Continuing with George:
“I’m sorry Steve…in a complex world of 6.5 billion homo sapiens, when are cooperative and selfish behaviors ‘not in tension?”
I’m sorry George, but you just reversed y0urself. This is what you originally said:
“He seems to insinuate that altruism and self interest are mutually exclusive. His ignorance that altruism often serves a “self interest”, speaks volumes about his ignorance of basic evolutionary behaviors and the various strategies employed by social, cooperative species such as ours.”
Now, however, he backs around and asks us when altruism and self-interest are “not” in a state of tension.
Moving along:
“You did make a nebulous reference to a ‘lifeboat’ and ‘hedonism’ in your last post, but actually never pursued the details of any ‘textbook examples, much less any real world experiments that showed why a Calvinist would behave differently than an Islamist, humanist, Buddhist or Scientologist in any given moral scenario.”
I see I overestimated George’s grasp of the obvious. Since the lifeboat scenario is a stock hypothetical in social ethics, it hardly needs explaining for the average reader with an above room temperature IQ. But we’ll make an exception in George’s case. Here’s a standard illustration:
***QUOTE***
So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being "our brother's keeper," or by the Marxist ideal of "to each according to his needs." Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as "our brothers," we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.
Since the boat has an unused excess capacity of 10 more passengers, we could admit just 10 more to it. But which 10 do we let in? How do we choose? Do we pick the best 10, "first come, first served"? And what do we say to the 90 we exclude? If we do let an extra 10 into our lifeboat, we will have lost our "safety factor," an engineering principle of critical importance.
Suppose we decide to preserve our small safety factor and admit no more to the lifeboat. Our survival is then possible although we shall have to be constantly on guard against boarding parties.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
***END-QUOTE***
In such a scenario, a consistent Christian would be self-sacrificial while a consistent humanist would be self-centered.
“Again with the constant mimicry of my phrasing…I’m honored. It’s like having a pet monkey.”
And do you feel equally honored to be the pet monkey of natural selection?
“I derive my understanding of the world via the empirical observation and testing method we generally refer to as science.”
Pity that the interpretation of your sensory input is at the mercy of that blindly programmed primate brain of yours.
“Are you a zoologist or animal behavior specialist, Steve? Perhaps you could link me to your thesis on why wolves, dogs, lions, elephants, whales and other sentient social mammals, are not in a position to use their brains and evaluate altruistic versus self interests in a variety of circumstances?”
Oh, so you think that Fido engages in metaethical deliberations over existentialism, utilitarianism, and deontology?
Tell me, George, if you also believe that white mice are hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings?
“I hope this ‘textbook example’ helps you to understand, that human behavior is not all driven by ‘abstract reasoning, nor is it always alturistic, in even the most pretentious Christian blowhards like yourself.
I see that you suffer from short-term memory loss. Sorry about that.
In the context of this ongoing thread, the point was made that human beings, due to their powers of abstract reasoning, are able to objectify and therefore evaluate their instinctual impulses.
“Alturism and cooperative behavior doesn’t need a ‘worldview’ other than the one driven by survival and reproductive success in species.”
You continue to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Such philosophical naïveté does have a certain artless charm. Another throwback to George’s primate brain.
Perhaps we should have the old boy stuffed and put him in a museum of natural history—alongside Australopithecus.
We could exhume Stephen Jay Gould to complete the display. After all, we’re nothing more than meat machines.
“I guess this means you won’t be releasing your tax returns so we can see how much of a hypocrite you are with all this ‘altruistic’ posturing.”
And should I file this away with your other admittedly subjective value judgments?
In any event, hypocritical behavior doesn’t need a “worldview” other than the one driven by survival and reproductive success in species.
Welcome to the rat race, George. Calculated hypocrisy beats slavish altruism at the Derby every day of the week.
“Persecution never more personified, than in the butcher of Geneva, John Calvin.”
Yet another one of George’s subjective value-judgments. At this rate I need to compile a cumulative index of George’s subjective value judgments.
One wonders why George is so hard on poor old Calvin. After all, such card-carrying Darwinians as Dawkins and Dennett have taught us that a man like Calvin is the project of his memetic conditioning—that pesky old God-meme, ya know!
But a “simpleton” like George hasn’t evolved to the point where he can appreciate the memeplexity of Calvin’s historical predicament.
“More flattery…here’s another newsflash Steve, I’m not a supporter of Stalin, like you are of Calvin. They were both tyrants that used their positions of power to murder their theological and political opponents.”
It’s unfortunate for George that his withering disapproval is, by his own account, nothing more than a subjective value judgment. Sorta takes the bite out of his Olympian strictures.
“Btw…has your god ever come to you and told you to kill anyone for him?”
Btw…have your memes ever come to you and told you to kill anyone for Mother Nature?
“And group inter-subjectivity.”
I see. Speaking of which—executing heretics in the 16C was an intersubjective value-judgment as well.
“Moral thought is not something that either exists in the objective mind of your imaginary god or just in an individual’s mind. It is an inter-subjective, evolving phenomena that is spread via DNA and human culture. “
And by your own reckoning, Calvin was also a byproduct of sociobiology.
Also, if what is right or wrong is indexed to one’s historical position, why should Calvin be impressed by your own culture-bound value-judgments?
Oh, and I do hope you’re not going to appeal to the quaint, 19C notion of evolutionary progress, for naturalistic evolution is a non-directive process.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Back to the trenches
Continuing with George:
***QUOTE***
A very common problem with theist simpletons, like Steve here, is they tend to bifurcate the world into just “two sides”. You know…”saved – unsaved”, “Good Calvinist Christians – evil, militant, relativist, unbelievers”, “good Republican conservatives - bad, liberal Democrats”…that sort of thing.
That’s called the logical fallacy of false dilemma (also known as falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false dichotomy, false correlative, either/or dilemma or bifurcation).
***END-QUOTE***
Make a mental note of this statement as we run across examples of George’s own bifurcations.
“Again, this is another application of the false dilemma fallacy by Steve. I’m guessing he does this a lot. He seems to insinuate that altruism and self interest are mutually exclusive. His ignorance that altruism often serves a “self interest”, speaks volumes about his ignorance of basic evolutionary behaviors and the various strategies employed by social, cooperative species such as ours. I’m sure he’s never studied any game theory.”
The false dilemma is due to George’s inability to read and/or comprehend what I actually wrote.
I did not treat these as mutually exclusive. Rather, I brought up textbook examples in which altruism and self-interest are in tension.
This is a tension that evolutionary ethics cannot resolve inasmuch as the tension is generated by evolutionary ethics in the first place.
“Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from 3000 year old Genesis mythology?”
Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from the shifting sands of humanism?
“I’m not sure what planet Steve lives on, but I have always lived on one with limited resources. And there are lots of examples of other social cooperative mammals that use various altruistic survival strategies that have never heard of Steve’s gods or his idol John Calvin.”
Since other social animals operate by instinct rather than abstract reason, they are in no position to evaluate those instances in which altruism comes into conflict with self-interest.
“There’s no evidence to show that Christians are more or less altruistic than Buddhists or humanists or athiests.”
Even if true, that’s irrelevant. The point at issue is not who is more altruistic, but whose worldview is logically supportive of altruism.
“It seems Ted Turner and Bill Gates have given more to charity, then Steve’s entire congregation.”
Given Bill Gates’ net worth, that’s’ a pretty safe tautology.
“In the meantime, thanks for this simpleton view of complex, evolved behaviors your little brain doesn’t understand. “
And in the meantime, thanks for ducking the philosophical complexities of warranted behavior by your anti-intellectual resort to anecdotal decoys.
“For the same reason you have them Steve. They are part of your DNA and social learning. Unfortunately, our DNA and social learning are comprised of vast, unique gene combinations and life experience…thus, we don’t all have the exact same ones…”
i) This does not justify secular ethics. To the contrary, you are committing the naturalistic fallacy as well as the is-ought fallacy—both of which were raised by secular philosophers.
ii) The very fact that we are aware of our genetic programming and social conditioning makes it possible for us to evaluate our genetic programming and social conditioning.
Hence, we’re in a position to rebel against our genetic programming or social conditioning if they collide with our individual self-interest.
Appealing to the role of instinct or socialization is not a justification for instinct or socialization. Try again.
You yourself admit to the biological basis of sexual coercion, yet you apparently believe that rape is wrong.
“Imagine Steve as one of Calvin’s henchmen in 16th century Geneva, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born 4 centuries too late.”
Imagine George as one of Stalin’s henchmen in mid-20C Russia, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born a few decades too late.
Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and evil, militant Calvinistas on the other side.
“Poor Steve, he can’t quite figure out that ‘greater good,’ and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma.”
Poor George, he can’t quite figure out that if ‘greater good’, and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma, then Sam Harris et al. will be unable to disprove the Christian by invoking the problem of evil.
“Perhaps Steve never saw the results of the poll amongst Egyptian peasants who were asked if they thought Steve’s omnipotent god, slaughtering their first born children, so he could free some Hebrews, who he could easily freed without this genocide…”
Perhaps poor George never figured out that his moral subjectivism renders his opportunistic appeal to would-be defeaters like “genocide” otiose.
Notice how his current position amounts to a retraction of his previous position, in which he said:
“I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratutious or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”
Now, however, he relegates all of this to the realm of individual subjectivity.
And let us remember, once again, that I’m citing a distinction (“gratuitous” evil) drawn by secular philosophers as they formulate the problem of evil.
“Altruism is completely consistent with survival of genes in cooperative, sentient mammals, and mindless insects.”
It may be consistent with the survival of species. But it is frequently inconsistent with the survival of individuals.
An atheist is not a gene or mindless insect. He is a sentient being. And he will often be confronted with situations in which there is a conflict between altruism and his personal self-interest.
How does evolutionary ethics adjudicate that dilemma? Is he supposed to take one for the team? Why would he feel obligated to do what Mother Nature says when Mother Nature feels no obligation towards his individual wellbeing?
“And you see, I not only quoted the bible, I quoted the alleged second person in the three headed godhead. So excuse me if I take his word over Mr. Carson’s and Longeneckers.”
Quoting the Bible and exegeting the Bible are two different things. George has shown that he can quote Scripture, not that he can understand Scripture.
But if George wants to be an obscurantist, that’s fine with me.
Once again, ignorance is the royal road to unbelief.
“I never claimed to be a ‘secular humanist’ whatever you think that slur implies.”
You think that “secular humanism” is a slur? I guess that makes you a closet Fundy or jihadi.
“Well I would certainly count as evidence your reformed, protestant god manifesting himself in front of the whole world, clearly identifying himself as Steve’s god, and then slaughtering all the first born children of Muslim terrorists, and saying there’s more like that to come unless they all convert to Calvinism.”
This is why George’s appeal to evidence is frivolous and disingenuous.
“Or perhaps is it just one more example, in the long history of crazed theists, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them, and claiming their imaginary, invisible gods, authorized and helped them accomplish it?”
Not to mention the long history of crazed unbelievers like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them.
Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and crazed theists on the other side.
***QUOTE***
A very common problem with theist simpletons, like Steve here, is they tend to bifurcate the world into just “two sides”. You know…”saved – unsaved”, “Good Calvinist Christians – evil, militant, relativist, unbelievers”, “good Republican conservatives - bad, liberal Democrats”…that sort of thing.
