A redated post.
I wrote a comment on Debunking Christianity that I would like to share here.
Victor wrote: If this is a reason to reject the maxim of my undergraduate philosophy teacher (an atheist) "You ought to believe what you already believe, unless you have evidence that what you believe is not true," then I wouldn't endorse that kind of skepticism.
Scott replied: The problem with applying this maxim to a particular religious belief is the means in which you've acquired that belief and the inability to provide clear evidence that your belief is not true. It's as if you've thrown up your hands and claimed you're stuck with your belief since there is no other method in which you could attempt to identify whether it is factual or not.
VR: No. I have considered evidence for and against theism, and for and against Christianity. I just don't know if real neutrality is possible or even desirable. That's my only beef.
I think naturalism is self-refuting because it is inconsistent with the fact that human beings perceive logical relationship and act on that basis. If they were purely physical systems in a purely physical world, this would not be possible. We could not literally do mathematics, which is the very foundations of the science on which naturalism rests its case. If naturalism is true, then there are no scientists, and there is no scientific method, and we're all epistemically screwed.
In fact it's a little amazing to me that someone could accept the outsider test for faith and not accept the argument from reason against naturalism. The OTF says that if our religious views have sociological causes, they aren't rational, which suggests to me that atheists must have purely rational causes for their beliefs. But if naturalism is true, then everyone has natural, physical causes for all beliefs, and this got to be ten times more damaging than sociological causes. If naturalism is true, then there is no real mental causation, just physical causation that mimics mental effects.
I think that Christian theism has some problems in the area of the problem of evil, but these are not worse problems than naturalists have in explaining consciousness, for example. Atheists argue that if theism is true, then there would be no suffering, but if naturalistic atheism is true, there can only be pain behavior, not real pain, because pain is a subjective qualia that has no place in the naturalistic world of objective physical states. Hence, if naturalistic atheism is true, then there should be no suffering either.
I am amazed at how monotheism could have taken hold of the mind of the people of Israel, after a long struggle with paganism, and that the little nation of Judah could have escaped dispersion from the Assyrians, which would have destroyed that nation's identity permanently. To the ancient mind, it was a lot easier to be a polytheist than to be a monotheist. How could this have been reversed in an tiny and otherwise nondescript country like Israel, when it did not happen anywhere else? Not in Greece, not in Egypt, not in Babylonia, and not in Rome.
I have yet to see an account of the beginnings of Christianity that is any better than the one that Christians offer. If there were not miracles, then how do you get a bunch of people firmly convinced that Jesus rose from the dead and getting in the faces of the Jewish and Roman establishment to spread that belief? What happened to these people? How could Jews start accepting an incarnate deity? How could they change the Sabbath, and not try to apply the Jewish Law to Gentile converts? Mass hallucinations, and then their biggest persecutor, Saul of Tarsus gets one? Just a coincidence?
How do you explain the intimate, detailed familiarity that Luke shows with the Mediterranean world if he was never a companion of Paul and didn't see what he wrote about? I don't even know how many people are on the city council of the nearby cities of Avondale or Glendale here in the Phoenix area. But Luke provides this kind of detail, and the archaeology backs him up time after time.
No other religion has the kind of archaeological support that Christianity does. Have they found that battleground in Palmyra, New York, where the book of Mormon says a huge battle took place? Thought not. Is there a good DNA match between Jews and American Indians? You mean they look more like Orientals? Who witnessed Muhammad reciting and transmitting the Qu'ran?
I even think that there are present-day miracles that provide evidence for God. We had some discussion of that on Dangerous Idea as well.
Now if you say "Anything but the Supernatural" this may all seem irrational to you. But maybe some naturalists need to take the Outsider Test and see how things look from the perspective that miracles are possible. I could argue that you have been brainwashed by the scientific establishment to rules these possiblities out. But I won't. The world just makes more sense from the perspective of Christian theism than it does from any other perspective.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Monday, December 17, 2012
Friday, November 02, 2012
Sunday, March 06, 2011
This is a review of Wright's "hate-filled hypocrites" book
This passage in the review is especially interesting from the point of view of some of the things we have heard of late.
Fourth, there is a modest apologetic aspect to Wright's book. Wright does not try to persuade people to convert to Christianity. He does not gloss over the many shortcomings he finds in the way Christians think and act. But he does not hesitate to debunk the myths—David Bentley Hart would say delusions— proffered by critics of Christianity. Is it true that "everyone knows" Christianity is dying? Are Christian claims widely discredited? On the contrary, Wright's findings suggest Christians in the United States need not panic or overhaul everything they are doing. He cheekily includes this summary judgment in the conclusion. "You know, I'm kind of enjoying this oversimplification, so let's take it a step further. That's right, after about a year of reading the scholarly literature and analyzing scores of data sets, I am distilling my evaluation of Evangelical Christianity to a single grade. I give American Evangelical Christianity a B." The reports of Christianity's demise continue to be regularly exaggerated, as Books & Culture readers will be well aware (cf. John G. Stackhouse, Jr.: What Scandal? Whose Conscience? July/August 2007. Jon A. Shields: A Scandal of the Secular Conscience? January/February 2008. Andy Crouch: Transmission Routes: World Christianity and American churches. January/February 2010). What stands in the way of fruitful Christian life? Not massive problems that defy all efforts by Christians, but rather unsurprising obstacles (like institutional bureaucracy and people's penchant for sin), perennial problems that individual Christians and churches empowered by the Holy Spirit continue to faithfully address.
