The confutation of atheism-9

For one who alleges he possesses the ability to reason well, Dave Wave's reading comprehension seems low. My name is not Jason Engwer. This does not bode well for him. If one cannot get the name of his opponent correct, what hope does one have for continuing the dialogue? Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gene Bridges.

First, I would like to thank Dave Wave, empiricist, skepticdude or whatever alias he is using today for joining the dialogue. Given the length of his responses, however, I would like to encourage him to use his blogger ID and create his own blog to respond. This is not to limit discussion on this blog, but for our readers ease and mutual ease in responding to Dave. The comments section is not intended to be a discussion board and it will be easier to follow what he says, particularly for those reading the comments section, who have complained that his work is formatted poorly and difficult to follow as a result. However, we are accustomed to others posting on their own blogs when writing at length. This will aid our discussion greatly. You can then email any of us here with a link to your blog for us to respond if we choose.

I have a rather large writing project this week, so this will probably be the only time I get to respond to our Village Atheist until later this week or even next. I leave my friend Steve to deal with Dave Wave until then. When I return, I will actually introduce myself for the benefit of those who may be wondering who I am, since I am one of the new contributors here.

Much has already been said by Jason and Steve, so there really isn't much more to say.

Apparantly you’d rather water down Justin’s specification that what the Christians believe about Jesus is no different than what they believe about their gods, instead of taking Justin seriously, and a case in point would be.

Actually, I have the text of the First Apology in front me as I write this. The way I see it, you're the one not taking Justin seriously.

You allege the parallels he cites should be taken as evidence that Christians borrowed from them. Where is the supporting argument that Justin makes for that leap of logic on your part?

Justin goes on to state that what the Christians believe about Jesus is very different from what his audience believes about their gods. Have you read entire text of the First Apology? He takes points of comparison and shows where they are alike, so as not be considered atheists, but where they are disanalogous. His simply adapting to his audience by noting common ground.

Where is the evidence that he is affirming a genealogical parallel between the sons of Jupiter and Christ? Where can you find that in the text of the New Testament? Where does Justin use this to exegete Scripture? You're willing to cite the points of analogy, but why not the points of disanalogy? You keep telling us to cite specific miracles for evaluation. Why not cite specific pagan parallels instead of noting Justin's general statements?

Justin is using this as an apologetic tactic to refute the charge of atheism. He says this in the first portion of the Apology and begins by alluding to some points of common agreement. He is attempting to meet his audience on their own grounds and show that the Christian faith is rational according to the standards of his own audience, so as to refute the charge of atheism. The point that Justin is making is comparison by way of contrast. In fact he says elsewhere, "Now it is evident to all, that in the race of Abraham according to the flesh no one has been born of a virgin, or is said to have been born of a virgin, save this our Christ." (Dialogue With Trypho, 66). In the First Apology, he says that the crucifixion is unique to Christ. Those in the other parallels died, but not such a death as Christ. His argument isn't simply that Christ is not inferior, but that Christ is superior in every way. Justin also tells us where the narratives about Christ are sourced; and he also presents us with his idea of where the Greco-Roman myths are sourced.

But Justin Martyr was about 1900 years closer to the sources than are you “moder comparative mythologists”. Until you have some serious evidence to dispute Justin’s argument from parallels, the pagan-copy-cat-thesis stands. “NOTHING DIFFERENT”, remember?

A. The pagan-copy-cat thesis is not drawn from Justin Martyr or by Justin Martyr. It is drawn by modern comparative mythologists on your side of the aisle based on alleged, specific parallels who abuse Justin. Why should we accept what Richard Carrier, for example says, since he is 1900 years away from the sources he cites?

B. What does Justin say about the source of the information about Christ himself in the document you cited? Answer: Moses, Micah, Isaiah, et.al., not Greek myths. Justin provides his own explanations, and it contradicts your abuse of the words "nothing different." The question here is what Justin means by "nothing different." It means "nothing different" with respect to certain principles. In Greek myths, Zeus physically impregnated some women. In the New Testament, Mary is impregnated by the Holy Spirit. How does it follow that the latter was borrowed from the former? Where does Justin infer this? He doesn't. He simply notes that it is absurd for his audience to believe in the one and not the other. His hearers didn't seem to be making these connections, so Justin makes them to show that the Christians are not atheists or proposing anything nearly as preposterous as the poets had proposed given the nature of the God that Christians worship. If you believe the poets already, he argues, is it really such a stretch to believe the gospel narratives?