That’s called the logical fallacy of false dilemma (also known as falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false dichotomy, false correlative, either/or dilemma or bifurcation).
***END-QUOTE***
Make a mental note of this statement as we run across examples of George’s own bifurcations.
“Again, this is another application of the false dilemma fallacy by Steve. I’m guessing he does this a lot. He seems to insinuate that altruism and self interest are mutually exclusive. His ignorance that altruism often serves a “self interest”, speaks volumes about his ignorance of basic evolutionary behaviors and the various strategies employed by social, cooperative species such as ours. I’m sure he’s never studied any game theory.”
The false dilemma is due to George’s inability to read and/or comprehend what I actually wrote.
I did not treat these as mutually exclusive. Rather, I brought up textbook examples in which altruism and self-interest are in tension.
This is a tension that evolutionary ethics cannot resolve inasmuch as the tension is generated by evolutionary ethics in the first place.
“Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from 3000 year old Genesis mythology?”
Sigh…what can one expect from someone who derives his understanding of the world from the shifting sands of humanism?
“I’m not sure what planet Steve lives on, but I have always lived on one with limited resources. And there are lots of examples of other social cooperative mammals that use various altruistic survival strategies that have never heard of Steve’s gods or his idol John Calvin.”
Since other social animals operate by instinct rather than abstract reason, they are in no position to evaluate those instances in which altruism comes into conflict with self-interest.
“There’s no evidence to show that Christians are more or less altruistic than Buddhists or humanists or athiests.”
Even if true, that’s irrelevant. The point at issue is not who is more altruistic, but whose worldview is logically supportive of altruism.
“It seems Ted Turner and Bill Gates have given more to charity, then Steve’s entire congregation.”
Given Bill Gates’ net worth, that’s’ a pretty safe tautology.
“In the meantime, thanks for this simpleton view of complex, evolved behaviors your little brain doesn’t understand. “
And in the meantime, thanks for ducking the philosophical complexities of warranted behavior by your anti-intellectual resort to anecdotal decoys.
“For the same reason you have them Steve. They are part of your DNA and social learning. Unfortunately, our DNA and social learning are comprised of vast, unique gene combinations and life experience…thus, we don’t all have the exact same ones…”
i) This does not justify secular ethics. To the contrary, you are committing the naturalistic fallacy as well as the is-ought fallacy—both of which were raised by secular philosophers.
ii) The very fact that we are aware of our genetic programming and social conditioning makes it possible for us to evaluate our genetic programming and social conditioning.
Hence, we’re in a position to rebel against our genetic programming or social conditioning if they collide with our individual self-interest.
Appealing to the role of instinct or socialization is not a justification for instinct or socialization. Try again.
You yourself admit to the biological basis of sexual coercion, yet you apparently believe that rape is wrong.
“Imagine Steve as one of Calvin’s henchmen in 16th century Geneva, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born 4 centuries too late.”
Imagine George as one of Stalin’s henchmen in mid-20C Russia, and you’ll quickly realize he was simply born a few decades too late.
Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and evil, militant Calvinistas on the other side.
“Poor Steve, he can’t quite figure out that ‘greater good,’ and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma.”
Poor George, he can’t quite figure out that if ‘greater good’, and the adjectives ‘gratuitous and pointless’, as they relate to ‘evil’, are all subjective value judgments that might be perceived quite differently, by different people in any given situation or moral dilemma, then Sam Harris et al. will be unable to disprove the Christian by invoking the problem of evil.
“Perhaps Steve never saw the results of the poll amongst Egyptian peasants who were asked if they thought Steve’s omnipotent god, slaughtering their first born children, so he could free some Hebrews, who he could easily freed without this genocide…”
Perhaps poor George never figured out that his moral subjectivism renders his opportunistic appeal to would-be defeaters like “genocide” otiose.
Notice how his current position amounts to a retraction of his previous position, in which he said:
“I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratutious or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”
Now, however, he relegates all of this to the realm of individual subjectivity.
And let us remember, once again, that I’m citing a distinction (“gratuitous” evil) drawn by secular philosophers as they formulate the problem of evil.
“Altruism is completely consistent with survival of genes in cooperative, sentient mammals, and mindless insects.”
It may be consistent with the survival of species. But it is frequently inconsistent with the survival of individuals.
An atheist is not a gene or mindless insect. He is a sentient being. And he will often be confronted with situations in which there is a conflict between altruism and his personal self-interest.
How does evolutionary ethics adjudicate that dilemma? Is he supposed to take one for the team? Why would he feel obligated to do what Mother Nature says when Mother Nature feels no obligation towards his individual wellbeing?
“And you see, I not only quoted the bible, I quoted the alleged second person in the three headed godhead. So excuse me if I take his word over Mr. Carson’s and Longeneckers.”
Quoting the Bible and exegeting the Bible are two different things. George has shown that he can quote Scripture, not that he can understand Scripture.
But if George wants to be an obscurantist, that’s fine with me.
Once again, ignorance is the royal road to unbelief.
“I never claimed to be a ‘secular humanist’ whatever you think that slur implies.”
You think that “secular humanism” is a slur? I guess that makes you a closet Fundy or jihadi.
“Well I would certainly count as evidence your reformed, protestant god manifesting himself in front of the whole world, clearly identifying himself as Steve’s god, and then slaughtering all the first born children of Muslim terrorists, and saying there’s more like that to come unless they all convert to Calvinism.”
This is why George’s appeal to evidence is frivolous and disingenuous.
“Or perhaps is it just one more example, in the long history of crazed theists, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them, and claiming their imaginary, invisible gods, authorized and helped them accomplish it?”
Not to mention the long history of crazed unbelievers like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, terrorizing and murdering people who don’t believe like them.
Oh, and while we’re at it, notice how George, what with his bifurcated, either/or, black/white worldview divvies up humanity into good guys like himself and crazed theists on the other side.
Do we know we're saved?
John W. Loftus said:
“Calvinists know that they are saved? Really? So they have direct access to the secret will of God? There is no such assurance. As far as you know all you have is false assurance. Claim it all you want to if it makes you psychologically confident. But you can never be intellectually convinced of this, and you know it.”
1.We don’t need direct access to the secret will of God since that is not how the assurance of salvation is accessed in Scripture.
Rather, it is accessed in certain public criteria. For a discriminating discussion, cf. P. Helm, The Beginnings: Word & Spirit in Conversion (Banner of Truth 1986), 89-96.
2.You are also confounding paper doubts with real doubts. The hypothetical possibility that I may be a nominal believer or closet apostate has no more affect on my assurance of salvation than the hypothetical possibility that I’m a lunatic who happens to think he’s sane is any reason to question my sanity.
If I were really insane, then I’d be self-deluded about my own mental state. So is that a reason for someone who’s sane to doubt his sanity? Only if you're prone to paranoia.
“And the fear of hell keeps you from entertaining your hidden doubts, which makes you zealous for your faith since you suppress them.”
Loftus is now retreating into the Freudian fortress of the Id. But since, by definition, Castle Id is equally unprovable and unfalsifiable, an appeal to the alleged existence of unconscious doubts can never translate into conscious doubts.
“Calvinists know that they are saved? Really? So they have direct access to the secret will of God? There is no such assurance. As far as you know all you have is false assurance. Claim it all you want to if it makes you psychologically confident. But you can never be intellectually convinced of this, and you know it.”
1.We don’t need direct access to the secret will of God since that is not how the assurance of salvation is accessed in Scripture.
Rather, it is accessed in certain public criteria. For a discriminating discussion, cf. P. Helm, The Beginnings: Word & Spirit in Conversion (Banner of Truth 1986), 89-96.
2.You are also confounding paper doubts with real doubts. The hypothetical possibility that I may be a nominal believer or closet apostate has no more affect on my assurance of salvation than the hypothetical possibility that I’m a lunatic who happens to think he’s sane is any reason to question my sanity.
If I were really insane, then I’d be self-deluded about my own mental state. So is that a reason for someone who’s sane to doubt his sanity? Only if you're prone to paranoia.
“And the fear of hell keeps you from entertaining your hidden doubts, which makes you zealous for your faith since you suppress them.”
Loftus is now retreating into the Freudian fortress of the Id. But since, by definition, Castle Id is equally unprovable and unfalsifiable, an appeal to the alleged existence of unconscious doubts can never translate into conscious doubts.
Answer a fool according to his folly
A couple of Christian commenters have asked about our apologetic methodology at Triablogue.
As a general matter, Triablogue is a team effort. Different team members vary in their style, temperament, individual background, formative influences, epistemology, and so on.
The same is true for readers. Different readers will react differently to the very same material.
Moving to the specifics:
Darrin said:
“Shouldn't this battle be fought on epistemological grounds? I.e. should you not force their hands to show why their positions amount to something that is ‘true’ rather than something that is just their opinion? In other words, make them account for how they know the things they assert? Their use of induction (which is formally fallacious) to establish their ‘truth’ claims should be challenged. (Perhaps you have as I can't say I've read every thread).”
I think there’s often a time and place to get explicitly presuppositional. But I don’t do that all the time.
For one thing, if you play the presuppositional card every time, it looks like a dodge. It looks like you don’t have any specific answers to specific objections, so that all you can do is to play your dog-eared trump card every single time.
But since we often have specific answers to specific objections at our disposal, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t give specific answers to specific objections—instead of deflecting every objection and redirecting it to the preconditions of intelligibility.
This doesn’t mean that I object to specialization. Due to the specialization of knowledge, it’s not uncommon for an apologist to limit himself to a particular field of expertise.
If a Christian wants to make transcendental theism his bailiwick, that’s fine. We need to have that in reserve. And there are occasions when that’s the weapon of choice.
I just don’t think that every Christian apologist would limit himself to TAG as the only weapon in his armory. Our collective apologetic ought to be broader than that.
Shining and Burning Light said:
“And I have no problem utilizing all lines of Biblical argumentation, we can proclaim and defend the truth with passion and tenacity, bringing thunder when necessary, being sarcastic when the refutation of their arguments call for it, etc. But we should not treat them in kind, or fling retorts back and forth, and let the discussion degenerate into childishness. If unbelievers note our disposition and demeanor toward them when we respond, and they feel as though we're treating them like mud, it is unlikely that we're going to make any headway with them, even if our argumentation has won the day. We ought not represent Christ to them in this way, brother. The best argument we can make for Christianity is to be as Christ-like as possible. In my view, none of their self-deceiving arguments can even touch that. When we see an example of harsh judgment pronounced in the Bible toward someone (e.g. Hymenaeus and Philetus), there is a context for it. Sarcasm and harshness, though they have their place, ought not be the defining characteristic of our dealings with apostates/atheists. They should have some sense that we are concerned for their well-being, even though we are on opposite sides of the argument. I highly respect what you and the Tbloggers do, I admire your intellectual abilities (they are a great gift from God), and I esteem you as brethren. I don't have any legalistic list of do's and don'ts when refuting those who oppose the faith, but I am suggesting that you tone it down. Unbelievers are listening to you at DC, and at times (notice I said at times, not all the time) they pick up this disposition I've been talking about and they call you on it. When the Debunkees come off as the gracious ones, something is wrong! Please consider what I say, even though I am a nobody....thanks for your labors in the Lord.”
From one nobody to another, there’s a lot of truth in SBL’s observation.
