A Stanford Entry on Moral Non-Naturalism

The Wikipedia on Jihad

Does al-Qaeda have the right Islamic concept of Jihad?

Emerging Church Bashing

Thinking Christian reviews a book bashing the Emerging Church.

Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

If this site is correct, the answer has to be no. See also this.

Accepting Christ as your Lord and Savior

Does the Bible ever use the phrase "accept Christ as your Lord and Savior?" Looks like the answer to that one is no. And yet the ease with which we use such terminology identifies us as a real Christian or not a real Christian in the eyes of some believers.

A strange funeral tradition

HT: Sharon Gray.

Mike: You haven't had any Zoroastrians looking for services at your place, have you?

Some background on Christian socialism

Why do we value life?

Suppose we were to encounter a race of people very much like our own, except that they did not have the attitude toward murder, or rather homicide, that we have. If they wanted someone to die they killed them, and it was legal so long as a proper compensation was paid to the victim's family. They even had commandments from their
god, only there were just nine and "Thou shalt not kill" was left out. How would we make a case for the value of life to them.

I once had an officemate who thought that the so-called value of life was just that: so-called. The real values were pleasure and pain, and being alive or not simply didn't count. "When death is, we are not, when we are, death is not." Another friend said "Based on your philosophy, I could kill you right now and it would be OK." He answered "Only if you could do it painlessly."

How would you defend the value of life to these people?

Here's a blog from a student from my old seminary

Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. I can't believe it's been 30 years since I graduated from there.

Did Christians read the doctrine of original sin into the Hebrew Bible?

This piece, by atheist Austin Cline, suggests that this is so. Is he correct?

The Eastern Orthodox do not seem to have the sort of doctrine of original sin that is prevalent in the West, coming down from Augustine.

Another Al, another year, another recount

Where have we seen something like this before. Despite a very different climate, Minnesota is the new Florida.

I'm going to be a terrific senator! And I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people elected me! - Al Franken.

Wikipedia on Sin

This Wikipedia entry should help you become and expert on this subject.

Sin and Stupidity

A Jewish perspective.

Are Republicans real conservatives?

Spread the wealth around?

Is the graduated income tax (first proposed by Adam Smith) socialism? If you really think that "spreading the wealth around" is always and everywhere a bad thing, then shouldn't there be a flat tax?

And what about the $700 billion bailout? How can Republicans attack socialism if they participated in the bailout? Spread the wealth around? Isn't that what the Bush administration initiated, and McCain voted for?

From each according to his abilities, so long as you are in the middle class. To each according to his needs, if you are a big enough corporation.

When it comes to actual governance, the "conservatism" of Barry Goldwater is gone. What you get is corporate prostitution. Republicans follow conservative principles when it serves the interests of "the haves and the have mores." They trash those principles when it becomes convenient for the big companies.

I realize that my tone is a little cynical here. Perhaps someone can explain what the Republican Party today has to do with real conservatism.

And please don't tell me that at least this fake conservatism is better than liberalism. I just want to know what real conservative principles are, and how well you think the Republican party of George W. Bush reflects those principles.

The Book of Hezekiah

It's sometimes just as important to know what isn't in the Bible as what is in the Bible.

How would you write an anti-abortion statute?

I have some questions about how anti-abortion laws are supposed to go. First, can you get away with exempting the mother from criminal punishment. Albert Fall, in the Teapot Dome scandal, got convicted for taking a bribe that the person who gave the bribe, Doheny, was acquitted for giving. The 2006 South Dakota statute, referenced in this post, seems guilty of this sort of absurdity.

Second, if the grounds for objecting to abortion is that it is murder, and there really is no moral difference between killing a fetus and killing a born infant, then shouldn't these acts be prosecuted under the statute against murder, which means that whatever mandatory sentences are in place have to apply. (No community service, in other words).

How were abortion laws written prior to Roe. Can abortion be regarded as a separate crime from murder if it is murder?

Now these are questions. Please treat them as such. There may be good answers to them.

I am quite sure that anti-abortion laws would result in an enforcement nightmare. This bothers the utilitarian in me. But the deontologist answer is, of course, that if something ought to be outlawed, difficulties in enforcing the law should not be a reason to keep it legal.

Judith Thomson' defense of abortion

I'm redating this post, since it keeps coming up.

Judith Thomson's famous argument that if the fetus is a person, its right to life might be overruled by the rights of the pregnant woman.

An anti-slavery site

Lincoln didn't abolish slavery.

Equal Protection and Abortion

McConnell: One can make a pretty convincing argument, however, that fetuses are persons. They are alive; their species is Homo sapiens. They are not simply an appendage of the mother; they have a separate and unique chromosomal structure. Surely, before beings with all the biological characteristics of humans are stripped of their rights as "persons" under the law, we are entitled to an explanation of why they fall short. For the court to say it cannot "resolve the difficult question of when life begins" is not an explanation.

Here's my claim. If this argument goes through, then you have a Federal case against abortion based on the Equal Protection clause. What is wrong with this claim?

Why judicial activism is a red herring in the abortion debate

I still have trouble seeing why pro-lifers want abortion to be a state matter. In the case of gay marriage, social conservatives want an amendment preventing state judges or state legislatures from allowing it. Why not go for that with respect to abortion?

I have trouble seeing Roe as an unjustified instance of judicial activism. The court had to adjudicate between the rights of the pregnant mother and the rights of the fetus. If you think that, since it was the fetuses right to life that was at stake as opposed to the mother's right to privacy, if you think that all fetuses possess this right from the moment of conception, if you believe that the right to life takes precedence over all quality-of-life considerations including the right of privacy, then the only logical thing to fight for is the application of the equal protection clause of the Constitution to life in the womb. Why wimp out and hand it back to the states? Frank??

Of course, the right to life from conception has to be provable. The Roe argument is that that right is in doubt, and hence a right that is in doubt should not take precedence over a right that is not in doubt. I think Roe is right, unless you can establish the right to life beyond reasonable doubt. But if you're pro-life, that's your position, right?

If I am right, judicial activism is a red herring in the abortion controversy. Everyone likes judicial activism when it gets the results we want. We hate it when it gets the wrong results. The SCOTUS had to act, one way or the other. The only question is whether the Court made the right call or not.

Anti-Materialist philosophy now considered part of the creationist threat

The dualists are coming, the dualists are coming.

Abortion, Roe, and legislating from the bench

It seems to me that the case against abortion has been hitched to the conservative objection to "judicial activism." The hope for overturning Roe has been connected to the claim that had the SCOTUS refrained from "legislating from the bench," the ruling would have been avoided and state laws would have stood.

But if pro-lifers are right in supposing that fetuses are person from conception and we can know that, then the conclusion should not be to remand the issue to the states. The correct conclusion would be to press a case on behalf of fetal life based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, striking down all permissive abortion laws. That might be legislating from the bench, but wouldn't that be the correct for the court to make, on pro-life assumptions?