All that need be established is that Jesus fits the motif and that at least SOME of the parallels to jesus, existed BEFORE Jesus did, which is what Justin does for us when he cites retro-active demon activity before Christ to explain why Christ, coming later, looks so much like them. He would hardly refer to the activity of demons BEFORE THE BIRTH OF JESUS, in creating those parallels, if it is true, as apologists say, that the pagan stories mimicking Jesus only came AFTER Christianity.

Justin cites them from his present frame of reference. If you wish to make these parallels stick, then go and find them and make a case. Where is your evidence that the NT writers borrowed from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century versions of myths, and which myths and what exact parallels exist between those prior to the 1st century and how does the NT show evidence that the NT writers borrowed from them? What does Justin say is the source of the retroactive demon activity before Christ? In other words, what is the source of the material that was used in those parallels he cites? Is it uniquely Greek according to Justin, or does it have another possible origin?

Either way, Justin’s “we propound nothing different” qualification on his own parallels regarding son so Jupiter makes this a whole lot more serious case of borrowing than simply continuity of Greek thought a hundred years later....I’ll wait to see how you handle “we propound nothing different” first.

Well, let's see what Justin says, shall we.

A. Justin is attempting to refute the charge of atheism, that, because they did not worship the Greek gods, they worshipped no god at all. The pagans he addresses found the concept of God becoming incarnate repulsive and rejected the idea that Christ was fully god and fully man. He is simply asserting, against the charge of atheism, that the Christians are not atheists, that their concept of divinity is no less divine than the concept advanced by Greco-Roman religion of previous times. In fact, Christ is more worthy of being considered divine. In XXII he goes on to say that his point is to show Christ superior. His entire thesis involving these analogies is an attempt to say to his audience that they believe these other stories, so the charge of atheism is false, for how can they believe the lesser, inferior, and false, and not the superior, true, and greater?

B. Where in this does Justin allege a genealogical parallel or intend to allege such a parallel? Analogous parallels are not genealogical parallels. You need a genealogical, not an analogical parallel to make the copy-cat theory stick. You're making the claim. Now, find the parallels and make them.

C. Justin says that what has been taught to us by Christ and by the prophets who preceded Him are alone true and are older than all the writers who have existed, Moses in particular, "not because we say the same things they said, but because we say true things..." (First Apology XXXIII). After this, Justin lists several items of disanalogy. Then, Justin tells us exactly where the universe of discourse for the testimony of Jesus Christ lays. In the Hebrew prophets (XXXI); Moses (XXXII); the OT predictions of His birth (XXXIII, IV, V); the modes of prophecy (XXXVI). He writes extensively on each. Why accept the veracity of what Justin says about the pagan parallels but not what he says, very explicitly at that, about these actual universe of discourse from which the testimony about Christ Himself actually originates? You're the one asserting that he alleges a copying from the Greco-Roman myths, but Justin explicitly says otherwise. Justin discusses the origin of heathen mythology as well in the same apology, and he notes how disanalogous those myths are.

D. It's true that Justin has no grasp of historical chronology and does not purport to be an expert on the origins of the Greco-Roman myths, but he doesn't simply attribute them to demonic activity without further explanation; he also discusses them in such a way that it appears that he thinks that the Greeks borrowed from the Jews, not vice versa. Justin uses the formula that when they (the demons) heard about the prophecies of Christ in the Jewish Scriptures (Moses in particular), they then influenced the Greeks to copy ideas from those texts to make men, when Christ was come, think that His story was only one among many. Using your own naturalistic yardstick and discounting the statements about demons themselves, Justin is affirming that the Greeks built some of their myths on what they learned from the Jews. This accounts for the parallels. If you believe he is inferring the gospel narratives depend upon and copy from these myths, then you advance the very thesis that Justin repudiates, not one that he advances.

So, does Justin argue that the Christians borrowed from the Greeks? No. His argument infers that the Greeks in his audience should now listen to the Jews again and see that Christ is the fulfillment of those Jewish texts from which the Greeks in ages past borrowed, and this should inform them of the veracity of the gospel itself, for, if their own predecessors listened to the Jews and venerated them enough to borrow and copy from them in ages past, then how much more should they do so now that those prophecies which their ancestors venerated through copying into their own religion have come to clear, plain fulfillment in Christ. This is, ironically, much the same argument that the author of Hebrews makes to the Jews in his audience, that Christ is the culmination of the covenant with Israel at Sinai, which their fathers confirmed. How much more should they now confirm the New Covenant, the shadow having been made plain. This is exactly contrary to the pagan copy cat theory, but it fits exactly what conservative scholarship has been saying all along, that the pagans borrowed from the Christians. The pagan myths, according to Justin, which is the standard to which you have appealed, are very likely derived from Greek interaction with the Jews, not vice versa, so, if you wish to press "we propound nothing different" in a particular manner, then why not the rest of what Justin has to say? The other option is that they were written independently, but that still doesn't mean that the Christians or Jews borrowed from them, unless you want to reject what Justin says in Sections 31 - 39. For that you need evidence of geneaological parallel.

