Thom Stark's Critique of Copan: Deceptive Apologetics?
Thom Stark offers a criticism of Paul Copan's defense of the Old Testament. Copan rightly notes that Susan Niditch, on her book on war in the Old Testament, claims that the dominant voice of the Old Testament is against the idea that killing enemies is a sacrifice to God. However, Niditch says there is an earlier, less dominant voice that accepts the idea that killing enemies in war is a sacrifice to God. Copan tells you about the dominant voice, apparently implying that it is the only voice, though I don't see how why the phrase "dominant voice" which he does quote, could fail to imply a not-so-dominant voice. But he doesn't tell you about the less dominant voice, which Niditch also presents. This, Stark says, is deceptive apologetics.
The picture Niditch presents fits rather well along the lines of the idea of an evolving moral consciousness in the Old Testament, an idea I have no problem with. It might be embarrassing to the understanding of inerrancy that Copan endorses. I'm not an expert on applied inerrancy.
I'd like to see what others think about this. I am also going to e-mail Paul for his reaction.
This is an essay by Copan in which he quotes Niditch.
The picture Niditch presents fits rather well along the lines of the idea of an evolving moral consciousness in the Old Testament, an idea I have no problem with. It might be embarrassing to the understanding of inerrancy that Copan endorses. I'm not an expert on applied inerrancy.
I'd like to see what others think about this. I am also going to e-mail Paul for his reaction.
This is an essay by Copan in which he quotes Niditch.
The Anybody Who Is Anybody Fallacy
Academics have a bad habit of acting as if there is a consensus of scholarship because there is consensus within their own in-group. People will say "everybody is a materialist," and then when you point out people who aren't, it is assumed that those people are somehow marginal. It's the Anybody Who Is Anybody Fallacy. There's no principled way of deciding who to marginalize.
The same thing seems to happen amongst biblical scholars, but it doesn't mean much of anything. I asked a question in my response to John earlier which he didn't answer. If you marginalize all the evangelicals, who else are you going to marginalize? Brown? Fitzmeyer? Metzger? Wright? Bauckham? C. H. Dodd? Joachim Jeremias? Eta Linneamann? Luke Timothy Johnson? Why them and not Robert Price, who seems as marginal on the left as conservative scholars are on the right?
Further, if being a credentialed Bible scholar is so important, why are you and Richard Carrier speaking about these subjects at all? Neither of you are credentialed Bible scholars.
Many of the issues in biblical scholarship are philosophical, and not simply matters of biblical study. The problem of the antecedent probability of the miraculous is an important issue for scholarship, and yet I attended a conference of philosophers and biblical scholars in which one biblical scholar confessed complete ignorance of the debate on the subject, and who admitted that he had followed Bultmann blindly on the subject. (Bultmann's electric light argument against miracles is one of the worst arguments I have ever heard). Craig's debate with Ehrman did show that Ehrman had no understanding of the relevant philosophical issues either.
The same thing seems to happen amongst biblical scholars, but it doesn't mean much of anything. I asked a question in my response to John earlier which he didn't answer. If you marginalize all the evangelicals, who else are you going to marginalize? Brown? Fitzmeyer? Metzger? Wright? Bauckham? C. H. Dodd? Joachim Jeremias? Eta Linneamann? Luke Timothy Johnson? Why them and not Robert Price, who seems as marginal on the left as conservative scholars are on the right?
Further, if being a credentialed Bible scholar is so important, why are you and Richard Carrier speaking about these subjects at all? Neither of you are credentialed Bible scholars.
Many of the issues in biblical scholarship are philosophical, and not simply matters of biblical study. The problem of the antecedent probability of the miraculous is an important issue for scholarship, and yet I attended a conference of philosophers and biblical scholars in which one biblical scholar confessed complete ignorance of the debate on the subject, and who admitted that he had followed Bultmann blindly on the subject. (Bultmann's electric light argument against miracles is one of the worst arguments I have ever heard). Craig's debate with Ehrman did show that Ehrman had no understanding of the relevant philosophical issues either.
A bump in the road
Let me get back to my central thesis here. I am trying to argue a couple of things. One I am simply assuming, which is that there is no good argument that everyone ought to have strongly naturalistic priors about miracles. That doesn't mean that there's something wrong if you do have strongly naturalistic priors, only that there is no good argument, a la Hume, to suppose that I ought to have strongly naturalistic priors.