I myself follow the philosophy of Prov 26:4-5. Sometimes it’s prudent to answer a fool according to his folly, but at other times a different tack is called for. As one commentator puts it:
“That situation poses a problem to the wise: how should one ‘answer’ the fool? The opposite bits of advice—‘do not answer’ and “do answer’—show that there is no automatic formula to be applied. Each situation calls for a response that the wise must have confidence to discern on the spot. In one case, to answer would lead to prolonged argument in which the wise might be trapped into babbling like a fool. Where there is a chance of that, silence is the prudent way…In another case, one prick of the fool’s balloon may bring him back to reality and burst the bubble of his conceit (‘wise in his own eyes’). To answer in that circumstance does a favor to everyone, including the fool…both proverbs are valid, each in its own setting,” D. Hubbard, Mastering the Old Testament: Proverbs (Word 1989), 398-99.
I don’t think we should follow an unbeliever wherever he would take us. We march to the drumbeat of our own inspired music score. Yet the Bible is, itself, a book with many instruments in the orchestra pit: brass as well as strings.
And it also differentiates between one group and another. It reserves some very harsh words for the apostate.
I don’t believe that we should hand out respect like free samples of detergent. Respectable arguments merit a respectful hearing.
Disreputable objections do not. There’s no reason to treat everything the same way when everything is not the same.
It’s ironic how angry an unbeliever will become when you hold him to his own words and standards. But I think there’s a place for that—precisely because it exposes the vulnerability of the unbeliever’s position.
There are times when we should ruthlessly take an unbeliever at his own word, hold him to his word, make him eat his own words.
Call his bluff. Play by his own rules and beat him at his own game.
Why should he feel offended when we respond to him in kind, when we answer him in his own coin?
If he chooses to take umbrage, then that’s helpful—for he is taking offense at his own words and standards as soon as we stamp a return address on the envelop and mail it back to the sender.
The church is composed of a variety of people. The church is better off when it has more people like SBL and fewer people like me. But there’s a place for salt as well as light.
Of course, I myself am eminently expendable. There are any number of Christians out there who could do what I do and do it much better. Christians who know more than I do on any given topic.
But until the A-team comes on board, B-team rookies like me will fill in as pinch-hitters.
As a general matter, Triablogue is a team effort. Different team members vary in their style, temperament, individual background, formative influences, epistemology, and so on.
The same is true for readers. Different readers will react differently to the very same material.
Moving to the specifics:
Darrin said:
“Shouldn't this battle be fought on epistemological grounds? I.e. should you not force their hands to show why their positions amount to something that is ‘true’ rather than something that is just their opinion? In other words, make them account for how they know the things they assert? Their use of induction (which is formally fallacious) to establish their ‘truth’ claims should be challenged. (Perhaps you have as I can't say I've read every thread).”
I think there’s often a time and place to get explicitly presuppositional. But I don’t do that all the time.
For one thing, if you play the presuppositional card every time, it looks like a dodge. It looks like you don’t have any specific answers to specific objections, so that all you can do is to play your dog-eared trump card every single time.
But since we often have specific answers to specific objections at our disposal, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t give specific answers to specific objections—instead of deflecting every objection and redirecting it to the preconditions of intelligibility.
This doesn’t mean that I object to specialization. Due to the specialization of knowledge, it’s not uncommon for an apologist to limit himself to a particular field of expertise.
If a Christian wants to make transcendental theism his bailiwick, that’s fine. We need to have that in reserve. And there are occasions when that’s the weapon of choice.
I just don’t think that every Christian apologist would limit himself to TAG as the only weapon in his armory. Our collective apologetic ought to be broader than that.
Shining and Burning Light said:
“And I have no problem utilizing all lines of Biblical argumentation, we can proclaim and defend the truth with passion and tenacity, bringing thunder when necessary, being sarcastic when the refutation of their arguments call for it, etc. But we should not treat them in kind, or fling retorts back and forth, and let the discussion degenerate into childishness. If unbelievers note our disposition and demeanor toward them when we respond, and they feel as though we're treating them like mud, it is unlikely that we're going to make any headway with them, even if our argumentation has won the day. We ought not represent Christ to them in this way, brother. The best argument we can make for Christianity is to be as Christ-like as possible. In my view, none of their self-deceiving arguments can even touch that. When we see an example of harsh judgment pronounced in the Bible toward someone (e.g. Hymenaeus and Philetus), there is a context for it. Sarcasm and harshness, though they have their place, ought not be the defining characteristic of our dealings with apostates/atheists. They should have some sense that we are concerned for their well-being, even though we are on opposite sides of the argument. I highly respect what you and the Tbloggers do, I admire your intellectual abilities (they are a great gift from God), and I esteem you as brethren. I don't have any legalistic list of do's and don'ts when refuting those who oppose the faith, but I am suggesting that you tone it down. Unbelievers are listening to you at DC, and at times (notice I said at times, not all the time) they pick up this disposition I've been talking about and they call you on it. When the Debunkees come off as the gracious ones, something is wrong! Please consider what I say, even though I am a nobody....thanks for your labors in the Lord.”
From one nobody to another, there’s a lot of truth in SBL’s observation.
I myself follow the philosophy of Prov 26:4-5. Sometimes it’s prudent to answer a fool according to his folly, but at other times a different tack is called for. As one commentator puts it:
“That situation poses a problem to the wise: how should one ‘answer’ the fool? The opposite bits of advice—‘do not answer’ and “do answer’—show that there is no automatic formula to be applied. Each situation calls for a response that the wise must have confidence to discern on the spot. In one case, to answer would lead to prolonged argument in which the wise might be trapped into babbling like a fool. Where there is a chance of that, silence is the prudent way…In another case, one prick of the fool’s balloon may bring him back to reality and burst the bubble of his conceit (‘wise in his own eyes’). To answer in that circumstance does a favor to everyone, including the fool…both proverbs are valid, each in its own setting,” D. Hubbard, Mastering the Old Testament: Proverbs (Word 1989), 398-99.
I don’t think we should follow an unbeliever wherever he would take us. We march to the drumbeat of our own inspired music score. Yet the Bible is, itself, a book with many instruments in the orchestra pit: brass as well as strings.
And it also differentiates between one group and another. It reserves some very harsh words for the apostate.
I don’t believe that we should hand out respect like free samples of detergent. Respectable arguments merit a respectful hearing.
Disreputable objections do not. There’s no reason to treat everything the same way when everything is not the same.
It’s ironic how angry an unbeliever will become when you hold him to his own words and standards. But I think there’s a place for that—precisely because it exposes the vulnerability of the unbeliever’s position.
There are times when we should ruthlessly take an unbeliever at his own word, hold him to his word, make him eat his own words.
Call his bluff. Play by his own rules and beat him at his own game.
Why should he feel offended when we respond to him in kind, when we answer him in his own coin?
If he chooses to take umbrage, then that’s helpful—for he is taking offense at his own words and standards as soon as we stamp a return address on the envelop and mail it back to the sender.
The church is composed of a variety of people. The church is better off when it has more people like SBL and fewer people like me. But there’s a place for salt as well as light.
Of course, I myself am eminently expendable. There are any number of Christians out there who could do what I do and do it much better. Christians who know more than I do on any given topic.
But until the A-team comes on board, B-team rookies like me will fill in as pinch-hitters.
Armchair psychology
***QUOTE***
Today there is violence between Israel and Lebanon. And while no one can say this is purely a religious war, the elements of religion are plainly evident, especially when militant Islamics (like Hamas, and Hezbollah) want to destroy Israel as part of what they understand the Koran to say.
And then there are Christians who are so zealous for their faith they consider anyone who questions their faith as a personal attack. They too are zealots for their faith.
But why? Why are these religious people so zealous for their faith? Why? Is anyone that zealous in defending their favorite Baseball team, or in defending the historicity the founding of ancient Rome, such that they will personally attack someone who denies it (well there might be a small select few regarding a baseball team, but Christians as a whole take our questions personally).
Fear of hell. That explains the zeal of the zealots in this world. It's a cradle to grave intimidation that causes otherwise intelligent and caring people to be stupid and fearful and zealous for their faith.
Tell me this, Christians, if it weren't for the fear of hell, how zealous would you be for your faith? How willing would you be to consider the questions we pose here at DC? How does the fear of hell itself affect how zealous you are to defend your faith?
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/zealots-and-fear-of-hell.html
***END-QUOTE***
1.This is all very illogical. For one thing, I can think of plenty of sports fans that are quite zealous about the home team. I guess they’re motivated by the fear of hell, right?
2.Loftus’ analysis would only make sense if two conditions were met:
i) The zealot is afraid of hell, and
ii) He believes that his zealous activities will save him from hell.
As far as militant Muslims are concerned, they seem to be motivated, not by the disincentive of hell-fire, but by the incentive of their 72 virgins in Paradise.
It’s about the carrot, not the stick.
And there are other factors in play. The peer pressure from a cult of martyrdom. A propaganda machine along with a cottage industry of victimology. And the rush that comes of killing people. The thrill of danger.
As far as Christians are concerned, Evangelicals don’t believe that doing apologetics will save them from the flames of perdition. We are justified by faith, not by apologetics.
Moreover, many Evangelicals are unafraid of hell. They became Christians out of fear of hell. But now that they are Christians, they no longer fear the prospect of hell.
This is especially true for Christians in a theological tradition like Lutheranism or Calvinism in which a Christian can enjoy the assurance of salvation.
3.Finally, apostates can be every bit as zealous as Christians. Is this because the apostate is inspired by his fear of hell?
Today there is violence between Israel and Lebanon. And while no one can say this is purely a religious war, the elements of religion are plainly evident, especially when militant Islamics (like Hamas, and Hezbollah) want to destroy Israel as part of what they understand the Koran to say.
And then there are Christians who are so zealous for their faith they consider anyone who questions their faith as a personal attack. They too are zealots for their faith.
But why? Why are these religious people so zealous for their faith? Why? Is anyone that zealous in defending their favorite Baseball team, or in defending the historicity the founding of ancient Rome, such that they will personally attack someone who denies it (well there might be a small select few regarding a baseball team, but Christians as a whole take our questions personally).
Fear of hell. That explains the zeal of the zealots in this world. It's a cradle to grave intimidation that causes otherwise intelligent and caring people to be stupid and fearful and zealous for their faith.
Tell me this, Christians, if it weren't for the fear of hell, how zealous would you be for your faith? How willing would you be to consider the questions we pose here at DC? How does the fear of hell itself affect how zealous you are to defend your faith?
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/zealots-and-fear-of-hell.html
***END-QUOTE***
1.This is all very illogical. For one thing, I can think of plenty of sports fans that are quite zealous about the home team. I guess they’re motivated by the fear of hell, right?
2.Loftus’ analysis would only make sense if two conditions were met:
i) The zealot is afraid of hell, and
ii) He believes that his zealous activities will save him from hell.
As far as militant Muslims are concerned, they seem to be motivated, not by the disincentive of hell-fire, but by the incentive of their 72 virgins in Paradise.
It’s about the carrot, not the stick.
And there are other factors in play. The peer pressure from a cult of martyrdom. A propaganda machine along with a cottage industry of victimology. And the rush that comes of killing people. The thrill of danger.
As far as Christians are concerned, Evangelicals don’t believe that doing apologetics will save them from the flames of perdition. We are justified by faith, not by apologetics.
Moreover, many Evangelicals are unafraid of hell. They became Christians out of fear of hell. But now that they are Christians, they no longer fear the prospect of hell.
