Robert Adams on Moral Arguments for God

This is a classic essay, and a personal favorite.

Did God the Father Suffer when Jesus was Crucified?

The Church rejected Patripassian Modalistic Monarchianism. But I wonder how many Christians would affirm it if it were explained to them?

Hate the sin and love the sinner

Thanks to David C. for that piece by Corvino on the APA petition. It strikes me as far more rational than anything else I've seen from the pro-petition side. Rather than respond to it as a whole, I would like to make a note of one comment he makes.

I also agree that, while there’s a difference between orientation and conduct, the two cannot be teased apart as easily as some religious conservatives would like. Who we are is intimately connected with what we do—especially when it comes to deep personal relationships. Those who profess to “love the sinner but hate the sin” often distort that deep connection.

I admit that it is difficult to hate the sin and love the sinner. If you oppose the passion of my life, or my deepest and most powerful intimate relationship, how can you claim to love me? I understand the force of these comments.

But in order to have a civilized society, you have to hate the sin and love the sinner. You have to associate with people whose actions you disapprove of and whose beliefs you disagree with heartily. And if you want to have a philosophical society, and not just a secularist echo chamber, you have to be able to have respectful exchanges with people on the other side. You have to be very reluctant to draw that conclusion that says "If that's what you believe, then we just can't talk at all."

Advocates of a Dawkins-style New Atheism seem to be moving in that direction with respect to belief in God. They seem to me to want to remove religious faith from the sphere of serious discourse, to laugh it out of the intellectual marketplace. This is a dangerous course.

I believe that GLBTs make a serious mistake when they shut people out who don't approve of them. There is a dialogue and debate on gay issues that has to take place within communities of faith. It is to their advantage to respect the integrity of those traditions while staking out their own positions in response. This is especially important for GLBTs of faith, and there are many of those. They, too, benefit in the long run if they can learn to hate the sin (which to them would be the sin of thinking homosexuality to be a sin) and love the sinner.

Amputees and the Argument from Evil

I think this person argues a lot like Loftus.

God, Ethics, and Weariness in Well-Doing.

One might imagine getting tired of being moral, if you keep seeing immoral people getting advantages and honest people doing badly. (CEOs who crap out their companies get golden parachutes, honest workers get laid off). Does a theist have a better answer to the thought "why bother being moral, it clearly doesn't work."

Is Patriotism a good thing?

Emma Goldman argues against patriotism. Anyone care to defend it with real arguments? Or is this something your shouldn't have to debate?

Leibniz's Cosmological Argument

Defended by Alexander Pruss. From the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.

Even if you didn't vote for him, you still need to pray for him

He is our president.

The Plantinga-Dennett exchange

It seems like discussion by the pros can be about as acrimonious as it is here in the comboxes of Dangerous Idea.

Reply to Clayton on the APA Petition

Clayton: First, "Whose side are you on" is not an argument. I'm rather proud of the fact that I have managed to disagree with virtually everyone in the four years I've been blogging. I voted no on the Arizona version of California's Prop 8 that was on the ballot last fall. But this is a different type of issue.

The use of the term "discrimination" has some negative connotations which implies some degree of condemnation on the part of the APA. The ordinary context for the use of that term has to do with racial discrimination, where someone is denied opportunties based on a characteristic that is entirely beyond their control and clearly has no relevance to performance. The same is the case in the area of gender. When you get to sexual orientation, it gets a little dicier, since there are some issues about the role of human choice in sexual orientation. But I will set those aside for the time being.

But when you say that a code of conduct is discriminatory, you cross and important line. Unless we've all gone hard determinst here, we do choose our conduct and are responsible for our conduct. So this is a step we have to watch very carefully. It raises a whole host of issues. Are no-drinking codes discrminatory? Are bans on heterosexual premarital sex discriminatory? Are we going to be hearing from NAMBLA attorneys saying that some got denied a job because of being a pedophile?

Christians schools often require their professors to sign statements of faith. I'm sure in many of them you have to sign statements that either entail or virtually entail that you believe that homosexuality is a sin. Is that discriminatory? If that isn't discriminatory, then why would a code of conduct be discrminatory? If you're gay by orientation but you are ready to sign a statement that entails that you believe gay conduct to be sinful, why should you not also be expect to sign a statements that says you won't engage in any of the conduct that you just agreed was sinful?

What is is the evidence that the APA actually took the step of treating a code of conduct as discriminatory? Did everyone who signed onto this step think of it in this way?

The miscegenation parallel has some serious problems. First of all, there is pretty substantial rational consensus on this issue. Given our level of reflection on racial matters, we have reached a point where the community as a whole views this objection as prejudicial.

Second, there opposition to homosexuality has support from the founding documents of Christianity (and of other religious traditions) that is missing from the debate surrounding racial discrimination of miscegenation. In fact, leaders of the civil rights movement were largely Christians who made their appeal from the point of view of a Christian world-view. (It was Rev. King, remember).

There is nothing equivalent to Rom. 1: 26-27 to consider when it comes to the racial issue. But any Christian who thinks seriously about the issue of homosexuality has to at least come to term with passages like this one. I'm not saying "that settles it" by any stretch, but you do have to come to terms with these kinds of passages.

So while the moral discussion of the ethics of racial discrimination and opposition to miscegenation is essentially over, both within and without communities of faith, there is far more discussion and dialogue needed before a similar conclusion can be drawn concerning homosexuality.

The petition wants these schools who have the conduct policy to be asterisked, but given the use of the term "discrimination" would such an asterisk be viewed as a scarlet letter?

Are the laws preventing gays from marrying unjust? They may be. But we don't have a rational consensus on this issue. I have to object strongly to the APA treating the conscientious moral beliefs of serious Christians (and others) who hold that homosexuality is a sin as merely prejudicial. This strikes me as Dawkins-style militant secularism, designed to marginalize Christianity in the academic community in the name of gay rights. It is a refusal to share intellectual space with people you don't agree with.

I'd like to meet the gay person who would have gotten a job at Biola if it weren't for Biola's code of conduct. Maybe there is one. But who could it be?

A Different Kind of Debate

Between a theistic evolutionist (Giberson) and an ID advocate (West). You may need to scroll down a little to find it.

Scientologists are on the defensive about the Travolta tragedy

Perhaps someone who knows more about Scientology than I do can refute or confirm my suspicion that this Scientology spokesperson is lying about Scientology not denying that autism is a disease. I can't see how a Scientologist can possibly believe that autism is a disease.

Roger Overton's The Virtuous Case for Christ

A charge of incoherence against The Chronicles of Narnia

Hat tip: Jim Lippard. I think I'll let other people take a crack at this one before I weigh in.

Andrew T on Inerrancy and Methdological Naturalism

The fact that abandonment of a belief might result in one’s being expelled from one’s institution of education doesn’t mean that the position is indefeasible. Someone who starts doubting aspects of Darwinian biology might have similar fears about their status at their own institutions of learning. I don’t want to uphold the whole “Expelled” claim, but I think there is considerable pressure within many academic biology departments not to stray from Darwinism. Further, people in places like Talbot got positions at places like Talbot because their thinking led them to think that inerrancy was true to begin with. There have been people who have left their Christian academic institutions because they had doubts about the doctrinal commitments of the institution. And sometimes these institutional statements are given fairly liberal interpretations. If you apply at Calvin College the official statements affirm the Canons of Dordt, but I know that some people who teach there are not five-pointers (Plantinga, who taught classes there while at Notre Dame, openly said that the Canons of Dordt may not have gotten things right.)

Further, exactly what is built into inerrancy is a little complicated, and what it takes to be guilty of “denying the Bible” may have more to it than just rejecting some popular hyper-literal interpretation of Genesis. The medievals said “Authority has a nose of wax” and that is, I think, true of inerrancy, although there are occasions where you get explusions, or attempted explusions, from groups like the ETS. However, the attempt to get Open Theists out of the ETS failed a couple of years back. I take it you have read the Chicago Statement and know what the doctrine is actually thought to mean by its contemporary advocates.

There are stronger and weaker versions of MN, just as there are stronger and weaker versions of the commitment to inerrancy. It is a framework believe that the advocate will call into question only in the face of considerable evidential pressure.

One of the things I tried to explain in my long exchanges with the Calvinists was that someone might in fact believe that inerrancy is true, but at the same time hold, based on their moral understanding, that the Calvinistic conception of a reprobating God was morally unacceptable. They might think that the biblical evidence supported anti-Calvinism rather than Calvinism, and therefore accept both inerrancy and anti-Calvinism. However, if presented with sufficient evidence (based on Calvinist exegetical arguments) that inerrancy and anti-Calvinism could not be held simultaneously, they might choose, in the hypothetical situation, to give up inerrancy. It wouldn’t follow from that never really believed in inerrancy in the first place.