Quick question

Why is it that the same people who want abortion settled by the states want gay marriage settled by the federal government, through a constitutional amendment?

Abortion and constitutional law

In debating the abortion issue, people sometimes conflate the moral question of abortion with the legal question as to whether abortion laws are constitutionally justified. The following four positions are compossible.

1) Abortion is always morally wrong, (except in cases where the life of the mother is in danger) but as a matter of constitutional law, Roe was correctly adjudicated.

2) Abortion is not always morally wrong, and Roe was correctly adjudicated.

3) Abortion is morally wrong, and Roe was not correctly adjudicated.

4) Abortion is not always wrong, but Roe was not correctly adjudicated.

The Dawkins-Lennox debate

Abortion voting: What looks like a Libertarian perspective

Though he does not identify himself as libertarian himself.

Response to Jim Jordan

I do not have your intellectual certitude on this issue. Do you really think that I'm not telling the truth when I say that? Perhaps a study of the complete works of Frank Beckwith would convince me otherwise. I am even less sure that I would know how to produce a good legal argument against Roe v. Wade, because in a legal context you have ways of blocking the sorts of "err on the side of life" arguments that I would use if I were trying to talk someone I knew not to get an abortion.

And I have even more serious doubts about the standard conservative attack on Roe: that it involved judicial activism. It seems to me that the right of privacy is constitutionally grounded. But to defeat Roe, it seems to me that you've either got to make that argument, or make the argument that we can achieve a rational consensus that fetuses are persons from the moment of conception. Both seem to me to be difficult cases to make. (I wish I had Hasker's debate with Sullivan available to me now).

All you have with any political leader is their professions of Christian conscience.
The pro-life position is appealing in the sense that you don't get stuck with the problem of accounting for how fetal life comes to acquire the full rights of personhood. But to go from there to the conclusion that there is no moral difference between taking the life of a zygote and taking the life of a two-year-old looks like a stretch to me.

I think some of the considerations that support the right to life are some of the same ones that push me in the direction of the Democratic Party, the concern for the defense of the weak and disadvantaged against the powerful. (Probably the strongest moral theme in all of Scripture).

So I would very much like to move my party away from the sort of rhetorical position that really sounds like life in the womb doesn't matter. Perhaps after what I anticipate will be Obama's election victory, my post will be entitled "An Open Letter to Barack Obama" urging him to take fetal life seriously and to move away from the sort of Planned Parenthood party line we are so used to hearing from Democrats.

I really think that neither political party has enough power, with our two-party system, to push through a change in the Supreme Court sufficient to overthrow Roe and get us to the place where abortion is illegal in many states. So long as there is a partisan deadlock on this issue, no progress will be made.

I find this whole issue extremely difficult, and I have never tried so hard to me intellectually honest in all my life.

The Catholic Bishops' statement on forming the political conscience

No compromise on abortion?

James Howell, on Ben Witherington's blog, suggests otherwise.

I really and truly believe that the partisan, no-compromise positions taken on each side of the aisle on this issue result in more dead fetuses than necessary. I'm afraid that if I were strongly pro-choice, and I were to hear some of the Holocaust rhetoric that I have been hearing in the combox here, I would retreat to a firmer pro-choice stance than I would if pro-lifers were to say, "There are a bunch of you pro-choicers out there who really think abortions are bad things; let's see what we can do to reduce them."

But in an election year, it's easier for the Republican to yell "baby-killer" and the Democrats to yell "they're taking away your right to choose."

But, you say, Obama is a pro-choice extremist and won't listen? Try him (if he is elected). Appeal to the Christian conscience he says he has. If people try it and it doesn't do any good, and there isn't a reduction in abortions, you can come back to me and say "See, I told you so."

Plantinga, Christians and their doubts

A redated post.

Since the issue of Christian doubts has come up on a couple of blogs, I thought this, from Plantinga, would be of interest.

And what can I say about my spiritual life since leaving Calvin? For me,
as, I suppose, for most others, spiritual life is an up and down proposition,
with what one hopes are the consolidation of small but genuine gains.
Sometimes I wake in the wee hours of the morning and find myself wondering:
can all this really be true? Can this whole wonderful Christian story really be
more than a wonderful fairy tale? At other times I find myself as
convinced of its main lineaments as that I live in South Bend.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road

I got this from someone at Spare Oom.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change!
JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road...ZZZZZzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz
SARAH PALIN: BECAUSE, I WAS GONNA SHOOT HIM FOR BLOCKING MY VIEW OF RUSSIA !
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.
GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.
DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?
COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.
BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken.
AL GORE: I invented the chicken.
DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.
OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.
GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.
BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.
ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.
ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?
COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

The William Lane Craig Debate Source

Transcripts, audios, and videos. It's all here.

Supply-Side Economics

I am told that the correct name for trickle-down economics is supply-side economics, and that trickle-down is an insult. Very well, call it what you want. The question is, does it work?

The One-Issue Abortion Vote

It almost sounds to me as if you are saying "Even if we lose all the other arguments, and Obama is the better choice on every other ground except abortion, you as a Christian are obligated to vote against Obama for that reason alone."

But even the actual Obama quotes don't seem to me to say that he wants these "abortuses" to die. He may have been misinformed about whether born-alive fetuses would be left to die. He also has made statements to the effect that "health of the mother" exceptions on late-term abortions should be made clear so that they don't cover just anything.

What are you suggesting, that Obama just likes seeing women get abortions?
And isn't it illegal to let babies die, anyway?

My arguments have been this.
1) Roe v. Wade will almost certainly not be overturned regardless of who is elected President.

2) Even if it is overturned, it will not result in many babies being saved through legal restrictions. I would be surprised if any state, even the reddest of the red states, would pass a comprehensive ban on abortion.

3) Abortion rates rose until the Clinton administration, after which they have steadily decreased. There may be many reasons for that, but one of the has to be the passage of the Familay and Medical Leave Act, which made it illegal for employers to fire employees who took unpaid time off to bear children. Health care reform would be another way in which abortion might be discouraged.

4) I don't see an overwhelming case for the simon-pure pro-life position. I can see both sides of the issue, and some of my moral intuitions suggest that you can't give the same right to life to something that is not conscious that you do to something that is. I'm not coming out as a staunch defender of "a woman's right to choose" and would like to see more restrictive laws on abortion than are presently allowed under Roe.

4) While abortion is an issue that generates a lot of moral passion, other issues, such as slavery, poverty, corporate responsibility, misguided wars, torture, and global warming (or climate change if you prefer that expression) are also moral issues of considerable importance, and they are issues where the President's action have a much greater and more direct effect than in the area of abortion.

So no, I reject the case for a one-issue abortion-based vote. I have made these points a number of times here. If you think this makes me "every baby-butcher's best friend," you should reflect on how many babies have been saved from abortion as a result of 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of Bush I, and 8 years of Bush II. This is a matter that was settled by the one branch of government deliberately set furthest away from the political arena, the judiciary. I'm also convinced that we have not exercised enough leadership in looking for ways to decrease abortion apart from the long arm of the criminal law.