This is a general statement, which cannot be logically used to refute a specific statement, and Justin cites numerous specific parallels which merit closer inspection than just saying humans have a tendency to think the same way about stuff all over the world."

A. It is precisely because they have been subjected to close scrutiny that these parallels have been rejected.

B. And which of them is genealogical? What specific parallels does he cite in such a way that he affirms Christians borrowed from them? On the contrary, he infers later in the First Apology that those parallels are parallel because they borrowed from Jewish literature, the same universe of literature that prophesied Christ. If there is a common source in Justin's thinking, the source is the Jewish Scriptures, not the Greco-Roman myths; and that source applies to both the gospel narratives and the Greco-Roman myths. Justin clearly views the former as being directly related to the Jewish Scriptures while the latter is indirectly related and more oblique. Why accept what he says about the existence of analogical parallels but reject his denial of genealogical parallels and his opinion that the common source for the Greco-Roman myths is the perversion of the Hebrew writings? For Justin, the pagan parallels are oblique and analogical only, the result of perversions of the source material in Moses and elsewhere. On the other hand,according to Justin, the gospel narratives are plain and directly rely on the Hebrew Scriptures without perverting them.

I already explained that. Justin was citing the parallels to show that Jesus should be believed by the Greeks, if their criteria for a true god-man was virgin-birth, miracles, resurrection, ascension, etc. If that was the case, Justin is arguing that that Jesus is "in no way inferior" to them. Yet while he uses the close parallels in a different way for a different audience, that doesn't erase a single one of them.

A. Notice the original question was "Why would a Jew, whom the pagans of the 2nd century tell us were renown for their separatism, find a myth constructed from Greco-Roman pagan myths persuasive?"

B. The Village Atheist's cites the criteriion of a virgin birth, but the parallels Justin cites, as Celsus cites, are not virgin births. The Village Atheist cites the resurrection. Which of these Greco-Roman myths involved an actual resurrection from the dead and which one(s) did the Christians use in composing the resurrection narratives and virgin birth narratives?

C. Where does Justin say these are "close" parallels?

D. Apparently, the Village Atheist has selected parts of Justin but not the whole. Justin argues against the charge of atheism. He employs these allusions to pagan mythology to show that the philosophical content of what they teach has some general points of agreement, but the comparison is by way of contrast. To further refute the charge of atheism, he notes analogical parallels in certain other myths, but notes these are lesser and different mytdisanalogous also disanalgous. His point is that the Christians cannot be faulted for atheism for believing in Christ, who is superior to those in these inferior stories. He then explicates a classic Christian defense of the validity of the gospel and specifically sources Christ in the universe of the Jewish Scriptures, not Greco-Roman myths (exactly contrary to copycat theorists' assertions).

He then discusses the origin of the pagan myths, and asserts that it was either demonic influence alone or demonic influence working through Greek interaction with those same Jewish sources that was accreted into the Greco-Roman myths. He appears to use this to infer that his audience should remember then that some of what they believed was copied from the Jews and changed for their own culture. Their forefathers listened to the Jewish Scriptures enough to do this, how much more should they now listen to the Jewish Scriptures again, not their own myths. Thus the "close parallels", in Justin's view, are the result of Greeks having borrowed from Jews in centuries past, not vice versa, and Christians, he says, did not base their accounts on the Greek myths, but on the Jewish Scriptures, the truth of which antedates the Greek myths.

First, you don’t have any evidence that Mary WAS a virgin after she conceived Jesus. The mere fact that Matthew and Luke insist she was, doesn’t suddenly mean there’s no borrowing from pagan sources. God appeared as a man many times in the Old Testament, so the only thing going for the “she was still a virgin after conception” is the question begging reliance on Matthew and Luke, who records in this case are the very question at issue.

A. I have the text of the New Testament, so I do have evidence. You simply dismiss it out of hand. The burden of proof is on you to show the text is incorrect or spurious. This is no more question-begging than your naturalism. All you have so far is an assertion that virgin births can't happen because miracles can't happen, which is made on a stipulative use of the principle of uniformity. I have seen no argument against the veracity of Luke in any of your writing. Jason has already addressed this with you multiple times.

B. If you think they were borrowing from pagan sources, the burden of proof is on you to show that they did so. What sources were used? Why would a Jew writing to Jews find parallels from Greek mythology persuasive, and why would his readers find them persuasive? The Jews had a low view of Greek mythology. The NT was written during a time when observance of the Law was a major issue within the churches. How did these observant Jews, who worshipped in the Temple with the other Jews and preached in the synagogues come to accept Greek mythology so quickly and easily?