Even if Craig would believe in inerrancy regardless of whether there were strong evidence for it or not, it could be that he could say he was confident that there were lots of good arguments and reasons for being and inerrantist, or he could say that it was an article of faith. One's faith that something is true doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to make all sorts of ......stuff up to support one's beliefs.

APA peitition supports discriminatory policy

One of the freedoms that I cherish is the freedom to disapprove. Any conception of tolerance that takes away my freedom to disappove, and to act on my disapproval, is a significant freedom lost.

Even if, at the end of the day, it turns out that homosexuality is morally acceptable, it does not follow that gays and their supporters have the right to punish people who disapprove of them and believe them to be acting immorally.

HT: Francis Beckwith.

A Compliment from a Surprising Source I Hadn't Seen Before

My arch-critic Richard Carrier:

I'm no longer sure. The more see of their arguments and speeches and debates the more cynical I get about their honesty. It becomes hard to maintain once you put all the facts together. So far there is only one apologist I know whom I actually trust as honest: Victor Reppert. I think he tells the truth as he sees it and doesn't make sh*t up or play rhetorical games or get angry when he runs out of arguments. That doesn't mean I consider all others to be dishonest, since most I simply don't know well enough to say either way. But those I do know a lot about (e.g. Habermas, Geivett, Craig, etc.) I just don't trust--or in some cases, actively distrust. Sadly, I've had so many experiences with dishonest Christians I can't afford to give any Christian the benefit of a doubt, so it's fair to say the liars have really hurt their cause.

I don't share his dismal view of my fellow apologists. I really do think that apologetics should be a matter of reflecting as carefully and honestly as possible on the issues, and if your reflections support your religious, then you ought to be able to say so, and why so.

Anyway, I do appreciate responses of this sort to my efforts.

And you thought Christianity was sexist?

From the Hindu Padmapurana:

There is no other god on earth for a woman than her husband. The most excellent of all the good works that she can do is to seek to please him by manifesting perfect obedience to him . Be her husband offensive in manners debauched, immoral, a drunkard, a gambler live in open sin with another woman a wife should always look upon his as her god . She must on the death of her husband , allow herself to be burnt alive on the same funeral pyre then everyone will praise her virtue . In his presence, she ought always to be cheerful and never show signs of sadness or discontent.

Yet, India has had a female prime minister (as has Islamic Pakistan). America has never had a female President.

Some biblical support for gender equality

A Rule for Definitions of Religion

My rule is that a definition of religion has to pass two tests. The definition has to include Buddhism. And it has to exclude the Dallas Cowboys.

Inerrancy and Methodological Naturalism

This is something I put in the combox of the last post, but it need to be treated separately here.

I think there are difficulties with Craig's apologetical operation. I have some fundamental differences in methodology, etc. I'm not comfortable with what he does with his appeal to religious experience and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

However, I fail to see how pre-commitment to biblical inerrancy is any worse than pre-commitment to methodological naturalism. If a naturalistically inclined biblical scholar finds it difficult to account for the founding events of Christianity, well, by golly, my hallucination/legend/whatever-else theory may not fit all the facts as we know them, but at least it's better than admitting a miracle. We can't let a divine foot in the door, now can we?

The "special pleading" charge, as in the case of Russell's analysis of Aquinas, carries with it an implicit classical foundationalism that has been rejected in numerous areas of inquiry. We don't come to the data as a blank slate to be written on, nor should we. We are humans, not Vulcans. And pretending to be a Vulcan when you aren't one is just one more way of being irrational.

Now, a methodological naturalist could treat MN as a defeasible working hypothesis, but an inerrantist could do the same.

Robert Price's attack on WLC's intellectual honesty

Does Craig's appeal to religious experience make his apologetics dishonest? Robert Price seems to think so. But it seems that we could discover truths through different routes. We could reach the conclusion that the Kingdom of Israel existed in ancient times by accepting the inerrancy of Scripture. But we could also reach that same correct conclusion through a purely secular study of history.

I will turn to specific arguments below, but first, a look at two fundamental axioms of Craig's work is in order. The first is what strikes me as a kind of "Double Truth" model. The second is the old red herring attempt to evade the principle of analogy by means of the claim that critics reject miracle stories only because they espouse philosophical naturalism. The second follows from the first. Both commit the fallacy of ad hominem argumentation even while projecting it onto the opponent. Let me note, I have no intention of discounting any of Craig's arguments in advance by trying to reveal their root. Rather, I shall take what seem to me the important ones each in their own right.

William Lane Craig is an employee of Campus Crusade for Christ. Thus it is no surprise that his is what is today euphemistically called "engaged scholarship." Dropping the euphemism, one might call him a PR man for Bill Bright and his various agendas. One thing one cannot expect from party hacks and spin doctors is that they should in any whit vary from their party line. When is the last time you heard a pitchman for some product admit that it might not be the best on the market? When have you heard a spokesman for a political candidate admit that his man might be in the wrong, might have wandered from the truth on this or that point? Do you ever expect to hear a Trekkie admit that the episode about the Galileo 7 was a stinker? Heaven and earth might pass away more easily. And still, there is just the outside chance that Craig might have become convinced through his long years of graduate study that Bill Bright has stumbled upon the inerrant truth, that needle in the haystack of competing world views and theories. But I doubt it. I think he has tipped his hand toward the end of the first chapter of his book Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, "Faith and Reason: How Do I Know Christianity is True?"[2] There he draws a distinction between knowing Christianity is true and showing it is true.

What, then, should be our approach in apologetics? It should be something like this: "My friend, I know Christianity is true because God's Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true. And you can know it, too, because God is knocking at the door of your heart, telling you the same thing. If you are sincerely seeking God, then God will give you assurance that the gospel is true. Now, to try to show you it's true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing to you, that's my fault, not God's. It only shows that I'm a poor apologist, not that the gospel is untrue. Whatever you think of my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately you have to deal, not with arguments, but with God himself." [3]

A little further on he saith, "unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem. Sometimes an unbeliever will throw up an intellectual smoke screen so that he can avoid personal, existential involvement with the gospel."[4]

Craig, then, freely admits his conviction arises from purely subjective factors, in no whit different from the teenage Mormon door-knocker who tells you he knows the Book of Mormon was written by ancient Americans because he has a warm, swelling feeling in his stomach when he asks God if it's true. Certain intellectual questions have to receive certain answers to be consistent with this revivalistic "heart-warming" experience, so Craig knows in advance that, e.g., Strauss and Bultmann must have been wrong. And, like the O.J. Simpson defense team, he will find a way to get from here to there. Craig would repudiate my analogy, but let no one who can read doubt from his words just quoted that, first, his enterprise is completely circular, since it is a subjectivity described arbitrarily in terms of Christian belief (Holy Spirit, etc.) that supposedly grounds Christian belief! And, second, Craig admits the circularity of it.

It almost seems Craig has embraced a variant of the Double Truth theory sometimes ascribed to Averroes, the Aristotelian Islamic philosopher, who showed how one thing might be true if one approached it by the canons of orthodox Islamic theology while something very different might prove true by means of independent philosophical reflection. Can it be that Craig is admitting he holds his faith on purely subjective grounds, but maintaining that he is lucky to discover that the facts, objectively considered, happen to bear out his faith? That, whereas theoretically his faith might not prove true to the facts, in actuality (whew!) it does?

I think he does mean something on this order. But what might first appear to be a double truth appears after all to be a half-truth, for it is obvious from the same quotes that he admits the arguments are ultimately beside the point. If an "unbeliever" doesn't see the cogency of Craig's brand of New Testament criticism (the same thing exactly as his apologetics), it can only be because he has some guilty secret to hide and doesn't want to repent and let Jesus run his life. If one sincerely seeks God, Craig's arguments will mysteriously start looking pretty good to him, like speaking in tongues as the infallible evidence of the infilling of the divine Spirit.

Craig's frank expression to his fellow would-be apologists/evangelists is revealing, more so no doubt than he intends: he tells you to say to the unbeliever that you find these arguments "really convincing," but how can Craig simply take this for granted unless, as I'm sure he does, he knows he is writing to people for whom the cogency of the arguments is a foregone conclusion since they are arguments in behalf of a position his readers are already committed to as an a priori party line?

His is a position that exalts existential decision above rational deliberation, quite ironic in view of his damning Bultmann's supposedly nefarious existentialism! Rational deliberation by itself is not good enough for Bill Craig and Bill Bright because it can never justify a quick decision such as Campus Crusade's booklet The Four Spiritual Laws solicits. I do not mean to make sport of Craig by saying this. No, it is important to see that, so to speak, every one of Craig's scholarly articles on the resurrection implicitly ends with that little decision card for the reader to sign to invite Jesus into his heart as his personal savior. He is not trying to do disinterested historical or exegetical research. He is trying to get folks saved.

