Every dog has its day

A high-strung guy by the name of Glenn Peoples (or, as Inspector Clouseau would say, “Glenn Pippuls”) is undergoing a very public meltdown because of a passing remark I made about him, in response to something he wrote about some others and me.

Just to put things in context, my remark was in response to something that he said. I did two little posts about something William Lane Craig said. Some folks, like Matt and Maddy, took great offense at this. They coauthored a reply at their blog, naming names.

Glenn Peoples then did his own post, referring back to their post. It was only after he initiated his attack that I responded to him.

Here’s the way in which Glenn chose to phrase and frame his reply:

I will admit to jumping on a bandwagon with this one. A good recent post over at MandM alerted me to just how far and wide the phenomenon of apparently ignorant evangelicals bashing William Lane Craig is spreading based on something he said recently. Since such uninformed critique seems to spread like wildfire...

Why the furore? Why the extreme nature of the attacks? Why the accusations, hostility and wilful enmity? I know I’ve said this before, but it is such a major problem within evangelicalism that it can’t be mentioned enough. The problem is twofold: Ignorance and insularity. Actually there’s a third problem stirred up by ignorance and insularity, namely an unwillingness to listen carefully and charitably to what another person is saying.

Not exactly something you’d put on a Hallmark card.

I responded by pointing out that “Of course, Glenn isn’t really defending Craig. Rather, Glenn is using the Craig incident as a pretext to defend himself. Glenn is a liberal (denies hell, denies inerrancy), so he wants to make evangelicalism a big tent. Defending Craig is just a ploy for making his case that evangelicals should be more tolerant and open-minded with respect to the Glenn Peoples of the world.”

At this point Glenn got terribly agitated:

I realise that you do not share my beliefs as expressed in my defence of Bill Craig, however as you know, I neither named you nor accused you of engaging in sin.

That’s an odd allegation on several levels:

i) I didn’t accuse him of engaging in “sin.” Of course, if that’s how Glenn chooses to interpret his own conduct, who am I to take issue with his self-assessment?

ii) What’s wrong with naming names? Matt and Maddy named names. Glenn acts as if his privacy was violated. Yet before I ever responded to him, he did a post, referring back to Matt and Maddy’s post–where they “name names.” So there’s no great mystery regarding the identity of the culprits.

It’s not as if Glenn spoke to me in confidence. Indeed, he also started to publicly quote our “private” Facebook exchange.

Steve, I did not name any of Bill Craig’s critics. I certainly did not single you out and attack your character, yet you have made the choice to do this of me – without contacting me at all.

This betrays the same obtusity. Glenn is a blogger. He operates in the public domain. Matt and Maddy named the critics, and Glenn took it from there. So what’s the problem?

Moreover, Glenn made things personal at the outset by accusing the critics of “ignorance,” “hostility,” “willful enmity,” etc.

He also said “That would require him [Hays] to stop swinging his Bible (assuming he has one) around on a chain while he beats his chest and actually read it. I can’t see that happening anytime soon.”

It’s hard to know what to make of Glenn: Bambi one moment–Tony Montana the next.

Here you accuse me of:

1) Being a liar (pretending to do one thing when I am knowingly doing another.

2) Being a liberal in spite of my ostensible conservatism and of my repeated defence of evangelical Christianity against liberalism.

3) Being self serving in the defense of another.

None of these accusations are true.

i) I accused him of ulterior motives in his ostensible defense of Craig. Ironically, in the very effort to refute the charge, Glenn corroborates the charge. Listen to some of what he said by way of response:

Every now and then I make a remark about the unfairness and crippling partisanship of some evangelicals and the way that it harms our collective effort to present the Christian message to the world.

This sums up just the kind of partisanship that has prevented so many evangelicals from being effective. The worst enemies are deemed to be those who agree on all things but differ on a jot or tittle, and these (namely, people like me) are the ones most worthy of public smearing.

The behaviour you have exhibited is exactly what is wrong with evangelical Christianity: The intention to persuade the world that our intellectual universe is intact when we cannot even get our moral compass and behaviour right in the way that we deal with each other.

Notice Glenn’s backdoor admission that his real agenda is to rectify what he deems to be wrong with evangelicalism. He seized on the Craig incident as an excuse to further his personal agenda.

ii) As for liberalism, Glenn denies the inerrancy of Scripture, and the doctrine of everlasting punishment–as well as the historicity of Adam. These are hallmark positions of the theological liberal. The fact that he can demotes these denials to the rank of “jots and tittles” shows you how far the downhill slide he’s already gone.