Fourth, there is a modest apologetic aspect to Wright's book. Wright does not try to persuade people to convert to Christianity. He does not gloss over the many shortcomings he finds in the way Christians think and act. But he does not hesitate to debunk the myths—David Bentley Hart would say delusions— proffered by critics of Christianity. Is it true that "everyone knows" Christianity is dying? Are Christian claims widely discredited? On the contrary, Wright's findings suggest Christians in the United States need not panic or overhaul everything they are doing. He cheekily includes this summary judgment in the conclusion. "You know, I'm kind of enjoying this oversimplification, so let's take it a step further. That's right, after about a year of reading the scholarly literature and analyzing scores of data sets, I am distilling my evaluation of Evangelical Christianity to a single grade. I give American Evangelical Christianity a B." The reports of Christianity's demise continue to be regularly exaggerated, as Books & Culture readers will be well aware (cf. John G. Stackhouse, Jr.: What Scandal? Whose Conscience? July/August 2007. Jon A. Shields: A Scandal of the Secular Conscience? January/February 2008. Andy Crouch: Transmission Routes: World Christianity and American churches. January/February 2010). What stands in the way of fruitful Christian life? Not massive problems that defy all efforts by Christians, but rather unsurprising obstacles (like institutional bureaucracy and people's penchant for sin), perennial problems that individual Christians and churches empowered by the Holy Spirit continue to faithfully address.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Christians are gaining in numbers, not atheists
I am redating this post.
According to this report from Inside Catholic.
HT: Bob Prokop
According to this report from Inside Catholic.
HT: Bob Prokop
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Some Confusions from Loftus on Methodological Naturalism
I was away from the computer yesterday, so I didn't see John's comment.
And you are being extremely disingenuous Vic, to the point of lying (yes, lying. You are at least lying to yourself).
Look at Walter Martin's book on the cults. Listen, I am not stupid. You are. Martin and all others assume there is a natural explanation for every other religion but their own.
I have never seen such utter stupidity before.
I am not subscribing. Anyone with a brain can read Martin's books or Geisler's or McDowell's.
Listen, if you wish to engage me take a basic primer in apologetics.
Sheesh. Is this the level or ignorance it takes to believe?
I think so, and that's why I want nothing to do with it. I am a thinking person. Critique this all you want but with such a buffoonish post as this it is MORE obvious than the nose on your face.
I am going to ignore Mr. Loftus' unfortunate tone here, and proceed to the logical point I think he has missed. Martin, Geisler, and McDowell, I take it, believe that the founding of other religions can be explained naturalistically. Of course, it is critical only in Western revealed religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc. to have supernaturally explained founding events. Christians believe that God was active in the founding of both Judaism and Christianity, but they do not think God participated in the founding of the Islam, or the founding of Mormonism. It is certainly open to Christians to accept a supernatural explanation for the founding of these religions, namely a demonic explanation, but Martin and others don't ordinarily go that way, and I am inclined to suppose that they are right to do so. I heard a Christian caller to Hank Hanegraaf's show say that Moroni was an angel, but he was a fallen angel. Richard Abanes, a Mormonism expert, said that he didn't think that this was the case.
The obvious point, which seems to have escaped Mr. Loftus, is that explaining something naturalistically is not sufficient to make one a methodological naturalist. Here is the definition of methodological naturalism, provided by Paul Kurtz here.
First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible....
In other words, before investigating some phenomenon, a methodological naturalist decides that whatever explanations are to be given it cannot be a supernatural explanation. Someone who adopts methodological naturalism assumes from the outset that no supernatural explanation can or will be given. What that means is that if an event in fact has a supernatural explanation, the investigator, who has committed himself to MN, will miss that explanation.
Now, people who believe in miracles explain many, indeed most things non-miraculously. When Catholics canonize saints, they have to verify the miracles. They can conclude that the prospective saint didn't produce any miracles, in which case he (or she) is not canonized. That doesn't mean they are methodological naturalists, that means they didn't find enough evidence to support this particular prospective saint's miracle claims.
Now, look at the structure of the arguments in the comparison between the founding of Islam and the founding of Christianity, which I linked to in the previous post. I'm not even vouching for the argumentation in defense of Christianity here, I am just making the case that that site compared the manuscript evidence, the documentary evidence, and the archaeological evidence for the Bible as opposed to the Qu'ran. No doubt the author of this site thinks that the founding of Islam is in fact to be explained naturalistically, but there is nothing on the site that I can see that says it must be explained naturalistically. The central characteristic of methodological naturalism is a necessity that the subject matter be explained naturalistically, and that any supernatural explanations, even if true, be overlooked. In fact, by presenting this kind of evidence, the author of the website is implying that if the evidential situation were reversed, them we ought to seriously consider the Qu'ran, and not the Bible, is divine rather than human in origin.
Martin, Geisler, and McDowell do not assume that there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam. I contend that they argue that, in this case, there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam.
So Mr. Loftus is making a leap from
1) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell in fact explain the origins of Islam naturalistically,
to
2) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell are employing methodological naturalism in their explanation of the founding of Islam.
And this, I submit, does not follow. Only be conflating the acceptance of a naturalistic explanation in a particular case with the acceptance of methodological naturalism can Mr. Loftus make his case that my last post was stupid. Once the distinction between these is clarified, his criticism falls flat.
And you are being extremely disingenuous Vic, to the point of lying (yes, lying. You are at least lying to yourself).
Look at Walter Martin's book on the cults. Listen, I am not stupid. You are. Martin and all others assume there is a natural explanation for every other religion but their own.