Why is this important? His characterization of people who do not accept his apologetical version of the historical Jesus as "unbelievers" who merely cast up smoke screens of insincere cavils functions as a mirror image of his own enterprise. His apparently self-effacing pose, "If my arguments fail to convince, then I must have done a poor job of explaining them" is just a polite way of saying, "You must not have understood me, stupid, or else you'd agree with me." His incredible claim that the same apologetics would sound better coming from somebody else (so why don't you go ahead and believe anyway?) just reveals the whole exercise to be a sham. Craig's apologetic has embraced insincerity as a structural principal. The arguments are offered cynically: "whatever it takes." If they don't work, take your pick between brimstone ("God holds you accountable") and treacle ("God still loves you").

More on slavery and utilitarianism

It could well be that, looking at it over time (when there were no machines to be our slaves) it could be argued that slavery resulted in an overall positive balance of pleasure over pain. The game changed with the development of industrialization, when we could switch to machines as a source of physical energy.

A general rejection of slavery might have to be based on something else than utility.

Is Christian Faith Irrational?

That's not a biblical perspective.

Bertrand Russell accuses Aquinas of Special Pleading

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know m advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given I in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. (H.W.P.p463)

VR: Funny thing. A good deal of present-day philosophy of mind could be accused of the same thing. In many discussions in the philosophy of mind materialism is a base assumption that is not to be questioned, and the debate concerns what version of materialism is true.

Student expectations cause grade disputes

According to this New York Times article.

Some old lecture notes on Christianity

•The Founding of Christianity II
•Paul, the Judaizers, and the New Testament
•I. Jesus’ apocalypticism
A.Jesus did teach about an impending final judgment.
B.Some passages suggest that he predicted his own return within the lifetimes of those present. This would cause some theological problems because he didn’t meet that timetable.
C.He viewed his kingdom as not of this world, and so was not a political messiah.
•II. Pentecost
A. The earliest disciples gathered in an upper room where they began to preach the message of Christ’s resurrection, and when they did the book of Acts records that people could understand it in their own language.
•III. The Jerusalem Church
A.The Jerusalem church was led by James, the brother of Jesus. It was a strong influence for 40 years but died out with the destruction of Temple of Jerusalem.
B.The non-Jewish, Greek-speaking branch of early Christianity began spreading throughout the Roman Empire.
•IV. Paul and the Mission to the Gentiles
A.Originally named Saul, Paul was a Roman Citizen, a fluent Greek speaker, and a scholar of Judaism.
B.He was at first virulently opposed to the early “Jesus Movement,” and according to Acts, supported the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen.
C.While en route to persecuting more Christians on the road to Damascus, he had an experience of the Risen Christ which convinced him to become a Christian and to spread Christianity to non-Jews.
•V. Paul and the Gentiles
A.Despite his commitment to the Gentile mission, he always went to the Jewish synagogue first, on only when rejected there, went to the Gentiles.
B.Christians of Jewish origin, called the Judaizers, insisted that Gentile Christians follow the Jewish law. In particular, they insisted that all the males be circumcised. Paul insisted that faith in Christ, not obedience to the Jewish law, was what was sufficient for salvation, and that therefore Gentile converts did not have to be circumcised. In his mind, circumcision was replaced by baptism as the entry ritual, and rightness with God did not require ritual correctness in any event.
•VI. A Turning Point
A.This is the first major turning point in Jewish history. Had Paul’s opponents prevailed, Christianity would probably have remained nothing more than a Jewish sect.
B.Paul maintained that if we were to go by the Jewish Law, all are sinners and condemned for their wrongdoing. We need not strict observance but redemption from our sinful nature. Accepting God’s righteousness in Christ, not our own righteousness, is what puts us into right relationship with God.
•VII. So should we just party hearty?
A.Paul says no. The Christ who saves us also inspires us to lead a moral life, and to behave in a way that brings honor to the Gospel.
B.Jesus was proof of God’s love for humanity, especially demonstrated by Christ’s death on the cross for our sins.
C.Sin had brought to humans the punishment of death, but Jesus’ death is the atonement for human sins and Jesus’ return to life shows that eternal life in right relationship with God can be given to humans who have the Spirit of God in them.
D.For Paul, Christ was a cosmic figure who was pre-existent, and who reunites God and human creation.
•VIII. The New Testament
A.The Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. (Not John, Paul, George and Ringo).
B.Acts of the Apostles.
C.The Epistles
D.The Book of Revelation.
•IX. The Gospels
A.Portraits of the life of Jesus. Not biographies in the strict sense. The first three are called the Synoptic Gospels.
1. Matthew was written to a Jewish audience, and portrays Christ as the new Moses and as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy.
2. Mark is the shortest Gospel, and focuses on the deeds, not the words of Jesus.
3. Luke contains many miracles, contains many portraits of women, emphasizes compassion for the poor and the oppressed.
4. The Gospel of John was written somewhat later. Shows a struggle between light and darkness. Portrays Jesus as the incarnation of God, the divine made visible in human form.
•X. The Acts of the Apostles
A.Part of a two-volume work by Luke whose first volume was the Gospel of Luke.
B.Portrays the early expansion of Christianity, culminating in Paul’s being taken to Rome to stand before Caesar.
C.Also contains a considerable miraculous element.
D.Some parts of it are remarkably well-attested by archaeology, in that it indicates correctly what types of governmental institutions existed in various cities and gives other details about the places it mentions which have been confirmed by archaeology.
•XI. Epistles
A.Many attributed to Paul, though some also to John, Peter, James and Jude.
B.Authorship of some of them is open to dispute.
C.Focus on belief, morality, and church order. The epistle to the Romans lays out Paul’s understanding of what Christ does for humans, and how Christ’s righteousness relates to the Jewish law. The Corinthian epistles deal with problems in the new Christian churches, and Galatians is Paul’s rebuttal to those who had insisted that Gentile Christian converts be circumcised.
•XII. Revelation
A.A series of visions that shows Christ’s final triumph over evil.
B.Highly symbolic language employed that would probably be understood by its readers but not by the Roman authorities, should they get a hold of the book.
C.The New Jerusalem descends from heaven and is ruled over by Jesus, who appears as a lamb. The evildoers are cast into the lake of everlasting fire.
D.Was very influential in Christian art and literature, such as the Divine Comedy by Dante and Paradise Lost by Milton.

Wikipedia's version of the Argument from Reason

(1) For an assertion to be capable of truth or falsehood it must come from a rational source (see explanation below).
(2) No merely physical material or combination of merely physical materials constitute a rational source.
(3) Therefore, no assertion that is true or false can come from a merely physical source.
(4) The assertions of human minds are capable of truth or falsehood
Conclusion: Therefore, human minds are not a merely physical source (see explanation below).
The argument for the existence of God holds:
(5) A being requires a rational process to assess the truth or falsehood of a claim (hereinafter, to be convinced by argument).
(6) Therefore, if humans are able to be convinced by argument, their reasoning processes must have a rational source.
(7) Therefore, considering element two above, if humans are able to be convinced by argument, their reasoning processes must have a non-physical (as well as rational) source.
(8) Rationality cannot arise out of non-rationality. That is, no arrangement of non-rational materials creates a rational thing.
(9) No being that begins to exist can be rational except through reliance, ultimately, on a rational being that did not begin to exist. That is, rationality does not arise spontaneously from out of nothing but only from another rationality.
(10) All humans began to exist at some point in time.
(11) Therefore, if humans are able to be convinced by argument, there must be a necessary and rational being on which their rationality ultimately relies.
Conclusion: This being we call God.

The Anselmian argument for God

This is the wikipedia page on the OA.
Anselm's second argument
Anselm in his Proslogion 3 made another a priori argument for God, this time based on the idea of necessary existence. He claimed that, if God is that than which no greater can be conceived, it is better to be necessary than contingent; therefore, God must be necessary. To sum up:
1. God is the entity than which nothing greater can be thought.
2. It is greater to be necessary than not.
3. God must therefore be necessary.
4. Hence, God exists necessarily.
In Chapter 2 of “The Existence of Nature and God” Anslem′s Argument for the Existence of God is as follows:
1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.
2. It is greater to exist in reality and in the understanding than just in understanding.
3. Therefore, God exists in reality

Why I've always hated the Ontological Argument

Consider this dialogue about the modal ontological argument.
T: Surely, you think it's possible that there is a God, surely. I mean, maybe he exists, doncha think. I mean, you aren't one of those dogmatic atheists, are you.
A: Yes, of course, I admit that it's possible that God exists.
T: Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha! Since the existence of God is either necessarily true or necessarily false, the S5 axiom says that if a necessary truth claim is possibly true, it must be necessarily true. Since you have admitted that God possibly exists, you must therefore conclude that God necessarily exists!!!
A: Uh, could we maybe restrict the accessibility relation or something?

Bill Vallicella is dealing with an atheist argument on his site with much the same problems.

The other title I had in mind for my book

Was "If the Watchmaker were Really Blind, Dawkins Wouldn't Know It."

I think I chose the right title.

