Debunking John Loftus: Part n.

Our friend, John, John-boy Loftus, stopped by and commented on this post of mine.

"Christianity claims things that are way out in right field, to use a metaphor."

Atheism claims things that are way out of the ballpark. And, I think the metaphor is "you're out in left field."

"My view is, was, and will be, is that the view requiring the fewest unexplainables is the one to be preferred."

My view is, was, and will be, that John Loftus' rejection of the triune God doesn't allow him to explain anything.

"Go ahead explain the atonenment [sic]. I have been waiting. Anyone there at Triablogue up to it?"

Yeah, sure thing, here's from my 6 yr old’s catechism we went through a couple years ago:

Q. 48. What is meant by the Atonement?

A. Christ's satisfying divine justice, by his sufferings and death, in the place of sinners.

You know John-boy, if you'd like me to arrange a radio debate between you and my 6 yr. old I'd be happy to do it.

"And your alternative is to believe in the brute unexplainable fact of an eternally existing trinue [sic] God who never had a beginning and who decrees all of the suffering we experience in the world because that brings him more glory."

1) I said that you have asked us to explain things and when I have asked you to explain things you've said you don't have to. So, which is it? This doesn't address my claim, at all. It's not even in "right field." If not everything can be explained, then why is this a problem, at all?

2)What do you mean by "unexplainable?" What is it to "explain" something in your worldview? Is it causal? Mechanistic? Philosophical? Basic? Non-basic?

3) Your alternative is to not be able to explain anything.

4) Your problem is that you have to presuppose the brute unexplainable fact of an eternally existing triune God who never had a beginning and who decrees all of the suffering we experience in the world because that brings him more glory, in order to make sense of your experience.

"Was logic created by him,"

Depending on what you mean by logic, no.

"or must God abide by some standard of Logic?"

You must have meant, must God abide by some standard of logic outside Himself? In that case, no.

"To say Logic is God's very nature does not tell us whether his logic is true or not...it just is...because there would be no higher standard of logic to test God's logic."

1) God cannot lie, that's a presupposition of the Christian worldview. So, all you've done is to presuppose that Christianity is false in order to say it's false. Terribly uninteresting, John-boy.

How's this: since God exists, how can you say atheism is true?

2) So, does one need a "higher" standard of logic do determine if "lower" logics are "true?" If so, then how do you determine your human logic? If you have no higher standard than human logic is just to say "it's there." You wouldn't know if it's true or not because you'd have no higher standard by which to judge it.

If you have a higher standard, then how do you judge that higher standard? By a higher one? Ad infinitum.

Hey, don't complain, you did that to yourself (I can do that with math et al.).

3. What if God is the highest standard and whatever he says is "righteous and true?" Seems like you'd have to presuppose the Christian worldview as false in order to even bring up your charge. So, I guess if you want to leave out relevant details to make your case, take that low road then.

"How can you even think of saying that your view is preferable to mine?"

'cause yours is stupid.

"There is faith for both sides, since on one can be absolutely sure."

You "absolutely sure" 'bout that?

Anyway, thanks for admitting that atheism is faith-based. I'm sure the boys (and girl!) at the Secular Outpost liked that one.

Here's the humdinger: my faith saves knowledge and rationality, yours destroys it.

"But still, the simpler theory is to be preferred."

1) Well, here's my theory: God's right and John-boy's wrong. Simple enough?

2) The simple theory must be able to account for or explain what needs explaining. It's not enough to have a simpler theory if you can't account for anything.

3) Though we shouldn't add entities beyond what's needed, we also should not subtract entities beyond what's needed.

4). This objections assumes, many times, that only physical or naturalistic explanations can be given or accepted.

5) Hume destroyed empiricism and appeal to necessary causes, so how can you explain anything?

"And when I read the Bible it contains far too many things which are out of sync with today's world--far too many."

1) Those being?

2) So your little sliver of experience, in "today's world," allows you to make claims about what is possible or impossible in the totality of it all?

3) That's called a hasty generalization, a fallacy, John-boy.

4) You ditched your critical thinking class didn't you? You and the other kids who have now since apostatized were all down at the arcade playing Donkey Kong and drinking soda pop while the other kids stayed and learned logic.

"The explanation that God was doing things differently back then doesn't wash."

1) Oh, God can't run His universe in a way unlike he ran it before? Nice of you to be so humble. Does God need to ask your permission to do something, or stop doing something?

2) If people cannot do things different than they did in the past, then John, John-boy Loftus cannot have deconverted.

3) If John, John-boy Loftus cannot have deconverted then he's still a theist.

4) If Loftus is still a theist then we've finally proven Steve Hays' claim that Loftus is really an under cover theist trying to make atheists look bad!

"And the evidence we do have of the past is that ancient people believed in magic, gods and godesses, [sic] sacrifices, divination, God insired [sic] dreams, incarnations, and...and...and... Unbelievable [sic] stuff."

How many times is Loftus going to bring up this slandering the past fallacy? Lewis called this one, Chronological Snobbery.

I've pasted Greg Bahnsen's little answer to Loftusian type claims before, but ole John-boy never responds. I guess he thinks he can just ignore counter evidence and argumentation and pretend that his thesis still stands. It looks as if he just plugs his ears and chants "my theory is simple, my theory is simple."

Well, here's Dr. Bahnsen again (http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pa165.htm),

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Slandering The Past

You will notice in the hypothetical challenge to Christianity's credibility which is expressed above (meant to be representative of the actual negative mindset and comments of unbelievers which we encounter), there is an unquestioned and arrogant assumption that a critical mindset about miracles is the exclusive property of "the modern world." The philosopher David Hume snidely remarked that it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors....[1]

Over and over again you will find non-Christians who simply take it for granted that people in the ancient world believed miracles took place, to be blunt, because: (a) they were too scientifically stupid to know better, (b) they were gullible and naive, and/or (c) they were fascinated and eager to find anywhere they could traces of magic in their experience.