This is especially true for Christians in a theological tradition like Lutheranism or Calvinism in which a Christian can enjoy the assurance of salvation.
3.Finally, apostates can be every bit as zealous as Christians. Is this because the apostate is inspired by his fear of hell?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Prophetic fulfillment
“If a prophecy is not falsifiable, it is as worthless as a newspaper astrology column. Making a prediction specific enough to be understood in advance is hard. Re-interpreting a text to make it predict past events is easy, and the techniques (like shoehorining) are well-understood. It can be done with Nostradamus and Biblical acrostics. It can be done to fit normal Biblical prophecies to non-religious figures like Napoleon.”
http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2006/07/changing-subject.html
The initial sentence is a valid inference from a false premise. I never said or implied that Bible prophecy was unfalsifiable.
What I said is that it would be self-defeating for a prophecy to be too specific, since that would invite efforts to thwart the prophecy.
Hence, no one Messianic prophecy (to take one prophetic class for purposes of illustration) is going to give you the who, what, when, where, why, and how of its fulfillment.
Rather, we have a set of prophecies which, taken together, give the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their collective fulfillment.
It’s like espionage—in which information is compartmentalized. Different agents are given different folders which, taken together, spell out the game plan.
“Because of this problem, sensible people demand that it be possible to correctly interpret Biblical prophecies in advance.”
This is self-refuting by Hallquist’s own examples. He doesn’t regard Nostradamus as a true prophet. Indeed, he clearly regards Nostradamus as a charlatan.
But Hallquist didn’t live before the time of Nostradamus, now did he? Hallquist is judging the prophetic quality, or lack therefore, of the famous quatrains after the fact.
Either that or Hallquist is very well preserved for his age.
And does he really believe that Bible prophecies are equally adaptable to figures like Napoleon?
Or does he believe that Bible prophecies are false?
http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2006/07/changing-subject.html
The initial sentence is a valid inference from a false premise. I never said or implied that Bible prophecy was unfalsifiable.
What I said is that it would be self-defeating for a prophecy to be too specific, since that would invite efforts to thwart the prophecy.
Hence, no one Messianic prophecy (to take one prophetic class for purposes of illustration) is going to give you the who, what, when, where, why, and how of its fulfillment.
Rather, we have a set of prophecies which, taken together, give the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their collective fulfillment.
It’s like espionage—in which information is compartmentalized. Different agents are given different folders which, taken together, spell out the game plan.
“Because of this problem, sensible people demand that it be possible to correctly interpret Biblical prophecies in advance.”
This is self-refuting by Hallquist’s own examples. He doesn’t regard Nostradamus as a true prophet. Indeed, he clearly regards Nostradamus as a charlatan.
But Hallquist didn’t live before the time of Nostradamus, now did he? Hallquist is judging the prophetic quality, or lack therefore, of the famous quatrains after the fact.
Either that or Hallquist is very well preserved for his age.
And does he really believe that Bible prophecies are equally adaptable to figures like Napoleon?
Or does he believe that Bible prophecies are false?
Emotional hemophilia
Have you ever noticed how many militant unbelievers are emotional hemophiliacs?
Every time you bruise the frail constitution of their atheism, they begin to bleed emotionalism out of all their pores.
You’d think I’d taken out a full-page ad in the NYT leveling a personal attack on Anonymous or George.
I did a post on Sam Harris. Suddenly this eruption of personal pique.
All I can say is that if your atheism is so delicate that you hemorrhage hysteria every time you get a bump or scratch from a Christian blogger, even when someone else was in the cross-hairs, then it’s best to avoid contact sports for your own protection.
Please refrain from reading Triablogue if a rhetorical nick from my keyboard would prove fatal to your seculatory system.
Anonymous said:
“Nice straw man dude. Violence is not a "biological imperative". If you don't see a difference between the limited mental capabilities of a lion and the advanced reasoning skills of human beings then you are a bigger dumbass than I give you credit for. I guess you have never heard of the benefits of altruism and cooperation in the evolutionary process? Why the [expletive deleted] do you think human beings live in societies instead of hermits in caves?”
1.This is another funny thing about so many militant unbelievers. Not only are they ignorant of our side of the argument. They are often just as ignorant of their own side of the argument.
As I pointed out in my previous reply to George, there are secular scientists who by no means regard my claim as a “straw man” argument:
A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (MIT 2000)
by Randy Thornhill, Craig T. Palmer, Margo I. Wilson
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Mariner Books 1997) by Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham
I realize, of course, that we must make allowance for the fact that MIT Press is a hotbed of Bible-thumpers while the Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham is probably a closet Fundy too.
2.Anonymous appeals to the benefits of altruism and cooperation. But he overlooks so many obvious counterexamples. One of the many problems with secular ethics is the frequent a conflict between altruism and self-interest.
It may be in everyone's general self-interest to be altruistic, but that also means that I may have to sacrifice my personal gratification for the common good. And why, if I'm an atheist, would I want to do that?
It's easy to be altruistic when it doesn't cost us anything, when everyone is the beneficiary.
But, to take the textbook example, the benefits of altruism will quickly break down on a lifeboat.
Altruism only works when there's enough to go around for everyone, and everyone benefits from a spirit of sharing and cooperation.
But what about a competitive environment with limited resources?
This question comes up all the time in bioethics, with the rationing of medical services.
A consistent atheist knows that he has only one life to live, and the only future he has a personal investment in is his own short-term future, because he won't be around a 100 years from now.
Moreover, we quickly pass our physical prime, so the clock is ticking. I may live to be 90, but I can't do at 90 what I could do at 30.
From a secular standpoint, hedonism is far more logical than altruism.
“I know, I know, it is impossible for you to believe that someone who doesn't believe in your god can still have morals. If you absolutely require a god to keep you from killing, then please, I beg you, keep believing.”
The question is not whether an atheist can still have morals, but why an atheist should still have morals.
And it isn’t just the Christian who raises this question. As I documented in my previous reply to George, this is a question which divides the secular community, with many unbelievers adopting some form of moral relativism.
Once again, Anonymous is clueless about his own side of the argument.
This is because atheism is ultimately antisocial.
For the record, here are some of the challenges confronting the atheologian as he deploys the problem of evil:
***QUOTE***
Firstly, one who accepts either a divine command theory of ethics or non-realism in ethics is in no position to raise the problem of evil, that is, to offer the existence of evil as at least a prima facie good reason for rejecting theism. This is because a divine command theory, in taking morality to be dependent upon the will of God, already assumes the truth of that which is in dispute, viz. the existence of God (see Brown 1967). On the other hand, non-realist ethical theories, such as moral subjectivism and error-theories of ethics, hold that there are no objectively true moral judgments. But then a non-theist who also happens to be a non-realist in ethics cannot help herself to some of the central premises found in evidential arguments from evil (such as ‘If there were a perfectly good God, he would want a world with no horrific evil in it’), as these purport to be objectively true moral judgments (see Nelson 1991). This is not to say, however, that atheologians such as David Hume, Bertrand Russell and J.L. Mackie, each of whom supported non-realism in ethics, were contradicting their own meta-ethics when raising arguments from evil – at least if their aim was only to show up a contradiction in the theist’s set of beliefs.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-evi.htm
***END-QUOTE***
Moving on the George:
***QUOTE***
LOL…I’m not really interested in playing your games of semantic hair splitting Steve. I must have missed the big list of “gratuitous” versus “garden variety” evil in my copy of the bible.
You’re dodge is noted for the record.
I'm sure it will be a trend.
***END-QUOTE***
Just like Anonymous, George doesn’t know his own side of the argument. So I beg the indulgence of my readers while I give him a remedial course in Atheism 101.
“Gratuitous” evil is a necessary ingredient in the existential problem of evil as formulated by atheologians:
William Rowe’s version is often regarded as the classic formulation:
***QUOTE***
The second premise is sometimes called ‘the theological premise’ as it expresses a belief about what God as a perfectly good being would do under certain circumstances. In particular, this premise states that if such a being knew of some intense suffering that was about to take place and was in a position to prevent its occurrence, then it would prevent it unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. Put otherwise, an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God would not permit any gratuitous evil, evil that is (roughly speaking) avoidable, pointless, or unnecessary with respect to the fulfillment of God’s purposes.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-evi.htm
***END-QUOTE***
Here’s another illustration:
***QUOTE***
There are a number of evidential arguments from evil. The most common of these simply reformulates the logical argument into a probabilistic argument:
(1) Gratuitous evils probably exist
(2) Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the God of theism (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good)
(3) Therefore, the God of theism probably does not exist
Clearly, many evils can clearly lead to greater goods, for example suffering the slight pain of an injection in order to receive a life-saving drug. Advocates of AE do not generally have this kind of thing in mind when they refer to suffering or evil. What is meant by ‘evil’ is gratuitous or pointless evil.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_tattersall/evil.html
***END-QUOTE***
Notice that I’ve taken my “semantic hairsplitting”, not from my own side, but from George’s side—unless, that is, he suspects that The Secular Web is really a front organization for witch-burning theocrats.
Perhaps Richard Carrier and I are in cahoots. Ya never know!
Now, from a Reformed standpoint, the doctrine of predestination rules out the possibility of gratuitous evil.
So it’s hard to see how the problem of evil can be deployed as an internal critique of Calvinism.
However, other traditions may be more vulnerable on this score.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
I’m not sure if a backache makes the list of gratuitous evil. And not being superstitious and credulous, I am also not convinced that every piece of good fortune a Christian prays for, and comes true, is the result of your personal, invisible gods’ intervention.
That’s called the Fallacy of Coincidence. It’s the fuel that keeps the engine of your Christian superstition burning.
***END-QUOTE***
The fallacy of coincidence may explain cases attributable to coincidence. But some cases resist such a facile interpretation.
***QUOTE***
Again, feel free to provide me the list, and the evidences, of all the "evils" your personal Christian god has prevented using this nebulous process you call “common grace”. I assume this is your fancy term for “my god’s magic powers”.
***END-QUOTE***
One widespread example is the psychological oddity of the unbeliever who continues to believe in altruism even though that’s inconsistent with his secular worldview.
***QUOTE***
Will there be a day of reckoning for your god, and all the evil he caused, and all the evil he allowed to transpire, that he could have allegedly stopped, and all the evil that his followers did to others who wouldn't believe like they required?
I'm looking forward to it...let me know when it is, so I can put it on my calendar.
***END-QUOTE***
You’re one of many unbelievers who raise theodicean objections without ever bothering to consult the answers.
***QUOTE***
Sure it does. I’m surprised you’re not familiar with your own mythology. Your mythology claims your god created the first man and woman in an idyllic garden where there was no death and disease.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, of course, unresponsive to what I originally said. What I said was: “Christian theology doesn’t deny the existence of death and disease.”
Your reply is a labored equivocation. Since you’d only resort to equivocation because you can’t offer a respectable argument, I accept your admission of defeat.
“Again, I’m kind of surprised you are not familiar with the words or your Lord and Savior.”
One of the things I’m familiar with debaters who resort to sophistical tricks like acontextual prooftexting when their back is to the wall.
“1. Christians don’t like to die premature, painful deaths from disease. They think that this is a ‘bad’ thing. Some may even call it ‘evil.”
Christians are not the source or standard of Christian theology. The Bible is. You are attempting to shift ground from an internal critique of Christian theology to anecdotal decoys.