It’s nice to see that Glenn currently retains some residual conservatism from his former days as a Van Tilian theonomist, but the very fact that he’s drifted so far to the left doesn’t leave one sanguine about the stability of his present position.

iii) I’d add that (i) and (ii) may well be conjoined. To judge by his CV, Glenn has been unsuccessful in landing a job with an Evangelical institution. Is that because he’s too...uh...liberal?

If so, it’s not surprising that he has a very personal stake, indeed, a professional investment, in shifting the evangelical border stones to the left.

iv) I didn’t accuse him of being a “liar,” but the fact that he’s so quick to draw that inference is a bit self-incriminating, if you ask me.

After first of all defending his doing what I was complaining about, Steve now tried to back away from the claim that he had even made false claims about me. If this was his position, he could have said so right away.

What a silly misreading of what I said. He’s so blinded by his self-justification that he can’t even recognize the tendentious form of the statement.

I’m not backing away from my initial claims; rather, I reject his mischaracterization of my claims as false.

PS – Steve intially claimed that my three posts were deleted by the spam filter “automatically” and that I should stop being so “ignorant and paranoid.” However, he uses blogger. When I posted those comments, all of them made it through the spam filter and appeared on his blog. I checked each time by visiting the blog again. Then minutes later, they had disappeared after being visible on the blog for a short time. I have used blogger and I know others who use it now. I know that this is not how blogger’s spam filter works. If a comment is picked up by the filter as spam, it does not appear at the blog. It can later be moved tot he spam folder, but this requires manual action by an admin. I make no comment on why Steve made this claim about why my comment vanished three separate times. Make of it what you will.

i) To my knowledge, there’s nothing sinister or suspect about the phenomenon of comments briefly appearing, only to disappear into the spam filter. For example, that was happening to comments left by David Waltz at Beggars All.

It tells you something about Glenn’s fervid state of mind that he leaps to a conspiratorial interpretation. But then, Glenn nothing if not touchy or moody. Consider how quickly the abortive debate between Tom Talbott and him (over at the “Evangelical Universalist”) turned acrimonious.

ii) The further fact that some of his comments took, but others did not, ought to be an obvious cue that we’re dealing with a random mechanical quirk rather than a systematic effort to censure his objections.

iii) It’s also ironic that for someone who’s so hypersensitive about imagined slights to his honor, his first resort is to accuse his opponent of underhanded conduct when an alternative explanation (the spam filter) is readily available.

If Glenn took Jesus more seriously, and took himself less seriously, he wouldn’t be so easily agitated. 

Churches Using Carnal Means to Attract People

Paul Washer on pastors serving up goat food rather than sheep food.



HT: Lane's Vlog

Any steeples in Peoples?

Recently, Glenn Peoples has been drawing a distinction over believing what's "orthodox" in contrast to behaving in a "Christian" manner. The context in which he draws this distinction is over his comments about WLC, our responses to him, and so on. Check out this post for context.

Of course, I take it Glenn would agree a genuine Christian should believe what's orthodox as well as behave in a "Christian" manner.

But the problem is that Glenn and I would disagree on what actually constitutes orthodox Christianity as well as ethical Christian behavior.

With regard to the former, Glenn denies inerrancy as well as supports annihiliationism (PDF). I think such a stance casts doubt over whether Glenn's beliefs are orthodox. But that's another issue and debate. For the time being I'll simply reference the responses in the links above and take such beliefs as unorthodox.

So the issue at hand is Glenn's allegation that we're not behaving in a "Christian" manner:

1. Since I don't think Glenn is orthodox in the first place, I don't necessarily think he should be treated as a fellow Christian.

2. Of course, I'm willing to be gracious to him just like I'm willing to be gracious to anyone else in general. But then the problem is that he's not a random stranger or whatever. Rather, he's a professing evangelical Christian who is explicitly teaching and advocating doctrines like annihilationism and denying innerancy so that others would be persuaded about his beliefs as well. If I might be so blunt, he's teaching falsehoods and trying to rope others in.

Also, he holds a doctorate (I believe) in political philosophy and has tried to acquire teaching posts at evangelical seminaries and the like. In fact, if he could acquire a teaching post, then it's possible he'd teach and influence others with such beliefs as well. After all, he cites his "areas of ability" to include the philosophy of religion, ethics and meta-ethics, political philosophy, philosophical theology, moral theology and Christian ethics, historical and systematic theology, intro to OT and NT studies, and biblical theology. Several of these could serve as platforms for Glenn to launch into topics like inerrancy and hell.