Trickle-Down Economics

If you want to grapple with something that bothers me about political conservatism in the economic sphere, it is what seems to me to be a commitment to the trickle-down thesis. The idea is that lowering the tax burden on the higher economic levels will stimulate the economy in general, create jobs, and benefit the people down the scale. I think this is the heart of what the Republicans are using Joe the Plumber to illustrate. Joe himself probably won't be harmed by the Obama tax plan, quite the reverse. However, if he were to get into a position where his profits exceeded $250,000, then the tax plan would increase his taxes (though, I'm told, by just 3%). However, this might cripple his ability to employ Jack the Plumber, Bill the Plumber, and Suzanne the Plumber (let's not be sexist now).

But does it work that way? In particular, does anything trickle down in America when a large corporation goes multinational, and finds labor in Mexico, China, and elsewhere, countries unfettered by American labor laws?

I tried to research the argument that Thomas Sowell had made that it is a mistake to hold that conservatives subscribe to trickle-down economics; that the term itself is a straw man. Offhand, I don't see why it's a straw man.

Ross Perot said "Trickle-down didn't trickle." Where is that guy now that we need him?

Why we don't discuss politics and religion at the dinner table

I think if everyone successfully avoided the ad hominem fallacy, then we could truly learn something when Uncle Joe, the born-again Christian, and Uncle Charlie, the village atheist, got together around Thanksgiving dinner. Or when Uncle Bill, the Rush Limbaugh admirer, and Uncle Bob, the who has seen every Michael Moore movie 10 times, get together.

Ad hominem is the shift of attention from issues to people. It is difficult to assess the merits of Clinton's economic policies, it is far easier to talk about cigars, interns, and finger-wagging. It's also easy to portray Bush as stupid and Clinton as slick, than it is to actually address the issues involved in their administrations.

There is a necessary aspect of political discouse that does involve evaluating not merely the positions of the candidates but their fitness to serve. I have problems with the Palin selection from that standpoint, but I don't think that's a subject that can be fruitfully pursed at this point. We can talk about Obama's association with Ayers and Wright, McCain's association with Keating, and Palin's association with the Alaskan Independence Party unit we are blue in the face. Nothing will be achieved.

I try to keep everything personal off this blog. I made an exception mentioning my aging and now deceased parents in the context of a discussion of Social Security and Medicare, and regret it now, for obvious reasons. By the same token, I really don't care how old Steve Hays is, or who he lives with, or whatever else. The debate should be about issues not people. As for diagnosing intellectual dishonesty, as Obama said in another context, that's above my pay grade. It's enough to show someone is mistaken, if you can. Showing that they are somehow dishonest requires abilities beyond the capacities of mere mortals. At least that's how I see it.

How do we improve the tone? We avoid ad hominem arguments. I have linked to a Wikipedia treatment of the ad hominem fallacy.

More on the tone

Political posts, like other posts, are partly there to defend what I believe in, but they are also designed to generate critical thinking. I know this is a forum in which liberals and conservatives can enter the discussion. I also want people to realize that Christians can exercise some independence of mind when it comes to politics. I have seen this from both liberals and conservatives in the comment box.

When I talked about improving the tone of the discussion, it is important to realize that I mean for it to begin with me. I can't control Steve Hays or Ilion or anyone like him. I don't know what to say to people who think that anyone to the left of John McCain is an intellectually dishonest evildoer. I also don't know how to respond to people who think all Christians (or atheists, for that matter) are stupid, ignorant, insane, or wicked. That kind of certitude has always escaped me.

If my posts serve only the goal of political advocacy, they fail by my own standards. It's easy to hit easy targets.

Is Joe the plumber a leaky story?

On improving the tone of political debate

I don't know if any of you have been going over to Triablogue, but I have been treated over there to the harshest personal attacks I have ever received from anyone from Steve Hays. Compared to him, Steven Carr has been the model of politeness. To Hays, it isn't enough to say that I am backing the wrong candidate for President. I have been compared to Goebbels, called a Red Philosopher, a Baby Butcher's Best Friend, a poseur, a goose-stepping apparatchik for the left, a false philosopher and a false Christian, and even someone too stingy and selfish to help his own parents in their old age, since I said I was sure glad they got Social Security and Medicare when they advanced in age. He presumed that, all this time, I was a tenured professor, which, alas, I have never been. To him, this isn't a debate, this is a police interrogation. Anything you say can, and will be used against you.

I am quite sure I don't deserve this treatment. At the same time, I have to ask myself if I have done the best job I could, not merely for making the case that a Christian can support Obama, but really exploring the issues in a helpful way, encouraging critical thought, and not simply shooting at easy targets. This is a blog, not a set of publishable essays. I'm trying to open honest discussion, not speak the last word on matters of considerable dispute amongst Americans. In the philosophy of religion, I would like to think that my efforts have created a more civilized playing field, where people on both sides can discuss their differences. I may not have done so well on political matters.

I can't think of anybody in political history who has rubbed me the wrong way as much as Sarah Palin has. It may be my intellectualist bias; I expect my political leaders to have thought-through positions on issues. Maybe that's asking too much, I don't know. I know some would say that even if she doesn't have thought-through positions, at least she doesn't take the wrong positions. But from the first time she opened her mouth and tried to grasp the mantle of Hillary Clinton and the 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, despite complete opposition to everything Hillary stands for, I have found this choice to be an insult to the intelligence of the American people.

Because I think Obama has health care right, the economy right, Iraq and Afghanistan right, and for a number of other reasons, I do support him for President. I'm not a simon-pure pro-lifer, but I would like to see more commitment to the value of unborn life than he has shown so far. Despite evidence that of pro-abortion extremism, I'd like to think that he is persuadable on, say, a partial birth abortion ban. (There's the audacity of hope for you!).

I'd like to see a grass-roots, bipartisan effort including both pro-lifers and moderate pro-choicers (the combination of these groups surely constitutes a majority in America), to get together to look for ways to minimize abortion. Maybe a Coalition to Minimize Abortion should be formed. Do a little community organizing. Because I think that with the current political deadlock, with "the right to life" and "a woman's right to choose" used as a means to get out the respective party bases, there is little chance of doing anything on the abortion issue that makes any progress from anyone's perspective.

Of course, if you think I have all the other issues wrong, this won't impress you. Fine. I do respect thoughtful conservatives like Bill Vallicella, in spite of my deep suspicion that the what has come out of the dominance of conservatives over the past 28 years or so has resulted in a lot of what I call corporate prostitution and the abuse of power. (These are subjects for more detailed discussion, of course). I don't think either party has a monopoly on good or on evil.

What does this statement mean?

This is not a rhetorical question. I do want an answer.

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." She also said, "This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Does she mean that whether one pals around with terrorists or not is a function of how imperfect one sees the country? So that if she were to see the country as less perfect than she now sees it, she would then be justified in palling around with terrorists.

