Chesterton on the OTF

HT: Bob Prokop


"The next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it. And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it. They are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term. They are doubtful in their very doubts. Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling."



"I do seriously recommend the imaginative effort of conceiving the Twelve Apostles as Chinamen. In other words, I recommend [one] try to do as much justice to Christian saints as if they were Pagan sages. ... When we do make this imaginative effort to see the whole thing from the outside, we find that it really looks like what is traditionally said about it inside. ... It is exactly when we see the Christian Church from afar ... that we see that it is really the Church of Christ. To put it shortly, the moment we are really impartial about it, we know why people are partial to it."
 

The test and the answer key

JWL: You must seek to justify what you consider the facts apart from faith. Now you might not like me engaging you in this argument after you recognize the validity of the OTF all you want to, but if you truly wish to be an outsider to your own faith then to evaluate it properly an outsider like me can be of extreme value to you.

So, let me be of service. ;-)

VR:  No. That's where you start turning the Outsider Test for Faith into an Insider Test for Infidels. The OTF is a thought experiment, nothing more. Just because you invented the term for the test (the idea has always been around in some form or another), doesn't mean that you have the answer key in your desk drawer. I'm not convinced that there is any rational obligation to make one's faith depend on passing it. The argument you present in your book for why religious beliefs must pass the OTF is full of holes.

In one sense, you really never do get outside. When you go from theism to atheism, atheism becomes inside and theism becomes outside. I think the presuppositionalists have this much right; I don't think there is any real neutral ground.

But it is healthy to ask the question "What if I had come into all of this with a different experiences and background than what I in fact have?" But that's a question I have been asking since I was 18, and it's part of why I majored in philosophy. That's part of the good faith effort to be intellectually honest.

In particular, I don't believe in the Feldman-type argument where we have to stop holding positions because our epistemic peers disagree. I think that kind of thing stultifies thought, and as I understand the philosophy of science, I think it would stultify science.

I take it that cognitive science shows us that rationality is difficult. Of course, I've been arguing that rationality isn't even possible if naturalism is true, an argument you somehow don't feel any need to even respond to. But setting that aside, if it is difficult to be rational, then the OTF, or the deconversion the OTF is supposed to engender, is not going to make people automatically rational. It is one tool among many that we might use to help us become more rational, nothing more.

There is an appeal to intellectual honesty and fairness which is legitimate, but not an overwhelming argument against Christianity. What gets loaded on top of it, though, is what concerns me: a lot of unrealistic and questionable epistemology, a lot of highly questionable psychologizing, and an evaluation of the available evidence which is very different from mine. In fact, the claim that Christianity can't pass the test is backed up by statements that strike me as demonstratably false, such as the claim that Christians operate with a double standard when they, for example, reject Islam and accept Christianity. They appear for all the world to be submitting both religions to the same test, and claiming that Christianity comes out better.

And part of what you are calling faith, particularly an individual person's religious experience, is relevant evidence for people to use in evaluating their beliefs. 

That's what I object to: The Outsider Test for Faith Test, based on how closely your answers fit Loftus's answer key.

Moral subjectivism and the value of rationality

What's interesting to me here is the extent to which commitment to rationality is linked to a belief in moral objectivity. A believer in objective morality can argue that everyone ought to do one's best to believe what is true, even when believing the truth is emotionally costly. Whatever is legitimate in the Outsider Test for Faith appeals to this kind of commitment. But does this commitment make sense if moral relativism or moral subjectivism is presupposed?

Bertrand Russell wrote, concerning fideistic believers:

There is something pusillanimous and sniveling about this point of view, that makes me scarcely able to consider it with patience. To refuse to face facts merely because they are unpleasant is considered the mark of a weak character, except in the sphere of religion. I do not see how it can be ignoble to yield to the tyranny of fear in all terrestrial matters, but noble and virtuous to do the same things where God and the future life are concerned. 