If we have to compare, he's more akin to a wolf in sheep's clothing than a fellow Christian.

Or if he's a genuine Christian teaching falsehoods, perhaps someone like Peter Enns, then the situation is still unwelcome. It's more akin to receiving friendly fire in the midst of combat. If that's what's happening, one would have to suppress the friendly fire in order to protect the rest of the troops.

Hence my stance in regard to his stance is, first and foremost, one of opposition to what he's teaching as true when it's false. The links I provide above are a good start in dealing with what he teaches (although he's responded to them on his website).

3. Given that Glenn can't see such central Christian doctrines as inerrancy, I don't immediately trust his judgment on what it means to behave as a "Christian" either. He doesn't get the benefit of the doubt in regard to what the Bible teaches on other doctrines or topics including Christian behavior when he continues to make and advocate such egregious errors on central doctrines.

4. A lot of what Glenn is hot and bothered about is personal attacks against his character. He accuses us of lying about him. He accuses us of calling him a liberal when (he says) he's not.

5. We've posted about ad hominem attacks in the past. Just search for "ad hominem" in our archives.

6. On more than one occasion we've referenced philosopher and logician Peter Geach who has argued for the legitimacy of tu quoque arguments in certain contexts. The following is from his book Reason and Argument:

Ad hominem arguments. This Latin term indicates that these are arguments addressed to a particular man - in fact, the other fellow you are disputing with. You start from something he believes as a premise, and infer a conclusion he won't admit to be true. If you have not been cheating in your reasoning, you will have shown that your opponent’s present body of beliefs is inconsistent and it's up to him to modify it somewhere. This argumentative trick is so unwelcome to the victim that he is likely to regard it as cheating: bad old logic books even speak of the ad hominem fallacy. But an ad hominem argument may be perfectly fair play.

Let us consider a kind of dispute that might easily arise:

A. Foxhunting ought to be abolished; it is cruel to the victim and degrading to the participants.

B. But you eat meat; and I'll bet you've never worried about whether the killing of the animals you eat is cruel to them and degrading to the butchers.

No umpire is entitled at this point to call out "Ad hominem! Foul!" It is true that B's remark does nothing to settle the substantive question of whether foxhunting should be abolished; but then B was not pretending to do this; B was challengingly asking how A could consistently condemn foxhunting without also condemning something A clearly does not wish to condemn. Perhaps A could meet the challenge, perhaps not; anyhow the challenge is a fair one - as we saw, you cannot just brush aside a challenge to your consistency, or say inconsistency doesn't matter.

Ad hominem arguments are not just a way of winning a dispute: a logically sound ad hominem argues does a service, even if an unwelcome one, to its victim - it shows him that his present position is untenable and must be modified. Of course people often do not like to be disturbed in their comfortable inconsistencies; that is why ad hominem arguments have a bad name.

7. What's more, the Bible itself uses ad hominem. For example, Jesus and others like Peter and Paul attack the character of false teachers.

8. Of course, Glenn doesn't mind returning the favor in lying about Steve and calling him a liberal. Not to mention denigrating other Christians. By doing so, Glenn isn't dealing with our arguments. Rather, he's attacking our character as well. But, apparently according to Glenn, it's wrong for us to behave like this while it's fine for him to behave like this. It's a double standard: one for "open-minded" Christians like him and another for "close-minded" Christians like us.

9. In any case, Glenn is the one who kicked off the insults by calling Christians like us "ignorant" and "insular" about WLC and his comments.

10. Not to mention Glenn has reserved some rather ungracious words to ascribe to conservative Christian motives in hiring faculty. For example, Glenn has said that "the conservative Christian community wants its scholars as long as it can control them."

Or take Glenn's words here: "For my part, I think the problem with a lot of seminaries is that they are too theologically partisan, and that is why they don’t develop a culture of rigorously critical thinking." Hm, so "partisans" are incapable of "critical thinking." Now, I wonder, would Glenn further suggest non-partisans (of which I take it he is one) are the ones capable of critical thinking?

Besides, what does it mean to be "theologically partisan"? Does it mean to adhere to a confession of faith? Or something else? If a seminary doesn't want to be "partisan," does it have to allow for someone or some persons to both teach in favor of miracles as well as against the possibility of miracles (e.g. the resurrection)? Or someone to teach in favor of inerrancy as well as teach against inerrancy - which, BTW, would be rather convenient for Glenn? However, isn't any seminary bound to be "partisan" in some fashion? Isn't Glenn himself "partisan" in teaching against inerrancy and espousing conditional immortality and annihilationism?