Also notice the use of the present tense in this sentence. It's just false that Obama now pals around with Ayers, and it is also now false to say that he intends to target his own country. The most that can be said here is that he once targeted his own country and doesn't now regret doing so.

Let's assume that Obama is open to criticism because of his association with Ayers. Does anything follow from that about his view of America?

Is it always morally wrong to befriend former terrorists, even unrepentant ones? Would Jesus befriend terrorists, or just tax collectors and sinners? (You guys are going to stone me for asking this question).

Abortion and Brain Birth

If a person is considered dead a brain death, shouldn't life (or more precisely, personhood) be thought to begin at brain birth, rather than conception or birth? The author of this essay suggests that it comes rather later than many people would have thought, but that the suggestion that personhood begins here faces some difficulties.

ACORN, the new Republican talking point?

I will have to admit that I don't understand this story. If I were trying to steal votes for the Democrats, this is not the way I would go about doing it. Of course we could go with a Democratic conspiracy theory; it's really the Republicans trying to discredit community organizing. But conspiracy theories are a last resort. So what gives here?

Why I am a Palin fan

I love Palin. I really do. This Palin dialogue is, I think, a prescient metaphor for the condition of the McCain campaign. Is it dead, or just pining for the fjords? I can't be sure.

Sarah Palin's Debate Flow Chart

HT: Debbie Albury.

A new book on the torture issue

Some lecture notes on Descartes

Since we will soon be starting Descartes today in Philosophy 101, I thought I would put some notes I wrote up about him on the blog. Comments and dialogue welcome of course.

Rene Descartes
I. The Impact of Modern Science
II. Three Goals
A. Find Certainty
B. Establish science on a firm foundation
C. Reconcile science and religion
III. Uncertainty about beliefs caused by intellectual, ecclesiastical, and political upheaval
A. Intellectual upheaval: Change from a geocentric view to a heliocentric view (the sun, not the earth is the center of everything)
B. Ecclesiastical upheaval: Instead of one Church in control of everything, Europe is divided between Catholics and Protestants
C. Political upheaval: Descartes time saw the rise of the modern state, and the colonization of the Americas. It also saw 30 years of war over religion, resulting in the slaughter of 1/3 of the population of Europe.
IV. Threat of materialism and determinism
A. Modern science moves in the direction of viewing the world as a machine
B. But if the world is a machine, and we are just one more part of the world, then we are machines
C. If we are machines, then whether we do right or do wrong is a function of how we were programmed. Given the basic laws of the universe and the initial positions of the atoms, we could not have done otherwise from what we did.
D. If we could not have done otherwise from what we did, then the idea of sin makes no sense. We are not, in any significant sense, responsible for our actions. What’s worse, if you assume there’s a God, the God is responsible for all of our worst sins. This does not seem compatible with the idea of a perfectly good God.
V. The Jesuit solution: The Protestants, for example, maintained that it was possible to doubt the truth of the Church’s teaching by appealing to the Bible. At the Jesuit school that Descartes attended, they taught him that this would result in an unending chain of doubts. You can doubt the Church on the basis of the Bible. You can doubt the Bible on the basis of science. You can doubt science on the ground that it appeals to sense experience, which can be doubted. Once the spiral of doubt starts, it can’t be stopped. So just believe what Mother Church tells you to, and don’t ask so many questions.
A. Descartes is not satisfied with the Jesuit Solution. However, he does learn something from the Jesuit method. But he develops the method of universal doubt not to undermine confidence and force reliance on the authority of the Church, but to discover what he can really be sure of.
VI. Two models of knowledge: The house model and the boat model. According to the house model, what makes a belief system stad up is its foundation. If a house is shaking, tear it down, put in a secure foundation, and build it up again. On the boat model (attributed to Neurath), we have to replace planks as necessary, but tearing the whole boat apart would be a mistake that would cause the boat to sink.
VII. Method of doubt: Doubt everything that can possibly be doubted, not simply what can reasonably be doubted.
A. Sense experience and the Dream Conjecture. Could I really be dreaming? Well what if I pinch myself. But then I could be dreaming the pinch. So I pinch myself again, and again, and again, until I really do go unconscious and start dreaming!
B. Mathematical Truths: Descartes introduces the Evil Demon conjecture. Is it possible that SATAN IS CONTROLLING YOUR MIND? (Perhaps you have been listening to too much rock music, with Satanic lyrics put in backwards, and now SATAN IS CONTROLLING YOUR MIND). Well, what Descartes means is an omnipotent being (unlike the fallen angel Lucifer) who is dedicated to deceiving everyone as much as possible. In order to discover what we can really be sure of , Descartes introduces the Satan Test. Something can be included in the foundations of knowledge only if, even on the assumption that Satan is controlling your mind, and wants to deceive you as much as possible, you can be sure that this belief is true.
C. Can anything pass the Satan test? Surely not the knowledge that Bush is President. That could be a media hoax. Or your belief that you are now sitting in a chair? A piece of cake for the devil. How about math? Descartes says that perhaps 2 + 2 = 5, but Satan has deceived you into thinking that 2 + 2 = 4. (I have my doubts about his position on this one, but let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt.)
D. How about the belief that I am now thinking. Could Satan deceive me into thinking that I am now thinking? Well, if he DECEIVED me into thinking that I am now thinking, then I would have to not be thinking. On the other hand, if I had the deceptive thought that I am now thinking, I would have to be thinking. The idea that I am now thinking is indubitable, because a contradiction emerges when I attempt to consider that possibility of being deceived about it.
E. What about the belief that I exist. Well, if I can be sure that I am thinking, then it follows that I exist. Or, as you no doubt heard before you ever took Philosophy, “I think therefore I am.” Although you may have heard it a million times (in fact it’s a great thing to say after a few beers if you want to impress someone with how deep a thinker you are-NOT), this is what it means in its original context. “I think” and “I exist” pass the Satan test, because even on the assumption that Satan is controlling my mind, he can’t possibly deceive me about these two claims.

And the winner of Thursday's debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin is...

Tina Fey. You betcha!

A review of Religulous

Richard Dawkins goes to the movies.

Aristotle and Sir Robin

We all agree that the actual Robin is a coward, and that the song is false. But what about the Robin of the song. According to the popular definition of courage, one is courageous if one either lacks fear or ignores danger, and certainly the Robin of the song satisfies that requirement. However, Aristotle's definition of courage suggests that a courageous person lacks (or fails to act upon) fear, or ignores danger, to the extent that it is rational to do so. This courage in facing danger can be defective, in which case the person is cowardly, on the mean, in which case the person is courageous, or excessively, in which case the person is foolhardy, and hence does not possess the virtue of courage.

Notice also that it is possible for someone to "bravely run away," if we accept Aristotle's account of courage, however paradoxical that may seem. The reason Sir Robin is a coward is because the three-headed monster is bickering with itself, and hence cannot possibly be as dangerous as it might appear to be at first. Robin doesn't think long enough to figure that out, instead he "turned his tail and fled."