An explanation of the principle of charity

Some dialogue on Eastern religions at Richard Dawkins' site

Are religions like Buddhism and Hinduism unacceptable to someone who believes as Dawkins does? Atheists debate that issue here.

Manata Responds to My Post on Islam and Calvinism

Sad to say, we don't have a lot to disagree about with respect to the particular points relating to this exchange.

I think this site is serious

Kinder, Kirche, Kuche.

Something on Aristotle's concept of God

Stanford Encyclopedia Article on Moral Arguments for Theism

Slavery and Utilitarianism

Let's say that we figure out a plan for enslaving 10% of the population. If we do that, then each of the other 90% will receive 10 units of happiness that they would not otherwise have. The slave will, of course, lose 50 units of happiness. However, 10 units of happiness spread of 9 people is 90 units of additional happiness, which outweighs the 50 units of happiness lost by the slave. Therefore, based on utilitarianism, we have a justification for slavery.

Now, these calculations aren't accurate. But we are left with this question: is this the real reason that we oppose slavery. Because the pain of the slaves outweighs the pleasure of the masters? If utilitarianism is correct, then that must be our reason.

Howard Robinson's Stanford Entry on Dualism

Carrier's Atheistic Cosmological Argument

From the Carrier-Wanchick debate, which I am linking to .

Carrier's Atheistic Cosmological Argument from his Debate with Wanchick.

Atheistic Cosmological Argument (ACA)
The universe is almost entirely lethal to life. By far, most of existence is a radiation-filled vacuum, and there are easily a trillion times more dead worlds than life-bearing planets. Life is clearly an extremely rare and unusual product of the universe. We also know it took the universe billions of years to finally produce any life anywhere, and then only an extremely simple single-celled life form. Then it took billions more years of a long, meandering and often catastrophically failing process of evolutionary trial-and-error to finally produce human beings. CN explains this state of affairs better than BT, since this state of affairs is highly probable on CN but not particularly probable on BT.
Even if a God might have some reason to build a universe this way, he had many other ways he could have chosen (like the way the Bible literally depicts and early Christians believed), and some make more sense on BT (a God has no need of a universe so old or big, for example). But we know of only one way CN could produce human beings: pretty much the way they were, with vast ages of unguided trial-and-error spanning across vast stretches of life-killing space. For example, if CN, then (a) life could only be an accidental byproduct of the organization of the universe, but (b) the only way life could then exist is if the universe were so incredibly old and big that something as improbable as the origin of life would be possible, yet (c) that is exactly the universe we find ourselves in. We have no comparably good explanation for why the universe would be so old and big on BT, or for many other peculiar features of our universe. Therefore, CN is a good explanation for why we observe what we do, while BT is not.

Formally:
P21: If CN is true, the nature and scale of the universe, and the history of life that we actually observe, is the only possible way we could exist that we know of, and is therefore what we would expect to observe.
P22: If BT is true, the nature and scale of the universe, and the history of life that we actually observe, is one of countless possible ways we could exist that we know of, including some that make more sense, and is therefore not what we would expect.
C10: Therefore, per logicum, CN explains what we observe better than BT.

Parody argument:
1. I crossed the street today.
2. If naturalism is true, then the only way I can do that is by walking.
3. If God exists, then there are many ways I can get across the street besides walking, because, for example, God could cause me to apparate across the street Harry Potter style.
4. Therefore, we have evidence that God does not exist, based on the fact that I walked across the street today.

Reply to Clayton on Russell

Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. (It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.) That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have; but, apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity. I may say that when I was a young man and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.

Clayton says: I don't see that Russell failed to take account of this point: If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.You say, "Cosmological arguments always tell you what needs a cause. Contingent things. Things that begin to exist". He doesn't think that cosmological arguments show both that all contingent things need causes _and_ the world is such a contingent thing. He doesn't think that cosmological arguments show that everything that has a beginning needs a cause _and_ the world had a beginning. Now, you might disagree with _this_ point, but I don't think Russell is guilty of quite the strawman you've suggested.

But it seems to me that there are attempts on the table (Russell could have been forgiven for not knowing about the Kalam argument, but the Thomistic argument is another matter) that try to point to a characteristic that the physical world possesses, namely contingency, which God does not possess, such that the world needs a cause and God does not. These attempts may fail, but Russell surely knew that they existed, and nevertheless he presents a one-parapraph refutation of all cosmological arguments that simply presumes that all attempts like this fail. In the process he makes theists look really retarded, because it looks as if advocates of these arguments simply had to be reminded of the simple point that James Mill made to his son John Stuart Mill, and the cosmological argument is a cooked goose. In fact a good deal of the impact of the paragraph has to do with not only that the argument can be refuted, but that this is something that can be done on one's lunch break.

I suppose you can say that here Russell is giving us the "short version" of an argument that can be defended at greater length. And of course lots of people do that sort of thing. You might think that in fact the universe has no cause-requiring properties that God would not equally possess. But in any event he makes it look easy, when it really isn't.

Islam and Calvinism

According to the linked site.

Beyond gaining a better understanding of Islam it is astounding to me how many of the verses from the Qur’an and how many of arguments Muslim theologians and commentaries use sound identical to those used by Calvinists to rationalize the doctrine of predestination. My guess is that if you removed the flowery language and substituted certain words such as Allah in many of the quotes from the Qur’an or Muslim commentaries with the word God that the statements would be indistinguishable from statements on doctrine from not just the Reformers of John Calvin’s day but also indistinguishable from those in modern Reformed Theology like John Piper, R.C. Sproul and others.



I am not sure of the value of this line of argumentation in a critique of Calvinism, however. First, a similarity to something is Islam is not an automatic problem. Muslims do get some things right. Secondly, the Calvinist responses here seem to involve theological voluntarism, which is certainly a natural inference from some things Reformed theologian say, but I don't think is essential to Calvinism. I did say at some points in my exchanges with Calvinists a few months back that I thought that the theodicy moves they were making could as easily be made on behalf of Islam as well as on behalf of Christianity.



The comparisons are interesting in their own right, however.

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.

William Lane Craig will debate Richard Carrier

This should be really interesting.

The Secular Outpost: Stupid Philosopher Tricks

Keith Parsons thinks philosophers have said a lot of ridiculous things. I think in a lot of cases there is method in their madness even if, at the end of the day, we conclude that there was madness in their method.

The Secular Outpost: Stupid Philosopher Tricks

Is Morality Hard or Easy?

This is, or course, an echo of the chapter in Lewis's Mere Christianity where he asks, "Is Christianity Hard Or Easy?" I put this question on the discussion board for my ethics class, and got three responses, all agreeing that morality is easy, at least for them.

I find this a little stunning.

At least he's not gay

Congressman Pete Stark is a out-of-the-closet atheist in congress. My title is based on one of the comments.

Exclusivism, Inclusivism, Pluralism

Explaining these three positions.

A Wikipedia entry on....me??

Meaning of life apologetics and the Keith Parsons rebuttal

Here is an account of a new debate by Bill Craig in Canada. One thing to notice about this debate, however, is that Craig is defending a proposition here about which he and Richard Dawkins profoundly agree. Both of them, emphatically, think the question of God is enormously important!! While the idea that the question of God doesn't matter is popular in the general public, there is something a bit strange in an atheist arguing the negative side of that issue.

Craig says: But I noticed that in the debate I was watching, he actually said exactly what I was going to argue that evening, namely, that if there is no God, then “the universe is devoid of any absolute meaning or moral sense.” I decided to camp on that point and added his quotation to the end of my opening speech.

A couple of points. First, while I think the question of God is profoundly important, and I do think that the type of meaning we might find in life is going to differ whether we are theists or atheists, I question whether these sorts of considerations are as devastating to atheism as Craig makes them sound. Keith Parsons, in his debate with Craig and in his essay on misconceptions of atheism, suggests a line of defense against this "meaning of life apologetics" that I have yet to see answered effectively.

The first point is that many atheists lead what they consider to be meaningful lives. They have friendships and other close personal relationship, they pursue the truth, they watch football games and eat pizza, etc. The meaning of life apologist then answers that this isn't "absolute" or "ultimate" meaning. The second point in the Keith Parsons rebuttal is to point out that this need for "absolute" or "ultimate" meaning is one that is imposed by a theistic or especially Christian world-view, and need not be accepted by an atheist. We can, to use C. S. Lewis's phrase "rub along quite well" without it. The typical next step in meaning of life apologetics is to bring out various nonbelievers who bewail the lack of meaning in life without God. Russell's "firm foundation of unyielding despair" is a typical one that Craig actually quoted in his debate with Parsons; a few quotes from existentialists like Sartre and Camus (the most important philosophical problem is the question of suicide) will do the trick also. But here Parsons can (and did) point out that the Russell quote is taken out of context if viewed from the perspective of the philosopher's total life, and the emotional reactions of people like Camus are surely not logically necessary for atheists, in fact, as Eric Koski suggested to me in correspondence, these reactions may be temper tantrums on the part of people who long for a lost faith, but hardly normative for atheists in general.

