Avalos on prayer

Last year, apostate Hector Avalos gave a talk on prayer:

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/news/student_life/article_277d43c6-dcc5-11e4-b244-e3f0fe813ae9.html

This appears to be a rehash of objections he raised in more detail in his article: "Can Science Prove that Prayer Works?" Free Inquiry 17 (1997). I'll comment on that article. 

The problem with this and any so-called controlled experiment regarding prayer is that there can be no such thing as a controlled experiment concerning prayer. You can never divide people into groups that received prayer and those that did not. The main reason is that there is no way to know that someone did not receive prayer. How would anyone know that some distant relative was not praying for a member of the group that Byrd had identified as having received no prayer?

I basically agree with that.

For example, many people with high blood pressure would call me to pray for them when their blood pressure rose. I would come and pray, and afterwards the blood pressure would fall. This would be regarded by me and the patient as an answered prayer. Yet most blood pressure frequently does rise and fall on its own because our bodies have systems that function like the thermostat in our homes. Many other "sick conditions" also get better on their own because the body has mechanisms to relieve itself (for example, fevers, colds, many types of aches and pains). 
Another reason for the widespread belief in divine healing among Christians, especially Pentecostals, is the dynamic of the services in which healings are said to occur. In many instances a great quantity of healings are reported by traveling evangelists. Usually the evangelist asks the patient what the problem is. 
Many may say, for instance, that they had a "kidney problem" when they have a backache. The evangelist usually does not verify if the patient is indeed suffering from kidney problems and is not usually familiar with the patient s medical history. Yet he might announce that the patient was healed of "kidney problems" to the entire audience. The evangelist also might assume that the persons who approached the altar were healed, and so he may report that multitudes of persons were healed in his previous stop. Indeed, the evangelist rarely performs follow-up examinations. Thus exaggerated numbers of reported healings can multiply rapidly in these environments.  
The psychology of the petitioner is also a contributing factor. If the evangelist, for example, asks patients if God has healed them, they are very likely to say "Yes," even if their symptoms say the opposite. [14] The reason is that many patients are embarrassed to say that God has not healed them because this appears to insult God.

i) I agree. However, citing unimpressive examples does nothing to counter more impressive examples. What about medically verifiable miracles? 

ii) Avalos fails to draw an elementary distinction. If you wish to prove the occurrence of answered prayer, then it's logical to begin with unambiguous examples. But once you establish the occurrence of answered prayer, that makes another examples more likely to be cases of answered prayer, even if they are ambiguous. 

For most of my young and adolescent life, I was a faith healer in a Pentecostal tradition. I witnessed what I then thought were resurrections, spontaneous growth of short limbs, cures from cancer, and many other types of diseases. In retrospect, I have learned much about why people believe in answered prayers even when there is evidence to the contrary or even when it is logically absurd. Every single case of a supposedly answered prayer that I witnessed can be explained by one or more of the following factors: (1) false assumptions, (2) erroneous information, and (3) wishful thinking. 

Yet he admits that he "witnessed what he then thought were resurrections, spontaneous growth of short limbs…" He fails to explain how he could misperceive the instantaneous growth of short limbs. That would be a visible phenomenon, right? Does he think his eyes played tricks on him?  

For Christian believers, answered prayers qualify as a type of miracle. According to Charles Hodge, the famous American fundamentalist theologian: "A miracle, therefore, may be defined to be an event, in the external world, brought about by the immediate efficiency, or simple volition, of God." [11] The problem with verifying scientifically that miracles as defined above ever occur is that the Christian god is supposed to have infinite characteristics, and we can never know whether a prayer has been answered by a being that is said to be infinite. 
Let me explain. One of the infinite characteristics of the Christian god is omnipresence - that is, this being is said to be everywhere in the universe at the same time. The Christian god is also said to be eternal, all-powerful, and all-knowing. Yet, we, as finite human beings, could never know that such an infinite being exists. For example, in order to know that there is a being who is everywhere at the universe at the same time we would have to be everywhere in the universe at the same time. 

i) I don't think God is literally omnipresent. God isn't a physical being. So God isn't everywhere. Strictly speaking, God isn't anywhere. 

ii) It's not uncommon to postulate the existence of spaceless entities (e.g. numbers, logical laws, possible worlds). Their explanatory power accounts for concrete states.

In order to know that there is a being who is eternal, we would have to be eternal. 

i) That's a one-sentence assertion. He fails to explain why we'd have to be eternal to know there's an eternal being. What's the principle? That you must be like what you know? The subject of knowledge must be the same kind of being as the object of knowledge? Must I be a bumble bee to know that bumblebees exist?

ii) I don't need to be timeless to know that timeless objects exist (e.g. numbers, logical laws,possible worlds). I infer their existence because they do necessary explanatory work. They are indispensable to account for certain concrete states. 

In order to know that any event we witnessed in the world was caused by a particular being, we first have to know that such a being exists. For example, it would be absurd to say: "I know my prayer was answered by an invisible Martian, but I do not know if invisible Martians exist." The reason this statement is logically absurd is that it attributes an action to a being not known to exist. 