I have never seen such utter stupidity before.
I am not subscribing. Anyone with a brain can read Martin's books or Geisler's or McDowell's.
Listen, if you wish to engage me take a basic primer in apologetics.
Sheesh. Is this the level or ignorance it takes to believe?
I think so, and that's why I want nothing to do with it. I am a thinking person. Critique this all you want but with such a buffoonish post as this it is MORE obvious than the nose on your face.
I am going to ignore Mr. Loftus' unfortunate tone here, and proceed to the logical point I think he has missed. Martin, Geisler, and McDowell, I take it, believe that the founding of other religions can be explained naturalistically. Of course, it is critical only in Western revealed religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc. to have supernaturally explained founding events. Christians believe that God was active in the founding of both Judaism and Christianity, but they do not think God participated in the founding of the Islam, or the founding of Mormonism. It is certainly open to Christians to accept a supernatural explanation for the founding of these religions, namely a demonic explanation, but Martin and others don't ordinarily go that way, and I am inclined to suppose that they are right to do so. I heard a Christian caller to Hank Hanegraaf's show say that Moroni was an angel, but he was a fallen angel. Richard Abanes, a Mormonism expert, said that he didn't think that this was the case.
The obvious point, which seems to have escaped Mr. Loftus, is that explaining something naturalistically is not sufficient to make one a methodological naturalist. Here is the definition of methodological naturalism, provided by Paul Kurtz here.
First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible....
In other words, before investigating some phenomenon, a methodological naturalist decides that whatever explanations are to be given it cannot be a supernatural explanation. Someone who adopts methodological naturalism assumes from the outset that no supernatural explanation can or will be given. What that means is that if an event in fact has a supernatural explanation, the investigator, who has committed himself to MN, will miss that explanation.
Now, people who believe in miracles explain many, indeed most things non-miraculously. When Catholics canonize saints, they have to verify the miracles. They can conclude that the prospective saint didn't produce any miracles, in which case he (or she) is not canonized. That doesn't mean they are methodological naturalists, that means they didn't find enough evidence to support this particular prospective saint's miracle claims.
Now, look at the structure of the arguments in the comparison between the founding of Islam and the founding of Christianity, which I linked to in the previous post. I'm not even vouching for the argumentation in defense of Christianity here, I am just making the case that that site compared the manuscript evidence, the documentary evidence, and the archaeological evidence for the Bible as opposed to the Qu'ran. No doubt the author of this site thinks that the founding of Islam is in fact to be explained naturalistically, but there is nothing on the site that I can see that says it must be explained naturalistically. The central characteristic of methodological naturalism is a necessity that the subject matter be explained naturalistically, and that any supernatural explanations, even if true, be overlooked. In fact, by presenting this kind of evidence, the author of the website is implying that if the evidential situation were reversed, them we ought to seriously consider the Qu'ran, and not the Bible, is divine rather than human in origin.
Martin, Geisler, and McDowell do not assume that there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam. I contend that they argue that, in this case, there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam.
So Mr. Loftus is making a leap from
1) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell in fact explain the origins of Islam naturalistically,
to
2) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell are employing methodological naturalism in their explanation of the founding of Islam.
And this, I submit, does not follow. Only be conflating the acceptance of a naturalistic explanation in a particular case with the acceptance of methodological naturalism can Mr. Loftus make his case that my last post was stupid. Once the distinction between these is clarified, his criticism falls flat.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The upside and the downside of Christianity
Yes, I don't like the idea of hell one bit, and I hope universalism is true.
The doctrine that any aspect of my character which I have not submitted to Christ is sinful is no fun. The fact that God isn't going to listen to all my self-justifications is no fun. There are many other things I would prefer to do on Sunday morning than attend church. All that stuff about giving to the church, yeah, I'd wish that away, too. The idea that there is someone superior to me judging my actions and not grading on the curve is something I would wish away, even if forgiveness is available. I'd like to say that my good deeds are my achievement, but, no, can't say that either. I like thinking that having a higher level of education makes me somehow better than other people, but nope, can't say that, either.
The idea that pride is a sin, or as Lewis has it, The Great Sin, is pretty tough doctrine for me. If I were an atheist I could think that my freedom from the superstitions of most of my fellow Americans makes me better than them, but since I'm a Christian, I can't say that.
The hope of an everlasting life with God is, of course appealing to me. God's love for everyone (which some Calvinists deny) is appealing as well.
So, it's a mixed bag, which is all that I have been saying all along.
The doctrine that any aspect of my character which I have not submitted to Christ is sinful is no fun. The fact that God isn't going to listen to all my self-justifications is no fun. There are many other things I would prefer to do on Sunday morning than attend church. All that stuff about giving to the church, yeah, I'd wish that away, too. The idea that there is someone superior to me judging my actions and not grading on the curve is something I would wish away, even if forgiveness is available. I'd like to say that my good deeds are my achievement, but, no, can't say that either. I like thinking that having a higher level of education makes me somehow better than other people, but nope, can't say that, either.
The idea that pride is a sin, or as Lewis has it, The Great Sin, is pretty tough doctrine for me. If I were an atheist I could think that my freedom from the superstitions of most of my fellow Americans makes me better than them, but since I'm a Christian, I can't say that.
The hope of an everlasting life with God is, of course appealing to me. God's love for everyone (which some Calvinists deny) is appealing as well.
So, it's a mixed bag, which is all that I have been saying all along.