OK, so where does the Meaning of Life Apologetic go from here, in response to the Keith Parsons rebuttal? Maybe something like the Lewis-style argument from desire might be tried at this point. But I am claiming that, so far as I can tell, the Meaning of Life Apologetic as developed by Craig doesn't seem to me to have a good answer to the Keith Parsons rebuttal. Unless there is something I missed in Craig.

Hasker on Scientific Naturalism

But science as a total worldview—the idea that science can tell us everything there is to know about what reality consists of, enjoys no such overwhelming support. This worldview, (often termed scientific naturalism) is just one theory amongst others and is no more capable of being “proved to all reasonable people” than are religious belief systems. To claim that the strong support enjoyed by, say, the periodic table of the elements transfers to scientific naturalism as a worldview is highly confused if not deliberately misleading.



From Peterson, Basinger, Reichenbach and Hasker, Reason and Religious Belief 4th ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) p. 57.



I happen to know that Hasker wrote this.

The Case Against Grad School

This author thinks that, for most people, graduate work in the humanities is a bad idea, and certainly a bad career move.

A critique of my defense of critical rationalism

From a critical analysis of my book by Kyler Kuehn:

After dispensing with faulty understandings of Lewis’s apologetic stance, Reppert broadens the scope of his inquiry to deal with more general epistemic issues, in order to show where Lewis’s apologetic position fits within the spectrum of ideas. The first view described is fideism, which is comparable to the Presuppositional view of epistemology (and apologetics) held by Van Til, Bahnsen, Frame, and others. As an example of this view, Reppert quotes the well-known televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who opines (p. 29), “Man can’t use his mind to know the truth; if he uses his mind he just comes up with something stupid like the theory of evolution”. This captures the essence of fideism, which requires that one’s ultimate religious questions are not open to critical analysis by one’s mental faculties. The problems with mutually conflicting fideistic claims are obvious, and Reppert does not spill any additional ink reviewing them. Instead, moving on to strong rationalism, he describes the other extreme: the belief that our rational faculties are the sole arbiter of truth claims, so that claims that cannot be verified logically or empirically do not warrant our belief. Bertrand Russell is given as a paragon of strong rationalist beliefs, in that he explains away beliefs in the supernatural (and especially God) as the product of irrational fears. Interestingly, Reppert points out that claims to holding a “monopoly on rationality” are expressed on the theistic side as well, as shown by Josh McDowell’s statement in Evidence that Demands a Verdict that “a rejection of Christianity is usually not so much of the ‘mind’ as of the will, not so much ‘I can’t’ but ‘I won’t’”.

Now there are two main problems with such a view. The first is that at the very least a de facto, operational answer is given to the problem of the criterion by every single thinking, observing being. Either one begins with experiential forms of knowledge and one builds a worldview (including a definition of knowledge) from that starting point, or one posits logically necessary criteria for what constitutes knowledge, and then one seeks experiences and observations that fulfill such criteria. Unfortunately for Reppert, his view proves too much; if both options that are able to solve the dilemma of the criterion are disallowed, then it is not the case that definitions of knowledge are up for grabs, with radically different worldviews resulting in internally “rational” beliefs. Rather, no view of knowledge whatsoever is valid! Only radical skepticism denies in principle the attainability of knowledge; however, his entire purpose for writing is that he believes that true and rationally justified beliefs (i.e. knowledge) are attainable. And it is important for our later considerations to point out that there is a sense in which even those who doubt the validity of knowledge in general make practical use of (even tentatively held) beliefs—though they would not call such a thing “knowledge”, of course.

The second problem with Reppert’s analysis of critical rationalism is that he vastly overestimates the necessity of “neutral” ground from which to analyze competing truth claims. While it is true that no finite being can attain an unbiased “view from nowhere”, Reppert errs when he thinks such a view is necessary for clearly discerning the truth in any given situation. Yes, psychological effects can influence one’s beliefs, but they do not utterly overturn and negate one’s innate rational capabilities (once again, Reppert ironically appears to be attacking one of the foundational pillars of his argument from reason—namely, that truth actually exists and is knowable by humans). What is necessary, then, is not “neutral” ground, but instead common ground between disputants in any argument. In an adversarial situation, such as within a court of law, both the prosecution and the defense have a bias in that they want their own position to be true, but they have a mutually agreed upon framework within which to present their respective arguments. Indeed, the common presumption is that our legal system works precisely because both sides are biased towards their own view, and will thus work with all possible skill to prove their position true and their intellectual opponent’s position false. A disinterested defense attorney leads not to justice, but to a mistrial!

Since Reppert merely requires that his position be defensible given his assumptions, we will see that his argument, while valid, will not ultimately prove convincing to skeptics unless the further step is made to justify the premises of his arguments. This also colors his view of Lewis’s arguments, such that he seeks to explain away Lewis’s more confrontational statements as not being truly representative of his actual views. But if Reppert’s definition of critical rationalism lacks the clarity to distinguish between rationally acceptable arguments (valid solely within one’s framework) and rationally compelling arguments (that hold across all reasonable frameworks), then he will of course be at a loss to fit Lewis’s bold claims of exclusive rationality into a more tentative “critical rationalist” stance. But this is only a definitional problem for Reppert, not a consistency problem for Lewis.

This is a really nice powerpoint on Hume on Miracles

By Wes Morriston. Doesn't prove anything one way of the other (doesn't try to, really) but lays out the issues really nicely.

Wikipedia on Christian Faith

Chernikov replies to Koski, not Parsons

People believe the damnedest things.

Was it a fumble?

I promised I would not blame the game's result on the officiating. But it was pretty obviously an incomplete pass. Of course, all that would have resulted in was a chance for a Hail Mary in the end zone. Warner would just have to throw it into coverage and hope that Larry or Anquan came down with it. Two costly plays: the pick-6 at the goal line by Harrison just before half, and Aaron Francisco falling down and allowing the 46-yard Santonio Holmes catch.

On the other hand, the game with the Eagles could have gone the other way as well. The Panthers were not a championship caiber team, but the Eagles, the Cardinals and the Steelers were all championship caliber teams. The scoring history in the Eagles game and the Steelers game was remarkably similar, with the Cardinals in reversed roles.

Pittsburgh Steelers 27, Arizona Cardinals 23

The good news is that this is one of history's great Super Bowls. The bad news is, the Cardinals lost.

Reply to Parsons in the explanation of religious belief

Keith Parsons replied to my genetic fallacy discussion on the Secular Outpost.

Vic, thanks loads for your reply. I do not think that we have a theory that shows that most people would believe in the Judeo-Christian God. I don't know of any theory, except maybe Plantinga's sensus divinitatis, that says that belief in God is hardwired. However, there is much evidence that belief in a god or gods is. Here is a sample of recent books adducing such evidence: The "God" Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper, Faces in the Clouds, by Stewart Guthrie, Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson, In Gods we Trust, by Scott Atran, The Evolution of Morality and Religion, by Donald M. Broom, Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer, and Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett (We are a LONG way beyond the old Freudian and Marxist explanations). Each of the theories presented in these books is what I call a Biological Belief Theory (BBT). Each BBT adduces vast amounts of information from neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and anthropology to argue that humans have a natural proclivity towards belief in gods. No BBT holds that belief in a specific god, Zeus, Marduk, or Yahweh, for instance, is "hardwired." All of these writers recognize that specific gods are social constructs, the products of particular cultures and historical contingencies and subject to historical development. But they argue that culture does not write on a blank slate. God myths are avidly invented, promulgated, and believed because they satisfy a natural yearning and give a specific shape to innate but inchoate urgings. Vic, you say that explaining God is a tougher case than Hobbits. We know how Hobbits were made up, but we cannot say so clearly how God was made up. But it seems that we can. Karen Armstrong's A History of God recounts in considerable detail how a small-time, truculent tribal god of a minor pastoral people became the one universal God of the later prophets, and then the triune God of Christianity, and then the ferociously unitary Allah of Islam, and, eventually, the watchmaker God of the Enlightenment. Armstrong explains cogently how these evolving concepts of God were responses to the spiritual needs and cultural exegincies of particular times and places. Of course, just one person thought up Hobbits (though, of course, Tolkien was drawing upon a vast history of folklore about "little people"), and no one person made up God. But the principle is the same. If we know that an idea was a product of myth and folklore(and, prima face, this seems to be the case with Yahweh just as much as for Zeus, Odin, or Quetzalcoatl), and if we know that people will be inclined to invent, promulgate, and believe such myths whether they are true or not, then, absent compelling contrary evidence, it is rational to discount such ideas. Further, as I argued, such discounting does not commit the genetic fallacy.Vic, you say that wanting to believe in God was for you a major obstacle to belief. Knowing you as a person of exceptional honesty and intellectual integrity, I'll take you at your word. However, I also know how easy it is for our introspective self-reports to be wrong, however honest our self-scrutiny is. For instance, over the years I have heard many people preface a statement of belief (in God, ESP, UFO's, conspiracy theories, monsters, or what have you) with the claim that they started off as skeptics but were brought around by "overwhelming evidence." Then, when you look at the evidence, and find it to be very underwhelming, you have to conclude that their initial skepticism did not run nearly so deep as it subjectively seemed to them. So, we can easily be wrong about what we perceive as our real, deep-down desires and motivations. Tell me, do you really think that, had you been born Vijay instead of Victor, and if you were from Bangalore rather than Phoenix, AZ, that you would not now be as devoted to Brahma as you are to God?