Of course, on those three scores we should wonder if the enlightened modern world has any reason for pride, really. It is not the least bit difficult today to locate scientifically stupid people, even college graduates. Watch them try to "fix" things with a hammer, deal with an unwanted cockroach or rationalize their smoking; listen to their home-cures for a hangover. And as for gullibility and magic! In our oh-so-smart "modern" world have you ever heard about get-rich-quick investment schemes, diet fads, lottery fever, or the wonder of crystals (or pyramids, etc.)?

Or listen to all those respected entertainers on TV talk-shows telling large, attentive audiences about their "former lives," or about the healing power of meditation, or about "social karma" and "mother earth," or about the "human face" of communist tyranny in our century, etc. These are hardly evidences of a critical mind or superior rationality.



Believe It Or Not, Skepticism Has Been Around

Clear-thinking people should beware of sloppy and self-serving generalizations about, or comparisons between, one age (or culture) and another.

Even more, they should refrain from manifesting the kind of historical ignorance which imagines that people who lived before our enlightened, modern age were, in general, never critically minded or were readily fooled (or more easily than we would be) into accepting tales of miracles. After all, what is the source of the expression occasionally still used in our day "he's just a doubting Thomas"? Remember Thomas, called Didymus (the "Twin"), from the gospel of John's account of Christ's resurrection (John 20:24-29)? Down through subsequent history he has come to be called "Doubting Thomas" just because of his skeptical mindset regarding one of the greatest miracles in the Bible. Thomas would not readily accept the testimony of the other apostles that they had seen the resurrected Savior.

And he was not alone in that spirit of disbelief. Even those who personally encountered Christ after He rose from the dead were not excitedly awaiting or jumping with eagerness at the opportunity to believe that a wonder had taken place. Two disciples on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-31) as well as Mary Magdalene (John 20:1, 11-16) were so disinclined to believe such a miracle that they did not even recognize Jesus when they saw him. (Gestalt psychology helps us understand that kind of experience, which all of us have had when "seeing" somebody we know, but not recognizing him "out of normal context" or in an unexpected setting.) Matthew relates that even in the presence of the resurrected Lord and knowing who He was supposed to be, "some doubted" (Matt. 28:17).

When the gospel of the resurrected Savior was taken out into the ancient world, there was then - even as now - a general antagonism to the credibility of such claims. Paul proclaimed the resurrection of Christ before the Council of Areopagus in Athens, but the Greek poet Aeschylus many years before had related, in the story of the very founding of the Areopagus, that it was there declared that once a man has died "there is no resurrection." The ancient world knew its share of skepticism and denunciation of miracles. Luke writes that when Paul's address to the Areopagus brought him to the claim about Christ's resurrection, his audience could hardly be characterized by general gullibility and a predisposed willingness to affirm the miracle! Instead: "now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked," and others more politely put Paul off to another time (Acts 17:32). Ridicule of miracles did not begin in the modern world of enlightened science.

Just like our own culture today, the ancient world was an intellectually mixed-bag. Like us, it had its share of superstitious and mystically minded people; as we do, it had people whose thinking was ignorant, misinformed, lazy, stupid, illogical and silly. But also like our own age, the ancient world had plenty of people who were skeptical and cynical. (Indeed, those were even the names for two prominent schools of ancient Greek philosophy in the period of the New Testament!) Plenty of people in the ancient world were critically minded about reports of natural wonders and magical powers. Many not only doubted claims to miracles and found them incredible, but even precluded the very possibility that such things could occur.


The Truth Claims Of Christianity

This was so much the case that you will notice the apostle Peter felt it necessary to make this declaration in his second general epistle: "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty" (2 Peter 1:16). Peter knew that it would be easy for people to "write off" the claims of Christians as just so much more idle chatter and story-telling; he knew that people in his own generation had dismissed the church's proclamation about Jesus because they would not believe such claims regarding miracles. Far from being stupid and gullible, Peter's contemporaries had to be assured that apostolic accounts of Jesus were not cunningly devised fables, but the eyewitness truth.

It was important for the Christian testimony in the midst of an unbelieving culture that followers of Jesus have a reputation for not "giving heed to fables" (1 Tim. 1:4) or entertaining "old wives' tales" (1 Tim. 4:7) - that is, fictitious accounts which are the very opposite of "the truth" of Christianity (2 Tim. 4:4). The hostile world of unregenerate men would only too gladly dismiss the claims of the gospel narrative as being of the same mythical nature - fabulous, unreliable, exaggerated.

The point here, very simply, is that contemporary critics of the Christian faith who automatically dismiss and ridicule the miracle-claims of the Bible because of the alleged widespread ignorance and gullibility of the ancient world only bring shame to themselves for their own ignorant prejudices and unwarranted generalizations. Like today, defenders of the faith in the ancient world encountered significant opposition and negativity about the alleged occurrence of miracles - hostility ranging from sophisticated philosophical repudiations to gut-level mockery. If people living in those days came to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, healed the sick and was raised from the dead, it was not because they categorically were weak-minded and ignorant fools, ready to believe any and every fable that came their way.

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"Unbelievable [sic] even to YOU if someone were to tell the same kinds of stories in today's world."

What, you mean like if someone told me that "Once upon a time (read: billions and billions of years ago) a frog turned into a prince (read: species turned into other species)." You mean like that?

Or, like when people tell me that non-rational matter somehow turned into the rational?

Or like when people tell me that what was once not-living became living?

Or like when people tell me that two-way lungs evolved into one-way avian lungs?

John-boy, that's qualities turning into their opposites. That's alchemy You know, trying to turn lead into gold.