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
More on comparing the evidence for Christianity to other religions
For starters, there seems to be a lot of archaeological confirmation of, especially, some of the details in the book of Acts. Whoever wrote it knew precisely what forms of government were in place when Paul was supposed to have gotten to those cities. So that really places the author of the text close to the time and place of the events, because actually, those forms of government changed from time to time.
The reported events took place in public and involved leading figures of the time like Pontius Pilate. The Book of Mormon is about things that happened centuries before in the Americas, and archaeology is an embarrassment to Mormonism, but mostly helpful to Christianity. http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/11/teresa-nielsen-haydens-critique-of.html
You have several people writing the accounts of the whole thing, as opposed to just one persons statements. You have evidence of people engaging in extremely risky behavior to support these beliefs.
The events are more public, there is considerable more archaeological support, and you also find people taking martyrdom risks almost from the beginning and making fundamental changes to a time-honored religion based on what happened to Jesus.
And you find a lot of failed attempts to explain it all away. I mean, what's up with all these swoon theories, and theft theories, and wrong tomb theories, etc. You don't find that in Islam.
So even if you reject Christianity, I think it puts up more difficulties for the skeptic than does the founding of Islam or the founding of Mormonism. These are just a few things off the top of my head, but I think they suffice for my purpose.
The reported events took place in public and involved leading figures of the time like Pontius Pilate. The Book of Mormon is about things that happened centuries before in the Americas, and archaeology is an embarrassment to Mormonism, but mostly helpful to Christianity. http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/11/teresa-nielsen-haydens-critique-of.html
You have several people writing the accounts of the whole thing, as opposed to just one persons statements. You have evidence of people engaging in extremely risky behavior to support these beliefs.
The events are more public, there is considerable more archaeological support, and you also find people taking martyrdom risks almost from the beginning and making fundamental changes to a time-honored religion based on what happened to Jesus.
And you find a lot of failed attempts to explain it all away. I mean, what's up with all these swoon theories, and theft theories, and wrong tomb theories, etc. You don't find that in Islam.
So even if you reject Christianity, I think it puts up more difficulties for the skeptic than does the founding of Islam or the founding of Mormonism. These are just a few things off the top of my head, but I think they suffice for my purpose.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Why are all the naturalistic explanations of the founding of Christianity such nonstarters?
I'm not going to make confident assertions about what would change my mind. There are too many factors. But I can tell you something that would, in my eyes, decrease the probability that Christianity is true.
One thing that would hurt the probability of Christianity for me would be if skeptics could come up with a halfway convincing story about how Christianity arose. Swoon theory? Come on. Jesus stripped on 100 pounds of grave clothes, pushed that gigantic stone out of the way, and put a flying tackle on the Roman guard, after being left for dead because of a crucifixion? Hallucination theory? Lots of problems. The disciples stole the body? Why? So they could get martyred for something they knew was false. Legendary development? Why does Luke know so much about all the city governments in the Mediterranean world? Jesus never even existed? How come nobody has come up with the theory that Socrates never existed? Jesus' evil twin took over after he was crucified? Getting desperate aren't we?
Of course, I know all about the Humean argument that anything's better than accepting a resurrection. Yes, rationally, one could be a skeptic about the supernatural origin of Christianity while admitting that there isn't much out there in the way of naturalistic explanations of the founding of Christianity. But why do all those theories have such ghastly problems?
One thing that would hurt the probability of Christianity for me would be if skeptics could come up with a halfway convincing story about how Christianity arose. Swoon theory? Come on. Jesus stripped on 100 pounds of grave clothes, pushed that gigantic stone out of the way, and put a flying tackle on the Roman guard, after being left for dead because of a crucifixion? Hallucination theory? Lots of problems. The disciples stole the body? Why? So they could get martyred for something they knew was false. Legendary development? Why does Luke know so much about all the city governments in the Mediterranean world? Jesus never even existed? How come nobody has come up with the theory that Socrates never existed? Jesus' evil twin took over after he was crucified? Getting desperate aren't we?
Of course, I know all about the Humean argument that anything's better than accepting a resurrection. Yes, rationally, one could be a skeptic about the supernatural origin of Christianity while admitting that there isn't much out there in the way of naturalistic explanations of the founding of Christianity. But why do all those theories have such ghastly problems?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Reply to Loftus on faith and evidence
John Loftus wrote: What would proof look like to an outsider?
I have already said what would convince me Christianity is true.
Now YOU be reasonable. What would proof look like for you to reject your adopted faith due to the accidents of birth? I was reasonable in that link. Be reasonable with us.
I don't think accident of birth carries a whole lot of weight here. I'm a Bayesian subjectivist: we come into our thinking lives with a set of antecedent probabilities, and we adjust them as the evidence allows.
It is an accident of birth that I grew up in a Methodist family, but it is equally an accident of history (unless God was in on it), that I encountered good, strong, defenders of Christianity who took the relation of faith and intellect seriously, who took my questions with the utmost seriousness, and showed a kind of intellectual integrity that I thought was often lacking in the sort of glib unbelief I encountered in the academic community.
If my reading of Bertrand Russell had not convinced me of the value of free thought (though maybe not quite as he defined it), how would my thoughts be different today? If Russell had made more of an effort to understand the Christian beliefs he attacked, how would my beliefs be different today? If Craig Bustrin from my home church in Phoenix had not introduced me to the writings of C. S. Lewis, how would my beliefs be different today? If Bob Prokop (an occasional commentator here) and the late Joe Sheffer had not talked me through my period of disaffection as an undergraduate with Campus-Crusade style literalism while remaining a profoundly orthodox Christian, how would my beliefs be different today? If Keith Parsons had not moved in to the same house with me when I was in seminary and challenged me from a skeptical standpoint, how would by beliefs be different today? I don't know, and neither do you.