Keith: First of all, I think the Hobbit example is flawed because almost no Tolkien readers have the slightest inclination to be realists about hobbits, since the words “fantasy fiction” are right on the cover of the book. Maybe the case of Tim, who sees snakes in his room after a long drinking binge, might be better. We have good reason to suppose that his room contains no snakes, and we can explain how someone having consumed as much alcohol as he has consumed would come to hold such beliefs. Here, however, you are typically going to find people in the room who see no snakes, etc. In short there will be a body of evidence undermining the claim that there are snakes in Tim’s bedroom.

Do we have anything like this with respect to religious beliefs? I think it is difficult. Now IF we have assessed the overall evidence for theism as pretty poor, in much the way that the others of us in Tim’s room who see no snakes assess the evidence negatively, then we might try to figure out how Tim got his belief that there were snakes in the room. But presumably you are offering these psychological explanations as a piece of atheological evidence itself, as a reason to reject belief in God that stands independent of such arguments as the argument from evil. Now I do suppose that if we knew enough about alcohol and its effects on the brain we could dismiss claims of that sort even in the absence of evidence against the claim itself, simply on the grounds that it was produced by an unreliable belief-producing mechanism.

But the challenge for this argument is going to be daunting. You have to remember, first, that if the Christian God really does exist, it is highly likely that God would make us in such a way that our true needs are met by a knowledge of, and relation to him.

And let’s look at what we have to explain. First of all, you must explain the proclivity to think in terms of deities, and to produce religious explanations. Then you have to explain how a society moved from polytheism to monotheism. Then you have to explain how, right from the midst of a people whose whole history had been a battle for monotheism, someone came along who claimed to be the Incarnate God and got a significant enough following to spread belief in him throughout the Roman Empire, resulting in a monotheistic God that is nevertheless triune. And then you have to explain the fact that people at the highest levels in science and philosophy still think the evidence sufficient for belief in this triune God. These are four separate steps, and they all need to be accounted for.

For the sake of this discussion, I will grant that if naturalism is true human beings can be expected to produce supernaturalist beliefs. When we get to the second and third steps, I think the naturalist is going to run into problems. Parsons writes:

Karen Armstrong's A History of God recounts in considerable detail how a small-time, truculent tribal god of a minor pastoral people became the one universal God of the later prophets, and then the triune God of Christianity, and then the ferociously unitary Allah of Islam, and, eventually, the watchmaker God of the Enlightenment. Armstrong explains cogently how these evolving concepts of God were responses to the spiritual needs and cultural exigencies of particular times and places.

Really now! I haven’t read Armstrong, but let me point out that this job is a going to be a tough one. Let me present an analogy. The Arizona Cardinals are about to play in their first Super Bowl tomorrow. I do not know whether they will win, as I hope, or whether the Pittsburgh Steelers will win, as Keith hopes. But let’s concern ourselves with how we might explain the Cardinals’ playoff victories to date, the three triumphs over the Atlanta Falcons, the Carolina Panthers, and the Philadelphia Eagles. Now you can talk, if you want, about the stellar passing of Kurt Warner, the opportunistic defense and the enormously positive turnover ratio, the almost superhuman catches of Larry Fitzgerald, the resurgence of the Cardinals’ running game, and their enormous success in shutting down some pretty effective running backs. But if you take all of these things and say that, with them, they were the inevitable NFC Champions, you would be overlooking the fact that this franchise had been NFL doormats since the mid 1970s, that they had lost several games toward the end of the season, some by large margins, and that they were not favored to win any of the playoff games they eventually did win. In short, you have to take seriously what the Cardinals were up against in this playoff run if your explanation of their success is to have any credibility. That is why Cardinal fans who say they knew all year that this would happen are, well, blowing hot air out of some undignified places.

What does this have to do with the explanation of religious belief? Surely I am not following the example of our quarterback in explaining these victories theologically. No, all I am saying is that if you are going to explain the emergence of such developments as Western theism, you had better be aware of the forces arrayed against this development.

If it were perfectly natural for polytheists to turn to monotheism, why didn’t it happen in Greece, in Rome, in Moab, in Babylonia, in Assyria, in Syria, amongst the Hittites, or the Scythians, or in India (where there was some development, but not classical monotheism) in China, or in Egypt? No, your explanation has to explain how it happened in Israel and why it didn’t happen elsewhere. And if we look at the history of Israel, we find that the supporters of Hebrew monotheism had to fight a battle for it against what seemed like the forces of gravity dragging them back in to the polytheism of the other nations. The Golden Calf, Baal, and a host of other deities beckoned the ancient Hebrews away from Yahweh, and for the most part that gravitational power sucked them in. All of the kings of Israel and most of the kings of Judah were idol-worshippers. Remember any military defeat in that time was typically explained as the god of the victorious nation beating the god of the defeated nation. Seeing how Yahwism could hang on in that kind of an atmosphere is tougher than seeing how the Cardinals pulled off three straight playoff upsets and made it to the Super Bowl. The religion of Yahweh was tougher and more demanding, and did not promise the worshipper any magical power over his deity. If there had been no Babylonian captivity followed by an opportunity for those who held on to monotheism in the face of captivity (amazing given what I said about beliefs regarding military defeats) to return to the homeland, the belief in the Hebrew God would have died out as surely as belief in the gods of Moab did, or the gods of Assyria and Babylonia.

And Egypt? Remember King Tut? He succeeded Pharaoh Iknaton, the innovative Pharaoh who introduced monotheism. But only for his reign. Young King Tut brought the force of gravity back to Egypt, he reinstituted the ancient Egyptian polytheistic God and got rid of Iknaton's little experiment with monotheism.

And then, once that is in place, we now have to tell the story of Jesus. How in the world does someone arise in the very bastion of monotheism who claims to be God incarnate, and who ends up being regarded as the second person of a Triune but still monotheistic God? First, someone has to make some remarkable claims about himself while at the same time having the kind of profound moral insight sufficient to provide him with a following. I think this is where the Liar, Lunatic or Lord argument has its proper place. I think this is difficult to explain. But that’s not all. Then Jesus has to be crucified, dead, buried, and resurrection claims now have to emerge. Did the disciples hallucinate? And then who else had to hallucinate? Saul of Tarsus? Without him the message of Jesus never makes it out to the Gentiles. I’m not exactly saying that it’s too all too improbable to be false (well, I actually do think this), but the idea that this is all easy to explain in terms of human needs and psychological impulses is crazier than saying that the Cardinals were inevitable NFC champions from the first snap of the 2008 season.

And then we have to explain how people like Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Robert Adams, Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, etc. come to look at the reasons for believing in the Christian God and find it good. Oh yeah, then there’s that Reppert guy, too. Now apart form actually refuting their arguments, I don’t see how you can criticize their beliefs. Yes, these people could have misevaluated the evidence. But I don’t see how a psychological explanation can possibly be a good argument against their convictions. Yes, there are possible psychological explanations, but that is all I will grant. I could give, just as easily, possible psychological explanation for the unbelief of Keith Parsons or any other atheist. Paul Vitz offers psychological explanations for atheism. I don’t think any psychological theory is deep enough and complex enough to be complete, in the absence of independent reasons to accept or reject religious belief.

I conclude, therefore, that the psychological explanation of religious belief fails to constitue a reason to reject religious belief.

Fox will do third Narnia film

Disney out, Fox in for Narnia.

Some Salsa That Will Put You In Touch With the Divine

A little bit of this on your Mexican food and you'll start seeing Jesus in your burritos.

From Norwood Russell Hanson's What I Don't Believe

Instead of spelling galaxies, how about this one? I changed the name at the end, however.

Suppose . . . that on next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world are knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls; leaves drop from trees; the earth heaves and buckles; buildings topple and towers tumble; the sky is ablaze with an eerie silvery light. Just then, as all the people of the earth look up, the heavens open - the clouds pull apart - revealing an unbelievably immense and radiant Zeus-like figure, towering above us like a hundred Everests. He frowns darkly as lightening plays across the features of his Michelangeloid face. He then points down - at me! - and exclaims for every man, woman, and child to hear, " I have had quite enough of your too-clever logic-chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured Richard Dawkins, that I do most certainly exist!"