Dembski on Design Arguments

This guy must have been reading Dangerous Idea

HT: Ed Babinski.

Obama's speech on religion

I am redating an old post, which seems to suggest to me that Obama showed, at this point in his career, some capacity to listen to pro-life concerns. I posted this on primary day last February, but it seems relevant to our current discussion.

I'm still an undecided primary voter even today. But this is interesting.

Wikipedia entry for the brain in a vat

The infamous brain in the vat has its own Wikipedia page.

Barack: The Biggest Baby-Killer of them all?

Some of you, I fully understand, would not vote for Barack Obama because he is pro-choice. I understand the underlying viewpoint here. But there is an added kicker to this, and that is that it is alleged that Obama is something worse than pro-choice, he's actually a supporter of infanticide, since he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in the Illinois State Senate.

First, last I heard, the laws of the State of Illinois made it illegal to kill infants. So was this legislation even necessary?

Second, the name of a piece of legislation tells you nothing. By this logic, someone who voted against the No Child Left Behind Act wants children left behind, or someone who voted against the Healthy Forests Initiative wants sick forests.

Third, when I suggested that pro-lifers have to be prepared to accept a greater expansion of socialism to care for all the would-be victims of abortion, there was a chorus of objections from pro-lifers. But this law, if the linked article is correct, mandated state funds to take care of these children as long as they were alive. It also abrogated the rights of parents and would have given lawyers an opportunity to "sue everything on two legs." But I thought Republicans hated trial lawyers. In other words, there appear to have been various reasons for voting against this legislation besides wanting the accidental survivors of abortion dead.

Concerning that anarchist friend of mine

Which raises an interesting question as to how far we can go in separating the legal and the moral questions when it comes to abortion. Is it inconsistent to oppose abortion morally but not legally? The tricky part is that if you consider abortion to be the taking the life of a person, and you think it unjustified, you've got some actions that fall with the class of murders (which by definition is the morally unjustified taking of human life) which you think should nevertheless not be legislated against. That does seem initially counterintuitive, but is there solid ethical reasoning backing up this intuition?

Anarchy, State, and Abortion

I had a friend once who was an atheist, an anarchist, and thought abortion was murder. Obviously he's a counter-example to the claim that pro-lifers want to impose their religious views on the public. But, of course, he would have to be opposed to laws against abortion, since, of course, he was opposed to, well, laws, being an anarchist

Are the biblical documents reliable?

An essay by Jimmy Williams.

Some Questions for Conservatives

Do you support scrapping Social Security, either gradually or suddenly?

Do you hold to a general principle of laissez-faire capitalism, that the government ought to stay out of the economy. That principle is equally violated by a corporate bailout as it is by LBJ's War on Poverty.

Was the GI Bill socialism?

Do you oppose any and all government assistance to poor people?

And who do you think was last conservative President? If you say GW Bush I'm going to laugh. Ronald Reagan? Give me a break. Herbert Hoover? Maybe.

Are child labor laws justified? There's government intervention to be sure.

The leaders who have run the Republican party for years are not principled conservatives. They want government to back big business. Their hearts start bleeding at the sight of a failing multinational corporation.

Do you seriously doubt that many have benefitted from government involvement in the economic life of the public?

What, in your view, constitutes principled conservatism? This isn't just a rhetorical attack. I'd really like to see what conservatism is really all about. The "conservative" ideology that has run the Bush administration seems to be an ideology that looks out for big business first and foremost. If that means government involvement, then government gets involved. It that means reducing government, then government is reduced. But I see no commitment to limited government as an overall governing principle. That is why, if you really convinced me that conservative principles were true, I would register, not Republican, but Libertarian.

A correction to a previous post

I had implied in my previous post that perhaps government assistance in areas like Social Security and Medicare would not be necessary if Christians were more generous. That assumes that Christians have it in their power to make it the case that we don't need these things, and that is not what I wanted to argue. I do not claim that the need for these things is the fault of Christians generally. I would make the general point that Christians should probably do better than we do in dealing with poverty, but I will not claim that Christian moral failure makes it necessary for anti-poverty government institutions to exist.

Ken Samples on the Importance of Worldviews

More statistics: Did Clinton Lower the Abortion Rate?

Got statistics? Here you go!

Who is the party of fiscal responsibility?

Why I am a Democrat.

Let's get down to the real point of this little piece on Joe Republican. The conservative belief that the government should not regulate the economy, that it should not take an interest in the welfare of less-privileged citizens by constraining the greed of large corporations, presumably because the better the big companies do the more jobs they'll create, therefore benefitting the rest of the world, looks just false to me. It looks as if historically, interventions by government have at least on many occasions been a good thing. Social Security was identified with Socialism when it was proposed, and it is sometimes attacked today as a Ponzi scheme. But I can't forget how much things better were for my mother and father, both political conservatives, once they started receiving it. In my childhood Medicare was attacked as Socialism, but again, it has made a huge difference to many people, including my parents. So much so that Bush wanted to expand it when he got into the Presidency.

Bill Vallicella once criticized my use of this little piece by saying that it commits a diachronic fallacy; it implies that because liberals might have been justified in going for government assistance to the economy in the past, it doesn't follow that the kinds of things liberals propose today are justified. As Palin would say, perhaps so. Nevetheless the general principle that government should keep its filthy laws off our collective economic body seems just false, and there can't be any greater proof that what we have seen this past week. The bitter fruits of deregulation have been reaped this past week, and now one of the leading deregulators, a member of the Keating Five, wants the job of cleaning up the mess?

The Bible says those who won't work should not eat. But those willing to work should eat, and the weakest members of society, those who are too young, too old, or too sick, or too disabled, to work, should be able to eat as well. It would be wonderful it trickle-down actually worked, or if in particular Christians were so generous enough so that government action was not necessary. The evidence suggests otherwise.

The Day in the Life of Joe Democrat mentions mostly things that Rush Limbaugh, in his worst nightmares, images liberals as advocating, not the actual accomplishments of real liberals.
Let's take a look at something that was enacted in the Clinton years, the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was for the purpose of preventing companies from firing mothers who took of to have babies and spend time at home with their children before going back to work. I was pleased to see that McCain voted for this legislation, but I remember Limbaugh and other conservatives railing against it. But gee, if you're pro-life and you want women to carry their babies to term and not abort them, how can you be against this sort of legislation? Is overturning Roe all you can think of when you think about lowering the abortion rate?

For reasons I have presented earlier, while I don't subscribe to what I think is a doctrinaire commitment to "a woman's right to choose," I don't think that is an area where the President can make a direct impact. I am being told that if McCain is elected, we'll get a fifth pro-life justice on the Court, Roe will be overturned, and abortion will at least be prohibited the the red states. I think that won't happen; I think the abortion rate will actually rise if McCain is elected and fall if Obama is elected. So pro-lifers should vote Democratic this time.

