Michael Shermer And Bart Ehrman On Christmas And Christianity

Michael Shermer recently had Bart Ehrman on his YouTube channel. There are too many problems with the comments made by both of them for me to interact with everything. They address a wide range of topics: Jesus' existence, the virgin birth, Trinitarianism, the atonement, the resurrection of Jesus, the problem of evil, etc. But Ehrman was on the program primarily to discuss Christmas issues. He had an online seminar on the subject coming up on December 5, and that was Shermer's main interest. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is respond to some of their comments about Christmas and prophecy fulfillment.

"Jesus gave up his weekend for our sins"

Jesus died for our sins. But he was only dead for 3 days. So what did he sacrifice? His weekend. Jesus gave up his weekend for our sins.

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) June 6, 2017

From the great atheist theologian Michael Shermer. It's always a mistake when someone tries to be more clever than they are. The result is to expose how dumb they are. 

Shermer's quip is a category mistake. Jesus died to atone for the guilt of sin.* Guilt (culpability, blameworthiness) is a moral category, which makes it a qualitative rather than quantitative category. Duration is quantitative. The duration of his death is irrelevant to its atoning value. The principle isn't duration but substitution. 

*To be more precise, to atone for elect sinners.

Little green men of the gaps

1. I recently linked to the debate between Michael Shermer and David Wood. Now I will comment on the debate. 

i) A mistake many people make in evaluating a debate is to award winners and losers based on which position they agree with. For them, it's not about the actual performance. It's not about who made the best case in the course of the debate. Rather, it's about prior agreement or disagreement. What side the viewer is on coming into the debate frequently dictates who they perceive to be the winner or loser. Their own position affects what they hear. Often, they are poor listeners. They don't analyze arguments. They perceive the winner or loser, not based on the quality of the intellectual performance, but prior agreement or disagreement with the position under debate. Of course, that's the wrong way to assess a debate. Your side could be right, but still do a bad job of arguing for its position. 

ii) There are roughly two kinds of spokesmen for a position: popularizers and high-level thinkers. Ideally, when assessing a position, we should judge it by the high-level thinkers and scholars. Indeed, good philosophers go the extra mile by improving on the arguments of the opposing position. That way, when they attack the opposing position, they attack the strongest case that can be made for the opposing position.

iii) However, there's value in attacking popularizers. In general, they have a much wider audience then the high-level thinkers and scholars. They are more directly influential. Their followers find their bad arguments convincing. Their follows fail to recognize what bad arguments these are.

iv) Wood won the debate hands down. He won on points. He's very focussed. Very analytical. Although he has a wicked sense of humor which he deploys in his satirical videos about Islam, in this debate he was pretty matter-of-fact. 

Shermer is a practiced debater. He has his spiel. In this debate he seems to have mellowed since he debated John Lennox 6 years ago. Maybe he was just in a different mood that night. In this debate he often adopts a folksy, avuncular tone. However, that's a facade, because that's punctured by snide or bitter comments. Although his demeanor is initially somewhat winsome, it gets to be tiresome. In addition, he meanders. Jumps back and forth.

BTW, in comparing his debate with Wood to his debate with Lennox, I notice that Shermer recycles the same bad arguments, even after he's been corrected. 

Italic text will be me quoting Shermer or summarizing Shermer. 

Michael Shermer v. David Wood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWKm40-dnM

John 20:29 And Michael Shermer

There's a small handful of Biblical passages that are often cited by those who want to portray Christianity as anti-intellectual. Even some professing Christians will cite a passage like John 20:29 as an apologetic against apologetics. I've often commented on how badly such passages have to be taken out of context in order to abuse them for anti-intellectual purposes.

What I want to do here is note how the recent Michael Shermer story illustrates what John 20:29 actually seems to be referring to. If somebody like Michael Shermer were to believe in the paranormal after having a paranormal experience, what would be wrong with that? Would I fault him for wanting evidence for the paranormal? For not taking a blind leap in the dark? For citing his experience as a justification for changing his view? For trying to persuade other people by citing reason and evidence in support of his position? No. It's good when somebody like Shermer wants evidence, doesn't just take a blind leap in the dark, tries to persuade other people by citing the evidence of his own experience with the paranormal, etc. I don't fault him for those things. I fault him for not accepting the existence of paranormal phenomena on the basis of the evidence he had access to prior to his own experience. The evidence he had previously was well beyond what was needed to justify a belief in paranormal phenomena. He didn't need to wait for a personal experience.