Anyway, getting back to the point, these are instances of Glenn's personal attacks against the character of a group of Christians despite his professed antipathy to personal attacks against people's characters. Sure, Glenn advises evangelical Christians to "listen carefully," to be "gracious" and "charitable," yet he hardly evinces these qualities in his interactions with us and other Christians.

11. Perhaps Glenn would do well to read and meditate on a passage like Matt. 7:3-5. Although I'll note Jesus makes a personal character "attack" on these Christians when he calls them "hypocrites." I point this out because it might not sit too well with Glenn who would decry such ad hominem rhetoric and behavior as unbecoming of a Christian.

12. Glenn accuses us of not behaving in a manner which is consistent with Christian ethics. By the same token, I'm surprised that one of Glenn's "areas of ability" is Christian ethics in light of the fact that he apparently likewise doesn't behave in a manner consistent with Christian ethics.

Of course, someone like me might retort that I've never formally studied ethics. Certainly I'm no student of ethics let alone an ethicist. But I don't know what justification Glenn will provide for his unethical Christian behavior given that Christian ethics is one of his "areas of ability."

Blunt needles

January 3, 2011

Washington, D.C. (NBS) - In a Herculean effort to stimulate the economy while reducing health care costs, Pres. Obama is strongly encouraging Congress to propose a bill which will require all Americans to do their part by using blunt needles rather than the previous array of needles available to them. An unspoken assumption is that this has particular reference to affect medical professionals who regularly use various needles for procedures such as sutures, biopsies, and surgical operations.

"It's time for Americans of all genders, colors, creeds, sexual orientations, and medical specialties to embrace the Audacity of Blunt Needles in order to reclaim American Steam for the American Dream!" shouted Pres. Obama to cheering crowds of Hollywood directors, actors, Scientologists, and Katie Couric.

But skeptics argue there will be several problems if the bill is passed. There will less choice available to Americans if everyone is required to use blunt needles. Thus far Americans have enjoyed considerable variety in their choice of needles. There have been a plethora of different shapes and sizes among needle users: long needles, short needles, needles made of different materials, needles with fine points, microscopic needles, needles for threading, needles for tapestries and upholsteries, fishing needles, hypodermic needles, and so on and so forth.

Instead, Pres. Obama and the Democrats want to issue standard "one size fits all" blunt needles to the nation. The bill smacks of "Big Brother, redubbed "Mean Mother," which detractors declare is an attempt by "the nanny state" to impinge upon bedrock American liberties and individual rights by mandating stock needles.

In addition, many opponents of the Obama Systematic Needling America Plan (OSNAP) fear this is just the beginning of a slippery slope. What's next, pins? Types of threads? Will syringes have to be replaced with spray bottles? Or scalpels with sporks or foons? "We've come a long way in human history, from when needles were first just the tips at the end of leaves to what we have today, only to be forced down a single narrow track," opined James Watson, a medical archaeologist and historian. "This is an attempt to stifle thousands of years of human creativity and innovation," he said, glumly.

Many Seattleites, known for their cultural and other diversities, are likewise perturbed. Local cafe frequenter and jazz enthusiast Billy Bates exclaimed in exasperation, "We may as well scrap the Space Needle since every big city across the nation will have their own similar needle now!"

On the economic side, the bill in turn would ostensibly curtail the profits of needle-making and related industries which would be legally mandated to sell blunt needles to all regardless of past needle use, misuse, abuse, or no-use history. This would affect grandmothers knitting quilts and scarves, mothers sewing their children's clothing, and intravenous drug users looking for the next hit.

Moreover future physicians won't be exposed to various needles but will have to learn solely from blunt needles. Several medical school professors have voiced their doubts in teaching students how to insert blunt needles in tubes such as cannulas and catheters. This could result in diminished clinical skills and have grave repercussions for the future of American health care. A first year American medical student, Elliot Reid, expressed confusion when he responded, "But, um, I still don't get why we can't just learn how to do blunt needle aspirations?"

Related, patients will be at greater risk for infections pre, peri, and post surgery. Not to mention other serious complications could arise. Blunt needles could increase the overall morbidities and mortalities of Americans.

But Americans aren't the only ones concerned. A merchant in a northern Italian city who preferred to remain anonymous raised the point that if he were pricked by a blunt needle, then it's possible he would not bleed but rather bruise.

