Reply to Loftus on the Outsider Test

Loftus' response is here. 

I am afraid your response fails pretty miserably. I said that if you are going to have a test you have to have one that eliminates confirmation bias whether or not it is pro-faith or anti-faith. Faith can cause people to be biased, but so can other things, included bias against religious claims. At least, my experience suggests this to me. When people attack religious beliefs without doing any work on even trying to understand the religious beliefs they are attacking, that is what I call bias.

If you think faith is the only way in which you can have bias, and if you are an atheist, you cannot have bias, then that seems awfully biased to me.

Are all the biasing cultural influences in favor of the religion of one’s society? There is a considerable religious plurality in our society. And even amongst people who are supposedly religious start getting concerned when people get really serious about following their own religion.

This song was written by a couple of country singers from Alabama, the Louvin Brothers. Does this sound like people who are being pressured by their culture to follow Christianity?

My buddies tell me that I should've waited 
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun 
But I still love them and I sing with pride 
I like the Christian life 

I won't lose a friend by heeding God's call
For what is a friend who'd want you to fall 
Others find pleasure in things I despise 
I like the Christian life

My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus 
They say I'm missing a whole world of fun 
I live without them and walk in the light 
I like the Christian life 

I won't lose a friend by heeding God's call
For what is a friend who'd want you to fall 
Others find pleasure in things I despise 

I like the Christian life
I like the Christian life

So, apparently following the Christian life will cost you friends and cause people to make fun of you. Even if you're a good old boy from Alabama. 

I happen to think that Christianity has evidential support that other religions don’t have. If you could show me another religion that has the kind of support Christianity has, I would have to take it seriously. If the book of Mormon recorded a lot of events that is supported by archaeology, I would have to take it seriously. If Islam had better evidential support than it does, I would have to take it more seriously. Maybe it’s doing better than David Wood thinks it’s doing, but I doubt it.

 http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/Wood/best_argument.htm

So, measuring Mormonism and Islam against Christianity by the same standard of evidence, Christianity wins.

In the previous post you wrote:

Vic, there isn't a good reason to reject MN. Why would you ask that we must reject it when the preponderance of evidence supports using it in every area it touches? It's the only reasonable method to use. Your God supposedly created the world such that by using MN we have amassed a great deal of knowledge because of it. We MUST use it if we want knowledge. Science itself is based on it. There isn't any better method for gaining objective knowledge about the world. Your rationalizations that we could overlook the evidence for the supernatural are actually tiring to me. Your God produced the problem you must speak against. What's the best explanation that MN works so well? Given that your God wants us to believe and created the world in such a way that we must use MN to gain knowledge, the best explanation is that your God doesn't exist. You are trying to explain away the evidence once again.

VR: The reason why methodological naturalism works as well as it does is that methodological naturalism and methodological theism get the same results.

Naturalism says:

There are absolute regularities in nature which are just there and that’s all. They are never violated and cannot be violated.

Theism says:

God has created the world in such a way that most events are occur in accordance with them. On certain special occasions, God may act in such a way as to violate those laws, but he does so relatively infrequently, to show things that are of the greatest significance.

God creates the world in such a way that most of what goes on in the world will not be evidently supernatural. If God didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have a stable world about which we can make predictions. So, the people who founded modern science were Christians, and no they weren’t just compartmentalized. They followed methodological naturalism and methodological theism, and got the same result. But if you apply methodological naturalism to theistic claims,  you automatically reject them. As Richard Lewontin puts it:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "

We’re going to test faith on this basis? What possible answer can we get?

More Lennox on the role of religion in the development of science: a balanced discussion

Lack of appreciation of the precise point I'm making here can lead to confusion. I am not claiming that all aspects of religion in general and Christianity in particular have contributed to the rise of science. What I'm suggesting is that the doctrine of a unique Creator God who is responsible for the existence and order of the universe has played an important role. I am not suggesting that there never has been religious antagonism to science. Indeed, T.F. Torrance, commenting on Whitehead's analysis, points out that the development of science was often "seriously hindered by the Christian church even when within it the beginnings of modern ideas were taking their rise." As an example he states that Augustinian theology that dominated Europe for 1,000 years had a power and beauty that led to great contributions to the arts in the Middle Ages, but its "eschatology which perpetuated the idea of it, directed attention away from the world to the super-terrestrial, while its conception of the sacramental universe allowed only a symbolic understanding of nature and a religious, illustrative use of it" thus "taking up and sanctifying a cosmological outlook that had to be replaced if scientific progress was to be made." 