“2. Christian theology states that their god loves them and cares about their well being, and also the well being of sparrows.”
The Bible does not promise that Christians will be exempt from suffering in this life. Quite the contrary.
“3. Christian theology states that ‘things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive’."
If you’re a five-year old in Sunday school. But for the Christian theology of prayer, try:
D. A. Carson, ed. Teach Us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible & the World (Baker 1994).
R. Longenecker, ed. Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (Eerdmans 2001).
“4. Christian children get sick with diseases, and they, and their believing parents, friends and entire church congregations, pray for their recovery.”
True.
“5. Yet the children still die.”
True.
“6. Thus, Christians like you, have to rationalize why your god doesn’t care, or only cares ‘sometimes’.”
No, the problem is with people like you who begin and end with a Reader’s Digest version of Christian theology’
“7. That's your problem in a nutshell.”
No, that’s only a problem for people like you who try to shrink Christian theology down to the size of a nutshell.
“I must have missed the part where the Christian god appointed you the Bishop of ‘right expectations and true beliefs’. I think perhaps your little blog site has gone to your head. “
And I must have missed the part where the natural selection appointed you the Bishop of “right expectations and true beliefs”. I think perhaps my little combox has gone to your head.
“You're just one of countless internet apologist wannabes, who calls himself a 'Christian' and who is trying to convince me that he speaks for the one true god. So far I’m not impressed with your intellect or your authority to speak for yourself, much less a god.”
You're just one of countless nullifidian trolls, who calls himself a 'secularist' and who is trying to convince me that he speaks for the one true infidelity. So far I’m not impressed with your intellect or your authority to speak for yourself, much less humanism.
“Well then I would hope you have evidence to support that claim, you being so ‘logical and unemotional’ in your presentation of your arguments. Do you?”
And what would you count as evidence?
“I’m not really interested in what Paul Helm or Bertrand Russell or any other atheist philosopher has to say right this moment. They are not here to debate me. And you are wrong to assume they have some magical authority over my position, like Saul of Tarsus does for yours.”
1.Paul Helm is a Christian philosopher, not a secular philosopher.
2.This has nothing to do with an argument from authority. Rather, Russell, Helm, and the others I’ve cited are giving reasons for their respective positions.
Your unwillingness to interact with their arguments bespeaks your inability to interact with their arguments.
3.You accuse me of misrepresenting secular humanism, so I quote representatives of secular humanism. I'm answering you on your own ground—or should I say?—quicksand?
“And you’ve yet to convince me with any evidence that your personal Christian god has ever ‘intervened’ at anytime to stop any gratuitous evil. But I’m sure if I wait long enough, you’ll get around to that.”
What do you count as evidence?
***QUOTE***
It seems your position is:
I know my personal god isn’t intervening much, but I think he might be intervening some, I just can't offer any conclusive evidence that he is, or why he is only doing it for certain situations.
Sounds like a perfect rationalization of projecting your invisible god onto the probablistic events of a natural world where no gods are ever intervening.
***END-QUOTE***
Actually, you’re confusing my position with yours. You’re acting as though the only evidence for divine intervention would be the uniformity of divine intervention, as if divine intervention should operate with the law-like regularity of a natural force.
Of course, divine intervention is personal and discretionary, not mechanical and invariable.
And if divine intervention were universal, you’d immediately discount it as indistinguishable from the laws and forces of nature.
“The fact that you’re a smug, pusedo-intellectual Christian, who's read a few books on logic and philosophy, and who looks down his nose at other. lesser educated Christians…
I see. And you look up to lesser educated Christians, is that it?”
Actually, I hold all Christians to the same standard (myself included), which is the authority of Scripture.
“I am getting them from the natural world. You and I are part of the natural world…Because I have the capacity to make value judgments and disapprove of things I don’t like. Is this hard for you to grasp?”
You say that you’re getting your value judgments from the natural world at the very same time you’re rendering value judgments about the natural world of which you’re a part. You stand in judgment over the very source of your standard.
To use the standard to judge the standard is viciously circular. Is this hard for you to grasp?
Every time you bruise the frail constitution of their atheism, they begin to bleed emotionalism out of all their pores.
You’d think I’d taken out a full-page ad in the NYT leveling a personal attack on Anonymous or George.
I did a post on Sam Harris. Suddenly this eruption of personal pique.
All I can say is that if your atheism is so delicate that you hemorrhage hysteria every time you get a bump or scratch from a Christian blogger, even when someone else was in the cross-hairs, then it’s best to avoid contact sports for your own protection.
Please refrain from reading Triablogue if a rhetorical nick from my keyboard would prove fatal to your seculatory system.
Anonymous said:
“Nice straw man dude. Violence is not a "biological imperative". If you don't see a difference between the limited mental capabilities of a lion and the advanced reasoning skills of human beings then you are a bigger dumbass than I give you credit for. I guess you have never heard of the benefits of altruism and cooperation in the evolutionary process? Why the [expletive deleted] do you think human beings live in societies instead of hermits in caves?”
1.This is another funny thing about so many militant unbelievers. Not only are they ignorant of our side of the argument. They are often just as ignorant of their own side of the argument.
As I pointed out in my previous reply to George, there are secular scientists who by no means regard my claim as a “straw man” argument:
A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (MIT 2000)
by Randy Thornhill, Craig T. Palmer, Margo I. Wilson
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Mariner Books 1997) by Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham
I realize, of course, that we must make allowance for the fact that MIT Press is a hotbed of Bible-thumpers while the Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham is probably a closet Fundy too.
2.Anonymous appeals to the benefits of altruism and cooperation. But he overlooks so many obvious counterexamples. One of the many problems with secular ethics is the frequent a conflict between altruism and self-interest.
It may be in everyone's general self-interest to be altruistic, but that also means that I may have to sacrifice my personal gratification for the common good. And why, if I'm an atheist, would I want to do that?
It's easy to be altruistic when it doesn't cost us anything, when everyone is the beneficiary.
But, to take the textbook example, the benefits of altruism will quickly break down on a lifeboat.
Altruism only works when there's enough to go around for everyone, and everyone benefits from a spirit of sharing and cooperation.
But what about a competitive environment with limited resources?
This question comes up all the time in bioethics, with the rationing of medical services.
A consistent atheist knows that he has only one life to live, and the only future he has a personal investment in is his own short-term future, because he won't be around a 100 years from now.
Moreover, we quickly pass our physical prime, so the clock is ticking. I may live to be 90, but I can't do at 90 what I could do at 30.
From a secular standpoint, hedonism is far more logical than altruism.
“I know, I know, it is impossible for you to believe that someone who doesn't believe in your god can still have morals. If you absolutely require a god to keep you from killing, then please, I beg you, keep believing.”
The question is not whether an atheist can still have morals, but why an atheist should still have morals.
And it isn’t just the Christian who raises this question. As I documented in my previous reply to George, this is a question which divides the secular community, with many unbelievers adopting some form of moral relativism.
Once again, Anonymous is clueless about his own side of the argument.
This is because atheism is ultimately antisocial.
For the record, here are some of the challenges confronting the atheologian as he deploys the problem of evil:
***QUOTE***
Firstly, one who accepts either a divine command theory of ethics or non-realism in ethics is in no position to raise the problem of evil, that is, to offer the existence of evil as at least a prima facie good reason for rejecting theism. This is because a divine command theory, in taking morality to be dependent upon the will of God, already assumes the truth of that which is in dispute, viz. the existence of God (see Brown 1967). On the other hand, non-realist ethical theories, such as moral subjectivism and error-theories of ethics, hold that there are no objectively true moral judgments. But then a non-theist who also happens to be a non-realist in ethics cannot help herself to some of the central premises found in evidential arguments from evil (such as ‘If there were a perfectly good God, he would want a world with no horrific evil in it’), as these purport to be objectively true moral judgments (see Nelson 1991). This is not to say, however, that atheologians such as David Hume, Bertrand Russell and J.L. Mackie, each of whom supported non-realism in ethics, were contradicting their own meta-ethics when raising arguments from evil – at least if their aim was only to show up a contradiction in the theist’s set of beliefs.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-evi.htm
***END-QUOTE***
Moving on the George:
***QUOTE***
LOL…I’m not really interested in playing your games of semantic hair splitting Steve. I must have missed the big list of “gratuitous” versus “garden variety” evil in my copy of the bible.
You’re dodge is noted for the record.
I'm sure it will be a trend.
***END-QUOTE***
Just like Anonymous, George doesn’t know his own side of the argument. So I beg the indulgence of my readers while I give him a remedial course in Atheism 101.
“Gratuitous” evil is a necessary ingredient in the existential problem of evil as formulated by atheologians:
William Rowe’s version is often regarded as the classic formulation:
***QUOTE***
The second premise is sometimes called ‘the theological premise’ as it expresses a belief about what God as a perfectly good being would do under certain circumstances. In particular, this premise states that if such a being knew of some intense suffering that was about to take place and was in a position to prevent its occurrence, then it would prevent it unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. Put otherwise, an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God would not permit any gratuitous evil, evil that is (roughly speaking) avoidable, pointless, or unnecessary with respect to the fulfillment of God’s purposes.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evil-evi.htm
***END-QUOTE***
Here’s another illustration:
***QUOTE***
There are a number of evidential arguments from evil. The most common of these simply reformulates the logical argument into a probabilistic argument:
(1) Gratuitous evils probably exist
(2) Gratuitous evils are incompatible with the God of theism (omnipotent, omniscient, all-good)
(3) Therefore, the God of theism probably does not exist
Clearly, many evils can clearly lead to greater goods, for example suffering the slight pain of an injection in order to receive a life-saving drug. Advocates of AE do not generally have this kind of thing in mind when they refer to suffering or evil. What is meant by ‘evil’ is gratuitous or pointless evil.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nicholas_tattersall/evil.html
***END-QUOTE***
Notice that I’ve taken my “semantic hairsplitting”, not from my own side, but from George’s side—unless, that is, he suspects that The Secular Web is really a front organization for witch-burning theocrats.
Perhaps Richard Carrier and I are in cahoots. Ya never know!
Now, from a Reformed standpoint, the doctrine of predestination rules out the possibility of gratuitous evil.
So it’s hard to see how the problem of evil can be deployed as an internal critique of Calvinism.
However, other traditions may be more vulnerable on this score.
Continuing:
***QUOTE***
I’m not sure if a backache makes the list of gratuitous evil. And not being superstitious and credulous, I am also not convinced that every piece of good fortune a Christian prays for, and comes true, is the result of your personal, invisible gods’ intervention.
That’s called the Fallacy of Coincidence. It’s the fuel that keeps the engine of your Christian superstition burning.
***END-QUOTE***
The fallacy of coincidence may explain cases attributable to coincidence. But some cases resist such a facile interpretation.
***QUOTE***
Again, feel free to provide me the list, and the evidences, of all the "evils" your personal Christian god has prevented using this nebulous process you call “common grace”. I assume this is your fancy term for “my god’s magic powers”.
***END-QUOTE***
One widespread example is the psychological oddity of the unbeliever who continues to believe in altruism even though that’s inconsistent with his secular worldview.
***QUOTE***
Will there be a day of reckoning for your god, and all the evil he caused, and all the evil he allowed to transpire, that he could have allegedly stopped, and all the evil that his followers did to others who wouldn't believe like they required?
I'm looking forward to it...let me know when it is, so I can put it on my calendar.