My second central thesis is that there is something very puzzling about the founding of Christianity, which makes all naturalistic accounts of its founding unbelievable. This is centered around the Resurrection as the central miracle, but really it's the whole story that just doesn't fit together very well unless the miraculous character of the whole thing is presupposed. My claim is that if you try, in a serious way, to put the historical jigsaw puzzle together without a resurrection, the pieces don't fit. You end up having to strain the facts to make them fit the theory. Now if you have strongly naturalistic priors, I suppose that is what you must do, or you can even say "I don't know what happened, but whatever it was, it wasn't a resurrection." On the other hand, it seems absurd to say that there is something self-contradictory about the idea of an omnipotent being who can resurrect someone from the dead. But your priors are what they are.
C. S. Lewis, in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy, encountered an atheist who reached just such a conclusion, who, nevertheless, remained an atheist. He wrote:
“Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole outline of Christian history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive “apart from his Christianity.” Now, I veritably believe, I thought-I didn’t of course say; words that would have revealed the nonsense-that Christianity itself was very sensible “apart from its Christianity.” But I hardly remember, for I had not long finished The Everlasting Man when something far more alarming happened to me. Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it really happened once. “… Was there no escape?”
by C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1942), pp. 223-224
For this atheist, this hardest boiled of all atheists, the evidence for the miraculous nature of the founding of Christianity was a bump in the road. For Lewis, it helped to push him toward conversion. What I have been trying to show, is that the bump is there.
My second central thesis is that there is something very puzzling about the founding of Christianity, which makes all naturalistic accounts of its founding unbelievable. This is centered around the Resurrection as the central miracle, but really it's the whole story that just doesn't fit together very well unless the miraculous character of the whole thing is presupposed. My claim is that if you try, in a serious way, to put the historical jigsaw puzzle together without a resurrection, the pieces don't fit. You end up having to strain the facts to make them fit the theory. Now if you have strongly naturalistic priors, I suppose that is what you must do, or you can even say "I don't know what happened, but whatever it was, it wasn't a resurrection." On the other hand, it seems absurd to say that there is something self-contradictory about the idea of an omnipotent being who can resurrect someone from the dead. But your priors are what they are.
C. S. Lewis, in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy, encountered an atheist who reached just such a conclusion, who, nevertheless, remained an atheist. He wrote:
“Then I read Chesterton’s Everlasting Man and for the first time saw the whole outline of Christian history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive “apart from his Christianity.” Now, I veritably believe, I thought-I didn’t of course say; words that would have revealed the nonsense-that Christianity itself was very sensible “apart from its Christianity.” But I hardly remember, for I had not long finished The Everlasting Man when something far more alarming happened to me. Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it really happened once. “… Was there no escape?”
by C. S. Lewis Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1942), pp. 223-224
For this atheist, this hardest boiled of all atheists, the evidence for the miraculous nature of the founding of Christianity was a bump in the road. For Lewis, it helped to push him toward conversion. What I have been trying to show, is that the bump is there.
Wagging the dog once again
JL: And we know this because the Bible says this is real testimony of a real event? Would someone PLEASE help me understand why this is not viciously circular?
VR: All I need is that it is testimony. It looks as if it is claiming to be about a real event. The historical argument does not assume any special authority for events recorded in Scripture, as opposed to events recorded by Tacitus or Josephus. However, the testimony is evidence for the occurrence of the event testified to. Maybe not good enough, people have to decide that. However, if Jesus was resurrected, the likelihood that Peter would testify to it is pretty good. If Jesus was not resurrected, we have to wonder why he would testify to it. So Peter's testimony is more likely given the resurrection than given no resurrection. It is, therefore evidence for the resurrection. Bayes' theorem at work.
Of course, the same argument can be applied to alien abductions. Just because we have evidence doesn't mean we have sufficient evidence. We can have independent reasons for rejecting testimony. You clearly think we do. However, to deny the existence of the evidence with the Yellow Brick Road argument is ridiculous. It also makes it clear what is wagging the dog here, it is not the evidence in the texts themselves, it is the antecedent improbability, on your view, of what they claim.
VR: All I need is that it is testimony. It looks as if it is claiming to be about a real event. The historical argument does not assume any special authority for events recorded in Scripture, as opposed to events recorded by Tacitus or Josephus. However, the testimony is evidence for the occurrence of the event testified to. Maybe not good enough, people have to decide that. However, if Jesus was resurrected, the likelihood that Peter would testify to it is pretty good. If Jesus was not resurrected, we have to wonder why he would testify to it. So Peter's testimony is more likely given the resurrection than given no resurrection. It is, therefore evidence for the resurrection. Bayes' theorem at work.