Torrance also says that what often seriously discouraged the scientific mind was a "hardened notion of authority and its relation to understanding that went back to Augustine... which first gave rise to bitter complaints against the church." Torrance nevertheless gives strong support to the general tenor of Whitehead's thesis: "In spite of the unfortunate tension that has so often cropped up between the advance of scientific theories and traditional habits of thought in the church, theology can still claim to have mothered throughout long centuries the basic beliefs and impulses which have given rise especially to modern empirical science, if only through its flagging faith in the reliability of God the Creator and the ultimate intelligibility of his creation." 

John Brooke, Oxford's first Professor of Science and Religion, is more cautious than Torrance: "In the past religious beliefs have served as a presupposition of the scientific enterprise insofar as they have underwritten that uniformity... a doctrine of creation could give coherence to scientific endeavor insofar as it implied a dependable order behind the flux of nature... this need not entail the strong claim that without theology, science would never have taken off, but it does mean that the particular conceptions of science held by its pioneers were often informed by theological and metaphysical beliefs." More recently, John Brooke's successor at Oxford, Peter Harrison, has made an impressive case that a dominate feature in the rise of modern science was the Protestant attitude to the interpretation of biblical texts, which spelt an end to the symbolic approach of the Middle Ages. 

It is, of course, notoriously difficult to know 'what would have happened if...,' but it is surely not too much to say that the rise of science would have been seriously retarded if one particular doctrine of theology, the doctrine of creation, had not been present, a doctrine that is common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Brooke issues a healthy warning against overstating the case: Just because a religion has supported science does not prove that the religion is true. Quite so, and the same can, of course, be said of atheism. 

The doctrine of creation was not only important in the rise of science because of its entailment of order in the universe. It was important for another reason. In order for science to develop, thinking had to be freed from hitherto ubiquitous Aristotelian method of deducing from mixed principles how the universe ought to be, to a methodology that allowed the universe to speak directly. That fundamental shift in perspective was made made easier by the notion of a contingent creation, that is, that God the Creator could have created the universe any way he liked. Hence, in order to find out what the universe is really like or how it actually works, there is no alternative to going and looking. You cannot deduce how the universe works simply by reasoning from 'a priori' philosophical principles. That is precisely what Galileo and, later, Kepler and others did: They went and looked, and revolutionized science.

God's Undertaker, pp. 21-23. 

Why reference matters

Graham Oppy writes:

At 368, Reppert argues: If the reference of our terms is indeterminate, then this has the disastrous consequence that we cannot reason to conclusions.

This is surely wrong. Reasoning can be purely formal. (If all flombs are bloops, and all bloops are shimbs, then all flombs are shimbs. The reasoning is impeccable. We can reason even if our terms have no meanings!) Moreover — and perhaps partly in consequence — so long as we restrict ourselves to a single context, and use the same word throughout, we can reason perfectly well even if our meanings are indeterminate. (If this is a rabbit, and that is a distinct rabbit, then there are at least two rabbits. Fine, regardless of Quinean indeterminacy in the meaning of “rabbit”!)

VR: But that's just the problem. Without fixed reference, we don't know whether we have three terms, four terms, five terms, or six terms. 

Let's take the following argument. 

1. All jackrabbits are gavagais. 

2. All gavagais are mammals. 

3. Therefore all jackrabbits are mammals. 

This argument is valid if the reference of gavagai is invariant between premise 1 and premise 2. But what if in premise 1 gavagai means "rabbit", but in the second it means "undetached rabbit part." Then the argument is invalid. 

Strictly speaking, there is not such thing as falsification

Strictly speaking, falsification isn't really possible. For any piece of evidence that undermines a theory, it is always possible to add an auxiliary hypothesis to restore the theory. There is no logical point that requires the abandonment of any theory, and this is the case whether the thesis involves the supernatural or does not involve the supernatural. 

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” 

― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers 

“Science advances one funeral at a time.”  -also from Planck. 

Materialism and its logical conclusions

Someone wrote: Victor wants "mind" to be supernatural, because if it turns out that minds are just extremely complex physical interactions within a living brain, it wipes out a large swath of his religion's basis for belief.

VR: And lots of other stuff besides. If the mind is just a complex interaction of the brain, then I could only be the same person I was when I was in the fourth grade if the physical content of my brain was the same as the physical content of my fourth-grade brain. But I would be surprised to learn if there was a single molecule in my brain today that was in my brain when I was in the fourth grade. So I am, from the standpoint of physics (the true standpoint according to physicalism) a different person from the person who heard in the lunch line the Kennedy had been assassinated, or even who received a Ph.D in 1989, or the one who got married in 1991, or whose shower was interrupted one Tuesday in 2001 to be told the that the World Trade Center buildings had been knocked down by airplanes. 