However, supporters responded with the fact that more patients will have to undergo further surgeries because the blunt needles won't be able to stitch up the patient during the first operation, thereby bringing patients back into the hospital for surgeons to further work on, and therefore bringing in more revenue to hospitals and clinics. Of course, this presumes the patient will survive the initial operation.

In addition, supporters reply, blunt needles obviously don't need to be sharpened. What's more, blunt needles can be re-used numerous times. This will save physicians tens if not hundreds of dollars in needle purchasing costs.

As for fears about the future of medical education, blunt needles are much easier to insert into objects since they'd have more surface area on their tips. Plus, blunt needles are more difficult to break off in patients since they tend to have larger circumferences, hence are thicker too, which OSNAP proponents contend increases safety in surgical operations.

"Besides, there are far bigger worries than what we're trying to do!" exclaimed Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. "I mean, shouldn't people be more distressed about finding rubber duckies in patients than blunt needles? That poses a much greater risk and danger."

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer commented: "The bill is really a win-win situation for everyone."

Of course, if medical professionals remain non-compliant in using blunt needles rather than other needles, then there will be serious consequences. For example, a fine will be levied against non-compliants. The fine will increase every year the individual continues to use non-blunt needles. Worse, non-compliants must attend lectures which feature hours of finger wagging from federal government licensed health officials responsible for overseeing the medical welfare of the nation and its citizens.

"I guess we'll see whether it's easier for a nation to go through the eye of a blunt needle than for Obama to enter the ranks of the greatest presidents in history," quipped retired family physician William Osler.

Restless spirits

L'Osservatore Romano

1/3/11

Today, Vatican lawyers, acting on behalf of the Holy Father, agreed to an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed amount.

The case originated in the Diocese of Baltimore. For 19 years, the Jordan family paid Fr. O’Shaughnessy, a retired priest from Limerick, a weekly stipend to celebrate a memorial mass for the soul of their dearly departed Aunt Daisy, and thereby hasten her release from Purgatory.

But as time went on, their peace of mind was shattered by escalating incidents of poltergeistic activity. Family members reported apparitions of Aunt Betsy smashing the heirloom crystal and china.

And sometimes, when they were driving, an unseen hand would seize the steering wheel and point their car towards a tree or streetlight. It was all a bit unsettling.

They hired a ghostbuster to investigate the phenomenon. As it turned out, Fr. O’Shaughnessy was dyslexic. Instead of celebrating a weekly mass for the departed soul of Daisy Jordan, he had, for the past 19 years, been celebrating mass for Sayid Jordan–a Kuwaiti playboy.

Daisy was naturally miffed to find herself stuck in Purgatory all this time while Sayid was on the fast-track to Paradise, thanks to Fr. O'Shaughnessy’s clerical error (pardon the pun). 

Separated at birth?

Is it just me, or am I the only one to detect the uncanny resemblance between Glenn Peoples and Cousin Itt?

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!

Glenn Andrew Peoples January 1 at 4:47am Report

Steve, as someone who makes the claim to be a brother in Christ - with all due respect, you owe me an explanation of yourself.

Regards
Glenn Peoples

Steve Hays January 1 at 3:43pm

Hi Glenn,

My talent agent forwarded your message to me.

I'm afraid you must have me confused with someone else. I'm an Italian fashion model who makes supplementary income doing margarine commercials. Perhaps you've seen me on TV.

However, I don't hold it against you. Mistaken identity is a common occurrence. Why, there are some folk who actually mistake Glenn Peoples for a Christian. (Hard to believe, I know.)

Arrivederci!

– Fab

Divining the divine

VINNY SAID:

If we must allow for the possibility of personal agents who are not limited by natural laws, then we are no longer justified in drawing inferences based on the natural processes we observe. We think that fingerprints on a gun might be evidence of who committed a murder because we understand the natural processes by which the patterns on the human finger can appear on other objects and we understand that those processes act consistently. If we believed that those patterns appeared on objects randomly or by divine fiat, we couldn't say that fingerprints on a gun were evidence of anything at all.

Sometimes fingerprints are “naturally” left on the gun by the hand of the killer.

However, sometimes fingerprints are artificially impressed on the gun. The killer staged the murder to look like a suicide. The killer wore latex gloves, shot the victim, then placed the gun in the victim’s hand to make it seem as though the victim shot himself. The fingerprints that appear on the gun are the prints of the victim, not the killer.

Therefore, is a homicide detective no longer justified in drawing inferences about a murder? No. For more than one piece of evidence is relevant.