Of course, the same argument can be applied to alien abductions. Just because we have evidence doesn't mean we have sufficient evidence. We can have independent reasons for rejecting testimony. You clearly think we do. However, to deny the existence of the evidence with the Yellow Brick Road argument is ridiculous. It also makes it clear what is wagging the dog here, it is not the evidence in the texts themselves, it is the antecedent improbability, on your view, of what they claim.
Two boats and a helicopter
The idea in some people's minds seems to be that even if there is good evidence for the NT, God should have provided more, and that he did not provide more is evidence that the evidence he provided isn't any good. Reminds me of this old joke:
A farmer is in Iowa during a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer's home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up, The man in the boat says "Jump in, I'll take you to safety."
The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, "Jump in, I'll save you."
The farmer again says, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer "I'll save you, climb the ladder."
The farmer says "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The helicopter goes away. The water comtinues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.
The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says "What are you doing here?"
The farmer says "I put my trust in you and you let me down."
God says, "What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!!!"
A farmer is in Iowa during a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer's home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up, The man in the boat says "Jump in, I'll take you to safety."
The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, "Jump in, I'll save you."
The farmer again says, "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer "I'll save you, climb the ladder."
The farmer says "Nope, I put my trust in God."
The helicopter goes away. The water comtinues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.
The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says "What are you doing here?"
The farmer says "I put my trust in you and you let me down."
God says, "What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!!!"
Reply to Loftus on my historical evidence project
Vic, you've got it wrong here and you don't realize what you're doing.
On the one hand you find the philosophical arguments against the probability of miracles to be weak (note, probability not possibility).
Yes, of course Hume's argument is an argument against the probability, not the possibility of miracles, though he slips at one point in the essay and talks about the absolute impossibility of miracles. My claim is that we cannot normatively establish that all rational persons must begin their investigations of the miraculous presuming the probability of the miraculous to be vanishingly low. There is no objective, non-objectionable method that can establish that it must be vanishingly low. That is the conclusion of my work on Bayes' theorem and miracles, which was done under the direction of atheist philosopher of science Patrick Maher, and it is also the conclusion of University of Pittsburgh philosopher of science John Earman, also an atheist.
What I do not claim to have shown is that no one should have vanishing priors for miracles. In my posts recently, I have been bracketing the question of prior probabilities. I have been trying to show that there is a surprising amount of evidence in support of miracles like the Resurrection. Whether you find it sufficient or insufficient will depend on your priors.
On the other hand you dive right into the arguments for the resurrection without first looking at the Bible as a whole. Once you look at what biblical scholarship as a whole you will learn not to trust the Bible just because something is stated in the Bible.
For the sake of debate concerning Christian origins, I don't need modern scholarship to keep me from doing that. The simple logic of not begging the question will do that. If I could argue "It says in the Bible that Christ was resurrected, therefore he was resurrected," then there wouldn't even be a debate, would there? No, what the Bible provides is preserved testimony to certain events. We have to talk about how close to the events the testimony is, whether it comes from eyewitnesses or people who spoke to eyewitnesses, etc.
I mean, what is "biblical scholarship as a whole?" It includes, I should think the Bible faculties of evangelical seminaries like Talbot and Trinity. But suppose your marginalize them. Are you going to marginalize Roman Catholics like Fitzmeyer and Brown and Luke Timothy Johnson? There's a considerable group of moderates like Joachim Jeremias and Oscar Cullman, Richard Bauckham and Anthony Thistleton. Are they marginal? And N. T. Wright, where does he fit in? Is he too "evangelical" to be a real biblical scholar? Was F. F. Bruce a real biblical scholar? Are they all people who haven't looked at biblical scholarship as a whole, while you, John Loftus, have looked at it as a whole? I smell the "no true Scotsman" fallacy once again.
Apart from my own WIBA I highly recommend you read Thom Stark's book when it comes out (I don't know when). In my opinion when it comes to understanding biblical scholarship the phrase "educated evangelical" is an oxymoron.
Yeah, if those danged evangelicals would just read the right books they'd come out with their hands up waving a white flag. Sounds like the young evangelicals who think that if their skeptical friends will just read Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, and C. S. Lewis, they'll all get down on their knees forthwith and pray the sinner's prayer.
If Tim McGrew is right, skeptics need to read some books of 18th and 19th Century apologists, who in some ways defend the reliability of the NT with greater sophistication even than those from the 20th and 21st Centuries. So maybe the McGrew Challenge can be a response to the Debunking Christianity challenge. I mean, we can go on with dueling challenges all day long until somebody gets tired.