On the assumption of materialism, the evidence I have for believing anything  has nothing, ever, to do with my actually believing it. If materialism were to just endanger religious beliefs, that would be one thing. But it does a lot more than that, I am afraid. 

Jerry Fodor once wrote: 


"if it isn't literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching, and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying. ..if none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it's the end of the world." ( Fodor, A Theory of Content and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass, Bradford Book/MIT Press, 1990, p. 156; quoted in Stich, Deconstructing the Mind, New York, 1996, OUP, p. 169)

But that is just what materialism, taken to its logical conclusions, maintains. 

Is monotheism the historical foundation of modern science?

From John Lennox's God's Undertaker: 

At the heart of all science lies the conviction that the universe is orderly. Without this deep conviction science would not be possible. So we are entitled to ask: Where does the conviction come from? Melvin Calvin, Nobel Prize-winner in biochemistry, seems in little doubt about its provenance: ‘As I try to discern the origin of that conviction, I seem to find it in a basic notion discovered 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, and enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely that the universe is governed by a single God, and is not the product of the whims of many gods, each governing his own province according to his own laws. This monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science.’17

Questions for the Outsider Test for Faith

I've always thought that, within limits, the idea of an outsider test is not a bad one. Even if we don't commit ourselves to necessarily giving up any position that every outsider ought to accept, (which to my mind is a bit much), we still need to be aware of biases and be aware of what other people can accept, since we are, after all, talking to other people who do not think as we do. My complaints have always had more to do with what John does with the test than with the test per se. 

The Outsider Test for Faith claims to be able to approach these by identifying biasing factors and factoring them out before investigating. What you learned from mama's knee, or what you prefer to be true are, it is contended, accidental facts about the investigator which don't render your belief more likely to be true, therefore you should try to factor that stuff out before you ask the question of what beliefs are true in the area of religion. But you don't want a method of screening out bias the does only half the job, and screens out only potential biasing factors that tend to lead one in the direction of religious belief. Are there biasing factors which have no epistemic value but lead one in the direction of atheism? Thomas Nagel is a atheist, but he thinks that "fear of religion" is a factor that biases people against positions, such as the idea that mind is fundamental to the universe, that we have good reason to accept.

Even if you don't accept Nagel's conclusions about mind, isn't fear of religion at least a possible biasing factor? And if so, shouldn't any real test concerning religious belief have the capability of counteracting it. If the test only counteracts pro-religious biases but not anti-religious biases, then the test is faulty. 

Loftus maintains that the test commits us to a methodologically naturalistic investigation. Methodological naturalism, if we accept it, as I understand it, makes it methodologically unacceptable to include a supernatural conclusion even if it were to be correct. If our investigation discovers, and does not merely presuppose that the supernatural isn't there, then our methodology would have to have allowed for the possibility of discovering it had it been there.

It's not a test if it can have only one possible outcome.

From the Bahnsen-Stein debate: The crackers in the pantry fallacy

Although I am not a Bahnsenite by any stretch of the imagination, I think Bahnsen's discussion of the crackers in the pantry fallacy very telling. 

We might ask , "Is there a box of crackers in the pantry?" And we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we go about answering questions determining the reality of say, barometric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radio activity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you're now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty. In such cases, one does not do anything like walk to the pantry and look inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions, and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case.

Just think of the differences in argumentation and the types of evidences used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, magicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists. It should be obvious from this that the types of evidence one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question.

Dr. Stein's remark that the question of the existence of God is answered in the same way as any other factual question, mistakenly reduces the theistic question to the same level as the box of crackers in the pantry, which we will hereafter call the crackers in the pantry fallacy.

Is there anything wrong with God of the Gaps reasoning?

Robert Larmer says no. 

It's all about faith???

Z: Well with religion it's not about evidence, but faaaaaith....

VR: Oh please. So, the famous book in defense of Christianity was called "Faith that demands a verdict?"

There are Christians out there who really think the evidence supports their position. They are NOT fideists. If people really were thoroughgoing fideists, then most of what atheists say isn't going to get through to them at all. Atheists keep saying that Christians have no interest in evidence, but then they keep arguing that Christians shouldn't be Christians because there isn't any evidence. But in doing so they are presupposing that evidence matters, which, on their own view of Christians, is not true.

Christians often say the opposite of what you are saying here. They say that evidence matters and that the evidence supports, say, the Resurrection. If I thought that I could only be a Christian by being a fideist, I would have left the fold 40 years ago.

Sean McDowell on arguments for God

Here. 