I don't know whether I would call that "artificial." The appearance of the pattern on the gun is still the result of the natural secretions on the friction ridges of the finger being transferred to the object. The question of whether someone other than the murderer handled the gun after the fatal shot was fired is always a possibility that needs to be eliminated, but it is a possibility that is governed by the natural processes.

i) Well, if the killer is ever apprehended, he can explain to the police that the murder victim died of "natural causes." That should let him off the hook.

ii) You talk about agents who are "subject to," "bound by," or bound by "natural laws" or the "regularities of nature"–as if the only evidence we have for personal agency is that of agents "constrained by" such "laws."

However, there are serious paranormal researchers like Michael Sudduth, Stephen Braude, and Rupert Sheldrake who deal apparent types of agency that aren't reducible to physical laws or natural process–at least not as standardly defined. Same thing with Christian exorcists. And if the definition is broadened, then you can't rule out miracles.

iii) Miracles can also employ natural processes. For instance, there can be miracles of timing. What are called "coincidence" miracles.

iv) You also create a false dichotomy. You overlook the possibility that natural laws can express personal agency. The expression of divine intent.

My computer keyboard exhibits a fixed correlation between the key I press and the letter that appears on the screen. Yet this law-like correlation is the expression of design. The keyboard was engineered by a personal agent to exhibit that law-like correlation. The regularity is purposeful. Regularity by design.

Motive is something we understand from observing the kind of personal agents who are bound by natural law as they pursue their wants and needs and desires. I don’t know how I can make any intelligent assumptions about what motives might drive a personal agent who is not subject to natural law.

You have a very wooden view of how to analyze issues. However, philosophers frequently entertain thought-experiments that are far removed from mundane experience.

Or take the stock horror theme of the avenging ghost. Say a guy murders a coed. She comes back as a ghost and begins to wreak havoc in his life with all manner of ominous, uncanny happenings.

Hypothetically speaking, it wouldn't be hard to infer the vindictive motives of the ghost–even though this spectral agent isn't subject to the "laws" of nature. She is out to exact revenge on her killer. Her motives are clearly punitive.

Christian essentials

GODISMYJUDGE SAID:

How would you define the essentials of the faith, or would you simply leave them undefined.

Are you asking what's essential to saving faith, or what’s essential for the Christian faith to be Christian?

i) Apropos the former: as you know, the Bible states certain doctrines one must believe to be saved.

On the other hand, the Bible also has a principle of graded responsibilities (Lk 12:48; Heb 13:17). So to some extent I expect the propositional content of saving faith is person-variable.

God holds F. F. Bruce to a higher standard than the paperboy.

ii) Apropos the latter: in polemical books that deal with doctrinal controversies (e.g. Galatians, 1 John), the Bible spells out certain fundamental doctrines. So I think it’s possible to draw up a partial list of Christian essentials.

However, those are occasional writings which discuss Christian essentials incidentally rather than systematically. So I think we lack sufficient information to compile a definitive list of Christian essentials.

Ultimately, it’s incumbent on us to believe whatever the Bible teaches. That will automatically include the “essentials” (since the whole includes the part).

iii) Of course, Christian Bible scholars, ethicists, and theologians also spend time trying to distinguish timebound Bible statements from timeless Bible statements. And that’s part of distinguishing essentials from nonessentials. But that exercise is not without various degrees of uncertainty.

Charity for me, but not for thee!

A lot of people are up in arms at the moment about a paragraph in William Lane Craig’s answer to Question 193 “Overweening Ignorance.” Facebook, blogs, twitter and message boards are abuzz with Christians angrily attacking Craig with the charge that this paragraph shows he either does not hold to the doctrine of original sin or that he thinks it is not essential to Christianity.

http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/12/william-lane-craig-original-sin-and-original-guilt.html

i) How does Matt know that we are “angrily” attacking Craig?

ii) If we are angrily attacking Craig, does this mean that Matt is angrily defending Craig?

The conclusion we are supposed to draw is that Craig is denying the truth of these passages and views these as “optional.”

Where did I indicate that Craig was denying the truth of these passages? How does Matt derive that conclusion from what I wrote?

In “Hollywood Squares” Hays draws a ejusdem generis parallel between Craig’s paragraph and the writings of liberal scholars like Spong, Bultmann and The Archbishop of Canterbury.

I didn’t identify them as liberals. I find it shocking that Matt would angrily attack Craig by comparing him to a bunch of liberals. He should be more charitable.

Are miracles improbable?