Until then what Bob Price said applies to what you're attempting to do lately.
Well, here's what Bob Price said.
"What evangelical apologists are still trying to show...is that their version of the resurrection was the most compatible with accepting all the details of the gospel Easter narratives as true and non-negotiable...[D]efenders of the resurrection assume that their opponents agree with them that all the details are true, that only the punch line is in question. What they somehow do not see is that to argue thus is like arguing that the Emerald City of Oz must actually exist since, otherwise, where would the Yellow Brick Road lead?....We simply have no reason to assume that anything an ancient narrative tells us is true." The Case Against the Case for Christ, (pp. 209-210).
Nonsense on stilts. Of course these people agree that you have to start from the presupposition that what we have is ancient human testimony to miraculous (and non-miraculous) events. Apologists sometimes slip and presume something like inerrancy, but the proper method is to look at these texts as ancient evidence. How good? Well, I would argue that in the Gospels we have four books written by people who at worst were in a position to talk to those who had seen and known Jesus, and who claimed to have seen him resurrected. They may have had theological aims, but they did their work with a concern to correctly preserve the facts concerning the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There are, of course, four such records, and as such if they agree with one another that something happened, that is at least some evidence that it indeed did happen. Evidence, mind you, that we might end up having to reject, but evidence nonetheless. Of course, the idea that the Gospels represented an attempt to get things right, as opposed to being a record of some out-of-control legends, will have to be argued for, but it is a conclusion I think is supported by the evidence.
The idea a piece of testimony becomes worthless once it becomes part of Scripture strikes me as just bizarre. Unless this is the Kooks and Quacks argument all over again, where you dismiss everything because of the time period it comes from. (As if there are no kooks and quacks today). Testimony to an event, all things being equal, is more likely to occur if the event occurred than if the event didn't occur. Therefore, by Bayes' theorem, it is evidence for the event. It may not be good enough evidence, but it is evidence. The claim that there is no evidence for the Resurrection strikes me as nonsense, and based on a misunderstanding of the very idea of evidence. And yes, I do think there is evidence for alien abductions. That doesn't mean I believe that anyone was abducted by aliens, I would not use the "no evidence" mantra for alien abductions either.
These founding events of Christianity brought about a massive change in the religious landscape of the Roman Empire, a change that resulted in Christianity becoming the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. For this to happen, a lot of people have to do a lot of surprising things. How do we explain it. My claim is that the founding of Christianity involves a set of events that are strange and difficult to explain unless Christ rose from the dead. What you do with that conclusion once I get you to draw it is up to you.
On the one hand you find the philosophical arguments against the probability of miracles to be weak (note, probability not possibility).
Yes, of course Hume's argument is an argument against the probability, not the possibility of miracles, though he slips at one point in the essay and talks about the absolute impossibility of miracles. My claim is that we cannot normatively establish that all rational persons must begin their investigations of the miraculous presuming the probability of the miraculous to be vanishingly low. There is no objective, non-objectionable method that can establish that it must be vanishingly low. That is the conclusion of my work on Bayes' theorem and miracles, which was done under the direction of atheist philosopher of science Patrick Maher, and it is also the conclusion of University of Pittsburgh philosopher of science John Earman, also an atheist.
What I do not claim to have shown is that no one should have vanishing priors for miracles. In my posts recently, I have been bracketing the question of prior probabilities. I have been trying to show that there is a surprising amount of evidence in support of miracles like the Resurrection. Whether you find it sufficient or insufficient will depend on your priors.
On the other hand you dive right into the arguments for the resurrection without first looking at the Bible as a whole. Once you look at what biblical scholarship as a whole you will learn not to trust the Bible just because something is stated in the Bible.
For the sake of debate concerning Christian origins, I don't need modern scholarship to keep me from doing that. The simple logic of not begging the question will do that. If I could argue "It says in the Bible that Christ was resurrected, therefore he was resurrected," then there wouldn't even be a debate, would there? No, what the Bible provides is preserved testimony to certain events. We have to talk about how close to the events the testimony is, whether it comes from eyewitnesses or people who spoke to eyewitnesses, etc.