Wes Morriston's rebuttal to the Kalam argument

Considered by Jeff Lowder to be the best atheist response. Here. 

On the history of Greek Science

Here. 

Bringing a rubber chicken to a gunfight: Slagle on Dennett

Here. 

Oh I can hear the response coming: 

Until Dennett has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor’s taste.

Yawn. 

Peter Hitchens on Christopher

Here. 

Alan Shlemon on the core beliefs of Islam

Here. Another conference speaker.

Clay Jones on why God allows evil.

Here.  I saw this presentation at an apologetics conference at a Phoenix area church. In this presentation Jones argues for human depravity, and says that very little distinguishes ordinary humans like ourselves from guards at Auschwitz, unless we are born again.

Christianity and the challenge of world religions

A presentation by Craig Hazen, which I saw at a local apologetics conference.

Are atheists as moral as believers?

No, according to this site.

Marshall and Loftus on the Outsider Test for Faith

David Marshall thinks it passes the test. Loftus, of course, disagrees. The debate, on Brierly's Unbelievable, is here. 

Does the Galileo story prove that science and religion are in conflict?

No. See here by John Lennox.

Hard questions for scientism

The difficult part in science-oriented philosophy is to get science to do the type of thing we don't normally think of it as being good at doing. Science is great at showing how things work. But a lot of people struggle with the idea of using a scientific approach to asking certain types of questions, such as

1) Why do I exist?

2) Why is there a material world at all?

3) What should I do with my life?

4) Is there a given purpose for my life that I ought to fulfill?

5) What kinds of social and economic structures promote happiness the most? 

6) Is my wife faithful? 

The last question is an interesting one because while there is a scientific approach to it, actually having to answer it scientifically (by having your wife followed everywhere she goes) is precisely thought of by most of us as being a good reason for thinking that one's marriage is in real trouble, either because of your lack of trust, or because she has given you good reason to doubt her fidelity. If you need science for this one, you are already in trouble. 

Hey, what happened to the Five Ways?

This is considered to be the most common theist arguments.

Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity. Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and make that the object of their attack. When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made "religion" simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc. You must be on your guard against these people for they will change their ground every minute and only waste your tune. Notice, too, their idea of God "making religion simple": as if "religion" were something God invented, and not His statement to us of certain quite unalterable facts about His own nature.

---C. S. Lewis

Craig on whether miracles should be characterized as violations of the laws of nature

Reproduced by Triablogue here.

Gilson on what atheists can teach us about ethics

Here. 

Kiefer on Objectivism and Theism

Here. 

Anti-apologists are almost always apologists

What is anti-apologetics? People can often be anti-apologists for certain answers they consider to be wrong. But normally, we don't do anti-apologetics simply to get someone to stop getting a particular wrong answer. Think of a Christian who does Mormon anti-apologetics. They wouldn't say that all they were doing was getting people to stop getting a particular wrong answer (Mormonism), but they don't care at all what answer they accept in its place. They do care, and care very much.

Someone persuaded to stop being a Christian might become a secular humanist, might become an Objectivist, or might become a nihilist or a communist revolutionary. Or they might come to think that if there is no hope beyond this life, there is no reason to continue living this one, and commit suicide. Nothing in the logic of atheism requires any of these responses as opposed to others. But most atheists who do anti-Christian apologetics do care which of those options are embraced. They are not merely anti-apologists. They are apologists.

Part I of a series on John Lennox's God's Undertaker

I received John Lennox’s God’s Undertaker as a Christmas present, and I thought it would be a nice idea to share my study of that book here. The book’s goal is to evaluate the claim that science has buried belief in God, that, at least if we extend scientific thinking as far as it will go, we get to the end of religion.

            The discussion begins with a quote from atheist Peter Atkins.

            Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As science discarded its chrysalis to become its present butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence. Only the religious---among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the underinformed, hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or of the universe of experience, that science can never hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered such a barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that such reductionism will fail are pessimism on the part of  scientists of fear the minds of the religious.

Peter Atkins, “The Limitless Power of Science,” In "Nature's Imagination - The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, Ed. John Cornwell, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Lennox replies:

And yet, and yet… Is this really true? Are all religious people to be written off as prejudiced and underinformed? After all, some of them are scientists who have won the Nobel Prize. Are they really pinning their hopes on finding a dark corner of the universe that science can never hope to illuminate? Certainly that is scarcely a fair or true description of most of the early pioneers in science who, like Kepler, claimed that it was precisely their conviction that there was a Creator that inspired their science to ever greater heights. For them it was the dark corners of the universe that science did illuminate that provided ample evidence of the ingenuity of God.