Similarly, it doesn't make sense to take John 20:29 as a rebuke of Thomas for being too intellectual, for wanting reason, evidence, and such. Rather, as far as Thomas is being rebuked on intellectual grounds in that passage, he's being rebuked for not following the evidence he already had to its logical conclusion. He already had Jesus' prophecy fulfillments, other pre-resurrection miracles performed by Jesus, his predictions of his resurrection, the empty tomb, and the testimony of other people who saw the risen Jesus, for example. Thomas was asking for more when he didn't need it, much like Shermer.

Michael Shermer's Paranormal Experience

Greg Taylor recently posted about a paranormal experience Michael Shermer reported having, an experience that "rocked [Shermer] back on [his] heels and shook [his] skepticism to its core". Taylor links to Shermer's article, so you can read it for yourself. It's short. But I recommend also reading Taylor's analysis. I agree with his doubts. Shermer has a lot of credibility problems. Still, Shermer's claims about his paranormal experience have some significance in light of his background and where the report of his experience was published.

Fallen idol

And here I thought all the misogynists were Bible-thumping fundies:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/richard-dawkins-sexist-atheists-bad-name/print

Aliens among us

One popular storyline in SF involves an advanced alien civilization that makes first contact with primitive humanoids. By definition, it has to be technologically advanced to be capable of deep space travel.

In one variation on this theme, first contact is the origin of humanoid religion. To primitive humanoids, the alien technology is magical. Godlike.

Continuing with our storyline, suppose humanoids passed down a traditional record of first contact in folklore. They recorded the appearance of the spacecraft. The appearance of the aliens. What they aliens did. 

The folklore might reflect a degree of legendary embellishment. Because the primitive humanoids lacked the scientific categories to describe first contact, they'd resort to mythopoetic categories. But it would still bear witness to a real event. 

Suppose ufologists appeal to this ancient folklore as evidence of first contact. Along come the debunkers. The counterparts to Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Michael Shermer, and PZ Myers in our SF scenario.

Now even though, in our scenario, aliens really did make first contact, the debunkers would dismiss that out-of-hand. 

Another variant on this theme involves alien/humanoid hybrids. Say they use molecular cloning to create hybrids. Then the aliens leave the hybrids behind.

Some humanoids never interbreed with hybrids. Other humanoids interbreed with hybrids, but because the humanoids outnumber the hybrids, the alien DNA is steadily diluted until only trace elements remain.

Suppose geneticists discover some humanoid specimens with residual alien DNA. The ufologists cite that as scientific confirmation that the folklore about first contact was authentic.

But the debunkers dismiss that as genetic anomalies, the same way they explain away evidence inconsistent with Darwinism–even though, in our scenario, this really is evidence of first contact. 

The same mindset which causes atheists to discount miracles, irrespective of the evidence, would cause them to discount first contact, irrespective of the evidence.

Thousands of gods

Over the past ten thousand years there have been tens of thousands of religions and thousands of gods. Which one is the right one? To believers in each one they all appear unique. To an anthropologist from Mars they all look the same... . This clever book gives you the intellectual firepower you need when engaging believers, pointing out, for example, that they are religious skeptics, too—of all those other faiths. Some of us go one faith further in our skepticism. You will, too, after reading this testament to the power of reason.

–Michael Shermer

This is Shermer’s blurb for the “new” book by John Loftus. It’s also a good illustration of how infidels are self-deceived by their intellectual pride.

From his own perspective, the “power of reason” is simply the brain of an ape. A 3-lb lump of meat that evolved by trial-and-error.

Moreover, it’s demonstrably false that believers generally think their religion or their god is unique. To begin with, religions are traditionally polytheistic, so there’s nothing unique about being a god in a polytheistic faith. You have plenty of competition in a crowded field for that distinction.

Moreover, traditional religions are often syncretistic. Hinduism is syncretistic. Roman religion is syncretistic. Their gods are not unique. You can substitute one nations gods for another in the pantheon. Roman gods for Greek gods, or vice versa. Interchangeable gods. A war god. A sex goddess. Ishtar. Aphrodite. Venus. Mars. Ares.

Furthermore, atheists typically propound an evolutionary theory of religion, according to which religion was originally animistic. The gods were simply personifications of natural forces, like sun gods, fire gods, and storm gods. Well, aren’t all sun gods, fire gods, and storm gods cut from the same cloth?

Finally, atheists also distinguish between anthropomorphic conceptions of God, like Zeus or Thor–and philosophical conceptions of God, like Thomism or perfect being theology. So they wouldn’t all look the same to a Martian anthropologist.

Like father of lies, like son

http://douggeivett.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/michael-shermer-on-the-mexico-debate/