Here's my take on the meaning of the slogan: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. (I don't know if other nonbelievers would agree with this.) An extraordinary claim is a claim that an improbable event occurred. An example is a miracle. Since a miracle is a violation of a law of nature it does not happen very often, possibly never. We can estimate a highest possible value for the probability of some miracle occurring e.g one in a billion for a person rising from the dead. (Say if approximately out of every billion people that have died there is one alleged claim of resurrection.) Extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim would be evidence which if the claim were not true, then the probability of the evidence itself would be a lot lower than that of the extraordinary claim being true. For example if testimony to a miracle was given and the likelihood of such testimony occurring was say one in a trillion if the miracle did not actually occur. (Thus a believer might argue that approximately out of every trillion false claims made there is at most one which is endorsed by a person willing to die for the claim.) If the probabilities involved cannot be compared then no case can be made.

By Peter Hawkins on The onus of miracles on 12/31/10

Is it improbable that a poker player had five royal flushes in a row? Well, that’s highly improbably if the deck is randomly shuffled. If, on the other hand, the dealer is a card sharp, then it may be highly probable (even inevitable) that the player had five royal flushes in a row.

So you really can’t say, in the abstract, what is probable or improbable. That depends on other variables, known or unknown.  

How Significant Is A Lack Of Documented Resurrections?

Last month, I posted some of Michael Licona's comments on the hallucination theory, taken from his recent book on the resurrection. A few days later, a skeptic posted a response, and I didn't see that response until just recently. I replied to him, and he responded again.

The discussion is primarily about whether the regularities of nature are as problematic for supernatural theories as they are for natural theories. In other words, if the evidence suggests that people don't naturally rise from the dead and that they don't naturally have the sort of hallucinations skeptics often attribute to the resurrection witnesses, then are those facts equally significant to the respective theories in question?

It should be noted that comment moderation is active in that thread, since the thread is so old. Once a thread reaches a particular age, comments coming from people who aren't part of the Triablogue staff have to go through moderation. (Otherwise, people can post in old threads without our knowing about it, which used to happen frequently.) If you post in that other thread, be aware that your post will have to go through moderation before it appears on the screen. Don't try posting your comments more than once. Just wait for your post to go through the moderation process.

Secular superstition

As infidels are wont to tell us, people in Bible times were gullible and superstitious. The same holds true for Christians today–unlike modern, skeptical, science-minded infidels. Or so they tell us.

On the other hand:

According to a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University...But the experts were quite surprised by other trends found among the UFO witnesses. People who have attended church recently and who identify themselves as born-again Evangelical Protestants are much less likely to have seen UFOs or to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence than people with little or no involvement with organized religion.

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/34758

Catholic laxity

According to Nick, the Catholic epologist:

        

Steve, The fact Protestants cannot agree on whether the day(s) of worship are essential or not is, in itself, proof of the failure of Sola Scriptura.

I do have to wonder if Nick is really that dense. Perhaps his is.

That would only evidence the failure of sola Scriptura if it is God’s will that all Christians worship on a particular date, but Scripture is unclear on that obligation.

Put another way, Scripture would only be inadequate if that was a divine obligation, but the testimony of Scripture was insufficient to apprise us of our divine obligation. But if the issue is adiaphorous, then we wouldn’t expect the Bible to stipulate a particular day of worship.

So, to show that sola Scriptura is a failure, Nick first needs to show that Christians have a divine obligation to worship on a particular date, but Scripture is unclear on their obligation. Needless to say, Nick hasn’t done that.

The mere phenomenon of Protestant disagreement on this issue doesn’t show, either that Scripture is unclear or insufficient.

For one thing, it’s quite possible for professing Christians to reject the clear teaching of Scripture. Indeed, Roman Catholicism is a case in point.

For another thing, Nick’s reasoning is reversible. Assuming that Scripture doesn’t specify a Christian day of worship, then the silence of Scripture renders that question inessential. That’s how you know it’s inessential. That’s how you know it’s a point of liberty.

At the moment I’m not affirming or denying that assumption. Rather, I’m simply drawing attention to the real nature of the argument, since Nick is too dense to grasp the issue at hand.

As a vassal of the pope, Nick tacitly begins with his Catholic assumptions regarding the day of worship, then alleges that Scripture is insufficient because it fails to ratify his operating assumptions.

But, of course, that’s confused. That wouldn’t show that sola Scriptura is a failure on Protestant grounds. For he has smuggled a Catholic assumption into the argument. At most, this only shows that Scripture is a failure on Catholic grounds. But, of course, that does nothing to advance the argument. Indeed, that doesn’t even amount to an argument. Rather, it begs the question.