C. God appeared as an angel in the OT and was perceived as a grown man. The Father does not impregnate Mary. For somebody that says he was a Bible-thumping Calvinist, you don't have a very clear grasp of the narratives.

Second, you should realize that failure to be an exact parallel doesn't suddenly mean there was no borrowing. The very fact that Jews, as you said, wished to be seen as unique, would argue that the Christian Jews would also, if they did indeed borrow, make sure that Jesus wasn't a perfect mirror image of the pagans.

That's not an assertion made on evidence that you possess that there was such borrowing. So much for your empiricism. Where is the specific, empirical evidence for such borrowing in the Lukan and Matthean narratives? What you have now is an unfalsifiable assertion.

The failure that there isn't an exact parallel and there is analogical one likewise doesn't prove their was borrowing. It is made even less likely if you view the NT narratives through Second Temple Judaism, which is the proper lens through which to view it. You have to justify why they would borrow at all, and if you assert they did borrow, you need to be able to show how, where, when, what they borrowed, etc. None of those arguments hold water.

I fail to see how any of this refutes my "present is key to past" principle. Your professor wouldn't even be able to compile his notes for that lecture nor could you even know what college you are supposed to be attending let alone what class you should be sitting in, if you reject "the present is the key to the past." Sounds like pretty solid criteria to me.

The present is the key to past, but sometimes a different key is needed to unlock the door. You need a supporting argument that naturalism is essential in order to hold the principle of uniformity. Why can't uniformity be placed under the principle of liberty and contingency? Jason and Steve have already shown you that a Christian can hold to the principle of uniformity under the rubric of providence, and it's not as if one has to be a theist or a Christian theist to hold to the principle of liberty and contingency. This has been discussed with you already, but, like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target when responding.

Straw-man, I never said low probability DID rule them out. What I think rules them out is the fact that naturalistic explanations for your miracle-data have more evidential force.

You have argued, "my own experience in life is my ultimate criteria through which I test the personal experiences claimed by others, and it must necessarily be in that order." You have most certainly argued that possibility, not "evidential weight" is the issue.

Here was your first claim:

To be plausible, he would have to have been resurrected, which I don't think is plausible, since historical reconstruction cannot occur unless one uses the present to interpret the past (principle of uniformity), which rule of historiography automatically excludes all allegations that would require suspensions of the known physical laws.

Here is another:

On the contrary, the absence of any concretely established parallel event is the very reason one would say that something in a report is false/impossible...and so the opposite is true as well, namely, that the existence of many concretely established cases of X, is what gives you confidence that X is not impossible

and another:

Do you have any non-controversial established cases of resurrection from the dead, so that I might stop seeing Jesus' resurrection as impossible and at least grant that it was within the realm of possibility?"

and another:

Yes, the fact that something is improbable DOES influence me to first deny it until I can interview the claimers to have a better idea of the place the miracle-claim originated.

Now you say you look case-by-case and do not need an established pattern. So at first, you appeal to the priniciple of uniformity as stipulative and rendering the miraculous impossible and are justified in rejecting a claim to the supernatural even there are thousands of witnesses. You explicitly make an argument from probability. Now you're making one on "evidential weight." Dave reminds me of certain contributors at Prometheus Books who compile books purporting to refute Christianity while their contributors contradict each other's theses every other chapter, with what one says is untrue being true several times over. We're on a sliding scale with his rules of evidence. My objection stands, for that is the reason the principle ofprinciple of contingency operates, it looks at the merits of all the evidence without subjecting history to a general principle of repeatability that is used as a stipulative tool to rule out evidence because of a particular metaphysical blik.

The priniciple of uniformity is not stipulative in the examination of history and testimony. History does not depend on stipulative universality and repeatability. Those who try to make such assertions have consistently found themselves being charged with obscuring, not illuminating history.

The testimony of regularity in general is in no way a testimony against an unusual event in particular. The prinicple of uniformity in history is, itself, a general principle, and miracles, by definition, would be irregularites and particularities; so, by your own yardstick, your appeal to the principle of uniformity in history cannot be used logically to refute a particular event. I need only borrow a page from your own rulebook to establish this, for earlier you said, with reference to critiquing pagan parallels that "This is a general statement, which cannot be logically used to refute a specific statement" and that we need to evaluate each one on its own merits. Yet you are using the priniciple of uniformity in exactly that manner to rule out specific events said to be miraculous for no other reason than your naturalistic blik.