Really? Take white explorers who saw bison on the Great Plains for the very first time. Must they know in advance that bison exist to take sightings of bison as evidence for their existence? Must they have evidence that bison exist independent of bison sightings before they can acknowledge that bison exist based on direct observation? How would Avalos ever establish the initial existence of something? If he automatically discounts the first case on the grounds that we can't accept that evidence unless we already know it exists, then that rules out novel discoveries. 

Likewise, in order to know that any event (e.g., an answered prayer or any other supposed extraordinary event) was caused by an infinite being, we first have to know that an infinite being exists. Since we can never know that an infinite being such as the Christian god exists, we can never know that any event we witness was caused by this being. In sum, knowing scientifically that an infinite God answered a prayer is logically impossible. 

That piggybacks on a couple of bad arguments (see above).

Prayer would be unnecessary if there were an all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful God. Let's suppose that the most gifted doctor in the world happens to be your friend. This doctor has the ability to cure any sickness known to modern medicine. Let s also suppose that this doctor is living with your family, which includes a six-month-old baby. 
Now if this infant were to become violently ill in the presence of this super-doctor, what would you expect from him? If the baby is choking, for example, you would expect him to use techniques that will relieve the baby s problem. You would not expect him to ask you first if you believed that he could cure your child before he was willing to help the child. You would not expect him to require you to show how much faith you had in him before he would help your child. What you would expect is for this super-doctor to act as soon as he sees the child choking. 

Among other things, prayer is designed to cultivate a sense of dependence on God. If all our needs were automatically provided for, there'd be no appreciation or realization of our dependence on God. 

Moreover, we shouldn't just expect people to do us favors. Asking for a favor is an acknowledgement that if your request is granted, the grantor is doing your a favor. Even if a parent knows that his teenager wants something from them, he may wait for the teenager to ask. A teenager shouldn't just take his parents for granted. Receiving what he asked for is a basis for gratitude. Otherwise, the child grows up to be a selfish, thankless person, since he expects everything to be provided without ever having to ask. The same dynamic applies to friendship. 

Let's also suppose that this doctor has the ability to prevent cancer in all children anywhere in the world even before it occurs. Undoubtedly, you would expect that if he had this ability then he would use it, if he really fits our definition of "good." But if the doctor has this ability, and does use it, then you would not expect there to be any cases of infantile cancer in the world. If this super-doctor has this ability, then he should not wait for anyone to ask him to prevent the suffering of children with cancer. We would expect him to act immediately out of pure goodness. 

That depends on the long-term consequences. Individual lives are not self-contained events. Rather, they have short-term and long-term impacts on other people's lives, for better or worse. Suppose God heals a child with cancer. Suppose his future grandson is a security guard at an oil refinery. He works the nightshift. One of his duties is to periodically check the gauges to make sure a system isn't going critical. But instead, he's watching a skin-flick. As a result, the refinery explodes, incinerating the inhabitants of the company town. Saving one life resulted in a thousand deaths. 

Similarly, an all-good God would not want anyone to suffer. 

Some people deserve to suffer. Take people who commit atrocities.  

An all-knowing God would know who would suffer ahead of time, and an all-powerful God could prevent suffering before it happens. Thus, if there were an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God, then there would be no need for prayer in the first place, especially if the prayer is used to alleviate illnesses or any other type of suffering. 

Of course, that's the problem of evil, for which there are different, sometimes complementary, theodicies. For instance, suffering can be a theater for soul-building virtues. Likewise, a world without suffering will have a different set of people than a world with suffering. Each scenario has tradeoffs. Each scenario has winners and losers. 

Even if someone prayed to the Christian god for healing and that person was healed, it would not prove that the healing was done by the Christian god. All religions claim to have answered prayers. For example, according to the Bhagavad-Gita, part of the sacred scriptures of Hinduism, the god Krishna claims that it does not matter which god human beings worship; it is Krishna who answers their prayer. [13] Thus, it would not be scientifically possible to show that it is the Christian god who answered a prayer even if such a prayer was answered. 

i) Avalos is equivocating. He's an atheist. So even if you can't prove that a prayer was answered by the Christian God, it still falsifies atheism.

ii) What kind of god is Krishna? He didn't always exist. He had parents (Devaki, Vasudeva). Is it even possible for an anthropomorphic deity like Krishna to exist? Is it even possible for a finite god like Krishna to answer prayer? 

iii) Hector's comparison is reversible. If the Christian God intended for Ravi Zecharias to exist, he might answer a prayer to Krishna by one of Ravi's ancestors, in case Ravi's future existence is contingent on that answer. Likewise, if God intended Tom Schreiner to exist, he might answer a prayer to Mary by one of Schreiner's Catholic forebears, in case Schreiner's existence is contingent on that answer. 

iv) There's a conspiratorial quality to Hector's objection. For instance, he teaches at Iowa State U. Now it's hypothetically possible that Iowa State U is really a front organization for a drug cartel. This deflects attention away from the cartel's nefarious activities. They bought off the local reporters and politicians to avoid detection.  