***END-QUOTE***
You’re one of many unbelievers who raise theodicean objections without ever bothering to consult the answers.
***QUOTE***
Sure it does. I’m surprised you’re not familiar with your own mythology. Your mythology claims your god created the first man and woman in an idyllic garden where there was no death and disease.
***END-QUOTE***
This is, of course, unresponsive to what I originally said. What I said was: “Christian theology doesn’t deny the existence of death and disease.”
Your reply is a labored equivocation. Since you’d only resort to equivocation because you can’t offer a respectable argument, I accept your admission of defeat.
“Again, I’m kind of surprised you are not familiar with the words or your Lord and Savior.”
One of the things I’m familiar with debaters who resort to sophistical tricks like acontextual prooftexting when their back is to the wall.
“1. Christians don’t like to die premature, painful deaths from disease. They think that this is a ‘bad’ thing. Some may even call it ‘evil.”
Christians are not the source or standard of Christian theology. The Bible is. You are attempting to shift ground from an internal critique of Christian theology to anecdotal decoys.
“2. Christian theology states that their god loves them and cares about their well being, and also the well being of sparrows.”
The Bible does not promise that Christians will be exempt from suffering in this life. Quite the contrary.
“3. Christian theology states that ‘things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive’."
If you’re a five-year old in Sunday school. But for the Christian theology of prayer, try:
D. A. Carson, ed. Teach Us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible & the World (Baker 1994).
R. Longenecker, ed. Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament (Eerdmans 2001).
“4. Christian children get sick with diseases, and they, and their believing parents, friends and entire church congregations, pray for their recovery.”
True.
“5. Yet the children still die.”
True.
“6. Thus, Christians like you, have to rationalize why your god doesn’t care, or only cares ‘sometimes’.”
No, the problem is with people like you who begin and end with a Reader’s Digest version of Christian theology’
“7. That's your problem in a nutshell.”
No, that’s only a problem for people like you who try to shrink Christian theology down to the size of a nutshell.
“I must have missed the part where the Christian god appointed you the Bishop of ‘right expectations and true beliefs’. I think perhaps your little blog site has gone to your head. “
And I must have missed the part where the natural selection appointed you the Bishop of “right expectations and true beliefs”. I think perhaps my little combox has gone to your head.
“You're just one of countless internet apologist wannabes, who calls himself a 'Christian' and who is trying to convince me that he speaks for the one true god. So far I’m not impressed with your intellect or your authority to speak for yourself, much less a god.”
You're just one of countless nullifidian trolls, who calls himself a 'secularist' and who is trying to convince me that he speaks for the one true infidelity. So far I’m not impressed with your intellect or your authority to speak for yourself, much less humanism.
“Well then I would hope you have evidence to support that claim, you being so ‘logical and unemotional’ in your presentation of your arguments. Do you?”
And what would you count as evidence?
“I’m not really interested in what Paul Helm or Bertrand Russell or any other atheist philosopher has to say right this moment. They are not here to debate me. And you are wrong to assume they have some magical authority over my position, like Saul of Tarsus does for yours.”
1.Paul Helm is a Christian philosopher, not a secular philosopher.
2.This has nothing to do with an argument from authority. Rather, Russell, Helm, and the others I’ve cited are giving reasons for their respective positions.
Your unwillingness to interact with their arguments bespeaks your inability to interact with their arguments.
3.You accuse me of misrepresenting secular humanism, so I quote representatives of secular humanism. I'm answering you on your own ground—or should I say?—quicksand?
“And you’ve yet to convince me with any evidence that your personal Christian god has ever ‘intervened’ at anytime to stop any gratuitous evil. But I’m sure if I wait long enough, you’ll get around to that.”
What do you count as evidence?
***QUOTE***
It seems your position is:
I know my personal god isn’t intervening much, but I think he might be intervening some, I just can't offer any conclusive evidence that he is, or why he is only doing it for certain situations.
Sounds like a perfect rationalization of projecting your invisible god onto the probablistic events of a natural world where no gods are ever intervening.
***END-QUOTE***
Actually, you’re confusing my position with yours. You’re acting as though the only evidence for divine intervention would be the uniformity of divine intervention, as if divine intervention should operate with the law-like regularity of a natural force.
Of course, divine intervention is personal and discretionary, not mechanical and invariable.
And if divine intervention were universal, you’d immediately discount it as indistinguishable from the laws and forces of nature.
“The fact that you’re a smug, pusedo-intellectual Christian, who's read a few books on logic and philosophy, and who looks down his nose at other. lesser educated Christians…
I see. And you look up to lesser educated Christians, is that it?”
Actually, I hold all Christians to the same standard (myself included), which is the authority of Scripture.
“I am getting them from the natural world. You and I are part of the natural world…Because I have the capacity to make value judgments and disapprove of things I don’t like. Is this hard for you to grasp?”
You say that you’re getting your value judgments from the natural world at the very same time you’re rendering value judgments about the natural world of which you’re a part. You stand in judgment over the very source of your standard.
To use the standard to judge the standard is viciously circular. Is this hard for you to grasp?
More Confusion from the Calvinist Flyswatter
I see that Bob L. Ross has taken the bait. I have to thank Mr. Ross for this. How predictable.
I have consistently stated that the theologians he cites do believe in means associated with regeneration in adults. I even provided a plethora of quotes to prove it.
He then quotes from those theologians referring to the narrow meaning of regeneration as being the work of the Holy Spirit apart from means, and he fails to deal with the actual quotes I provided for him, and then he runs off to talk about infant regeneration.
In fact, when he introduces the topic of infant regeneration, he is simply replying to me with an armload of caveats that were not in the material of his own that I was critiquing.
My last reply was tailored to reply to a specific allegation of his:
His stated complaint was that Sproul, White, Schriener, et. al. have given "no evidence" that we affirm instrumentality. The quotes I provided plainly contradict him. This exposes his complete disregard for the truth. I ask again, how is stating:
And how is stating:
or
a denial of means? I plainly state there that I affirm infant regeneration in infants dying in infancy, not in others, except as an abstract possibility, and I further limit my own limiting cases to those offered by Boyce, and I explicitly state my belief in means, which I name, the Word of God. So, Ross, to even insinuate that I am affirming anything about infants regenerated and walking around unconverted, especially into adulthood is a lie. For Charles to assent to it, is to assent to Ross' lies, and that, my friends makes them as guilty of lying as it did the scribes and Pharisees of murder for boasting that they built the tombs of the prophets whom their fathers killed.
This is plainly incompetent and shows the weakness of his hand. It shows he does not understand the language of regeneration used in modern theology nor the history of this language. It speaks to how bankrupt his hand is that he has to go off to talk about infant regeneration , which is the exception to the rule and said to be very rare, in order to discuss adult regeneration / non-infant regeneration, which is spoken of as God's most common and ordinary way of acting.
As I have explained to him many times, in modern theological language within the Reformed community, regeneration is spoken of in two senses. Not only this, but this language goes back as far as Francis Turretin, and it has been accepted since the 17th century, the time when the confessions were written, and the only record of persons disputing its legitimacy as an expression of the confessions at this time is Bob L. Ross. Since when did Bob L. Ross become the defining voice of confessional Calvinism?
All of this is to refute the statement, "Regeneration precedes faith."
Ross insists that to affirm that regeneration precedes faith is always to affirm that there is a time frame involved by which the individual walks around while being regenerate while having not yet believed and to deny means. That is, as he correctly notes, "Hardshell Doctrine." But this is not the position of the men who articulate this position today, especially me, and I have consistently told him that what I personally am affirming is that the relation is logical and causal, not temporal. I agree with Charles Hodge and A.A. Hodge who wrote:
I'd add that James Boyce himself, whom I have quoted many times already stated that regeneration precedes faith, when he wrote:
Notice that one of the men he criticizes, WGT Shedd, states,
Hardshell doctrine is that the soul is so utterly passive that the person is regenerated and unconscious of it and can live far into adulthood and never repent or believe until a very late age. But how is Shedd affirming Hardshell doctrine? After his discussion of the use of means (prayer, the Word of God, etc), he states clearly, ""The regenerate child, youth, and man, believe· and repent* immediately." Only with infants does he state otherwise, but that is a separate issue. As I stated beforehand, Mr. Ross needs to separate the issues, because to "refute" this, he has to run off to talk about infant regeneration, but how does this refute what Shedd said about non-infants?
As to means, I have soundly shown already that the very individuals that Mr. Ross criticizes all affirm the use of means: See here. One would have to be illiterate or willfully ignorant not to see that this is an explicit affirmation of means by all the persons listed.
Mr. Ross then quotes what they say when they speak of the actual work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration as if this refutes what they go on to state about means. However is this true? Are they referrring two contradictory notions?
No. Because what they are doing is speaking of regeneration in a narrow sense, and regeneration in a broad sense.
Narrow sense: The work of regeneration itself is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. This expresses the actual phenomenology of God Himself regenerating, God’s own work defined as resurrecting the lost soul to life.
Broad sense: The entire process leading up to a saving profession of faith and even continuing on (as a person is considered to be regenerate). Thus, this broader view is, functionally, the view that all of the effectual call and everything leading up to conversion is "regeneration." But even on that view, because the effectual call precedes conversion, regeneration still precedes faith. This expresses the broader psychology of the person, the object of God’s regenerating work. This usage may encompass all that leads up to the actual moment of conversion, or it may include that which follows (the fruits of regeneration itself, e.g. a regenerated person is a regenerate person; we know he is regenerate because of the fruit his life shows).
This is what Boyce is stating in his comments in his Abstract when he states:
Yet, he states,
Berkhof, one of his constant targets in his prattling, even states:
So, in order to deny that what they say about the broad sense is even in their writing, Mr. Ross has to appeal to what they say about the narrow sense.
When they say that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit alone, they are speaking of the actual divine agency of God to show that no amount of study, prayer, etc., is effectual on the soul; it is merely an external call with it. That's the point. The Holy Spirit's grace underwriting that means is what makes the call effectual. This is why Berkof, whom Mr. Ross insists denies means states,
To say that regeneration precedes faith is not to deny the immediacy of faith and repentance. It is not to deny means. For there can be no immediate turning to Christ, unless the person knows of Christ. Otherwise, where would he turn? There can be no turning from sin if the person does not know he is a sinner, and thus neither can be divorced from an external call or an effectual call, and to be effectual,the Holy Spirit underwrites the external call by striving with the soul.
At this point, Mr. Ross invariably runs off to talk about what these folks believe about infant regeneration. But infant regeneration is the exception, not the rule. How does what these men say about infant regeneration invalidate what they say about non-infants? We are not told, it simply does. Mr. Ross has made a category error, conflating the properties of one universe of discourse with another.
He never actually tells us how the exception disproves the rule. It just does. Infant regeneration is not regeneration in non-infants. The latter is the rule, the former is not the rule.
Even Wayne Grudem in his systematic theology states,
And, lest we forget, James Boyce himself stated:
Yet Mr. Ross pretends that Boyce never stated this. If the Founders is out of step with the SBC's own Founders, then Mr. Ross needs to account for James Boyce, particularly since Ross regularly criticizes Al Mohler and Tom Nettles. Telling me that Boyce affirmed means is superfluous, since I have not denied means, and since to believe regeneration precedes faith in the way that I, Dr. White, and others have stated it, is not to deny means. Quite the contrary, it is predicated on the use of instrumentality, the Word of God.