Your own experience with Christianity and with Christian thinkers was different from mine, but it is just as laden with historical accident as mine was.
I am trying to counter a simplistic picture in which believers all believe "on faith" (even if they have apologetic pretensions) and unbelievers, quite rationally, are waiting for PROOF which is not forthcoming. I would like to substitute a different picture for this one, one in which we enter with intellectual predispositions which we cannot fully avoid, but which we can and must modify in response to the evidence. It's called critical rationalism, and it is to be contrasted with fideism and strong rationalism.
In the original post I was responding to people who make heavy weather out of the fact that religious believers don't have PROOF for their position, by asking what proof would look like if we had it.
At the same time, changes in belief are cumulative, and big paradigm shifts need big evidential shifts in a various areas of thought. That is just how life is when we think. If you read the life of serious converts and de-converts, you don't find ONE BIG THING that PROVES Christianity, or atheism, or what have you. It's always a lot of things.
Chesterton wrote:
But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.
I have already said what would convince me Christianity is true.
Now YOU be reasonable. What would proof look like for you to reject your adopted faith due to the accidents of birth? I was reasonable in that link. Be reasonable with us.
I don't think accident of birth carries a whole lot of weight here. I'm a Bayesian subjectivist: we come into our thinking lives with a set of antecedent probabilities, and we adjust them as the evidence allows.
It is an accident of birth that I grew up in a Methodist family, but it is equally an accident of history (unless God was in on it), that I encountered good, strong, defenders of Christianity who took the relation of faith and intellect seriously, who took my questions with the utmost seriousness, and showed a kind of intellectual integrity that I thought was often lacking in the sort of glib unbelief I encountered in the academic community.
If my reading of Bertrand Russell had not convinced me of the value of free thought (though maybe not quite as he defined it), how would my thoughts be different today? If Russell had made more of an effort to understand the Christian beliefs he attacked, how would my beliefs be different today? If Craig Bustrin from my home church in Phoenix had not introduced me to the writings of C. S. Lewis, how would my beliefs be different today? If Bob Prokop (an occasional commentator here) and the late Joe Sheffer had not talked me through my period of disaffection as an undergraduate with Campus-Crusade style literalism while remaining a profoundly orthodox Christian, how would my beliefs be different today? If Keith Parsons had not moved in to the same house with me when I was in seminary and challenged me from a skeptical standpoint, how would by beliefs be different today? I don't know, and neither do you.
Your own experience with Christianity and with Christian thinkers was different from mine, but it is just as laden with historical accident as mine was.
I am trying to counter a simplistic picture in which believers all believe "on faith" (even if they have apologetic pretensions) and unbelievers, quite rationally, are waiting for PROOF which is not forthcoming. I would like to substitute a different picture for this one, one in which we enter with intellectual predispositions which we cannot fully avoid, but which we can and must modify in response to the evidence. It's called critical rationalism, and it is to be contrasted with fideism and strong rationalism.
In the original post I was responding to people who make heavy weather out of the fact that religious believers don't have PROOF for their position, by asking what proof would look like if we had it.
At the same time, changes in belief are cumulative, and big paradigm shifts need big evidential shifts in a various areas of thought. That is just how life is when we think. If you read the life of serious converts and de-converts, you don't find ONE BIG THING that PROVES Christianity, or atheism, or what have you. It's always a lot of things.
Chesterton wrote:
But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Who is a real Christian? A Scriptural answer
Biblically, the term is used by hostile outsiders. So in the Bible, you qualify as a Christian if you get people who hate Christianity to call you one, as this Wikipedia entry indicates.
Monday, October 05, 2009
From Defeating Defeaters: Those Darned Intuitions
According to William Lane Craig, one thing that makes Christianity plausible is that it fits with those worthless moral intuitions we've got.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Why Christianity and Islam cannot both be true
A redated post.
If two statements contradict one another, one must be true and the other false. That is the most fundamental law of logic. Thus the claims:
1) "God' final revelation to man is in the Qu'ran, where it is taught that Jesus never died by crucifixion."
conflicts with
2) "Christ's death on the cross atones for our sins."
1 logically entails
1A) Jesus did not die by crucifixion.
While 2 logically entials
2A) Jesus died by crucifixion.
Thus the central claims of Islam and the central claims of Christianity cannot both be true. The issue, by the way, is a factual issue. It does not even involve the supernatural.
If two statements contradict one another, one must be true and the other false. That is the most fundamental law of logic. Thus the claims:
1) "God' final revelation to man is in the Qu'ran, where it is taught that Jesus never died by crucifixion."
conflicts with
2) "Christ's death on the cross atones for our sins."
1 logically entails
1A) Jesus did not die by crucifixion.
While 2 logically entials
2A) Jesus died by crucifixion.
Thus the central claims of Islam and the central claims of Christianity cannot both be true. The issue, by the way, is a factual issue. It does not even involve the supernatural.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Christian, Islamic, and atheist perspectives on Jesus
Islam maintains that Jesus was a prophet, and a true and great prophet. However, his later followers distorted his message and said that he died and rose again from the dead as an atonement for sin, and that he was the Second Person of the Triune Godhead. According to Islam, God would never permit one of his True Prophets to die a criminal's death, and so they consider the Christian doctrine of crucifixion to be a sacrilege against Jesus.