I mean, what is "biblical scholarship as a whole?" It includes, I should think the Bible faculties of evangelical seminaries like Talbot and Trinity. But suppose your marginalize them. Are you going to marginalize Roman Catholics like Fitzmeyer and Brown and Luke Timothy Johnson? There's a considerable group of moderates like Joachim Jeremias and Oscar Cullman, Richard Bauckham and Anthony Thistleton. Are they marginal? And N. T. Wright, where does he fit in? Is he too "evangelical" to be a real biblical scholar? Was F. F. Bruce a real biblical scholar? Are they all people who haven't looked at biblical scholarship as a whole, while you, John Loftus, have looked at it as a whole? I smell the "no true Scotsman" fallacy once again.
Apart from my own WIBA I highly recommend you read Thom Stark's book when it comes out (I don't know when). In my opinion when it comes to understanding biblical scholarship the phrase "educated evangelical" is an oxymoron.
Yeah, if those danged evangelicals would just read the right books they'd come out with their hands up waving a white flag. Sounds like the young evangelicals who think that if their skeptical friends will just read Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, and C. S. Lewis, they'll all get down on their knees forthwith and pray the sinner's prayer.
If Tim McGrew is right, skeptics need to read some books of 18th and 19th Century apologists, who in some ways defend the reliability of the NT with greater sophistication even than those from the 20th and 21st Centuries. So maybe the McGrew Challenge can be a response to the Debunking Christianity challenge. I mean, we can go on with dueling challenges all day long until somebody gets tired.
Until then what Bob Price said applies to what you're attempting to do lately.
Well, here's what Bob Price said.
"What evangelical apologists are still trying to show...is that their version of the resurrection was the most compatible with accepting all the details of the gospel Easter narratives as true and non-negotiable...[D]efenders of the resurrection assume that their opponents agree with them that all the details are true, that only the punch line is in question. What they somehow do not see is that to argue thus is like arguing that the Emerald City of Oz must actually exist since, otherwise, where would the Yellow Brick Road lead?....We simply have no reason to assume that anything an ancient narrative tells us is true." The Case Against the Case for Christ, (pp. 209-210).
Nonsense on stilts. Of course these people agree that you have to start from the presupposition that what we have is ancient human testimony to miraculous (and non-miraculous) events. Apologists sometimes slip and presume something like inerrancy, but the proper method is to look at these texts as ancient evidence. How good? Well, I would argue that in the Gospels we have four books written by people who at worst were in a position to talk to those who had seen and known Jesus, and who claimed to have seen him resurrected. They may have had theological aims, but they did their work with a concern to correctly preserve the facts concerning the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There are, of course, four such records, and as such if they agree with one another that something happened, that is at least some evidence that it indeed did happen. Evidence, mind you, that we might end up having to reject, but evidence nonetheless. Of course, the idea that the Gospels represented an attempt to get things right, as opposed to being a record of some out-of-control legends, will have to be argued for, but it is a conclusion I think is supported by the evidence.
The idea a piece of testimony becomes worthless once it becomes part of Scripture strikes me as just bizarre. Unless this is the Kooks and Quacks argument all over again, where you dismiss everything because of the time period it comes from. (As if there are no kooks and quacks today). Testimony to an event, all things being equal, is more likely to occur if the event occurred than if the event didn't occur. Therefore, by Bayes' theorem, it is evidence for the event. It may not be good enough evidence, but it is evidence. The claim that there is no evidence for the Resurrection strikes me as nonsense, and based on a misunderstanding of the very idea of evidence. And yes, I do think there is evidence for alien abductions. That doesn't mean I believe that anyone was abducted by aliens, I would not use the "no evidence" mantra for alien abductions either.
These founding events of Christianity brought about a massive change in the religious landscape of the Roman Empire, a change that resulted in Christianity becoming the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. For this to happen, a lot of people have to do a lot of surprising things. How do we explain it. My claim is that the founding of Christianity involves a set of events that are strange and difficult to explain unless Christ rose from the dead. What you do with that conclusion once I get you to draw it is up to you.
The Space Trilogy and the AFR
Jim Slagle points out some passages in Perelandra and That Hideous Strength in which the Argument from Reason plays a role.
What did Josephus Really Say about Jesus
A redated post.
Well, most people are sure that he didn't say everything that the Testimonium Flavium says that he did. The passage was at least doctored. But for years it was thought that the passage was just made up, but more recent scholars think there is a historical core to Josephus' account.
Another account of the issue is to be found here.
Well, most people are sure that he didn't say everything that the Testimonium Flavium says that he did. The passage was at least doctored. But for years it was thought that the passage was just made up, but more recent scholars think there is a historical core to Josephus' account.
Another account of the issue is to be found here.
What would evidence look like if we had it?