In foreign affairs, again I am actually a conservative, I am very conservative about the traditional Just War theory, and skeptical of modernists who think that that its provisions are "quaint" because we live in a "post 9/11 world." Iraq was, in my view, a completely unjust war, and when I get in a bad mood I actually think it's a war we deserve to lose, since we invaded the country immorally to begin with. (Yeah, I don't like the sound of what I just said either). I don't care what the justification is, there are things you don't do to prisoners of war and things you don't do to criminal defendants, and the people we picked up off the battlefield in Afganistan should not have been put into some "neither fish nor fowl" category so that they we could do what we wanted with them.

So these are some of the main reasons why I am a Democrat.

Pro-life Democrats

Ah yes, I know what some of you are going to say to these guys. "You're in the wrong party. How can you call yourselves pro-life when you support a party that's against your position. If you were real pro-lifers you would leave."

Spong on the Resurrection

That should stir things up.

Fact-check on some of the anti-Palin material

I should point out here that these attacks on Palin haven't actually come from the Obama campaign. Someone posted a Vallicella post on Palin which directed me to factcheck.org.

The rumors about Palin are an understandable reaction to the possibility of having someone close to the Presidency who is unknown to the general public and is seen as extreme in some ways. Who she is is important. Is her campaign persona genuine? Or is she trying to appear to be something she is not. America wants to know, and should want to know.

It's my view that the Palin pick is a highly dubious pick for the reasons I gave earlier, which do not in any way rely on the truth of any of these speculations.

Palin can do herself a world of good by putting an end to the boasting about her stand on the Bridge to Nowhere and admitting quite honestly that she is a relatively new convert to the McCain anti-earmark gospel. In doing so, she needs to admit that her little one-liner about the bridge is highly misleading.

The e-mail mentioned by Factcheck from Anne Kilkenny raises some other issues concerning her leadership style which, while perhaps less sensational, are nonetheless important to the process of the vetting of Sarah Palin by our country.

Beckwith against abortion

This is Francis Beckwith's attack on abortion.

Why I Don't Want Sarah Palin in the Vice-Presidency

Perhaps the best way for me to sum up my discussions concerning Sarah Palin would be this. I happen to be a member of the Democratic party and an Obama supporter. There are a number of reasons that I have for this: I am skeptical of trickle-down economics, as important as private compassion is I think it needs to not stop when we get to the halls of government, I believe that invasions of foreign countries require justification we did not come anywhere near to meeting in our war with Iraq (though we did, I think, meet it in Afghanistan), I do think we should move away from fossil fuels sooner rather than later. I suspect that the mainstream Republican understanding of conservatism is to give large corporations and their CEOs whatever they want, which is hardly conservatism. On cultural issues I'm no fan of abortion but recognize some complexities in the issue and have some doubts about bringing the long arm of the law down on it. Though I think if I had a magic wand and could make Roe v. Wade go away I would wave it. I find the increased concentration of governmental power in the hands of the executive branch in response to an "emergency" created by 9/11 (the so-called "unitary executive) extremely troubling and the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques which I would call torture to be unconscionable. I believe in the separation of church and state, though some hyper-sensitive ways of applying that separation are, in my mind silly. But I don't want a great battle for a Christian America that never existed. I also find the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration unacceptable.

Overall, I'm just more comfortable in the Democratic party than in the Republican. But suppse I were a Republican, and perhaps one that fervently desired and expected that Roe v. Wade be overturned. Would I be happy with the Palin pick. Many people think she is the greatest thing since Ronald Reagan.

The answer is, that were I a Republican I would be troubled for my own party. First, apparently party leaders are not leaving the vice-Presidential choice to the nominee, they are telling him that he may not nominate certain people like Lieberman or Ridge. Second, we are told that this person has been thoroughly "vetted" but we have no idea what that "vetting" amounts to. Palin is unknown to most Americans and they would like to know what she is like. She makes good emotional connections with people, but so far there are serious problems with her background, she gives scripted responses to questions on issues, she is under investigation for misconduct as a governor, and makes dishonest statements about her record. Even if this pick proves effective for the campaign, it could prove disastrous for governance, especially if she has to supplant the elderly McCain in the highest office of the land.

Reply to Groothuis on Obama

Doug Groothuis is a friend who wrote a blurb for my book. But I have some difference with him politically. To wit:

Conservatives care about the poor. But they think that a "privatized" compassion is better than one that enlists the government. They think that trickle-down economics works. I think that this is not the case.

Bush had zero foreign policy experience and zero military experience, (except for a questionable brief stint in the Guard) and he showed it by expending our energy in the war on terror against a dictator who of whom there could surely be a great deal said against him, but who was no friend of Al-Qaeda and had no WMDs. McCain want to continue the Bush policies. Obama wants to change the focus in the war on terror to the truly dangerous terrorists who plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks.

As for abortion, I differ with the platform of my party on this matter, in that I would welcome a reversal of Roe. But were that reversal to occur, it would probably save the lives of two fetuses in the state of Mississippi. If we want to abolish abortion, we are probably going to have to make a large step in the direction of socialism in order to care for the children who would otherwise be aborted. Republicans aren't willing to do that, so their defense of life rings hollow.

Clinton to Obama: If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen

HC: “I’m with Harry Truman on this. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Just speaking for myself, I’m very comfortable in the kitchen. So if the heat goes up its okay with me, because we’ve got a lot of tough problems.’’

VR: Note to Sarah Palin: By dodging the heat, you are showing that you are no Hillary Clinton.

Evasion Central, Alaskan Headquarters

I did not have earmark relations with that bridge, to nowhere.

See this Youtube video. I'm sorry, but this doesn't pass the smell test.

On truthfulness in the campaign

From the New York Times article on McCain and the truthfulness of his campaign.

Mr. Obama’s hands have not always been clean in this regard. He was called out earlier for saying, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain supported a “hundred-year war” in Iraq after Mr. McCain said in January that he would be fine with a hypothetical 100-year American presence in Iraq, as long as Americans were not being injured or killed there.

More recently, Mr. Obama has been criticized for advertisements that have distorted Mr. McCain’s record on schools financing and incorrectly accused him of not supporting loan guarantees for the auto industry — a hot topic in Michigan. He has also taken Mr. McCain’s repeated comments that American economy is “fundamentally sound” out of context, leaving out the fact that Mr. McCain almost always adds at the same time that he understands that times are tough and “people are hurting.”

And not being truthful is a problem for either side. Should we demand that candidates raise the standard of truthfulness, not lower it?

A (very) basic account of knowledge

The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief.

Let's take an example. Suppose the Cubs win the World Series this year. A lot of fans are going to come out and say that they knew at the beginning of the season this would be the year the Cubs win the series.

First, the Cubs have to win the series in order for someone to know that the Cubs won the series. If the Angels win the series, no one can know that the Cubs won it.

Second, the person has to believe it. So someone who says he knew the Cubs would win would have to believe that the Cubs would win. Someone who was picking the Diamondbacks would not qualify as someone who knew that the Cubs would win.