But, if there's nothing objective about moral values, then there's no objective reason why I shouldn't be "pusillanimous and sniveling" if it keeps me emotionally comfortable. The appeal to intellectual honesty presupposes a commitment to the value of truth, which is going to be a subjective matter unless we accept objective moral values.

Why be rational?

Philosophers often ask the question "Why be moral?" Is there a parallel question "Why be rational."

Now, if we shouldn't be rational, I'm probably at least going to try, anyway. But can rationality be rationally justified?

How to pass the outsider test for faith

 Let's get back to the central point at issue here. You claimed that Christian opponents of other religions either question-beggingly assume the authority of the Bible, or exercise a kind of methodological naturalism with respect to other religions which, if applied to Christianity, would result in the rejection of Christianity as well. Looking at a paradigm case of Christian apologetic response to Islam, we find that this is not the case. We find that Christian apologists compare the Bible and the Qu'ran with respect to manuscript evidence, documentary evidence, and archaeological evidence. Given the fact that, on this reading of the evidence, the evidence supporting Christianity is better than that of Islam, an outsider could choose Christianity over Islam based on the evidence. In fact, as an unbeliever you can accept the claim that the Christian Bible has better manuscript evidence, documentary evidence, and archaeological evidence than has the Qu'ran. The comparison doesn't say what the evidential threshold should be, but it does say that Christianity is better evidenced than Islam. So, an atheist might say the evidence isn't sufficiently "extraordinary" to warrant belief, but even an unbeliever should realize that the Christian Bible is in better evidential shape than the Qu'ran.

I've even made the claim that if you could show me that the situation was really reversed, that the Qu'ran had better evidence, my faith would be in trouble.

Of course, there are many more gods, and more holy books. Do you know of any that would do better than either the Bible or the Qu'ran on these three tests?

So let's take Outsider Tester Joe, someone who has, hypothetically, put all religions, prior to investigation at the same level of epistemic probability. Joe takes each religion's holy books, and runs the three tests on each. The Christian Bible wins by a considerable margin, so Outsider Tester Joe either becomes or remains a Christian. He can only be thought to have failed to employ the OTF if he has treated similar cases differently because he is a Christian insider. But the cases are not similar. There's an evidential difference.

In any event, John, you should either show, specifically, how the comparison site I have referred to somehow uses methodological naturalism with respect to Islam but rejects in with respect to Christianity, thus employing a double standard, or abandon the claim you make in your book that Christian apologists appeal to methodological naturalism in response to other religions.

I should further emphasize that I don't necessarily buy all the arguments in support of the Bible on that site. That's not the point. The point is that it is hard to doubt that the Bible is far stronger than the Qu'ran in the three categories on which it tests the two holy books.

Put up or shut up.

Do Christians say that all other religions are just bunk?

C. S. Lewis didn't. 

To me, who first approached Christianity from a delighted interest in, and reverence for, the best pagan imagination, who loved Balder before Christ and Plato before St. Augustine, the anthropological argument against Christianity has never been formidable. On the contrary, I could not believe Christianity if I were forced to say that there were a thousand religions in the world of which 999 were pure nonsense and the thousandth (fortunately) true. My conversion, very largely, depended on recognizing Christianity as the completion, the actualization, the entelechy, of something that had never been wholly absent from the mind of man.¹

I couldn't believe that nine-hundred and ninety-nine religions were completely false and the remaining one true. In reality, Christianity is primarily the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfillment of what was vaguely hinted in all the religions at their best. What was vaguely seen in them all comes into focus in Christianity.²

1 C. S. Lewis, God In The Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), p. 132. 
2 Ibid., p. 54.

An Old Tennessee Saying

Back in Tennessee there's an old saying: When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.

I got this from an Al Gore e-mail. It may have a wider application than he intended.

I would recommend him to read Auerbach

This is a famous passage from C. S. Lewis's "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism."