Before entering, however, on this examination of the incidental allusions or secondary facts in the New Testament narrative, it is important to notice two things with regard to the main facts; in the first place, that some of them (as the miracles, the resurrection, and the ascension) are of such a nature that no testimony to them from profane sources was to be expected, since those who believed them naturally and almost necessarily became Christians; and secondly, that with regard to such as are not of this character, there does exist profane testimony of the first order.
George Rawlinson, The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1860), p. 180.
HT: Tim McGrew
George Rawlinson, The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1860), p. 180.
HT: Tim McGrew
Come on, let's have some real evidence!
The New Testament is propaganda, not evidence. Didn't you know that? The writers believed that Jesus was resurrected. They also wanted others to believe it. If we want real evidence, we need reports of the resurrection from people who didn't believe Jesus was resurrected. Now that would be real evidence, the kind we need in order to believe.
Blue Devil Knight on the historical argument debate
A lot of the discussion of historical apologetics has gotten off-track. I prefer not to ban people, but this means that you have to learn what to ignore. I am familiar with Steven Carr's methods of argumentation, and I don't happen to take his comments very seriously. The presence of people in the Gospels who are not mentioned elsewhere in history doesn't strike me as particularly a problem, since Jesus's life didn't primarily revolve around the big history-makers of the time. The disanalogy between these un-accounted for people, and the Angel Moroni or the final battle at the Hill of Cumorah, should be obvious. So I am happy to ignore him in favor of other commenters who make more serious points. But if in failing to give serious consideration to his argument I have somehow overlooked a strong case against Christianity, so be it.
Blue Devil Knight, on the other hand, has given some arguments that I think do deserve some serious attention. His comments are in blue, mine in black.
Yes. Of course, Bruno is not claiming to be a witness to anything. That's Jenkin's point.
Finally, it is strange that people act as if a 'hallucination' theory is the only plausible explanation of people incorrectly believing they observed something. We know there are many ways to acquire a false belief that you observed something in the past. Eyewitnesses are often earnestly wrong, but rarely is the explanation that they hallucinated. Much more likely is retroactive memory distortion.Blue Devil Knight, on the other hand, has given some arguments that I think do deserve some serious attention. His comments are in blue, mine in black.
Back to the martyr arguments.
Giordano Bruno's weird philosophy isn't confirmed by his martyrdom, but as Victor points out the fact that he believed in something strongly is probably established (I say 'probably' because he could have been suicidal or had a mental disorder).
Yes. Of course, Bruno is not claiming to be a witness to anything. That's Jenkin's point.
I agree that this consideration might block a small subset of skeptical views of the origins of Christianity that say they didn't truly believe the consequences of believing what they were saying were important. I say 'consequences of believing', rather than 'believing' because it is possible to martyr oneself for a cause even while saying things you are not sure are factually true, but the consequences are worth dying for (e.g., I would gladly lie, and (frankly not gladly) die if it meant preventing another 9/11).
I think we have to remember the context of my discussion here. Hallquist's book brings in UFOs and paranormal claims in order to help his case against the resurrection. However, the cases he talks about in his chapter on the history of debunking have to do with exposing deliberate fraud. My point was that the martyrdom risk behavior on the part of apostles like Peter undercuts deliberate fraud hypotheses. Peter goes from denying Christ before the crucifixion to declaring to the very people who crucified Jesus that God had raised him (thus vindicating Jesus and un-vindicating Caiaphas and company in the strongest possible terms). Now, either this transformation never happened, or it certainly needs explaining, and the explanation has to be different from the explanation that can be given in most of the UFO/paranormal cases, since those involve deliberate fraud.
At any rate, clearly martyrdom implies strong belief in something. Jim Jones' followers believed something strongly. Not sure what, but many were willing to die for it. They also witnessed miracles that he putatively performed and I'm sure they really believed it. The followers of Benny Hinn have witnessed his miracles, healing the blind, the crippled, etc.. I bet if he wanted, he could convince many of his followers to die.
The Benny Hinn case is a little bit different, because while I suppose conceivably you could get people to die for the claim that they saw people come up to the stage with health problems they appeared to lack when they went back, it's not the facts, but the explanation of these events that is at issue between supporters and critics of Hinn. In the case of a resurrection, if you thought you saw someone on Sunday whom you had seen die on Friday, it doesn't seem open to the skeptic to say, "Yes, Jesus was dead on Friday, but you saw him walking around on Sunday. But there's a good naturalistic explanation for this." Opponents of the Resurrection either say he didn't die on Friday or say he was still dead on Sunday.