All he’s done is to cite what he deems to be an unacceptable consequence of sola Scriptura, then conclude that sola Scriptura is unacceptable. But he hasn’t begun to justify his own standards. And he hasn’t begun to show that sola Scriptura is insufficient by Protestant standards.

The prevailing 'lax' attitude is of more recent origin, where virtually everything save "Jesus is Lord" is reduced to non-essential.

There’s nothing “lax” about taking the position that Scripture is indifferent to this issue. Laxity has reference to the enforcement of a policy, and not the policy itself. If you have a policy which you don’t enforce, then that’s a lax attitude. But not to have a policy on some issue or another is not, itself, symptomatic of a lax attitude. You may have good reason for thinking that such a policy would be unwarranted.

Again, I’m haven’t said that Scripture is or isn’t indifferent to this issue. I’m just documenting Nick’s intellectual limitations in framing the issue. 

This is in contrast to the more "conservative" days when Protestant denominations fought bitterly on such subjects.

Of course, we could also contrast the laxity of modern Rome with the more “conservative” days when it was far stricter in enforcing religious policies. If Nick were smart, he'd avoid an objection which invites such an obvious counterexample. But he isn't that smart. 

How mere is "mere Christianity"?

William Lane Craig recently defined Christian essentials as those doctrines to which all Christians subscribe. Conversely, if Christians don’t agree on some doctrine or another, then that’s inessential to the Christian faith.

So he seems to be using Christian consensus as his criterion for Christian essentials. And he’s not the only one to do this. You have people who cite something like the Apostles’ Creed as their common denominator. Christians are defined by their agreement with the Apostles’ Creed. That’s the frame of reference. If it’s not taught in the Apostles’ Creed, then it’s nonessential.

But there’s a basic problem with this criterion. For those who use Christian consensus as their criterion aren’t really using consensus as their criterion. You see, to say that Christian essentials are defined by whatever all Christians believe, you already have to have an idea of what makes them Christians in the first place. For you are claiming that this is something Christians believe in. So Christians aren’t simply defined by their common belief in this or that doctrine. For it has to be Christians believing it that makes it a Christian essential.

So those who appeal to Christian consensus are tacitly going behind the consensus. They actually begin with a preconception of who is or isn’t a Christian. If Christians believe something in common, then that makes it a Christian essential.

The fact that non-Christians disagree on some doctrine or another doesn’t render it inessential. Rather, the fact that Christians disagree on some doctrine or another renders it nonessential.

So consensus isn’t really the criterion. It has to be Christian consensus. In which case, it’s not consensus that defines a Christian, but Christians who define consensus.

Suppose you take the Apostles’ Creed as your frame of reference. Of course, there are people who disagree with one or more articles of the Apostles’ Creed. If you say their dissent doesn’t count because they’re not Christian, then, of course, you have to operate with a preconceived idea of what makes a Christian a Christian. You’ve defined the Apostles’ Creed as a Christian Creed. And you’re measuring Christian profession by that yardstick.

But once again, if that’s the case, then it’s not the consensus of Christians that determines Christian essentials. Rather, you’ve make a prejudgment concerning the status of the Apostles’ Creed, and you thereby judge Christian profession by whether or not a given individual affirms the Apostles’ Creed. That’s the bare minimum.

So folks like Craig don’t begin with consensus. Consensus doesn’t select for the Christian essentials. How would he know what Christians agree on unless he already knows who the Christians are?

But, of course, professing believers represent overlapping beliefs. Some professing believerss agree on premillennialism, but disagree on infant baptism–among many other examples.

So professing believers can be subdivided into many different overlapping groups. They are members of many different Christian subsets. The premillennial Christians or the amillennial Christians. The paedobaptist Christians or the credobaptist Christians. And so on and so forth.

So how does someone like Craig decide which subset represents the relevant unit of consensus? He can’t simply appeal to Christian consensus, for there is no one body of beliefs which represents Christian consensus.

Rather, you have a variety of overlapping positions. But this doesn’t mean they all intersect at the same point. And even if they did, that might be so minimal and incidental that it would hardly amount to a credible profession of faith.

Even something like the Apostles’ Creed is deceptive, for when Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants (to take three examples) profess the Apostles’ Creed, they don’t necessarily mean the same thing by the same terms. Clearly they don’t all mean the same thing by the “church” or the “communion of saints.”