In what is already a very old commentary I read that the fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a 'spiritual romance', 'a poem not a history', to be judged by the same canons as Nathan's parable, the book of Jonah, Paradise Lost 'or, more exactly, Pilgrim's Progress'. After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about any book in the world? Note that he regards Pilgrim's Progress, a story which professes to be a dream and flaunts its allegorical nature by every single proper name it uses, as the closest parallel. Note that the whole epic panoply of Milton goes for nothing. But even if we leave our the grosser absurdities and keep to Jonah, the insensitiveness is crass - Jonah, a tale with as few even pretended historical attachments as Job, grotesque in incident and surely not without a distinct, though of course edifying, vein of typically Jewish humour. Then turn to John. Read the dialogues: that with the Samaritan woman at the well, or that which follows the healing of the man born blind. Look at its pictures: Jesus (if I may use the word) doodling with his finger in the dust; the unforgettable nv vuz (13:30). I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read. I would recommend him to read Auerbach. 

John Beversluis is critical of this claim. He says:

But that is not an argument. It is a question based on the false assumption that wide reading in a particular genre necessarily makes one's judgment more reliable than narrow intensive reading in the same genre. 

Well, if you put a necessity operator in, I suppose it is a false assumption. It could be that someone who engaged in a wide reading of a genre could have worse judgment than someone who read more narrowly and intensively. Still, one could certainly make mistakes reading narrowly within a particular genre and ignoring the types of literature extant at the time. For example, calling the Gospels novels is a mistake someone might make who is familiar with Biblical literature but is not aware that no one wrote novels in ancient times. It certainly seems reasonable that Lewis could have knowledge, as a literary scholar, that would allow him to avoid mistakes that a narrowly focused biblical scholar could make.

This is a particularly forceful consideration when one realizes that the idea that John is a spiritual romance is not a consensus claim amongst biblical scholars. There are plenty of scholars who think that John is a good-faith attempt to record what Jesus really said and did.

But also notice that Lewis doesn't just appeal to his own authority as a biblical scholar, he cites an authority, the Jewish scholar Auerbach, whose Mimesis made him a heavyweight in literary criticism.

Gene Veith, in his treatment of Auerbach's argument says:

Homer, Auerbach shows, puts everything in the foreground — giving us what the characters look like, describing their surroundings in detail, and even telling us what they are thinking. This approach, which has become the model for Western fiction, is “to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations,” says Auerbach.

He contrasts this highly-imaginative approach to the way the Bible in Genesis describes the sacrifice of Isaac. We do not know what Abraham or Isaac look like; there is no description of the landscape; we are not told what Abraham thinks as he prepares to sacrifice his son; nor are we informed why God acts as He does. Such meaning is in the “background,” requiring interpretation and reflection and opening up untold depths.

This kind of narrative testifies to the real because it is messy, unpredictable, and compels, just like real life. Auerbach says that the story of David has to be historical. “In Absalom’s rebellion, for example, or in the scenes from David’s last days, the contradictions and crossing of motives both in individuals and in the general action have become so concrete that it is impossible to doubt the historicity of the information conveyed.”

David Bentley Hart skewers the New Atheism

I think I am very close to concluding that this whole “New Atheism” movement is only a passing fad—not the cultural watershed its purveyors imagine it to be, but simply one of those occasional and inexplicable marketing vogues that inevitably go the way of pet rocks, disco, prime-time soaps, and The Bridges of Madison County.-David Bentley Hart.

See also this excellent paragraph: 

But a true skeptic is also someone who understands that an attitude of critical suspicion is quite different from the glib abandonment of one vision of absolute truth for another—say, fundamentalist Christianity for fundamentalist materialism or something vaguely and inaccurately called “humanism.” Hume, for instance, never traded one dogmatism for another, or one facile certitude for another. He understood how radical were the implications of the skepticism he recommended, and how they struck at the foundations not only of unthinking faith, but of proud rationality as well.

Some Confusions from Loftus on Methodological Naturalism

I was away from the computer yesterday, so I didn't see John's comment.

And you are being extremely disingenuous Vic, to the point of lying (yes, lying. You are at least lying to yourself).
Look at Walter Martin's book on the cults. Listen, I am not stupid. You are. Martin and all others assume there is a natural explanation for every other religion but their own.