Third, a person has to be justified in believing it. So the mere fact that one is a die-hard, incurably optimistic Cubs fan, who have predicted victory for the last 70 seasons would not qualify as someone who knew that the Cubs would win the series.

Some philosophers have posed problems with this definition (google the word Gettier if you want to know about that) but this is a fair enough rough idea of what knowledge is.

And now for something completely different, a ticket I could really support!

Too bad they're constitutionally ineligible.

Does Lying Matter?

"I said thanks, but no thanks, to the bridge to nowhere."

Does anyone really care that this statement is exceedingly misleading at best and a bald-faced lie at worst. I think the latter is closer to the mark.

But does this matter? Should we care? Now telling me all the lies you think the Obamacrats might have told doesn't answer the question. That just gives us more lies to either care, or not care about.

Did it matter when Clinton lied? Should we give up on expecting our candidates to be truthful?

Jewish rejection of Original Sin

Original sin and inherited guilt

Does it make sense to say that we inherit guilt from our ancestors, recent or remote? It makes sense that you can inherit money from Mom and Dad. Guilt? I would admit that that is harder to see.

Christian Atheism?

Thomas J. J. Altizer's book The Gospel of Christian Atheism is online.

Some important distinctions in response to Christian Reconstructinoism

This is a Huffington Post piece by Chip Berlet.

This is the Wikipedia entry on Christian Reconstructionism

This is a description of Christian reconstructionism from Wikipedia. It looks pretty scary to me, not perfectly normal, as Ilion seems to suggest.

Why a Fellow POW won't vote for McCain

Rebuttals to anti-Palin claims

To be fair, this is a rebuttal page to the anti-Palin rumors that have gotten about. It will take some effort to sort out all the facts on this sort of thing.

Is Palin a Christian Reconstructionist

I've been reading Daily Kos stuff, which is, after all Daily Kos, and so they often aren't very good at distinguishing various strands of what has come to be known as the Religious Right. In their minds, Campus Crusade, and James Dobson, and ID, and Christian Reconstructionism all smush together, and that really weakens their case when they talk about this sort of thing. There may be bones to pick with all of them, but they are different entities.

However, this Christian Reconstructionist is praying for McCain to die so Palin can run the country. Wow. I have the suspicion that defending herself against the charge of right-wing Christian extremism will probably be the most critical challenge for candidate Palin.

Pro-Life, Soft Pro-choice, and saving real babies

I think Clayton makes a legitimate point. Let's think about what it will take to outlaw abortion. First, we have to add a justice to the court with just the right legal philosophy to seriously consider overturning a 35-year-old precent like that one. Now you can't ask potential justices how they will rule on cases, so you have to go by overall legal philosophy. This has all sorts of implications about how the Constitution will be applied to many cases which have nothing to do with abortion. OK, so Roe finally gets overturned. Then I take it whatever laws were in place back in 1973 would go back in force, but then I seriously doubt that many states will go for a blanket ban on abortion. So how many real babies will it save. As many babies as would be saved by, let's say, health care reform? We have two parties, the majority of one says they don't like abortion and want it outlawed, and the other side says they want it to be safe legal and rare. But it is not rare. Most pro-choice people seem to me to be what I would call "soft pro-choice," they think abortion a moral tragedy, one they would like to see as little of as possible. It looks as if the soft pro-choicers and the pro-lifers could team up to work on making abortion as rare as possible. I can't help thinking that interest in appearing ideologically pure to their "base," on both sides of the aisle, is keeping the abortion rate higher than it would otherwise be.

Barack Obama Campaign on Community Organizers

In watching the convention speeches last night I was struck by the ridicule that was given to Obama's experience as a community organizer. I think the attack was seriously misguided. This is from a response by David Plouffe of the Obama campaign.

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies. And it's no surprise that, after eight years of George Bush, millions of people have found that by coming together in their local communities they can change the course of history. That promise is what our campaign has been about from the beginning.

Throughout our history, ordinary people have made good on America's promise by organizing for change from the bottom up. Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek. And it's happening today in church basements and community centers and living rooms across America.

How would you explain sin to someone who had no idea what it means?

Suppose you were explaining all of this to someone who didn't know what sin is. You had to explain sin to them because they just didn't know what you were talking about when you used the word. How would you explain it to them?

It's a little like this when we are having religions of the world explained to us, religions of which we are not a part. In the Buddhist religion they have a conception of dukkha. It's translated "suffering" into English, but Buddhists tell me that that simple transliteration doesn't capture the meaning completely.

I suspect Buddhists react the same way when Christian talk about sin. How would you make the idea clear to them?

Limbaugh and Hannity on the Palin choice

Rush Limbaugh said that McCain's choice of Sarah Palin shows him to be a true maverick. That is just before he made the ludicrously sexist comment "We got the babe on our ticket." (So much for shattering any glass ceilings.) Sean Hannity interviews Karl Rove as the "architect" of the Palin selection. Both can't be right. Rove is the Republican party establisment, tied to George W. Bush. Doing what Rove wants is precisely not to be a maverick in today's Republican party. It is kowtowing to the "architect" of the dirty anti-McCain attacks that derailed his own bid for the Presidency in 2000.

If Palin was Rove's choice, then this shows that McCain is under the thumb of the Bush-Cheney wing of the party. His maverick status is forfeited.

Nor would the ascendancy of Palin to the Vice-Presidency shatter any glass ceilings. Palin didn't get the votes necessary to be nominated, the way Hillary Clinton nearly did. She got hand-picked by the Republican establishment. The Vice-President has as much of a job as the president permits him or her to have. John Garner, FDR's VP, said that job was worth a cup of warm spit. Only he didn't say spit, he said something else.

Comparing Palin's qualifications to Obama's is also absurd, at least at this point. Obama has executed a primary campaign, taken on formidable opponents within his own party, won the support of the Clintons for his general election campaign, and developed policy positions on the issues facing the President. He has also selected a running-mate. So we've seen him in action making presidential-type decisions.

In the coming weeks we shall see if Palin is capable of developing policy positions on the major issues of our time. Obama has chosen Biden, someone who is not only capable of assuming the presidency should Obama's heart stop beating, but someone capable of posing tough questions concerning the President's policies. Someone who will not be a rubber-stamp and a yes-man. The ability to choose people is the best sign of qualification for the presidency.

Palin may prove me wrong. She may prove that she is able to think seriously and independently about national issues. But I think the chances of the are about the chances of my mastering the nuances of string theory in the next week or so.

Doctor Logic's Humean Objection

You can also criticize the argument by maintaining, in a broadly Humean way, that the claim that Jesus is God is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Hence if you have some evidence that Jesus claimed to be God, and that Jesus possessed the character of a great moral teacher, and that it is highly improbable that Jesus could have had the character of a great moral teacher while at the same time falsely claiming to be God, you still can't get to the conclusion that Jesus was God if the claim that Jesus is God is so antecedently improbable that the evidence for the other propostions can't get the claim anywhere near probability .5. I can lay this all out with Bayes'theorem:

p (h/e) (The consequent probability of the claim Jesus is God after the evidence concerning Jesus' claim to be God and his being a great moral teacher is considered) = P (h) (the antecedent probability that Jesus is God) X P (e/h), (how probable the evidence would be if Jesus were God) over P (e) (how probable the evidence would be whether or not Jesus is God.