Hector's habit of floating hypothetical alternatives is a diversionary tactic. Even though it's hypothetically possible that things are not as they seem, unless we have actual evidence to the contrary, it's irrational to be suspicious. 

Even if we saw an extraordinary healing occur (e.g., a severed leg grow back instantaneously), we would not be able to prove scientifically that it was a supernatural occurrence. To say that something is supernatural is to say that something is not natural. But to say that something is not natural, one would have to be practically omniscient because that would be tantamount to saying that we know all the natural factors that could possibly be responsible for an event, and are claiming to know that none of the factors was responsible. No one has the kind of knowledge, and so consequently no one could ever call anything non-natural. 
The most we could say about an event whose cause is unknown is that the cause is unknown. As already noted, we would be less justified in attributing an extraordinary event to an infinite being. 
But even if you recovered from a potentially deadly illness in some unexpected manner, you still cannot know if it was an act of God. The most we could say is that the recovery was accomplished through an unknown process. Many recuperations that may appear supernaturally miraculous may be due to very natural processes which have not been recognized or studied previously. Indeed, one can draw up a long list of phenomena that were unknown 100 years ago but are deemed perfectly natural today. In fact, most believers in prayer have received conventional medical treatment, and so one cannot eliminate the possibility that it was the medical treatment, not the prayer, that actually had a beneficial effect, even when such an effect might be unexpected. 

i) That argument either proves too much or too little. We can turn it around. You'd have to be omniscient to disprove God's existence. You'd have to be omniscient to rule out supernatural factors. As he himself says, "there is no way to know that someone did not receive prayer". So naturalism is unverifiable. 

ii) By that logic, every biblical miracle might have happened, just as people saw it occur, yet it has a naturalistic explanation. Surely Avalos doesn't take that seriously. 

iii) If he really takes that position, then he's a secular fideist. If nothing in principle could ever count against atheism, then atheism isn't based on evidence. Atheism is indifferent to evidence. Faith-based atheism rather than fact-based atheism. 

iv) If a Christian receives conventional medical treatment, that explains the instantaneous regeneration of an amputated limb? 

God heals amputees!

Don't take my word for it. According to apostate atheist Hector Avalos, in "Can Science Prove that Prayer Works?" Free Inquiry 17 (1997):

Even if we saw an extraordinary healing occur (e.g., a severed leg grow back instantaneously), we would not be able to prove scientifically that it was a supernatural occurrence. 

For most of my young and adolescent life, I was a faith healer in a Pentecostal tradition. I witnessed what I then thought were resurrections, spontaneous growth of short limbs, cures from cancer, and many other types of diseases. 

So he's conceding that he saw the instantaneous regeneration of amputated limbs. (Notice that he uses "spontaneous" as a synonym for "instantaneously".) By his own admission, that's from firsthand observation. 

He doesn't deny what he saw. "Who should I believe–me or my dying eyes!" Instead, he says that's still not scientific proof that it was a supernatural occurrence. 

Now, Avalos is such a fanatical atheist that he might backpedal on his original, damaging admission. Again, though, how could he be mistaken? How could he see an amputated limb merely appear to instantaneously grow right before his eyes? 

Notice that he's not talking about tricks by other faith-healers, but his own direct observation.  

Exploring the Exodus

1. Over at Debunking Christianity, apostate atheist Hector Avalos has a long review of Patterns of Evidence. I won't have much to say in response to Avalos, since his post is not a direct attack on the Exodus itself, but on a film about the Exodus. At the end of this post I will comment on one of his statements. 

I haven't seen Patterns of Evidence. But from what I've read about it, I'm concerned that the film seems to be predicated on a false premise: 

http://patternsofevidence.com/controversy/

The operating assumption is that if the Exodus was a real event, there ought to be hard evidence for that event. And from reviews I've read, the film's solution is that scholars are looking for evidence within the wrong period. 

Assuming that's accurate, it's a misguided way to frame the issue. The "Exodus" is, itself, something of an umbrella term for (A) the period in which Israelites were slaves in Egypt, followed by (B) their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, followed by (C) their "40" year sojourn in the Sinai desert, followed by (D) the "Conquest" of Israel. 

2. We need to begin with a realistic understanding of what kind of physical evidence we'd expect to be available at this late date. As Edwin Yamauchi noted, in The Stones and the Scripture:

• Only a fraction of the world’s archaeological evidence still survives in the ground.

• Only a fraction of the possible archaeological sites have been discovered.

• Only a fraction have been excavated, and those only partially.

• Only a fraction of those partial excavations have been thoroughly examined and published.

• Only a fraction of what has been examined and published has anything to do with the claims of the Bible!

3. Regarding A-B:

i) Genesis and Exodus never name the Pharaohs who interacted with Moses and Joseph. That, itself, limits our ability to date the chain of events. We don't even know whose royal records to consult, assuming they're available. We don't know which Pharaonic tomb to look into. That tomb may not have been discovered or excavated.

ii) Even if we knew where to look, Pharaonic tombs don't broadcast the domestic and foreign policy failures of the establishment. 

iii) The Israelites resided in the Nile Delta. By definition, that's a flood zone. Do we really think their mud huts will survival millennia of erosion? 