God’s Undertaker, (Lion-Hudson), 2007.

Steve Hays on Skywriting

Here.  Of course some atheists have said that even if God were to skywrite, they still wouldn't believe.

Rights and moral objectivity

I think that one implication of rejecting moral objectivity is the conclusion that rights are given by societies, and are not inherent in people in virtue of being human. If someone has the right not to be enslaved, then that means that potential slaveholders have an objective obligation not to own them. 

Moral Subjectivity and the Holocaust

When people tell me that they believe that moral values are subjective, I often wonder whether they are willing to take their subjectivism to its logical conclusion. The statement "The holocaust was morally wrong," is a moral statement. Now if someone says "The Holocaust never happened," we regard it as a matter of fact about which the speaker can be mistaken. But if someone says "The Holocaust was morally acceptable," then if subjectivism is true, then a person cannot be mistaken about that. Does that make sense? 

David Bentley Hart on Dennett

Here. 

Who is an apologist?

I often hear the word "apologist" used for defenders of religious belief. But isn't anyone who advocates for a positions with respect to religion and apologist for that position. Why aren't people like Dawkins and Loftus considered apologists, that is, apologists for atheism?

Contrast these two statements

If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.

If atheism is a religion, then not eating meat is a diet.

Has science buried God? John Lennox at Rice

Here. 

If naturalism is true, then belief based on evidence is metaphysically impossible

The evidential relation is not a physical relation. So if physicalism is true, evidence never has anything to do with what anyone believes. On that view, only spatial, temporal and causal relations have anything to do with anything that goes on in reality. So rather than being the correct conclusion of evidentialism, naturalistic materialism actually makes evidentialism impossible. If theism is true, then it is possible for beliefs to be based on evidence. Otherwise, it's metaphysically impossible.

Why science can't explain consciousness

Here. 

Saints and Skeptics on the AFR

Here. 

Is Ted Cruz eligible to be President?

Maybe not. 

Euthanasia for the non-terminal

The Oregon Death with Dignity law is very clear about requiring a terminal diagnosis. Now, in highly secularized Belgium, this requirement is being waived. Here. Also, in the Netherlands, the consent requirement for euthanasia is being relaxed.

Does anyone see a dangerous trend?

Does the left have myths science can't challenge?

Apparently so.

Craig Keener on miracles

Here. 

Richard Purtill on the fantastic element in ancient miracle reports

A redated post. 

One possible way of generating a case for the Christian miracles is to envision what we should expect from a man-made religion. There are, I think, features of Christianity which we should not expect to find if there were not reality behind it.

There is a very interesting discussion of Apollonuis of Tyana, written by Philostratus in 220, found in Richard Purtill’s contribution to the second edition of Louis Pojman’s Philosophy or Religion volume. It’s on pp. 330-331 of that volume. Purtill is a both a professional philosopher and a fantasy and science fiction writer.

RP: It might be worthwhile to take a quick look, for purposes of comparison, at the closest thing we have around the time of the Gospels to an attempt at realistic fantasy. This is the story of Appollonius of Tyana, written about 220 A. D. by Flavius Philostratus, which is sometimes referred to by controversialists as if it were a serious rival to the Gospel accounts of Christ’s ministry and miracles. Penguin Classics publishes an excellent little paper back edition of this story, to which you may go for details, but let me note a few points in passing.
The story concerns a wandering sage who allegedly lived from the early years of the first century until about A. D. 96 or 98. Philostratus mentions some earlier sources for his work but at least some of those sources are probably his own invention. For one thing, Philostratus’ account contains serious historical inaccuracies about things like dates of rulers, which seem to rule out reliance on any early source. (Contrast with the Gospels duly noted-VR). The work was later used to discredit the uniqueness of Christ’s miracles by setting up a rival miracle worker, as Socrates was sometimes set up as a rival to Christ as a martyr and teacher of virtue.
Still, there is some evidence that a Neo-Pythagorean sage named Apollonius may have really lived, and thus Philostratus’s work is a real example of what some have thought the Gospels to be: a fictionalized account of the life of a real sage and teacher; introducing miraculous events to build up the prestige of the central figure. It thus gives us a good look at what a real example of a fictionalized biography would be like, written at a time and place not too far removed from those in which the Gospels were written.
The first thing to notice is the fairy-tale atmosphere. There is a rather nice little vampire story, which inspired a major poem by Keats, entitled Lamia. There are animal stories about, for instance, snakes in India big enough to drag off and eat an elephant. The sage wanders from country to country and wherever he goes he is likely to be entertained by the king or emperor, who holds long conversations with him andsends him on his way with camels and precious stones.
Interspersed with picturesque adventures there are occasional accounts of miracles, often involving prophecy and mind reading. A ruffian threatens to cut Apollonius’s head off and the sage laughs and shouts the name of a day three days hence; on thatday the ruffian is executed for treason. Here is a typical passage about healing miracles;
There came a man about thirty who was an expert lion-hunter but had been attacked by a lion and dislocated his hip, and so was lame in one leg. But the Wise Man massaged his hip and this restored the man to an upright walk. Someone else who had gone blind went away with his sight fully restored, and another man with a paralysed arm left strong again. A woman too, who had had seven miscarriages was cured through he prayers of her husband as follows. The Wise Man told the husband, when his wife was in labor, to bring a live rabbit under his cloak to the place where she was, walk around her and immediately release the hare: for she would lose her womb as well as thee baby if the hare was not immediately driven away (Bk. 3, Sec. 39).
RP again: Now the point is not that Appollonius no serious rival to Christ; no one ever thought he was except a few anti-Christian polemicists about the time of some of the early persecutions of the Church. The point is this is what you get when imagination goes to work on a historical figure in classical antiquity; you get miracle stories a little like those in the Gospels, but also snakes big enough to eat elephants, kings and emperors as supporting cast, travelers’ tales, ghosts and vampires. Once the boundaries of fact are crossed we wander into fairyland. And very nice too. But the Gospels are set firmly in the real Palestine of the first century, and the little details+ are not picturesque inventions but the real details that only an eyewitness or a skilled realistic novelist can give.