The case for moral objectivity

A redated post.

I. The argument from Implied Practice

1. If ethics is subjective, then we should expect people to recognize that actions which they are inclined to think of as "wrong" are only wrong from their point of view.
2. But invariably, people view wrongs against themselves as actions that are really wrong.
3. Therefore moral values are objective and not subjective.

II. The argument from Underlying Moral Consensus:
1. If morality were a subjective matter, we would expect to find sizable differences of fundamental principles amongst moral codes.
2. But there is, in general, agreement concerning fundamental principles amongst moral codes.
3. Therefore, morality is objective rather than subjective.

III. The argument from reformers:
1. If moral values are subjective, then moral codes cannot improve, since there is no objective standard by which to judge one code better than another.
2. But the work of people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks shows that moral codes can be made more just.
3. Therefore, moral values are objective rather than subjective.

IV. The argument from clear cases
1. If moral values are subjective, then even in clear cases of wrongness, we have to say that it is neither true nor false that an action was wrong.
2. But consider the case of someone inviting another person over for dinner, shoving that person into the oven, and then eating them as dinner. (Or the Holocaust, etc.)
3. Therefore, moral values are objective rather than subjective.

V. The argument from human rights.
1. If moral values are subjective, then there are no inalienable human rights. (A right in a moral obligation on the part of someone not to do something to you. If I have the right to free speech, that means someone has the obligation not to forcibly shut me up).
2. There are inalienable human rights.
3. Therefore, moral values are objective and not subjective.

Any missing argument here?

John Depoe's argument against materialism

An interesting development of the AFR by a much-missed former denizen of the blogosphere.

Ayer's ethical emotivism

A link discussing A. J. Ayer's emotive theory of ethics.

A 2008 edition of the Lexicon

Daniel Dennett's greatest work.

What do we mean by faith? And Where does it come in?

Without a clear idea of what we mean by faith, it could be all sorts of different things. Does faith mean belief absent any evidence, or belief in the face of a mountain of counter-evidence? Then of course the Muslim can have faith, and the Mormon can have faith, and the Catholic can have faith, and the Protestant can have faith, and the person who believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Pastafarians) can have faith.

Some people like to quote the Hebrews passage, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Without further explanation, that doesn't do much for us.

Let me quote C. S. Lewis: "I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in."

So what is faith, and what is the point where it does come in?

Against attempts to reconcile science and religion

By Jerry Coyne. HT: Eric Koski.

Kant's moral argument for God

A redated post. The link it to a philosophy of religion information site.

Suppose you have been trying to decide whether to believe in God or not and you can't figure it out. The philosopher Immanuel Kant thought that we are all in that situation. Kant argued that we must then choose the beliefs that will best facilitate our efforts to be moral persons, and he argued that a world-view with an infinite future ahead of us, a world-view where our choices are really up to us, and a world-view that sees the world governed by a moral God is preferable from that standpoint that a world-view where we die and rot, where the scales of justice are not balanced in the end. So if our goal is to be moral, then given a choice, we should believe in God.

Is Kant right about this?

Ross Douthat on the Teapot Analogy

HT: Matt Jordan

Is Christian apologetics inherently dishonest?

A redated post. This links to a Debunking Christianity post.

I suppose there are some Christian apologists who calculate the apologetic impact of what they say before saying it. But what seems to be going on here is a canard. Since the idea is to defend a particular belief, it must be dishonest, because the goal has got to be that of advancing the cause of Christianity rather than seeking the truth. But if so, atheist apologetics (and what the hell would you call all that stuff on Internet Infidels, not to mention what comes from Richard Dawkins, if it isn't atheist apologetics) is in the same boat.

As an apologist, all I am doing is saying "I have been following the argument where it leads as best I can for years now, this is where it has led me, let me tell you why I came to believe what I do and what holds my beliefs in place." I don't use arguments I think are bad in order to get people to become Christians.

I'm afraid this is an ad hominem attack on Christian apologetics. Last time I taught logic, that was a fallacy.

Atheism and devotion

Can you be an atheist without devoting yourself to atheism in any way? Some people, like Dawkins, are really dedicated to atheism. They put more effort into being atheists that most Christians put in to being Christians. But it does seem that one response, once you become an atheist, is not to devote yourself much to it and to move on in life and occupy yourself with other things. Many secular philosophers I have known are more like that.

The Modest Trilemma

Very often the Trilemma argument is treated as a proof of Jesus's divinity. I'd like to see how far it can go, not as a proof of Jesus's divinity, but simply as an argument against the claim that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. Whatever other options may be available to us (myth, legendary accretion, mentally ill genius, crackpot eschatological preacher, etc.), does it refute what it is primarily designed to refute, that Jesus was a great moral teacher who tried to teach us to be nice to each other, but the theological claims made concerning him in Scripture are just wrong.

Given the fact that our only sources for Jesus say that he did and said all sorts of things that imply that he was claiming to be God, the idea that he was just a great moral teacher but not God is does seem absurd. Either he was right about all that (in which case he would be God), or he was lying about who he was (in which case he would not be anyone people would want to follow) or he was nuts. If you can't accept him as God, then you can't follow him as a moral teacher. As Lewis put it:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

Now you can back out of these claims by saying that the Scriptures aren't reliable historical records and that Jesus never did or said anything to suggest that he was anything more than a Jewish carpenter with a call to preach. But if the Scriptures are highly unreliable about who he claimed to be, how could they be reliable when it comes to identifying what he taught?

We can call the argument against the "great moral teacher" hypothesis the modest trilemma. In other words, we might ask if the argument is successful against the "nice-guy Jesus" that is often part of popular culture. The ambitious trilemma tries to get you to conclude, instead, that Jesus was God. Defending the modest trilemma will certainly be easier than defending the ambitious trilemma.

Brandon on the Burden of Proof

Is there a burden of proof? Brandon seems to think there is no general burden of proof that could support, for example, the claim that atheism ought to be believed by default if there is no good proof (satisfactory to all parties) for theism.

A response to godless Christianity

Where does the information about Christ come from? From a source that says he walked on water, taught on his own authority (even exalting his authority over that of the Law of Moses), claimed the authority to forgive sin on his own authority, multiplied food miraculously, healed the sick, raised the dead, was crucified on the cross, died, was buried, and resurrected from the dead, and predicted that he would return at the end of time. None of this stuff makes any sense if God does not exist.If the sources are wrong about all this, is there anything we can have any assurance of that the sources got right? And if we have no reliable sources on Jesus, isn't this going to make following Jesus just a little bit difficult?

Can you oppose Roe without affirming the rights of the fetus?

Let's try the following to help clarify things. Do you think that it would be an Constitutionally unacceptable violation of privacy if there were a state law prohibiting oral contraceptives, vasectomies, or facelifts? This is the original context in which the right of privacy was brought up to the Supreme Court, the Griswold case, linked to here.

What's missing from the Griswold case, of course, is the presence of a fetus whose rights, arguably, merit protection. My view is that if you take the fetus out of the equation, Roe was correct, just as if you take the right of the Negro slave to liberty out of the equation in Dred Scott, then Dred turns out to be right.

The Source for the Qu'ran

Strict Constructionism would not have freed Dred Scott

According to this. It seems clearly right that the constitution did not affirm the right of a Negro slave to liberty. If it had, the Southern states would never have signed on to it. It does affirm the property rights of the owners. Therefore, if the job of the Supreme Court is to just interpret the Constitution and not legislate from the bench, Dred Scott goes back to his owner.

What is Strict Constructionist about Opposing Roe?

I'm going to try this one again, because I really want to get some serious discussion on it.

I was in some abortion discussions on another blog in which it was contended that no matter where you stood on the other issues, you nevertheless ought to vote for the Republicans because they take the right position the "transcendent" issue of the day, which is abortion. I tried to give people a sense of what they were asking me to do by asking me to do, since it was clear that this person probably would vote Republican even if the abortion issue didn't exist. On the other hand, I would have to vote against my convictions in virtually all other ways, in order to support candidates who at least have abortion right.

(I once said to a class of students that I thought that logically, Republicans should be pro-choice and Democrats should be pro-life, and got the enthustiasic support of a Republican student.)

So I suggested this scenario: suppose you had someone who is pro-life but a liberal Democrat on other issues, running against a pro-choice Republican. Who do you choose?

His answer was that so long as the Democrat was willing to nominate strict constructionist judges who would overturn Roe, that he would vote for the Democrat. The assumption is that the strict constructionist will overturn Roe, the "activist" will uphold it. One one blog I read that it was almost true by definition that a strict constructionist judge will be anti-Roe. Republicans like "strict constructionist" legal philosophies more than Democrats do, so that would make it highly unlikely that he would feel obligated to vote Democrat because of abortion.