4. Regarding C:

i)  The Sinai desert is about the size of West Virginia. 

ii) What physical evidence we'd expect to survive depends, in part, on the number of Israelites. Estimates vary. In his commentary, I think Douglas Stuart reasonably estimates their number at 28,800-36,000 (p302). 

iii) They only resided in the Sinai for a period of about 40 years, during the 2nd millennium BC.  

iv) They didn't settle down. Didn't build fortified cities with stone walls, houses, and public facilities. Rather, they were nomads, living in tents and moving from place to place. 

v) Even if they had some hard artifacts, like metal tools, they'd take that with them into the Promised Land rather than leaving it behind. 

vi) Moreover, they were hardly the only people-group to trek through the Sinai. Even if they did leave behind trace evidence, how would we be able to distinguish that from other nomadic groups in the Sinai, like the Bedouin? (I don't necessarily mean there were Bedouin at that time and place, but groups like the Bedouin.) 

5. Regarding D: 

i) Attacks on the historicity of the Conquest are typically based on misreading what Joshua and Judges actually claim. As one commentator notes:

The fact is that the book of Joshua does not claim that the Israelites caused widespread destruction of cities; in fact, it explicitly denies this (Josh 11:13). Joshua speaks of cities being taken and people (especially kings) being killed, but "only three cities–Jericho, Ai, and Hazor–are said to have been burned" (Josh 6:24; 8:28; 11:11,13). Furthermore, some areas seem to have been taken by something more like accommodation (or interpretation) than conquest (e.g., Gideon, Josh 9; Shechem, Josh 24:1,25; Gen 34). Finally, there is abundant evidence in the biblical record, especially in Judges, of Israelites intermarrying with Canaanites and worshipping their gods…It should hardly surprise us, therefore, if in the material remains of the period Israelites are virtually indistinguishable from Canaanites. B. Webb, The Book of Judges (Eerdmans 2012), 10. 

ii) Avalos says:

Mahoney never addresses the seemingly blatant contradiction that Jabin and Hazor are supposed to have been exterminated completely in Joshua 11:1, 10, and yet there is Jabin king of Hazor AFTER the death of Joshua (See Judges 1:1) in Judges 4:2. 
Apologists have attempted to explain this away by saying that there were two different Jabins. However, Judges has at least one other instance where it simply repeats a story from Joshua (compare Judges 1:11-15 with Joshua 15:15-19)
Therefore, editorial problems probably better explain the occurrence of Jabin in Judges 4. Otherwise, one would have to suppose that after a complete destruction of both city and people, Hazor rose again within a few years, and installed another king Jabin. The archaeological evidence is certainly lacking for that.

iii) But as one scholar notes:

The appearance in Joshua-Judges of two kings with the name Jabin is no more a "doublet" than two Niqmads (II and III) and two Ammishtamrus (I and II) in Ugarit, or two Suppiluliumas (I and II), two Mursils (II and III), and two Tudkhalias III and IV) of the Hittites, or two pharaohs (Amenophis (III and IV), Sethos (I and II), and Ramesses (I and II) in Egypt–all these in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries. K. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans 2003), 184-85. 

As another scholar notes:

Jabin was probably a royal title (like "Pharaoh" for the kings of Egypt). Joshua had defeated another "Jabin" at Hazor almost one hundred years earlier (Josh 11:1-11). Verses 23-24 probably refer to the final destruction of a resurgent Hazor in the thirteenth century, as attested (on at least one reading of the data) by the archeological remains there. B. Webb, ibid., 180.

iv) Notice that this isn't "within a few years," but about a century later. A lot can happen in a century. 

In addition, there's a reason why some sites were settled in the first place. They may have access to fresh water for drinking, fishing, or irrigation. They may be located along trade routes. 

That means that even when a site is destroyed by invaders, it remains an appealing location, for all the reasons that made it a magnet for the original settlers. So it's not surprising that it will be repopulated at a later date. Prime real estate is always desirable.  

Astrological atheism

Over at Debunking Christianity, apostate Hector Avalos says:

One should not let these apocalyptic interpreters forget that it is atheists who have been 100% correct in predicting that those end dates will fail, while it is believers who have been 100% incorrect. In other words, atheists (and other skeptics) have been the best "prophets" when it comes to these end dates.

To simplify, let's use round numbers. Suppose Jesus was going to return before 3000 AD. That means the odds are about 11,000 to 1 that he won't return on any particular day during that interval. Any astrologer with half a brain could safely predict that any given date for his return will be wrong. Mathematically speaking, the odds are overwhelmingly against the accuracy of any date you pull out of the hat. And that will be the case even if Jesus was, in fact, going to return before 3000 AD. 

Predicting when something won't happen can be infinitely easier than predicting when it will happen. If it happens on one day, it won't happen on all the other days. The days when it won't happen outnumber the day when it will happen by many orders of magnitude. Don't pat yourself on the back when you accurately predict a nonevent. In general, it takes no foresight to predict the nonoccurence of an event on any given date. 

Some events are predictable if they fall under human control. Likewise, some events are predicable if the outcome is connected to an observable a chain of causes, like running out of fuel, or the trajectory of a hurricane. 