Speaking for myself, as I pointed out to Mr. Ross in the last article, I limit infant salvation/regeneration to those actually dying in infancy, and I deny that there are persons walking around in a regenerate state who have not believed. I especially deny that infants are regenerated and then live into birth. (If I affirmed that, then I agree with Ross, I would be affirming Hardshellism). I also do not deny means. For him to state that I have shown "no evidence" that I believe regeneration occurs apart from means or other such nonsense is still a lie on his part; one for which he has still not apologized, and one for which I do not expect an apology. Since he evidently has no real concern for truth, and has not apologized for his attacks on me, I can only conclude that he is a persistentl liar and a factious man. So, we're back to Titus 3, and Mr. Ross only increasing his condemnation. He needs to repent.
Mr. Ross has also stated that James White does not wish to debate him. Yet Dr. White has plainly invited Charles and, by extension Mr. Ross, to call the Dividing Line anytime. Let's see Mr. Ross have the courage of his convictions. Let's see him actually interact with James White on this on the DL instead of hiding like a roach in the darkness of the comment box of the Calvinist Flyswatter. The number is 1-877-753-3341 (Toll Free) Most Tuesday Mornings at 11:00am MST and Most Thursday Afternoons at 4:00 MST.
I have consistently stated that the theologians he cites do believe in means associated with regeneration in adults. I even provided a plethora of quotes to prove it.
He then quotes from those theologians referring to the narrow meaning of regeneration as being the work of the Holy Spirit apart from means, and he fails to deal with the actual quotes I provided for him, and then he runs off to talk about infant regeneration.
In fact, when he introduces the topic of infant regeneration, he is simply replying to me with an armload of caveats that were not in the material of his own that I was critiquing.
My last reply was tailored to reply to a specific allegation of his:
This is the same "direct operation" palabber taught by the pedo-regenerationist theologians Shedd, Berkhof, and R. C. Sproul, and other preachers such as James White, Scott Morgan of the Founders, Gene Bridges, Tom Schreiner of the Southern Seminary, and others who advocate "Reformed" theology according to the Berkhof theology book.
None of them has given evidence that they believe that the Word of God is an instrumentality in the "quickening" work of the Spirit in regeneration or the New Birth, contrary to the Creedal Calvinism of all the Calvinistic Confessions of Faith.
His stated complaint was that Sproul, White, Schriener, et. al. have given "no evidence" that we affirm instrumentality. The quotes I provided plainly contradict him. This exposes his complete disregard for the truth. I ask again, how is stating:
God's call is made effectual by the Word and the Spirit. It is important to see that the Word and the Spirit are here conjoined as two vital factors of regeneration. The Holy Spirit is not working apart from the Word or against the Word, but with the Word. Nor is the Word working alone without the presence and power of the Spirit.a denial of instrumentality? Ah, but Sproul affirms infant regeneration, so he's contradicting himself, right? No, because, in Sproul's view, that is the exception to the rule, not the rule, and those who are so regenerated either die in infancy (the majority of said infants) or are converted by age 3 or 4 at the most (the vast minority of said infants, and, then, Sproul calls even that "speculative", and moreover, the means of grace, including the gospel are necessary for them to be converted, and God ensures that this instrumentality is involved. These are not heathen children, these are, in his theology, children reared in believing homes and evangelical churches. Do I agree? No, I think children converted at that age are regenerated at that age. On the other hand, I have a good friend converted @ that age but who did not experience a great crisis and has never had an spiritual problems with his faith since. Likewise Ruth Graham cannot even remember when she was converted. I think that this position is an abstract possibility, but even then, how does this disprove anything Sproul says regarding regeneration preceding faith in non-infants, the vast majority of the population?
The call referred to in effectual calling is not the outward call of the gospel
that can be heard by anyone within range of the preaching. The call referred to here is the inward call, the call that penetrates to and pierces the heart, quickening it to spiritual life. Hearing the gospel enlightens the mind, yet it does not awaken the soul until the Holy Spirit illuminates it and regenerates it. This move from ear to soul is made by the Holy Spirit. This move is what accompanies God's purpose of applying the benefits of Christ' work to the elect.
And how is stating:
The ordinary means (that for adults and children of competency in understanding) always is via the accompaniment of the Word of God and the calling to mind of other circumstances. I agree with Boyce on this, except in his third and possibly his second limiting case.
or
Regeneration is attended by the Word of God and gospel truth in all those not dying in infancy.
a denial of means? I plainly state there that I affirm infant regeneration in infants dying in infancy, not in others, except as an abstract possibility, and I further limit my own limiting cases to those offered by Boyce, and I explicitly state my belief in means, which I name, the Word of God. So, Ross, to even insinuate that I am affirming anything about infants regenerated and walking around unconverted, especially into adulthood is a lie. For Charles to assent to it, is to assent to Ross' lies, and that, my friends makes them as guilty of lying as it did the scribes and Pharisees of murder for boasting that they built the tombs of the prophets whom their fathers killed.
This is plainly incompetent and shows the weakness of his hand. It shows he does not understand the language of regeneration used in modern theology nor the history of this language. It speaks to how bankrupt his hand is that he has to go off to talk about infant regeneration , which is the exception to the rule and said to be very rare, in order to discuss adult regeneration / non-infant regeneration, which is spoken of as God's most common and ordinary way of acting.
As I have explained to him many times, in modern theological language within the Reformed community, regeneration is spoken of in two senses. Not only this, but this language goes back as far as Francis Turretin, and it has been accepted since the 17th century, the time when the confessions were written, and the only record of persons disputing its legitimacy as an expression of the confessions at this time is Bob L. Ross. Since when did Bob L. Ross become the defining voice of confessional Calvinism?
All of this is to refute the statement, "Regeneration precedes faith."
Ross insists that to affirm that regeneration precedes faith is always to affirm that there is a time frame involved by which the individual walks around while being regenerate while having not yet believed and to deny means. That is, as he correctly notes, "Hardshell Doctrine." But this is not the position of the men who articulate this position today, especially me, and I have consistently told him that what I personally am affirming is that the relation is logical and causal, not temporal. I agree with Charles Hodge and A.A. Hodge who wrote:
"The very first conscious exercise of the renewed soul is faith; as the first conscious act of a man born blind whose eyes have been opened is seeing." (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, 41).
REGENERATION is an act of God originating by a new creation a new spiritual life in the heart of the subject. The first and instant act of that new creature, consequent upon his regeneration, is FAITH, or a believing, trusting embrace of the person and work of Christ. Upon the exercise of faith by the regenerated subject, JUSTIFICATION is the instant act of God, on the ground of that perfect righteousness which the sinner’s faith has apprehended, declaring him to be free from all condemnation and to have a legal right to the relations and benefits secured by the covenant which Christ has fulfilled in his behalf. A.A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, Chapter 34.
I'd add that James Boyce himself, whom I have quoted many times already stated that regeneration precedes faith, when he wrote:
"The relation of regeneration to conversion will, therefore, appear to be one of invariable antecedence."
Notice that one of the men he criticizes, WGT Shedd, states,
"The regenerate child, youth, and man, believe· and repent* immediately. "
Hardshell doctrine is that the soul is so utterly passive that the person is regenerated and unconscious of it and can live far into adulthood and never repent or believe until a very late age. But how is Shedd affirming Hardshell doctrine? After his discussion of the use of means (prayer, the Word of God, etc), he states clearly, ""The regenerate child, youth, and man, believe· and repent* immediately." Only with infants does he state otherwise, but that is a separate issue. As I stated beforehand, Mr. Ross needs to separate the issues, because to "refute" this, he has to run off to talk about infant regeneration, but how does this refute what Shedd said about non-infants?
As to means, I have soundly shown already that the very individuals that Mr. Ross criticizes all affirm the use of means: See here. One would have to be illiterate or willfully ignorant not to see that this is an explicit affirmation of means by all the persons listed.
Mr. Ross then quotes what they say when they speak of the actual work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration as if this refutes what they go on to state about means. However is this true? Are they referrring two contradictory notions?
No. Because what they are doing is speaking of regeneration in a narrow sense, and regeneration in a broad sense.
Narrow sense: The work of regeneration itself is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. This expresses the actual phenomenology of God Himself regenerating, God’s own work defined as resurrecting the lost soul to life.
Broad sense: The entire process leading up to a saving profession of faith and even continuing on (as a person is considered to be regenerate). Thus, this broader view is, functionally, the view that all of the effectual call and everything leading up to conversion is "regeneration." But even on that view, because the effectual call precedes conversion, regeneration still precedes faith. This expresses the broader psychology of the person, the object of God’s regenerating work. This usage may encompass all that leads up to the actual moment of conversion, or it may include that which follows (the fruits of regeneration itself, e.g. a regenerated person is a regenerate person; we know he is regenerate because of the fruit his life shows).
This is what Boyce is stating in his comments in his Abstract when he states:
It is true that but few of the passages refer to anything save the work of God; yet these few sufficiently teach the use of the word in regeneration to lead us not to reject, as a part of it, that result of God's act which, in connection with the word, leads to the full union of its subject with Christ through repentance and faith.
The whole work is thus spoken of, however, because God is operative from the beginning to the end, but this does not prove that he does not operate differently in one part from what he does in the other.
The Scripture teaching is that God operates immediately upon the heart to produce the required change, by which it is fitted to receive the truth, and mediately through the word in its reception of that truth.
1. He operates immediately upon the heart to prepare the way for the truth.
(2.) The Scripture attributes the birth to the will of God exclusively, thus showing that in some aspect it is not to be regarded as due to the reception of the truth. John 1:13.
2. The Spirit acts mediately through the word.
Yet, he states,
"The relation of regeneration to conversion will, therefore, appear to be one of invariable antecedence."
Berkhof, one of his constant targets in his prattling, even states:
The word 'regeneration' is not always used in the same sense. Our Confession uses it in a broad sense, as including even conversion. At present it has a more restricted meaning. In the most restricted sense it denotes that act of God by which the principle of the new life is implanted in man, and the governing disposition of the soul is made holy. In a slightly more comprehensive sense it designates, in addition to the preceding, the new birth or the first manifestation of the new life." (Summary of C. Doctrine)James A. Boyce makes this same distinction in his Abstract of Theology!
So, in order to deny that what they say about the broad sense is even in their writing, Mr. Ross has to appeal to what they say about the narrow sense.
When they say that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit alone, they are speaking of the actual divine agency of God to show that no amount of study, prayer, etc., is effectual on the soul; it is merely an external call with it. That's the point. The Holy Spirit's grace underwriting that means is what makes the call effectual. This is why Berkof, whom Mr. Ross insists denies means states,
"The internal call is really the external call made effective by the operation of the Holy Spirit. It always comes to the sinner through the Word of God, savingly applied by the operation of the Holy Spirit, I Cor . 1:23, 24." (http://www.ccel.org/pipeline/1-html/5-berkhof-summery/Berkhof%2019.htm)At the same time, Berkhof states, regeneration in the narrow sense is, "
that act of God by which the principle of the new life is implanted in man, and the governing disposition of the soul is made holy.'"The actual work of the person being raised to spiritual life is accomplished by the Holy Spirit. In that narrow sense, regeneration is only His work. In the broader sense, the entire conversion process is in mind. The narrow sense does not occur, in all but infants, without the effectual call. The order is effectual call (regen. in broad sense), regeneration (narrow sense), immediate faith and repentance (conversion), justification. Then we say that the person is regenerate/regenerated. Again, if Mr. Ross would actually pay attention to what these texts state, he would know that.