Doctor Logic's claim is that the claim "Jesus is God" is so antecedently improbable that the even if historical evidence provides some confirmation of the claim, and if all the naturalistic scenarios have plausibility problems, the argument still fails.

I addressed this issue in my essay replying to Hume on miracles, and C. S. Lewis addressed in in chapter 13 of Miracles. I link to my own essay here.

Does Scripture Support the Right to Life?

J. P. Holding says that it does, and that pro-chioce interpretations are unreasonable.

Now I've seen everything

Here's something I expected to see about the time hell freezes over. A Republican commercial extolling one of the Clintons because she "told the truth." Politics makes strange bedfellows!

A new Mere Christianity??

Davis, Beversluis, and the higher critical objection to the MBG argument

There are two general lines of objection to Lewis's argument. One of them is the Higher Critical objection and the other the Sincere Mistake objection.

Stephen Davis's challenge to the higher critical objection is that even if you go as far with higher criticism as the Jesus Seminar goes, (which means, for example, things like "Before Abraham was, I am (YHWH) would be excluded as products of the early church), there are passages rated at least pink (Jesus probably said something like this) like

"But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you." (Luke 11: 20)

This clearly means that Jesus actually thought he was exercising God's eschatological power in exorcisms.

OR "Listen to me all of you, and understand, there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. (Mk 7: 14-15).

So Jesus claims the authority to say that we are not defiled by eating the wrong foods? And he's telling this to observant Jews? Who does he think he is?

or "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath." Mk 2: 27-28.,

Lord over the Sabbath?? Is he saying he made the Sabbath the Sabbath, and can set it aside if necessary? Again, who does he think he is?

These sayings are rated as likely to have actually been said by the Jesus Seminar.

It's also important to realize that the Jewish leaders reacted just as we would expect them to react to (to their mind) inappropriate divine claim. In response to Jesus' claim to forgive sins, The Jewish leaders don't say "No one can get their sins forgiven except by going to the temple," they say "No one can forgive sins but God alone." These sayings are rated as likely to have actually been said by the Jesus Seminar.

And notice the other problem. Suppose you think that a purely naturalistic Jesus has to be found. The cartoon image I have in my mind is some kind of first-century hippie guru who teaches peace and love, told good stories, and didn't claim any kind of supernatural prerogatives. It was his followers dragged in all the supernatural stuff and made a religion out of this simple leader's teaching (especially that jerk Paul). So everything is inauthentic that can't be fitted in nicely with philosophical naturalism.

But I have no idea how to peel the onion back so that we can get a historical Jesus who fits nicely with naturalism, and then throw the rest out as a product of the early church. Is there anything in the text that actually supports that kind of reading? Second, if we go that way with respect to Jesus, why would anyone bother to crucify him?

Beversluis's effort is a creditable one from the critical side. But Davis's essay from the Oxford Press anthology on the Incarnation, is an extremely important one, and although Beversluis responds Davis at one point in the essay, he doesn't deal at all with Davis's argument against the Higher Critical objection, which I have given only a small part of here.

I'm linking to the book where Davis's essay appears.

Beversluis's critique of Lewis's trilemma argument

John Beverslius, of course, has more than one paragraph devoted to Lewis's trilemma in his book. This is his entire chapter, which appears on Debunking Christianity. It's a good challenge for supporters of the argument, and a substantial improvement over his previous discussion.

New Blog, Old entries on Mere Christianity

I did a course on Mere Christianity a couple of years back, and blogged my notes. I am transferring those notes to a separate blog, in hopes they will provide a study guide resource for MC.

What my book says about the trilemma

A redated post.

Here's what I wrote about the LLL argument in my book. pp. 13-14.

Perhaps Lewis's most famous argument is what is known as the Lewis trilemma. It is unreasonable, Lewis says, to say that Christ is a great moral teacher but not God, because he claimed, both implicitly and explicitly, to be God. If he wasn't God, he either had to be lying, which would make him wicked, or he had to be deluded, which would make him insane. Since these two alternatives are implausible, Lewis says he must be telling the truth and really be God.

Many others have repeated this argument in their own apologetics. The argument makes four assumptions, however, and critics of the argument have challenged all these assumptions.

1. Jesus' claims in Scripture are best interpreted as not merely as claims to be the Jewish Messiah, but as claims to be God.

2. The Gospels are a reliable historical record of what Jesus said and did.

3. No sane person can form the false belief that he himself is God.

4. The claim "Jesus is God" is more antecedently probable than the admittedly antecedently improbable claiim that Jewus was a great moral teacher but and either a liar or a madman.

Lewis supplies some argumentation in defense of all of these claims in various parts of his writings, and it seems to me that there is a good deal to be said on both sides of each of these claiims before a final assessment can be reached. If all these assumptions are defensible, then the argument is a good one. But rather than debating these assumptions, apologists have simply repeated the mantra "liar, lunatic or Lord," while opponents have cried in response "false dilemma." Neither of these responses, in my estimation, does justice to the complex issues the trilemma raises.

Great Britain is Repossesing the U.S. A.

VR: Even though this isn't really from Cleese, imagine him reading it.

Great Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A. - A Message from John Cleese
To: The citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like”, “cool” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don’t try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

16. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with cucumber sandwiches, high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.

God save the Queen.

Only He can.

John Cleese

Please pass this message to all members of the former United States of America

UPDATE: According to this Snopes piece, this has been rewritten and reworked by hundreds of people, published through various online and print mediums in several countries and traced back to an internet message board in the year 2000 by a nobody, Alan Baxter in the UK. John Cleese’s name was wrongly attached to it in 2004 and reposted hundreds of times since in this format here. This is just another one of those times. Check out the Snopes page if you’re interested.

To wit, this is not John Cleese. Sorry for the unintentional trickery.

An old radio interview of me

From 4/25 and 5/9 2006 on the Reasons to Believe broadcast.

Naturalism: A Theory in Crisis?

From Chad MacIntosh.

Unconditional damnation, promise-breaking, and Flew's gardener

Kyle: I love to ask them how they know God loves them. "I am born again, I have God's promises." But if God has no moral problems with damning many (most?) people unconditionally, then I'm certain He would have no moral problems promising things He doesn't follow up on, or giving you a delusory experience, only to damn you later (Calvin's false hope).

VR: This is an issue I have often thought about. At one point in my lengthy exchange with Triablogue I asked what it would be for God not to be good, and Paul said "For God not to keep his promises." But if we were to discover that God had broken a promise, couldn't they just say that it was just my intuitions that God ought not to do that, and that of course God has a good reason for breaking his promise even though we have no idea what it is.

Flew's gardener lurks in the background.

Plantinga on Evolution vs. Naturalism