But in the abstract, a one-time event is unpredictable in the sense that it could happen at any time, yet it won't happen most days, weeks, years, centuries–even millennia (or more). 

For instance, some scientists theorize that a vast asteroid struck the earth about 65 million years ago. Let's grant that for the sake of argument. Consider all the days when it didn't happen, both before and after. Yet impact craters bear witness to such events, however rare or isolated. 

Were the disciples deadbeat dads?

Having been raised by a single mother and a single grandmother in both Mexico and in the United States, I personally know that women can be breadwinners. But I also see how much one income, instead of the income of two or more adults, greatly affected our family. 

The Bad Jesus, pp. 201-203
Heroic Disciples or Deadbeat Dads?

And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men’. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him (Mk 1.16-20). 

In another instance, Jesus seems to make an equally outrageous demand:

Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go’. And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head’. Another of the disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father’. But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead’ (Mt. 8.18-22). 

Imagine if a group of twelve men today left their families to follow a man they just met or barely knew. What sorts of questions would arise? For starters, one might ask what happened to their families? How are these families supposed to make a living after being abandoned by their main or only breadwinners? Who will assume the burden of the burial that the scribe abandoned? Is it morally right for someone to abandon a family in the first place? 

Once one begins to think more seriously about what Jesus wanted the disciples to do, it becomes very clear to anyone who studies basic economics that abandonment would impoverish the corresponding families almost immediately. If that family has infants, then those infants may be left without much food. Any wives are now left more vulnerable. 

Any hired servants may go unpaid. There was seemingly no notice given to every affected family by these disciples, but the anxiety of such an abandonment is hardly ever the subject of any compassion or sympathy by New Testament scholarship. These disciples are never labeled as deadbeat dads, cruel or irresponsible. 

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2015/07/dr-robert-myles-and-bad-jesus.html

The flaws in Hector's analysis are legion:

i) Did Avalos abandon his mother when he studied at Harvard for several years? Was she his roommate in the dorm?

ii) There's a general difference between a parent who deserts growing kids and a grown child who leaves home. As a rule, we don't consider it abandonment when a grown child leaves home. Indeed, there's often a cultural expectation that when kids reach adulthood, they ought to strike out on their own. They weren't supporting their parents–their parents were supporting them. In case their parents need financial support, that involves a grown child who's in a position to send money home because he's financially independent. Because he works outside the home. 

iii) There's nothing in Hector's two prooftexts to indicate the disciples in question were husbands or fathers. 

iv) Before the advent of modern contraception, couples usually had large families. Multiple sons and daughters. Indeed, providing for all of them could be a financial burden. You also had extended families.

Losing one or two sons to the mission field wouldn't ordinarily mean the parents had no other children to fall back on to help with the family business. There were lots of helping hands. 

v) Peter, for one, took his wife along with him when he was on the mission field (1 Cor 9:5). He didn't leave her behind. 

vi) Avalos ignores a key passage in which Jesus commands filial provision for needy parents (Mt 15). 

Likewise, a childless widow would be indigent, which is why Jesus revives the only son of a widow (Lk 7:11-17).

It's not as if Jesus has a policy of leaving needy wives and parents in the lurch.

vii) Mk 1:16-20 isn't a general command to Christian men. It was a timebound command during the life and public ministry of Christ, involving only 12 men. 

viii) Yes, there's a sense in which Mt 8:21-22 is outrageous. It sounds harsh to modern ears, and it would sound even harsher to ancient Jewish ears. The shock value is intentional.

In addition, it reflects the self-importance of Jesus. A demand like that either means he's suffers from delusions of grandeur or else he's God. 

ix) It's unlikely that the man's request is realistic. If his father had just died, he wouldn't be out and about with Jesus. He'd be at home making funeral arrangements. And if his father were dying, he'd be by his bedside, holding vigil–or else he'd ask Jesus to heal his ailing father. So the request is an excuse to procrastinate. 

As for Christ's reply, remember that Jesus often resorts to hyperbole. It's naive to take his reply at face value. It seems doubtful that Jesus is really forbidding him from attending his father's funeral. Rather, it's turning the man's mock piety back on him.

Rewarding virtue

In a recent interview (Inquisitive Minds postcast, part 2), atheist Hector Avalos says:  

It's no virtue in doing good because you're tying to please an invisible being. There's no reward that's going to come to you. That's not really moral action. 

That sounds oh-so idealistic. But let's be honest. What reason does an atheist have to be sacrificial? From a secular standpoint, isn't that irrational? Where's the evidence that Avalos practices moral heroism? 

It also depends on what you mean by "reward." There's the quid pro quo sense of reward, where you do something in exchange for what you receive in return. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

But that's not what's meant by eschatological rewards. To begin with, to be a creature is to be dependent. To have physical and emotional needs. Humans aren't robots. There's nothing intrinsically unspiritual about enlightened self-interest when it comes to having your essential needs met. That's actually a pious, humble acknowledgement that you're not God. 