The Robert Jenkin quote Tim offers is fun historically, but doesn't actually offer anything new to the discussion. He points out that the existence of false zealots doesn't imply all those with zeal are wrong. Fine. But that puts the burden back on resources independent of the existence of zealots. The existence of strong believers establishes nothing, as it is orthogonal to truth. It is not evidence for anything except strong belief.
However, a sharp belief and behavior change, such as Peter appears to have experienced, still needs to be explained unless, of course, you want to deny that it happened.
In sum I take it that the existence of martyrs blocks a very small subset of stories of the origins of Christianity: those in which people actively tried to deceive others, didn't believe any of it, and also importantly didn't believe strongly in the consequences of having people believe.
You'd have to believe in the consequences strongly enough to want to die for it. Paul, at least seems to be betting everything on Christ's resurrection, and this attitude seems to be reflected in the actions of people like Peter as well.
12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
It's hard for me to read passages like this, written by someone whose martyrdom risk behavior is off the charts, and take seriously the possibility that he didn't really believe that Christ was raised from the dead.
Does that describe any real skeptic? Does it describe Hallq or Carrier? Has anyone argued that the early founders were making a casual lie with little to nothing to gain from people accepting the lie?
Hallquist, interestingly enough, accepts the hallucination theory, and Carrier thinks Jesus never existed. My point in relation to Hallquist, which was the main point of the original post, was that Hallquist brought in UFO cases and paranormal cases which have been debunked by people like James Randi today and by Houdini in a previous era. However, those cases were deliberate fraud cases, which means that they are largely irrelevant to the Resurrection, unless it is supposed that belief in the Resurrection arose as a result of deliberate fraud. However, martyrdom arguments, which are not direct proofs of the resurrection, are nevertheless undercutting defeaters for deliberate fraud theories. Interestingly enough, I think UFO-type cases are irrelevant to Hallquist's own theory, which is a form of the hallucination/legend theory.
Finally, priors play such a huge role here, it is clear that these arguments from the apologists are for those with nonnegligible priors about miracles and gods. For instance, Tim calls the 'twin brother' theory of Jesus 'bizarre' (p 32 of the cited bit). Which is more bizarre, someone coming back from the dead or someone having a twin?
I know that Tim would say that the twin theory is bizarre because of the complete lack of evidence, but it does betray a lack of appreciation of just how incredible and unbelievable it is for people with the naturalist's priors that someone was resurrected. They need really good evidence.
I don't think Tim is arguing that anybody with strongly naturalistic priors ought to be convinced by the case for the Resurrection. I know Tim does believe in objective priors, but all either of us have claimed is that there is no normative argument proving, a la Hume, that every reasonable person must begin from strong naturalistic priors. My claims are as follows:
1) There is no normative argument based on probability theory showing that we must begin from strong naturalistic priors. Instead, people will consult their own credence functions and ask themselves how much evidence is sufficient. I think this is the overall upshot of Earman's critique of Hume in Hume's Abject Failurem and it is certainly the upshot of my papers on the subject, the one in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (Feb. 1989), and the one that appears online. The evidence will at best confirm theism and Christianity, but all we will get out of it is a cumulative case role-player. I am arguing that some reasonable persons can believe in the Resurrection, not that all reasonable persons must believe in it.
2) The evidence for the Resurrection is going to prove surprisingly strong when we start exploring, in detail, the alternative naturalistic hypotheses. What sounds good at first ends up looking severely problematic when we get done. Different pieces of the historical jigsaw puzzle will undercut different counter-hypotheses.
3) The case supporting the resurrection is cumulative, with several important elements. Martyrdoms are one piece of the puzzle. Archaeological confirmations are another. The claims of Christ and the moral character of Christ are still other pieces. The miracle stories in Acts are other pieces of the puzzle.
Basically, I'll need to see it with my own eyes. More than once. The person will need to live for a week or so, we'll do the DNA test, I'll get others to confirm that I am not hallucinating. I'd need a whole lot of evidence to believe it now, much less as recorded from sources almost 2000 years old with much weaker standards for belief.
Maybe that is what you would require. If I just show that there is something naturalistically mysterious about the history surrounding the founding of Christianity, that's all I could hope for in an argument on the subject.
There is an insurmountable wall here that logic will not cross. That is a weakness of the Christian view, as if logic could cross it, I would cross. I would be a Christian. If the evidence compelled it, I would be a Christian.
I don't believe that there's a slam dunk.