Atheists, of course, think that Jesus had no supernatural powers (since for them nothing supernatural even exists), but many of them do think that Jesus lived and died on the cross. Of course they deny a resurrection, since that would have to be supernatural. My ex-housemate Keith Parsons, who is an atheist philosopher at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, thinks that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, and that the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus and founded Christianity. Other atheists sometimes assert the Jesus Myth thesis, that Jesus never even existed and was made up by the early Christians. I think this is still a minority position even amongst atheists.
But Christians, Muslims, and atheists can all agree on this: that either Jesus died by crucifixion or he did not die by crucifixion. Whatever position you take on that matter, you can be either right or wrong. You can't be both or neither.
Atheists, of course, think that Jesus had no supernatural powers (since for them nothing supernatural even exists), but many of them do think that Jesus lived and died on the cross. Of course they deny a resurrection, since that would have to be supernatural. My ex-housemate Keith Parsons, who is an atheist philosopher at the University of Houston at Clear Lake, thinks that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, and that the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus and founded Christianity. Other atheists sometimes assert the Jesus Myth thesis, that Jesus never even existed and was made up by the early Christians. I think this is still a minority position even amongst atheists.
But Christians, Muslims, and atheists can all agree on this: that either Jesus died by crucifixion or he did not die by crucifixion. Whatever position you take on that matter, you can be either right or wrong. You can't be both or neither.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Reply to Scott on Christianity
Scott: The essence of my comment was as follows. The ability to construct a "logically possible" theology around a belief in the supernatural shouldn't be a sufficient reason to claim "you're stuck" with a specific definition of God's nature. IE. what you already believe. Since the supernatural is defined as that which you consider not nature, it is unclear as to what you would consider evidence that it is not true. Sure, things that we once thought were supernatural, such as opening a woman's womb, can cross over when they become transparent, but given the abundance of phenomenon that are still opaque and God's supposed omni-properties, it seems there could always be something you can point as "supernatural."
Well, we could, for example, find the unresurrected body of Jesus. That would cause massive revisions in my conception of who God is, and leave it up for grabs as to where I would go next.
VR (previously): We could not literally do mathematics, which is the very foundations of the science on which naturalism rests its case. If naturalism is true, then there are no scientists, and there is no scientific method, and we're all epistemically screwed.Naturalism doesn't imply that we cannot think of abstract things. Nor does naturalism claim that abstract things, such as circles and squares, have a causal effect on their own, such as creating universes or designing human beings.
The definition of 'naturalism' isn't necessarily limited to physical things with mass. Quantum teleportation allows the polarity of an photon to be transmitted instantaneously without any known method of transmission. There doesn't appear to be any "matter" involved, yet we can repeat it time and time again in a laboratory. it's science, not the supernatural.
In my detailed development of this line of argument, I maintain that there are four things that have to be left out of the causal order at its most basic level: subjectivity (all facts are objective from the point of view of scientific naturalism), normativity (things aren't the way they are at the level of physics because it's better for them to be that way), intentionality (it can't be part of a physical description of something that it is about something else) and free of purpose. If you are putting any of those things on the ground floor of the universe, you are moving in at least the direction of a mentalistic world-view which is creates a significant break with orthodox naturalism.
VR (previously) But if naturalism is true, then everyone has natural, physical causes for all beliefs, and this got to be ten times more damaging than sociological causes.
Scott: From my perspective, sociological interactions ultimately result in physiological changes that shape our beliefs. There is no dualism here. This seems to indicate a misunderstanding of my position as I think they are part of the same system.
VR: I'm sure that is your position. However, if my beliefs have sociological causes, and physicalism is false, then maybe there can be rational inference and mental causation. Hasker and I have argued at length, though, that even if the weakest form of naturalism is true, supervenient physicalism, there can't be any genuine mental causation.
I'm not saying that all beliefs acquired though social means must be wrong, or that such an acquisition method is "bad". It's one of many natural factors that ultimately results in physiological changes which determine our beliefs. However, social factors, geographical location and chronological presentation appear to be a unusually strong factors in accepting a particular religious belief. In addition, religions also make specific, yet conflicting claims about what is reasonable to expect from God and his nature, based on revelation and religious scriptures.
VR: If Christianity depends on a "word" that has to be spread, then some people are going to get an easier access to the truth than others. The same would be true of religious unbelief. It is, I think, less prevalent in Saudi Arabia than it is in the United States.
VR (previously) If naturalism is true, then there is no real mental causation, just physical causation that mimics mental effects.
Scott: It appears that your position is that beliefs are opaque and somehow except from causation.
VR: Nope. The perception of a logical connection between one proposition and another can cause a conclusion to be drawn. However, we are perceiving a logical connection, something that does not exist in a particular place and time. Therefore this is possible only if the physical (or natural) is not a closed system.
Scott: If I were to make an educated guess, this seems tied to the Biblical idea that we are made in God's image or that we must somehow be able to disengage our beliefs from causal factors since God judges us for them.
VR: If you mean that I think determinism is false, and that libertarian free will is true, then I do accept that, but that is distinct from my argument. And of course some of my fellow Christians are Calvinistic determinists who think that God can be the ultimate cause of our actions and judge them just the same, because we wanted to do them.
Scott: It's likely that our decision to distinguish phenomenon as being "mental" was based on our lack of knowledge about neurobiology, it's complex nature and the intimate relationship with have with our thoughts. As such, it seems it would make more sense to say we did the best with what we had at the time. Today, evidence strongly indicates that our beliefs are a culmination of our experiences, which are stored as electro-chemical patterns in our brain.