I have never seen such utter stupidity before.

I am not subscribing. Anyone with a brain can read Martin's books or Geisler's or McDowell's.

Listen, if you wish to engage me take a basic primer in apologetics.

Sheesh. Is this the level or ignorance it takes to believe?

I think so, and that's why I want nothing to do with it. I am a thinking person. Critique this all you want but with such a buffoonish post as this it is MORE obvious than the nose on your face.

 I am going to ignore Mr. Loftus' unfortunate tone here, and proceed to the logical point I think he has missed. Martin, Geisler, and McDowell, I take it, believe that the founding of other religions can be explained naturalistically. Of course, it is critical only in Western revealed religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc. to have supernaturally explained founding events. Christians believe that God was active in the founding of both Judaism and Christianity, but they do not think God participated in the founding of the Islam, or the founding of Mormonism. It is certainly open to Christians to accept a supernatural explanation for the founding of these religions, namely a demonic explanation, but Martin and others don't ordinarily go that way, and I am inclined to suppose that they are right to do so. I heard a Christian caller to Hank Hanegraaf's show say that Moroni was an angel, but he was a fallen angel. Richard Abanes, a Mormonism expert, said that he didn't think that this was the case.

The obvious point, which seems to have escaped Mr. Loftus, is that explaining something naturalistically is not sufficient to make one a methodological naturalist. Here is the definition of methodological naturalism, provided by Paul Kurtz here. 

First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible....

In other words, before investigating some phenomenon, a methodological naturalist decides that whatever explanations are to be given it cannot be a supernatural explanation. Someone who adopts methodological naturalism assumes from the outset that no supernatural explanation can or will be given. What that means is that if an event in fact has a supernatural explanation, the investigator, who has committed himself to MN, will miss that explanation.

Now, people who believe in miracles explain many, indeed most things non-miraculously.  When Catholics canonize saints, they have to verify the miracles. They can conclude that the prospective saint didn't produce any miracles, in which case he (or she) is not canonized. That doesn't mean they are methodological naturalists, that means they didn't find enough evidence to support this particular prospective saint's miracle claims.

Now, look at the structure of the arguments in the comparison between the founding of Islam and the founding of Christianity, which I linked to in the previous post. I'm not even vouching for the argumentation in defense of Christianity here, I am just making the case that that site compared the manuscript evidence, the documentary evidence, and the archaeological evidence for the Bible as opposed to the Qu'ran. No doubt the author of this site thinks that the founding of Islam is in fact to be explained naturalistically, but there is nothing on the site that I can see that says it must be explained naturalistically. The central characteristic of methodological naturalism is a necessity that the subject matter be explained naturalistically, and that any supernatural explanations, even if true, be overlooked. In fact, by presenting this kind of evidence, the author of the website is implying that if the evidential situation were reversed, them we ought to seriously consider the Qu'ran, and not the Bible, is divine rather than human in origin.

Martin, Geisler, and McDowell do not assume that there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam. I contend that they argue that, in this case, there is a naturalistic explanation for the founding of Islam. 

So Mr. Loftus is making a leap from

1) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell in fact explain the origins of Islam naturalistically,

to

2) Martin, Geisler, and McDowell are employing methodological naturalism in their explanation of the founding of Islam.

And this, I submit, does not follow. Only be conflating the acceptance of a naturalistic explanation in a particular case with the acceptance of methodological naturalism can Mr. Loftus make his case that my last post was stupid. Once the distinction between these is clarified, his criticism falls flat.

Comparing the Bible and the Qu'ran

According to John Loftus, critiques of other religions either simply quote the Bible as an authority, thus begging the question, or else, in their analysis of the other religions, they operate from the perspective of methodological naturalism with respect to the other religions while failing to employ that same methodological naturalism in dealing with the Christian Bible. That is why Christianity fails the outsider test for faith.