VR: This is part of reason for thinking the evidence we have is more like what we should expect if the story were true than if it were false. There seems to be a reality check on the scope of the miraculous element; Jesus doesn’t to miracles to show off, but only to advance His mission.

.



I

Correcting Sam Harris on Islam and the Virgin Birth

Courtesy of David Wood.

Natural theology and God of the Gaps

A redated post.

Is there any theistic argument that can't be accused of being a god-of-the-gaps argument? Is this an all-purpose reply to all natural theology? If so, then it seems that someone who subscribes to these responses would have to say that there couldn't be enough evidence for God's existence--that atheism is unfalsifiable, because anything that might require theistic explanation could be answered by saying that this is just a gap that naturalism hasn't filled quite yet. So if the stars in the sky were to spell out the words "Turn or burn Parsons this means you" (oops I did it again), and Parsons were to turn, he would be guilty of god of the gaps reasoning.

John Lennox on faith and science

Here. 

If ID is not science, then the denial of ID is also not science

I wrote:

If ID is not science, then the denial of ID is also not science. If the denial of ID is science, then ID is science. You can't have you cake and eat it too. 

Why?

Well, let’s take the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker, “Why the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design.” What this suggests to me is that we investigated the evidence of evolution, and concluded on the basis of that that the world is without design. What implies, at least to me, is that prior to investigating the evidence of evolution, we could either have concluded a world with design or a world without design, but the evidence leads us to think that there was not design. The dog, the evidence, is wagging the tail, the no-design conclusion. But if that is the case, then someone ought to be free to explore the possibility that this conclusion is not true, and still be doing science. You might be doing bad science, or mistaken science, but you should be able to be mistaken and still do science.

Consider the statement “The DNA evidence reveals that O. J. Simpson killed Nicole and Ron.” The statement clearly implies that the evidence could have implicated O. J. or exonerated him, but it implicated him. If any conclusion but “O. J is guilty” would have been thrown out on methodological grounds, then we would have to question the methodology. It is presupposing the answer, not deciding the question for us.

Now let’s look at another statement. According to Judge Jones, ID isn’t science because it “violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation”. Well, if in order to follow the grounds rules of science we have to rule out design, then the evidence of evolution didn’t reveal a world without design, it presupposed it in order for its work to count as science. The investigation could not have gone either way, it could only go one way.

Or take Richard Lewontin’s statement:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. "

On this view the tail, materialism, wags the dog, the evidence, and not vice versa. The evidence of evolution didn’t tell us there’s no divine foot in the door, our a priori adherence to material causes does that. 

The human nervous system as evidence of intelligent design

Here. 

What difference does God make

From Peter van Inwagen. 

Jim Slagle's defense of the AFR

Now out here. 

Why Scientism's Progress Narrative Fails

Here. 

Deep down inside, atheists really believe in God

See here.  But in my experience claims like this, on both sides are a whole lot easier to make than to show to be true.

Eleonore Stump on Divine Simplicity

Here. 

William Lane Craig on the size of the universe argument

Here. 