VR: No. The problem arises because the definition of the physical makes it impossible to make attribute determinate mental states to any genuinely physical system. You have a bunch of non-mental information at the basic level, you have the ways that non-mental stuff is put together, but however you put it together it will invariable fail to entail a determinate result as to what I believe. The reason it appears to do so is that we surreptitiously attribute properties to brains that are not really characteristics that a truly physical system can possibly have.
VR (previously) I think that Christian theism has some problems in the area of the problem of evil, but these are not worse problems than naturalists have in explaining consciousness, for example.
If we currently can't explain consciousness, then a supernatural being created the universe specifically for human life, who is actually three persons; one of which became a God-Man born of a virgin, who died for our sins, was resurrected three days later and ascended to a non-material realm by traveling through the earth's atmosphere? This simply doesn't follow. Instead, "we don't know all the details right now" seems to be the most reasonable response. Until we can gain a more thorough understanding the enormous amount of observable activity going on in our brains, saying that we cannot account for consciousness is like saying you know an particular event doesn't occur in a three thousand page novel despite only having read one word. Claiming an unobservable "God did it" is an argument from ignorance.
No, there's a fundamental problem of property incompatiblility. There is a conceptual chasm, and you can't cross that chasm by exploring the territory on one side of the chasm. What physical facts entail the truth, which I know, that I am Victor Reppert. That statement is false when you say it, even though there is no physical difference which explains the difference.
Vr: Previously: No other religion has the kind of archaeological support that Christianity does. Have they found that battleground in Palmyra, New York, where the book of Mormon says a huge battle took place? Thought not. Is there a good DNA match between Jews and American Indians? You mean they look more like Orientals? Who witnessed Muhammad reciting and transmitting the Qu'ran?
Scott: Out of all religions, Just because Christianity has the most plausible description of God's nature doesn't mean such a description must be accurate or is plausible when compared to agnosticism. If you say we must use faith to "plug the holes" in God's nature, then why plug them with a God who judges our choices based on incomplete information? Why plug them with a God who eternally exiles us from his presence without a chance to learn from such an exile? Why plug them with a God who found the smell of burnt offerings "pleasing" or demanded the violent death of a himself as a man, before he would forgive us of our own nature, which he himself supposedly created?
VR: These are common, but, so far as I can tell, by no means universal theological positions.
VR: Previously" But maybe some naturalists need to take the Outsider Test and see how things look from the perspective that miracles are possible. I could argue that you have been brainwashed by the scientific establishment to rules these possiblities out. But I won't. The world just makes more sense from the perspective of Christian theism than it does from any other perspective.
Did Hume say that miracles are impossible? No. He said it would be incredibly difficult to tell if one actually occurred. Today, his argument is much stronger due to our current understanding of human behavior and our process of observation. And if miracles are possible, then why have they decreased in number along with eye-witness literacy rate and technological advances in reporting, such as video and still cameras, orbiting satellites and a more detailed understating of biology? I'd think these factors would cause reports to go up exponentially, even if the overall number that actually occurred dropped. And why does God still only appear to perform miracles in what could be mistaken for statistical chance, even when our ability to detect them increases? This doesn't seem to really make sense from any perspective.
Maybe God doesn't want to give us demonstrative knowledge of his existence. God doesn't perform miracles to show off.
Anyway, Scott, thanks for an interesting and challenging post!
Well, we could, for example, find the unresurrected body of Jesus. That would cause massive revisions in my conception of who God is, and leave it up for grabs as to where I would go next.
VR (previously): We could not literally do mathematics, which is the very foundations of the science on which naturalism rests its case. If naturalism is true, then there are no scientists, and there is no scientific method, and we're all epistemically screwed.Naturalism doesn't imply that we cannot think of abstract things. Nor does naturalism claim that abstract things, such as circles and squares, have a causal effect on their own, such as creating universes or designing human beings.
The definition of 'naturalism' isn't necessarily limited to physical things with mass. Quantum teleportation allows the polarity of an photon to be transmitted instantaneously without any known method of transmission. There doesn't appear to be any "matter" involved, yet we can repeat it time and time again in a laboratory. it's science, not the supernatural.
In my detailed development of this line of argument, I maintain that there are four things that have to be left out of the causal order at its most basic level: subjectivity (all facts are objective from the point of view of scientific naturalism), normativity (things aren't the way they are at the level of physics because it's better for them to be that way), intentionality (it can't be part of a physical description of something that it is about something else) and free of purpose. If you are putting any of those things on the ground floor of the universe, you are moving in at least the direction of a mentalistic world-view which is creates a significant break with orthodox naturalism.
VR (previously) But if naturalism is true, then everyone has natural, physical causes for all beliefs, and this got to be ten times more damaging than sociological causes.
Scott: From my perspective, sociological interactions ultimately result in physiological changes that shape our beliefs. There is no dualism here. This seems to indicate a misunderstanding of my position as I think they are part of the same system.
VR: I'm sure that is your position. However, if my beliefs have sociological causes, and physicalism is false, then maybe there can be rational inference and mental causation. Hasker and I have argued at length, though, that even if the weakest form of naturalism is true, supervenient physicalism, there can't be any genuine mental causation.
I'm not saying that all beliefs acquired though social means must be wrong, or that such an acquisition method is "bad". It's one of many natural factors that ultimately results in physiological changes which determine our beliefs. However, social factors, geographical location and chronological presentation appear to be a unusually strong factors in accepting a particular religious belief. In addition, religions also make specific, yet conflicting claims about what is reasonable to expect from God and his nature, based on revelation and religious scriptures.