No doubt critics of Christian apologetics will take issue with some of the claims put forth in this comparison. But I don't think the case can be made that the author is employing a different standard for the Bible and for the Qu'ran. Nor does this comparison support Loftus' claim that any analysis of the Qu'ran either presupposes the inerrancy of Scripture or is methodologically naturalistic.

I would like to see some evidence to support Loftus's claims that Christians employ methodological naturalism when they critique other religions. It seems howlingly false to me.

Bonjour on the Argument from Intentionality

A major philosopher defends what he thinks is a decisive objection to physicalism.

Last Seminary's resource page on Naturalism

Lots of good material here.

Pratt on Pervo on Theudas

Following up on a dialogue that began here at DI, Jason Pratt has now finished his seven-part critique of Pervo's claim that Luke's way of using Theudas's name, as it appears in Gamaliel's speech, shows Luke's dependence on Josephus (and hence the late date of the work).

My central interest in the controversy surrounding late-dating Acts was the question that, given their apparent recognition of how so much accurate information about places and times and governmental systems that seems to be recorded in Acts, it is odd that they do not even ask the question of how that information could have been preserved into the early second century. Having looked at this essay by Richard Carrier, it looks as if he recognizes the amount of accurate content in Acts. He then points out that this was just means he was good with public information, as opposed to having a good idea of, say, whether the apostles might have hallucinated the risen Jesus. But he makes no attempt to explain how Acts came to have so much accurate detail, and given the fact that he holds a position like Pervo's on the dating of Acts, this is a dismaying omission. In other words, it looks as if Carrier doesn't even ask the question that I asked about Luke's knowledge.Does he really think this information would have been easy for someone in the second century to get?

Anyway, Pervo's book, along with Colin Hemer's, await me at the Glendale Community College library. I will see if he addresses the problem I posed.

Feser on Dretske

For all you Dretske fans.

The C. S. Lewis Bible: Something we don't need

This looks like a bald marketing ploy and an appeal to Lewis hero-worship. I think this proliferation of study bibles is kind of ridiculous. What's next, the Calvinist Bible and the Arminian Bible?

On being persuasive

Our assessments of the question of whether to be a believer of one kind or not cannot be, and I think should not be, affected completely by arguments and evidence. And if we do change our minds about something because of the evidence, it is usually a process that percolates over a period of time. Most of the time, we don't hear an argument that we decide is a good one and think "I never thought of that! I must be completely wrong!" That isn't how we operate.

Where religious conversion, or, I suppose, deconversion is concerned, there is a dimension of it that is open to rational debate, and a part that isn't really debatable. One must find the reason to make the move one is considering, but then one must have the will to take that step and accept a different position that may change your life forever.

Nevertheless, when we are in discussion, we do the most for our respective positions by sticking to the issues and debating them as forcefully and as charitably as we can. That's what we're here for. Let the conversions and deconversions fall where they may.

There is nothing I enjoy more than a discussion with an atheist in which I succeed in making Christianity just seem just a little more reasonable to him than when we started. I remember conversations I had 25 years ago with a fellow grad student at Illinois who liked to argue down Christians. I heard later he said after arguing with me "Boy, this is tough! I'm used to Christians just folding, or appealing to faith." Now, he remained a firmly committed atheist, and so far as I know, he still is. But who knows? 

The internet is a little bit driving, in that we deal with people but we don't actually see their faces. Hence, I think, we are more likely to call each other names and flip one another off (or the cyber equivalent thereof), because we do not know one another as persons.

I will say this: ridicule and abuse are, at least for me, very bad PR. I've heard enough anti-Christian ridicule to last three lifetimes. I happen to think that the culture of unbelief in many secular philosophy departments is sustained not by argument, but by intellectual peer pressure. I think about the people I have found impressive in my intellectual life: C. S. Lewis, Ted Guleserian,  Doug Arner, Bob Prokop, Joe Sheffer, Don Saliers, Hugh Chandler, Patrick Maher, Bill Hasker, and there are others. Most are Christians, others are not, but I think their character, as well as their intellectual capacities, made a difference to me.