Materialism and Hyper-Freudianism

I think there may be some limits on what questions can reasonably be considered to be empirical questions. Let’s take the Freudian view of religious belief as an example. According to Freudians, (and many other atheists as well) even those who think they believe in religious beliefs for reasons are really believing them for emotional reasons, and the “arguments” they provide are merely rationalizations. But why stop with religious beliefs? Isn’t it possible that we don’t believe any of our beliefs for reasons, but rather, we believe them for other reasons. If we looked at how we actually form beliefs, couldn’t we discover that, in fact, we never believe anything for the reasons we think we do? Is the statement “No one ever believes anything for a reason” at least possible? I like to refer to this position as hyper-Freudianism.

Unfortunately, such a position involves what Lynne Rudder Baker calls cognitive suicide. If a hyper-Freudian is asked why she believes in hyper-Freudianism, and she offers evidence for her belief, then by offering such evidence she falsifies hyper-Freudianism.

Now, I actually think that if categories are not fudged, and the material is defined, as it often is, in terms of the absence of the mental, then materialist theories of mind actually entail hyper-
Freudianism. It results in a proof that there are no proofs, which has to be nonsense.

Freudia

It follows that no account of the universe can be true I unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, [22] and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound–a proof that there are no such things as proofs–which is nonsense.-C. S. Lewis: Miracles, chapter 3. 

The Fallacy of Tendentious Terminology

Magic is "The pretended art of influencing events, and of producing marvelous physical phenomena, by processes supposed to owe their efficacy to their power of intervention of spiritual beings..."

Except, if God performs a miracle, he's not pretending to perform it, he is performing it. So God, by definition, cannot engage in magic. If he exists. If he doesn't exist, then he can't do magic or anything else. But the use of the term "magic" here begs the question, as do most uses of the Argument from Tendentious Terminology." Or should I call it the Fallacy of Tendentious Terminology.

Rauser on Spiegel on atheism

There is an aspect of this that I am not sure comes through the discussion. As a Christian, I care about whether atheists conduct their critiques in the way that Richard Dawkins does, or the way that Jeff Lowder does. I think the methods of New Atheism are culturally harmful in a way that the methods of other atheists are not. But if I want to criticize New Atheist methods, then I have to also be critical of similar methods coming from within the Christian fold. So I applaud Rauser's response.

The response, from both extremes, is to say that I am concerned about being nice. It's not about niceness. It's about maintaining productivity in discussion even when what we believe matters to us a lot. 

Here. 

William Hasker reviews an anti-afterlife book

Here.  Critics respond here. 

McGrew on Undesigned Coincidences

Here. 

Historical Doubts Relative to Napoleon

After all, all we have about Napoleon is just stories.

New book on the Inklings

Reviewed here.

The true meaning of Christmas

Luke 2: 1-20, New International Version

2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while[a] Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Josh McDowell and a certain atheist meme

Here is a version of that meme, from Dawkins:


Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists.

It seems to me that the existence of a book like Evidence that Demands a Verdict refutes this version of the meme. Christians do claim that they have evidence, the don't typically shout from the rooftops that they don't have any and it shouldn't matter. That doesn't mean that they might not have misunderstood the idea of evidence, or that there isn't a lot of popular fideism out there. Discussions here between Dawkins defenders and others have often involved the claim that Christians think they have evidence when they really don't, that to have evidence you have to have thus and so, and McDowell and those like him don't have that. But Dawkins isn't even saying that. This is either ignorance on a massive scale of what Christians have been saying, or intellectual dishonesty.  Or since it's coming from and Oxford professor, both.

Here is Lewis on Doubting Thomas:

The saying "Blessed are those that have not seen and have believed" has nothing to do with our original assent to the Christian propositions.  It was not addressed to a philosopher enquiring whether God exists.  It was addressed to a man who already believed that, who already had long acquaintance with a particular Person, and evidence that that Person could do very odd things, and who then refused to believe one odd thing more, often predicted by that Person and vouched for by all his closest friends.  It is a rebuke not to skepticism in the philosophic sense but to the psychological quality of being "suspicious."  It says in effect, "You should have known me better."  There are cases between man and man where we should all, in our different way, bless those who have not seen and have believed.  Our relationship to those who trusted us only after we were proved innocent in court cannot be the same as our relation to those who trusted us all through."

Great moments in censorship

A school in Eastern Kentucky is forced to leave the Christmas Bible verses out of A Charlie Brown Christmas. 

So, do we have another thing to celebrate during Banned Books Week?

Naive evidentialism and transcendental argumetation

If it turns out that we can't avoid realism about the external world because the alternative is self-undermining, does that mean that the evidence supports realism, or does it mean something else? It seems to me that the case for realism is transcendenal rather than evidential.