But does it work that way really? Let's look at the Dred Scott case, to which pro-lifers love to compare Roe. If you set aside the idea that a Negro slave is a person with a right to liberty under the Constitution, the court came to exactly the right decision. Property rights are property rights, and to say that one's property is no longer one's property when it crosses state lines is ludicrous.

It seems to me that there is nothing especially strict constructionist about saying that the fetus does have a right to life. But just as, if you take the slave's right to liberty out of the equation, Dred Scott comes up right, if you take the fetus's right to life out of the equation, it seems to me that Roe is spot on. Pro-lifers like to argue that the Supreme Court "invented" a right to privacy, but could we tolerate a law invading our medical privacy if it concerned contraception, or vasectomies, or face-lifts? In other words, there is only one "strict constructionist" argument against Roe, and it seems to me to be a bad one.

Further, isn't it a little weird that you are upholding a fetus's right to life by denying rights to the pregnant mother instead of affirming the rights of the fetus? Why would anyone oppose abortion for any reason other than the right of the fetus to life?

Now maybe this doesn't matter to some people. Maybe it doesn't matter whether Roe is struck down for a bad reason, so long as it's struck down. Any port in a storm. But that just doesn't seem to me to be very honest. If you could prevent abortions by telling women lies about the psychological effects of abortion, should you do so?

Further, legal precedents have far-reaching implications. I am inclined to oppose outcome-based jurisprudence, accepting judicial principles that get the conclusions we like, whether they are sound across the board or not.

It seems to me the only honest way of arguing against Roe is to argue that the fetus at least possibly has the right to life, and that that right is of greater significance and importance than the right of privacy and medical autonomy that ought to hold sway on other medical matters.

It may be that strict constructionists judges may be demographically more inclined to rule against abortion, but there is no good logical pathway from strict constructionism to the overturning of Roe.

Commandments and Moral Relativism

One thing to notice that any religion that says that there are Commandments from God virtually precludes the possibility of denying objective moral values. Even if you are President of the United States, it would be silly for you to say "Yes, yes, you have said that one should not commit adultery. But that's you're opinion, God. I think it's OK. Who's to say which of us is really right or wrong?"

On the Queerness of Morality

Perhaps one way of making sense of the "queerness" argument is this. Suppose you are a materialist. That is, what you believe is that everything that is real has a particular location in space and time, and that if a state is real it is a state of physical particles or a conglomeration of physical particles. Thus although the word "planet" does not occur in basic physics, it is a bunch of physical particles put together, and given some arrangement of physical particles, you can't deny that you have a planet there. But what about a "morally wrong act." It looks as if nothing about the physical world can entail that something, even a sadistic, cold-blooded Jeffrey Dahmer killing, is really wrong. Wrongness can't be added up from basic physical particles the way planethood can. Therefore, if materialism is true, there can't be any moral facts.

This of course can run in two directions.

1. If physicalism is true, then there can be no moral facts.
2. Physicalism is true.
3. Therefore, there are no moral facts.

or

1. If physicalism is true, then there can be no moral facts.
2. There are moral facts.
3. Therefore physicalism is false.

Free Parking and Improving the Universe

A redated post

Why didn't God create us with wings on our backs to fly? This is the question John Loftus asks. I can imagine various reasons why God did not choose to do this; I am not at all sure that making humans more powerful would be at all good for nature as a whole, or even for humans in the final analysis. But be that as it may, let me grant, for the sake of argument, that I can't think of any good reason why God couldn't have given us all wings. Exactly what does that buy the atheist? Why is this any different from the argument that says "There are gaps in the fossil record, I can't see how evolution could have make these transition, therefore there is no naturalistic explanation for these transitions and a creator must exist." If I were to present an argument like that over at Debunking Christianity, what would they say, do you think? They would say that there may be an explanation for this particular gap in the fossil record that we haven't figured out. Yet, when atheists are using the argument from evil, they use a gap in our understanding as to why God would permit such and such as a basis for rejecting theism. Why?

Let's take a humbler example. Many Monopoly players try to make the game more fun by collecting all the payments to the bank from various sources and putting them on Free Parking. Then when someone lands on Free Parking, they get all that money. And there is nothing wrong with changing the rules in that way. However, there is a reason why the game itself doesn't do that, which was explained in The Monopoly Book. Monopoly games tend to be long, but the game ends when all but one player goes bankrupt. Taking money that would otherwise have gone into that bank and putting it back into the hands of players slows down this process and makes the game even longer.

Now, I had never thought of that. What looked like an improvement to the game of Monopoly had a downside I didn't realize until it was pointed out to me. So what about my suggestions for improving the universe. The makers of Monopoly are mere mortals. What about a being of infinite intelligence? Is it not at least possible that from the point of view of Omniscience our proposed improvements for the universe really might not turn out to be improvements after all. Think about that next time your opponent lands on Park Place when you have a monopoly there.

A moderate Muslim defends his position

Jimmy Carter: The Most Underrated Modern President?

Ivan Eland thinks so.

Reply to Parsons on theism and the Genetic Fallacy

First, I don't think it's fair to say that atheists commit the genetic fallacy for the simple reason that atheists need not use an argument of the type you are suggesting, nor do they feel the need to.

It is true that very often atheists claim that their ability to explain theistic beliefs offers them a reason for rejecting theistic beliefs as false. Now if you had an explanation for theistic belief that showed that most human beings would believe in God regardless of the state of the evidence, that might be of some use argumentatively if it also showed that this was not the case for unbelievers. But do we have this? When someone like Freud comes up with a possible theory explaining the psychology of religious belief, that doesn't do a whole lot. We have a clearly true explanation for how we got our information about Hobbits. Theism is just a much tougher case.

So we get the argument "Humans fear mortality so much that they will invent any theory, however unreasonable, to escape the conclusion that they are headed for extinction." And now we're going to need the hard evidence, suggesting that this psychological theory is true. I can tell you that in my own case, wanting to believe in God made it more difficult to believe in God, not easier to believe in God. There are possible explanations for why I might have misevaluated the evidence in favor of theism, but these possible explanations don't do much to undermine my beliefs.

This is especially so since it's easy to come up with psychological explanations for atheism. Freud had a good one: the Oedipus complex. Or just the natural human desire to be the supreme beings, to have no one in existence who can judge my actions and tell me definitively that I am wrong, that I am a sinner. It seems to me that I can tell the atheist "OK, you take your psychoanalytic arguments off the table, and I'll take mine."

So while an industrial strength explanation for religious belief that really shows that people, including those like me who think they have good reasons for believing in God, would believe whether there were good reasons or not, might be damaging to religious belief, I don't think we are anywhere near having that kind of an explanation.

Do we really have cause to be uneasy?

What is interesting here is that Lewis, in attempting to make a case for his Christianity, argues on the one hand that there is a moral law, and that that moral law is so difficult to follow that we are going to need "outside help" to be able to live moral lives.

Whether you think such "outside help" is available or not, do you think his idea of a moral law that is really tough for humans, in their natural condition, to follow, is a justified concept?

Two types of animal right arguments

It seems to me that meat can be criticized in a couple of different ways. One of them is just to say that somehow animals have the right to life and we shouldn't be killing them. Another would be to say that we have the right to kill animals, but that meat-producers do so unethically. The Kashrut or Kosher Law of Judaism seems to be, at least in part, based on this motivation; the eating of meat isn't wrong, but unless it's killed properly, it shouldn't be eaten. And, in Alpha, the actual world, most animals are not slaughtered properly.

Wikipedia Entry on the Anthropic Principle

Has the term "anthropic principle" been developed in so many directions as to become useless?

The First Screwtape Letter

Screwtape here argues that getting someone to pay attention to science is the last thing you want to do if you don't want someone to become a Christian.

C. S. Lewis's The Poison of Subjectivism

The Cardinals are in the Super Bowl

I used to explain the difference between true belief and knowledge by pointing out to my classes that, someday, hard as it may be to believe, the Cardinals will get to the Super Bowl, and, when they do, some diehard fans (who will probably be fair-weather fans in actuality) will say that they KNEW the Cardinals would make it. Of course, they would be wrong, since their belief would have been justified at the beginning of the season. I stick to my statement, since, for example, the team I expected to get there from the NFC, suffered from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The Myth of Progress in the Evolution of Science?

This looks like a very interesting paper.

The audio of the Craig-Parsons debate

A redated post.

William Lane Craig on the Anthropic Principle

I heard Craig give this paper back in, I think, 1987. It is in response to the John Barrow and Frank Tipler book from that time.

Hey! Is this guy on the Celebrity Atheists list?

Karl Rove is, according to some reports, not a believer.

Is Secular Humanism a Religion

Or the lack of a religion?

A defense of dualism

By Chris Carter.

Answers in Genesis on the Dinosaurs

Why am I less than fully satisfied? By the way, Sarfati is a master-strength chessplayer!

A summary of Lewis's Miracles

The C. S. Professor's Blog