"Eternal life" is eternal happiness. Although duty takes precedence over happiness, you can't be depressed all the time and survive emotionally. Without hope, existence becomes unbearable. Hell is everlasting despair.  

In addition, the question of whether virtue is "rewarded" and vice is punished goes to the issue of whether there's any ultimate justice. If doing good is an infallible recipe for getting screwed, it is foolish to keep doing good. 

It sounds nice to say we should simply do good for its own sake, come what may, but if the universe was rigged so that do-gooders always lose and always suffer while evil-doers always win and always prosper; if–without fail–evil is rewarded and virtue is punished, it would be irrational to do the right thing. We need something to look forward to. We need to get something out of life. If not this life, then the afterlife. Interminable misery is nothing to live for. That's damnation. 

Be nice to "bad Jesus"

In The Bad Jesus, Hector Avalos has backed himself into a dilemma:

He calls himself a Jesus agnostic. He claims we don't know if there was such a person as described in the Gospels. But if that's the case, then he's in no position to say Jesus was a morally flawed teacher. 

If, on the other hand, the Gospels are reliable sources to evaluate the words and deeds of Jesus, then they do more than inform us about what he said and did. They inform us about who he was and is. And the Jesus of the Gospels is more than human. 

If the Gospels give us access to the genuine teaching of Jesus, then give us access to the genuine Jesus. A Jesus who is God Incarnate. The eschatological judge. The coming of Yahweh in the flesh. 

But in that event, how is Avalos in any position to attack the ethics of God? To say nothing more, isn't that foolhardy? If Jesus is bad, and Jesus is God, then Avalos should make every effort to avoid getting on the wrong side of Jesus. Bad Gods make bad enemies. 

"Bad Jesus"

1. Recently, apostate atheist Hector Avalos published The Bad Jesus. Last night I listened to his 2-part interview on the Inquisitive Minds podcast.

Even without reading his book, you get can a feel for the argument by perusing the table of contents:

Contents 1. Introduction    Basic Elements of the Argument 2. The Unloving Jesus: What’s New Is Old    Loving the Enemy in the Ancient Near East    Love Can Entail Violence    The Golden Rule: Love as Tactical    The Parochialism of New Testament Ethics 3. The Hateful Jesus: Luke 14.26    Jesus Commands Hate    Expressing Preference    Hate as a Motive for Divorce    The Statistics of Hate and Love    The Semantic Logic of Love and Hate 4. The Violent Jesus    Matthew 10.34-37: Jesus’ Violent Purpose    Matthew 5.38-42: Don’t Victimize Me, Please    Matthew. 26.48-56: Non-Interference with Planned Violence    John 2.15: Whipping up Pacifism    Acts 9: Jesus Assaults Saul 5. The Suicidal Jesus: The Violent Atonement    Jesus as a Willing Sacrificial Victim    Mark 10.45: Self-Sacrifice as a Ransom    Sacrifice as Service: Transformation or Denial?    2 Corinthians 5.18: Anselm Unrefuted    René Girard: Sacrificing Apologetics 6. The Imperialist Jesus: We’re All God’s Slaves    Rethinking ‘Anti-Imperialism’    Selective Anti-Imperialism    The Benign Rhetoric of Imperialism    Christ as Emperor    The Kingdom of God as an Empire 7. The Anti-Jewish Jesus: Socio-Rhetorical Criticism as Apologetics    Abuse Me, Please: Luke T. Johnson’s Apologetics    When is Anti-Judaism not Anti-Judaism?    When Did Christian Anti-Judaism Begin? 8. The Uneconomic Jesus as Enemy of the Poor    Jesus as Radical Egalitarian    The Fragrance of Poverty    Sermon on the Mount of Debts and Merits 9. The Misogynistic Jesus: Christian Feminism as Male Ancestor Worship    Mark 7//Matthew 15: The Misogynistic Jesus    Mark 10//Matthew 19: Divorcing Equality    The Womanless Twelve Apostles    The Last Supper: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner    The Egalitarian Golden Age under Jesus 10. The Anti-Disabled Jesus: Less than Fully Human     Disability Studies    John 5 and 9: Redeeming Jesus    The Ethics of Punctuation    Paralyzed by Sin 11. The Magically Anti-Medical Jesus    Miracles, Not Magic?    The Naturalistic Jesus    Psychosomatic Ethics 12. The Eco-Hostile Jesus    Mark 5: Animal Rights and Deviled Ham    Luke 22 and Matthew 8: Sacrificing Animal Rights    Matthew 21: Fig-uratively Speaking    Mark 13: Eschatological Eco-Destruction 13. The Anti-Biblical Jesus: Missed Interpretations    Mel and Jesus: The Hypocrisy of New Testament Ethics    Mark 2:23-28: Jesus as Biblically Illiterate    Matthew 19: Jesus Adds his Own Twist on Divorce    Isaiah 6:9-10: Integrating Extrabiblical Materials 14. Conclusion     The Ethics of New Testament Ethics

http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=294

i) The basic strategy is clear. He cites examples which, based on his own interpretation, show that Jesus held views that are politically incorrect. That makes Jesus "bad." 