Are there certain things we have to presuppose before evidence even becomes an issue? If so, there are positive claims that don't require evidence, and naive evidentialism is false.

What if white supremacy had been true?

Suppose, for example, whites were really superior to blacks. Would there be any moral advantage in suppressing that belief in the interests of equality? Now, in fact, blacks are not inferior, but if they were inferior, should be, on the supposed basis of avoiding racism, deceive ourselves into believing that this was not the case?

Is there good evidence for the resurrection?

I have yet to see a good theory that explains the historical events without running into serious problems when you look at it closely.

Here. 

It is interesting that atheists say Christians are not interested in evidence when one of the most popular Christian books of the last 50 years is Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

Positive claims require evidence

'Positive claims demand evidence'.

OK, here's a positive claim for you. "My sense experience gives me veridical knowledge of a physical world independent of my mind."

What is the evidence for this one?

Rape and abortion

People assume that impregnated rape victims will be the ones first in line at the abortion clinic. But is that armchair psychology?

HT" Michael Pieters.

Here. 

Secret Agent Man

I didn't realize that this song was about C. S. Lewis. See here. 

There is evidence on both sides of the God question

A lot depends on what exactly one means by evidence. My own view of evidence, in the context of the discussion of God, is something that is more likely to be there if God exists than if God does not exist. Evidence against God would be something that is more likely to exist if there is no God than if there is a God. With that understanding, I think the fine-tuning of the universe is a clear case of something that is more likely to exist if there is a God than if there is no God, so it's evidence for God. The degree and kind of pain and suffering that exists in the world does seem to be something that is more likely without God than with God, so that's evidence against God. 

Whether the positive evidence outweighs the negative evidence, to me, is the interesting issue. The no-evidence claim looks like a non-starter. 

C. S. Lewis's We Have No Right to Happiness

Very relevant to present-day issues on matters of sexual ethics. A lot of argumentation on the same-sex marriage issue seem to rest on a "right to happiness" premise that Lewis objects to here.

Is gay marriage destroying normal marriage?

I wonder if many of the people who supported same sex marriage just think that marriage for them is going to be like opposite sex marriage, they just expand the class of persons you can marry. They still think it has to be one person and you have to be faithful, it is just that you can now marry someone of the same sex. Some might think a broader re-evaluation of marriage is not warranted. 

Greta Christina, however, thinks that same-sex marriage is part of wider re-evaluation of marriage. 

When does a fetus become human?

When does a fetus become human? 

From conception, obviously. It is a homo sapiens fetus, not a canis familiaris fetus or a felix domesticus fetus. The question is whether species membership is sufficient for an overriding right to life. 

Apparently it's not just pro-lifers who think there is no difference between aborting fetuses and killing infants

Here. 

Religious reasons and legislation: Does legislation have to pass the materialist test?

When we talk about "religious" positions, do we mean positions which are based on something we think God has revealed, or do we mean something that is based on what is called natural law, which isn't based on particular Bible verses, but is nonetheless built on a concept of human nature whereby there is a purpose for human nature, and we can satisfy it of fail to satisfy it based on what we do? Someone like Paul Ryan, for example, bases his opposition to things like abortion and gay marriage on the latter, not the former. 

Positions like his tend to be adopted by people of religious persuasions, but if you were to ask him why he believes what he does, his argument will NOT typically say "The Bible says" or "It is the teaching of the Catholic Church.  But I strongly suspect his reasoning would not be accepted by, say, a materialistic atheist. 

When we say we don't want religious views imposed on us through legislation, does that mean that the case of our laws has to pass the "materialistic atheist test." that is, the arguments for it have to be acceptable from the standpoint of materialism is they are to be legislated? 

Judge not?

“Judge not, lest you be judged”- Matt 7:1-2

This verse is the favorite Bible verse of non-Christians, to fend of criticism for violating Christian standards of conduct.

When we talk about judging, we are talking about the claim that a person deserve something bad for doing something bad. Unless we are charged with the job of assigning criminal punishment, then we have to recognize that we lack knowledge of people's circumstances to know what someone deserves. On the other hand, I don't think that anti-judging mandate makes it impossible for us to say that certain types of actions are morally wrong. We could use the same reasoning for theft, or murder, or adultery, for example, and argue that we can't judge people who do those things.

See here. 

A woman has the right to do as she pleases with her body, but how far do we push it?

Suppose a whole village of about 1000 tiny people were living in a woman's left arm. Suppose the presence of the village in her arm makes her arm itch and is a mild nuisance. But since it's her body, does she have the right to holocaust the village?