VR: If Christianity depends on a "word" that has to be spread, then some people are going to get an easier access to the truth than others. The same would be true of religious unbelief. It is, I think, less prevalent in Saudi Arabia than it is in the United States.
VR (previously) If naturalism is true, then there is no real mental causation, just physical causation that mimics mental effects.
Scott: It appears that your position is that beliefs are opaque and somehow except from causation.
VR: Nope. The perception of a logical connection between one proposition and another can cause a conclusion to be drawn. However, we are perceiving a logical connection, something that does not exist in a particular place and time. Therefore this is possible only if the physical (or natural) is not a closed system.
Scott: If I were to make an educated guess, this seems tied to the Biblical idea that we are made in God's image or that we must somehow be able to disengage our beliefs from causal factors since God judges us for them.
VR: If you mean that I think determinism is false, and that libertarian free will is true, then I do accept that, but that is distinct from my argument. And of course some of my fellow Christians are Calvinistic determinists who think that God can be the ultimate cause of our actions and judge them just the same, because we wanted to do them.
Scott: It's likely that our decision to distinguish phenomenon as being "mental" was based on our lack of knowledge about neurobiology, it's complex nature and the intimate relationship with have with our thoughts. As such, it seems it would make more sense to say we did the best with what we had at the time. Today, evidence strongly indicates that our beliefs are a culmination of our experiences, which are stored as electro-chemical patterns in our brain.
VR: No. The problem arises because the definition of the physical makes it impossible to make attribute determinate mental states to any genuinely physical system. You have a bunch of non-mental information at the basic level, you have the ways that non-mental stuff is put together, but however you put it together it will invariable fail to entail a determinate result as to what I believe. The reason it appears to do so is that we surreptitiously attribute properties to brains that are not really characteristics that a truly physical system can possibly have.
VR (previously) I think that Christian theism has some problems in the area of the problem of evil, but these are not worse problems than naturalists have in explaining consciousness, for example.
If we currently can't explain consciousness, then a supernatural being created the universe specifically for human life, who is actually three persons; one of which became a God-Man born of a virgin, who died for our sins, was resurrected three days later and ascended to a non-material realm by traveling through the earth's atmosphere? This simply doesn't follow. Instead, "we don't know all the details right now" seems to be the most reasonable response. Until we can gain a more thorough understanding the enormous amount of observable activity going on in our brains, saying that we cannot account for consciousness is like saying you know an particular event doesn't occur in a three thousand page novel despite only having read one word. Claiming an unobservable "God did it" is an argument from ignorance.
No, there's a fundamental problem of property incompatiblility. There is a conceptual chasm, and you can't cross that chasm by exploring the territory on one side of the chasm. What physical facts entail the truth, which I know, that I am Victor Reppert. That statement is false when you say it, even though there is no physical difference which explains the difference.
Vr: Previously: No other religion has the kind of archaeological support that Christianity does. Have they found that battleground in Palmyra, New York, where the book of Mormon says a huge battle took place? Thought not. Is there a good DNA match between Jews and American Indians? You mean they look more like Orientals? Who witnessed Muhammad reciting and transmitting the Qu'ran?
Scott: Out of all religions, Just because Christianity has the most plausible description of God's nature doesn't mean such a description must be accurate or is plausible when compared to agnosticism. If you say we must use faith to "plug the holes" in God's nature, then why plug them with a God who judges our choices based on incomplete information? Why plug them with a God who eternally exiles us from his presence without a chance to learn from such an exile? Why plug them with a God who found the smell of burnt offerings "pleasing" or demanded the violent death of a himself as a man, before he would forgive us of our own nature, which he himself supposedly created?
VR: These are common, but, so far as I can tell, by no means universal theological positions.
VR: Previously" But maybe some naturalists need to take the Outsider Test and see how things look from the perspective that miracles are possible. I could argue that you have been brainwashed by the scientific establishment to rules these possiblities out. But I won't. The world just makes more sense from the perspective of Christian theism than it does from any other perspective.
Did Hume say that miracles are impossible? No. He said it would be incredibly difficult to tell if one actually occurred. Today, his argument is much stronger due to our current understanding of human behavior and our process of observation. And if miracles are possible, then why have they decreased in number along with eye-witness literacy rate and technological advances in reporting, such as video and still cameras, orbiting satellites and a more detailed understating of biology? I'd think these factors would cause reports to go up exponentially, even if the overall number that actually occurred dropped. And why does God still only appear to perform miracles in what could be mistaken for statistical chance, even when our ability to detect them increases? This doesn't seem to really make sense from any perspective.
Maybe God doesn't want to give us demonstrative knowledge of his existence. God doesn't perform miracles to show off.
Anyway, Scott, thanks for an interesting and challenging post!
Friday, March 06, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Christianity: Unique, or Uniquely wrong
Christianity makes a claim on behalf of its founder that is unprecedented and unique in the whole world. No one else says that the God of the Universe walked on earth to save us. Christianity is unique, and uniquely wrong if it's wrong.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Hate is hate, period.
Hate is not moral disagreement. It is not hateful to oppose gay marriage, or to support it. But hate can crop up on all sides of the political and the religious spectrum.
This is a link to an account, on Thinking Christian, of an attack on a church by gay fanatics. But the problem isn't the church or the gays, it's the hate. Period.
This is a link to an account, on Thinking Christian, of an attack on a church by gay fanatics. But the problem isn't the church or the gays, it's the hate. Period.
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