Honestly, in dealing with some internet atheists, I think to myself "You know, even if ____ had some good arguments, if that's what atheism does to you, I never want to be like that. And I am sure that many skeptics react the same way in dealing with some Christians.

I am sure if I had been Lewis's friend Christian friend Arthur Greeves, I would have thought that I had lost all the arguments with my young atheist friend. So I am going to dedicate this post to all the Christians who got into arguments with the young C. S. Lewis and ended up thinking they had lost.

Lofty Thoughts By Loftus on Loftus

BDK, if brain studies mean anything people are persuaded into thinking differently. They aren't just reasoned into it. Persuasion. So in the interests of persuading people rather than follow up on what seems to me to be a dead end I simply try a different tact. You can claim what you do all you want to. It's just that I can better persuade my opponents by several different ways of seeking the same truth than following them down the rabbit hole.

We see things differently. I know this. You don't seem to. That's our difference. It's not about more detailed arguments and reasoning. It's about helping those who disagree with me to see things my way. It takes a conversion, a new way of seeing the evidence, much like a lawyer who becomes a prosecutor in the midst of the same trial.

That's the genius of what I do, although for this I am railed against by my own side. Still I know what I'm doing and I'm making a difference.

There you have it, in his own words. This is a time-honored tradition that goes all the way back to the Sophists of ancient Greece.

On being right, and being wrong, in religion

Suppose I am a Protestant Christian, and Catholicism is true. Was I wrong about religion? Well, I was right about God, right about Christ, right about God having revealed himself, right about the Resurrection. Just wrong about church structure and the locus of authority. I am right about far more things than an atheist or even an agnostic is.

Suppose I am a Protestant Christian and Judaism is true. Then I was right about God, right about God's commands, just wrong about Jesus. An atheist or agnostic is wrong about the things I am right about.

Suppose I am a Protestant Christian and Islam is true. Then I am right about God, right that God has some things to say to us, right about Jesus as a prophet, just wrong about the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad, and, of course, wrong about the Qu'ran. I am right about many things that the atheist or agnostic is wrong about.

Suppose I am a Protestant Christian and Hinduism is true. I am right about a transcendent reality, but wrong about its nature. Still, an atheist or agnostic is wrong to deny this transcendent reality.

It seems as if being in the wrong religion doesn't mean that you are completely wrong about religion.

Is it a bigger mistake to miss religious truth, if there is any, than to embrace false religious beliefs?

The Argument from Reason and the Outsider Test

Loftus has given me no real indication that he has studied my argument from reason, or has any understanding of the arguments in MY book. And unlike him, I'm not going to complain if he gets all of his information from DI and DI2 instead of purchasing the books. You could get that information those sites as well. And it is relevant to the OTF, because when Lewis presented his argument originally, the argument went like this.

1. No thought is valid (perhaps we could say "No belief is justified") if it can be fully explained in terms of irrational causes.

2. If naturalism is true, then all beliefs can be explained in terms of irrational causes.

3. Therefore, if naturalism is true, it cannot be rationally held.

Critics of the argument, like Anscombe, argued that the presence of non-rational causes didn't necessarily invalidate a belief, essentially accusing Lewis's original version of the argument of the genetic fallacy.

But Loftus, using the psychological underpinnings of the outsider test, is arguing that we can dismiss religious beliefs because they are formed irrationally. The argument from reason asks how rational beliefs are possible on the naturalistic view that Loftus espouses. Unless the Argument from Reason can be effectively countered, even the Skeptical Threat version from which I actually distanced myself for epistemological reasons, we end up with the conclusion that the psychological analysis of belief, pressed against religious believers, can logically be extended to all beliefs if naturalism is true. And if that's the case, then the Knights of Reason who reject religion have their beliefs produced in the same irrational way as the "brainwashed" religious believers. If naturalism is true, we're all brainwashed, no matter what we believe.

It looks like the Outsider argument won't work unless the AFR can be rebutted.