Of course, the conclusion only follows if you think the views of the Western secular elite c. 2015 supply the standard of comparison. 

ii) Hence, Jesus is "eco-hostile" because he was responsible for pigs drowning and a fig tree withering. Once again, that only makes Jesus "bad" if you share the views of Peter Singer and radical environmentalists.

iii) The two examples he cites here create a quandary for his position. Both examples involve the supernatural, which Avalos denies. So he doesn't think Jesus really transferred evils spirits from the demoniac to a herd of pigs. Likewise, he doesn't think Jesus really caused a fig tree to miraculously wither. From his standpoint, that's fictional or mythological. 

As for Jesus incinerating the earth when he returns, Sodom and Gomorrah were population centers. It wasn't firebombing nature, but targeting sinners. Smart bombs.

And even if (ex hypothesi), Jesus were to incinerate the earth, that would be resetting the clock. Like terraforming.  

Finally, Avalos doesn't actually believe Jesus will do that.  

iv) He interprets the healings naturalistically, as psychosomatic cures. But at best, that explanation is only plausible for certain kinds of medical conditions.

v) Sometimes his allegations depend on absurd interpretations. He has a tin-ear for hyperbole in Lk 14:26. 

vi) Sometimes his allegations are inconsistent with secular ethics. For instance, even if you say the atonement of Christ was suicidal, secular ethics doesn't consider suicide to be inherently wrong, much less altruistic suicide. Hume considered the taboo against suicide to be superstitious. 

2. In his interview, Avalos made the following claims: 

i) When historians study figures like Herod, Alexander the Great, and Augustus Caesar, they consider the good and the bad. But when they study Jesus, he can do no wrong. They defend his ethical superiority. That's because they filter him through the lens of Chalcedon and Nicea. They treat him as divine rather than human. They continue to employ a "religionist" agenda. That's despite their claim to study him as a historical figure. 

ii) Likewise, that's in spite of the fact that many things Jesus said and did are antithetical to many of the ethical norms we hold to today as good.

iii) If you interpret the Sermon on the Mount in the context of the Olivet Discourse, Mt 5 is a case of deferred violence rather than nonviolence.

iv) Jesus is eco-hostile. He's guilty of "anthropocentric" ethics because he cares more about human beings than animals. 

Likewise, at the day of judgment, he will destroy the biosphere. The day of judgement is like the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah on a global scale. 

v) Jesus was anti-Jewish. That's not at odds with his Jewish identity. Jews can speak against other Jews. Consider the intra-Jewish polemics in Isaiah, or Jewish sects like Qumran. Some Jewish sects accuse other Jews of not being the true Israel. So Jesus could be guilty of "ethnic slurs," like Jn 8:44. 

vi) Some scholars defend Jesus by denying that he said some of the things attributed to him in the Gospels. But that's circular. That's only supposing Jesus couldn't say that. But the scholars have no independent corroboration for what he could or couldn't say. 

vii) Apropos (vi), Avalos is not a Jesus mythicist or a Jesus historicist, but Jesus agnostic. We don't have enough data to know whether there was such a person as is described in the Gospels. 

Avalos calls himself an empiricist. We don't have anything from Jesus' time. Nothing contemporary. Our sources date from the 2C and beyond. Since we don't have the "original Jesus," we can't tell how representative our sources are. We lack that standard of comparison.

viii) Modern morality is based on empathy. That's an evolutionary survival mechanism. It makes you care about others. It's not based on rewards.

ix) Some critics of Christianity like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris speak outside their field of expertise. They aren't Bible scholars, and that hurts their case.

3. Let's run back through his interview and assess his claims:

i) What if Jesus really is different? What if Jesus really is divine? 

Avalos erects a false dichotomy between Jesus as a divine figure and the study of Jesus as a historical figure. But if Jesus is God Incarnate, then that's a historical event. A real life. Avalos begs the question.

ii) I agree with him that, considered light of eschatological justice, Jesus was not a pacifist. The Sermon on the Mount is indeed a case of deferred violence.

But that's only morally problematic if you think violence is intrinsically wrong. How can Avalos hope to justify that claim?

iii) Even on evolutionary ethics, man is the apex predator. Likewise, animals typically care about members of their own species rather than other species. So Avalos can't justify animal rights on a secular basis. 

And to say anthropocentric ethics is wrong begs the question against Christian ethics.

Moreover, Avalos is disingenuous. He is spouting radical chic nonsense that he himself doesn't take seriously. He wouldn't hesitate to kill an animal to feed or protect himself–if it came to that.

iv) Since Avalos isn't Jewish, why is he so judgmental concerning intramural disputes about who is the true Israel? That's none of his business. 

Consider intramural wars in atheism concerning who best represents atheism?

He disregards the fact that in Jn 8:44, Jesus is turning the allegation of the critics back on themselves.

v) I agree with him that scholars have no objective basis for distinguishing authentic words and deeds of Jesus from inauthentic words and deeds of Jesus in the canonical Gospels.

vi) To claim that our sources for Jesus date from the 2C at the earliest is bizarre. 

It's unclear what he means by "contemporary" or "from Jesus' time." Does he mean anything written after the death of Jesus is unoriginal? That only something written about him during his lifetime could be original?