Clearly there is more to becoming a Christian than logic and evidence. I'm not sure what that implies about trying to use the available evidence and logic to convert people. I think it implies that such things are only part of the equation. My hunch is, they are a rather trivial part of most people's conversion experience, that conversion is much more a matter of inspiration, an opening of the heart to the light and glory of God, an undeniable experience of His presence and Goodness, than to picayune historical and logical points.
Of course there's more to it than argumentation. But faith can't prosper if a person thinks he or she is believing against their best intellectual judgment. And Christian converts do testify to the fact that reason and evidence DID play a significant role in their conversions, even if the conversion was not exclusively intellectual.One makes a judgment call doing the best one can with the evidence. But a Christian who really thinks that the evidence looks like what Dawkins or Loftus says it is is going to have a hard time being a Christian. The historical and logical points are not trivial, even if they are a very incomplete cause for conversion.
This is an extremely important point for my strategy, which is to push the naturalist (about the resurrection) into relying on hallucination theory, and then showing the problems with that. I really do think the hallucination argument, allowing for a significant amount of legendary accretions in the story, is the best shot the skeptics have in explaining the founding of Christianity. While I can see memory distortion being the cause of thinking a cab was blue when it was really green, I have trouble with the idea of retroactive memory distortion accounting for someone thinking they saw someone whom they had seen executed two days earlier, if they didn't hallucinate and there was no resurrection.
Let me take a personal example. Bob Prokop, a frequent commentator here, was a friend of mine my days as an undergraduate at ASU in 1973-1974. We both had a close friend by the name of Joe Sheffer, who, tragically, passed away in 1989 at the age of 36. Now, I can imagine, in a crowd, seeing someone at a distance whom I thought looked just like Joe. But no amount of memory distortion could possible convince me that I had lunch with Joe in 2006, getting his take on the argument from reason, the state of contemporary Thomist philosophy, Thomist models of artificial intelligence, modern physics, the flaws of the Bush administration, and the latest debates on Dangerous Idea. No, if I really thought I had lunch with Joe in 2006, I would have to have been "appeared to Joe-ly," I would have to have had some Joe-experience, which, on the assumption that Joe didn't come back to life in 2006, would have to be a hallucination.
Note this assumes that putative eyewitnesses did actually martyr themselves, that this is a historical fact. I'm not a historian of Christianity, so am willing to play along with such assumptions.
What is required isn't strictly speaking martyrdom, but martyrdom risk behavior. Peter wasn't killed as a result of what he said outside the gate in Jerusalem, but what he said was inflammatory enough to the people who were responsible for the death of Jesus to expose him to the likelihood that he would be killed, and Peter knew it.
But even assuming that a fairly narrow definition is meant, premise B does not follow from A and is not supported by any cogent line of argument; though some hapless evangelicals may fall into it by accident, it is certainly not a claim that would be endorsed by the vast majority of self-described evangelical scholars. Claims C1 - C3 are notoriously disputed; if Drange thinks he has the better of the argument with evangelicals here, he should simply make those arguments rather than assuming them as premises.
I note in passing that he would need far better weapons to establish C1 than those he chooses to employ. Drange understandably chooses the question of what is required for salvation as a point where serious doubt would create a problem. But utterly fails to show that such matters are in doubt. His attempt to pit Luke 13:3 against John 3:16, John 5:29, and Matthew 25:46 is execrable exegesis, amounting to the claim that since the latter three verses do not mention repentance, they teach a doctrine of salvation without repentance. This argument is too poor to deserve a response. And it is his only argument for contradictory biblical teaching on a point of importance.
Even granting arguendo that each of the claims C1 - C3 is correct, Drange’s argument will still miss C. S. Lewis—and that is a very significant target to miss. C4 and C5 are pertinent only to an extremely narrow reading of B that is so far out of the mainstream evangelical view as to render the term “evangelical” in this argument positively misleading. C6 is in part trivially true (there have been disputes about the canon) and in part misleading (the criteria for settling these disputes are well known and not arbitrary). C7 is a canard; the absence of the original manuscripts does not render disputes about the original text impossible to resolve.
Drange also makes some very strange errors. His claim that “the Q document is lost” not only presupposes that there was such a document—itself a point of contention among contemporary biblical scholars—but also displays his ignorance of the fact that, among those who believe that there is such a document, it is taken for granted that we have enough information in the overlapping portions of Matthew and Luke to reconstruct its contents, indeed, to write commentaries on Q. But none of this matters; the canon of scripture is not defined by anyone as the set of all of the things we might have liked to include if we had them.