If so, that's extremely arbitrary. For instance, a younger contemporary can write about an older contemporary after he died. A son or daughter can write about his late father or mother. He needn't write about them when they were still alive for his account to original. 

Oral history and living memory can be reliable decades after the event. Likewise, a historian can make use of firsthand accounts, even if the historian was not, himself, a firsthand observer. In addition, the sources can be much earlier than the history or biography that incorporates the sources.

Finally, do our sources of information for historical figures like Alexander the Great date from the time of Alexander? 

vii) Hector's skepticism generates a dilemma for his critique. He can only say the historical Jesus was bad if he knows what the historical Jesus said and did. If, however, he considers the canonical Gospels to be historically untrustworthy, then he's in no position to evaluate the ethics of the historical Jesus.

At best, he's evaluating the ethics of a fictional character. But what does that accomplish?

If your aim is to attack Christianity, the way to do that is not to attack the ethics of Jesus, but to attack the historicity of Jesus, and especially the divinity of Jesus. 

If Jesus was either a fictionally character or a merely human historical figure, then his moral teaching has no authority. Proving his teaching to be morally flawed would be superfluous. For the only reason Christians venerate his teaching is because they venerate his person as God Incarnate. 

Conversely, would Avalos attack the morality of Jesus if he thought Jesus really was God Incarnate? So the whole elaborate exercise is a misguided. 

viii) To make evolutionary ethics the standard of comparison is futile. To begin with, even if you accept naturalistic evolutionary psychology, that would only account for the origin of our moral sentiments. It would explain why we have instinctive feelings about right and wrong. But that wouldn't mean our moral instincts correspond to moral facts. To the contrary, our moral instincts would the byproduct of mindless, amoral evolutionary conditioning. Our sense of right and wrong would be arbitrary.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant his evolutionary narrative, natural selection doesn't foster universal empathy. Throughout human history, there's a double standard: empathy is reserved for members of your in-group. By contrast, there are no inhibitions on what you do to members of the out-group. 

There's a tension between altruism and self-interest. In case of conflict, do you save yourself at the expense of others, or save others at your own expense? Does the survival mechanism apply to the individual or the population? 

Even if evolution programmed humans to be altruistic, once we become aware of our programming, we can override our programming. It's just a form of brainwashing. It only works so long as you don't know that you were brainwashed. 

Unless Avalos has an objective standard to evaluate the ethics of Jesus, his critique is systematically tendentious. And he can't very well mount an internal critique of Jesus' ethics. He can't attack the ethics of Christ on Christian grounds, for the ethics of Christ are normative for Christian ethics. 

"When your Muslim coach prays"

I'm going to comment on an article by apostate atheist Hector Avalos:

http://amestrib.com/opinion/hector-avalos-when-your-muslim-coach-prays

Imagine yourself as the Christian parent of a student-athlete, and the new men’s basketball coach at your university announces that his Muslim faith will be an important part of his strategy. 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known as a false dichotomy. His entire article is predicated on that false dichotomy:

i) We should simply deport Muslims, like they are doing in Norway. Muslims reject our social contract. They reject the Bill of Rights. They foment domestic terrorism. They don't belong here. They don't believe in our system of gov't.

ii) Don't college basketball teams have more than one coach?

iii) What about chaplains? 

iv) What about sending your kid to a Christian college? 

The prayers, by the way, are voluntary. But the coach will take prayer requests only in the name of Allah, not Jesus, because the latter is not Allah.

Why should I ask the coach to pray for me? As I Christian, I can pray directly to Jesus. The coach is not my spiritual mediator. If my coach is Muslim, I should pray for him–not vice versa.

Prayers will be performed by prostrating yourself with your forehead to the ground, and facing Mecca. The coach does this five times a day, but players don’t have to do it that way. It’s voluntary, you see.

Yes, it's voluntary. 

The coach proudly displays a Quran everywhere he goes, including on the team bus. He was raised reading it, and he would like you, as his student-athlete, to read that wonderful book, as well. 

Actually, there's something to be said for reading the Koran, just as we might read Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. 

The coach has won many games by integrating Islam into the team. Islam also worked for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali, and so there is actual scientific proof that serving Allah makes you a winner. 

Muhammad Ali has Parkinson's disease. Abdul-Jabbar has migraines, leukemia, and cardiovascular disease. Is Islam a Faustian bargain? 

But now you feel coerced to follow the coach’s religious preferences for fear that you may not advance as a player.

Merely Feel coerced. Not that you actually are coerced. 

And what happens if you are a non-believer, but your coach preaches that faith is fundamental to life? No religious preference is listed by 27.5 percent of the college freshmen who started last fall, according to a recent major survey.
Imagine excluding 27.5 percent of potential recruits who may not see any particular faith as suitable for their lives. Imagine non-Christian students, who may be talented, but don’t want to play for a coach that is perceived as imposing a favored faith on players.

Merely perceived to practice favoritism. 

So Avalos is telling us unbelievers are so intellectually weak and impressionable that they cave into mere feelings of coercion or mere perceptions of favoritism.