To say that regeneration precedes faith is not to deny the immediacy of faith and repentance. It is not to deny means. For there can be no immediate turning to Christ, unless the person knows of Christ. Otherwise, where would he turn? There can be no turning from sin if the person does not know he is a sinner, and thus neither can be divorced from an external call or an effectual call, and to be effectual,the Holy Spirit underwrites the external call by striving with the soul.
At this point, Mr. Ross invariably runs off to talk about what these folks believe about infant regeneration. But infant regeneration is the exception, not the rule. How does what these men say about infant regeneration invalidate what they say about non-infants? We are not told, it simply does. Mr. Ross has made a category error, conflating the properties of one universe of discourse with another.
He never actually tells us how the exception disproves the rule. It just does. Infant regeneration is not regeneration in non-infants. The latter is the rule, the former is not the rule.
"The education of children should proceed on the principle that they are in an unregenerate state, until evidences of piety clearly appear, in which case they should be sedulously cherished and nurtured. . . . Although the grace of God may be communicated to a human soul, at any period of its existence, in this world, yet the fact manifestly is, that very few are renewed before the exercise of reason commences; and not many in early childhood." (Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967).John Frame, whom he has recently discussed at the Flyswatter, agrees with Vern Poythress on this. Poythress has stated that such persons are extremely rare and the age is no more than age 3 or 4. So, this is the exception to the rule, not the rule. If they affirmed (a) that these infants lived into adulthood (which is what Mr. Ross has claimed) he would have a point. Likewise, if they affirmed that all infants were regenerated or regenerated through baptism, they'd have a point, but they do not affirm baptismal regeneration and presume their infants unregenerate not regenerate, so how is this "Hardshell doctrine?" I'd further add that the only reason I quote them is because Mr. Ross consistently misrepresenting them, so for him to say that I am quoting them to support my position is disingenuous. I am merely answering Mr. Ross on his own terms of engagement. If he objects to my citing them, then he shouldn't be citing them incorrectly.
Even Wayne Grudem in his systematic theology states,
"Yes it is certainly possible for God to bring regeneration to an infant even before it is born...we must however, affirm that very clearly that this is not God's usual way for God to save people." He then goes on to state that he affirms that this is how he believes God acts when He knows that these infants are going to die.
And, lest we forget, James Boyce himself stated:
Regeneration (as in infants) may exist without faith and repentance, but the latter cannot exist without the former.VI. There is not only antecedence, but in some cases an appreciable interval.
1. This is true even of conversion regarded as a mere turning to God. Between it and regeneration must intervene in some cases some period of time until the knowledge of God's existence and nature is given, before the heart turns, or even is turned towards that God.
(1.) This must be true of all infants and of all persons otherwise incapable of responsibility, as for example idiots.
Yet Mr. Ross pretends that Boyce never stated this. If the Founders is out of step with the SBC's own Founders, then Mr. Ross needs to account for James Boyce, particularly since Ross regularly criticizes Al Mohler and Tom Nettles. Telling me that Boyce affirmed means is superfluous, since I have not denied means, and since to believe regeneration precedes faith in the way that I, Dr. White, and others have stated it, is not to deny means. Quite the contrary, it is predicated on the use of instrumentality, the Word of God.
Speaking for myself, as I pointed out to Mr. Ross in the last article, I limit infant salvation/regeneration to those actually dying in infancy, and I deny that there are persons walking around in a regenerate state who have not believed. I especially deny that infants are regenerated and then live into birth. (If I affirmed that, then I agree with Ross, I would be affirming Hardshellism). I also do not deny means. For him to state that I have shown "no evidence" that I believe regeneration occurs apart from means or other such nonsense is still a lie on his part; one for which he has still not apologized, and one for which I do not expect an apology. Since he evidently has no real concern for truth, and has not apologized for his attacks on me, I can only conclude that he is a persistentl liar and a factious man. So, we're back to Titus 3, and Mr. Ross only increasing his condemnation. He needs to repent.
Mr. Ross has also stated that James White does not wish to debate him. Yet Dr. White has plainly invited Charles and, by extension Mr. Ross, to call the Dividing Line anytime. Let's see Mr. Ross have the courage of his convictions. Let's see him actually interact with James White on this on the DL instead of hiding like a roach in the darkness of the comment box of the Calvinist Flyswatter. The number is 1-877-753-3341 (Toll Free) Most Tuesday Mornings at 11:00am MST and Most Thursday Afternoons at 4:00 MST.
Was Karl Barth a Calvinist?
“One of my professors was the dean of Evangelicalism for many years before he passed away, Dr. Kenneth Kantzer, who was an influential Calvinistic evangelical thinker at the time. He studied under the premier Calvinist of the last century, Karl Barth. I took a class with him on Calvinism, and I did my Master’s thesis on Karl Barth.”
—John Loftus
Karl Barth was in dialogue with Reformed historical theology. He was indebted to Calvinism.
But he was not a Calvinist. His own theological system is a highly eclectic and idiosyncratic synthesis.
For a comparative analysis of Barth by a Dutch-Reformed theology prof. who studied under Barth, cf.
Fred. H. Klooster: The significance of Barth's theology; an appraisal: with special reference to election and reconciliation (Baker 1961).
—John Loftus
Karl Barth was in dialogue with Reformed historical theology. He was indebted to Calvinism.
But he was not a Calvinist. His own theological system is a highly eclectic and idiosyncratic synthesis.
For a comparative analysis of Barth by a Dutch-Reformed theology prof. who studied under Barth, cf.
Fred. H. Klooster: The significance of Barth's theology; an appraisal: with special reference to election and reconciliation (Baker 1961).
Dumping on Debunker Week (7/13/06)
This is an open forum for the benefit of Christian commenters who've been banned from other secular sites. Fire away!
The naturalistic fallacy
***QUOTE***
Jim said:
Steve,
Interesting post. However, I don't think that it applies in every case of an atheologian's use of the "problem of evil."
Usually the a-theologian will claim that "evil happens" (therefore there is no God) and your criticism would apply. However, he doesn't NEED to do this to formulate an argument. All he needs to state is that "'evil' - as a theist would define it - exists" while maintaining a relativist position, and he could sidestep your objection.
BTW - I believe your criticism of George is accurate - he is clearly appalled by the actions he posits. But what if he formulated his argument by saying that the THEIST should see these things as evil - even though he views them reserved nonprescriptive stance?
***END-QUOTE***
Jim,
Good questions.
1.Yes, it is possible for a moral relativist to mount a purely internal critique of the Christian faith.
Since, however, George and Sam Harris are clearly including their own moral intuitions in the way they frame the problem of evil against Christianity, I didn’t bother to address your example.
2.But let’s play along with your example a little further. A moral relativist can press the problem of evil against Christian theism, but he will pay a price.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that he’s successful in showing that the problem of evil disproves the existence of the Christian God. What has he accomplished?
As a moral relativist, he doesn’t think it’s wrong to hold false beliefs. So even if the Christian faith were a false belief-system, there would be nothing morally objectionable, from his viewpoint, about continuing to adhere to the Christian faith.
So his victory would be a Pyrrhic victory.
***QUOTE***
George said:
“I don’t have to do any such thing, I just have to point to what theists consider evil, and show that their myriad gods are doing nothing to stop it.”
There are a couple problems with this claim:
i) Yes, you can point to events which a Christian would regard as evil. But that’s not enough to make an internal case against the Christian.
Rather, you need to point to events which a Christian would regard as gratuitous evils.
ii) To say that God is doing nothing to stop evil is fatally ambiguous.
It’s true that God doesn’t prevent every evil. But by common grace, he prevents many evils.
And in terms of Christian eschatology, there will be a day of reckoning.
“Most theists don’t want to die, or have their loved ones die slow painful deaths from diseases. Thus, they pray to their gods to intervene and provide a supernatural cure for these illnesses.”
This does nothing to disprove Christian theism. Christian theology doesn’t deny the existence of death and disease.
And prayer is not unconditional in Scripture.
For you to successfully mount an internal critique of the Christian faith based on the problem of evil, you need to cite phenomena inconsistent with Christian theology.
Your anecdotal examples don’t achieve that objective.
“Yet these alleged caring gods who allegedly ‘intelligently designed’ these killer viruses and cancers, don’t cure theists, or Reformed Protestant Christians, with any greater frequency than Buddhists or humanists or atheists.”
All you’ve done is to frame a straw man argument.
1.If some Christians labor under the misimpression that God will answer every prayer, the fact that their false expectations will be disappointeed does nothing to falsify the Christian faith. To falsify a false belief does nothing to falsify a true belief.
George, you need to try a little harder to be logical. You are letting your emotionalism get the better of the argument.
2.Also, I expect that Christians are healed at a higher rate than Buddhists or humanists or atheists.
“Again, if you want to claim that your god wants a little 12 year old Christian girl, to die a slow, painful death of cancer, and have her parents and her whole church, racked with anquish, as their prayers to this god go unanswered, that’s fine. I'm sure it can all be rationalized as "god's plan". But please don’t pretend that this god ‘cares’ about the welfare of this little girl or her family in this life and this world.”
Again, George, you’re substituting hysteria for reason. As Paul Helm has stated:
“There is no reason to think that God intends the details of the universe separately; there is one divine will, which encompasses all events. It would be fallacious to suppose that the divine attitude is the same with respect to every detail of what god wills…As Aquinas put it, ‘God, and nature, and indeed, every causal agent, does what is best overall, but not what is best in every part, except when the part is regarded in its relationship to the whole.’ We may suppose that when God knowingly and willingly permits certain events he does so in furtherance of some wider consideration wholly consistent with his character with respect to which they are a logically necessary condition. And likewise, some of those things which he causes are means to some further end,” J. Beilby & P. Eddy, eds. Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (IVP 2001), 182.
“Your gods, as usual, are nowhere in sight.”
You are falling into a fallacious all-or-nothing argument. The fact that God doesn’t intervene every time doesn’t mean that God doesn’t intervene anytime.
Once again, try to be rational about this.
“As far as your cliché strawman that I can’t critique your invisible god’s impotence, in the face of the death and destruction of his loyal followers, ‘without an external standard of comparison’. I believe if I commissioned a poll, most Christians would agree that they don’t want to die slow, painful, premature deaths. Nor do they want their children to. And I believe the same poll would show most of these Christians believe they can petition the Christian god to change the course of events should they be stricken with a deadly disease. They may even say that there god is ‘watching out for them’ or perhaps he has assigned an angel the task, or some such superstition.”
This is not an internal critique of the Christian belief-system. Every step of the way you fail to make good on your stated claim.
The fact that some churchgoers get their theology from “Touched By An Angel” rather than the Bible is irrelevant to the coherence of Christian theism.
“I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratutious or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”
If you are a naturalist, then where are you getting your value judgments if not from the natural world? So why are you so disapproving of what you seen around you? For a naturalist you’re pretty ill-adapted to your natural surroundings.
“No, the ‘problem of evil’ only exists when there is an allegedly omnipotent god that could prevent evil...but doesn't, for unknown reasons that theists like to rationalize.”
This is a simple-minded caricature of the problem. The fact that God doesn’t prevent every instance of evil, here and now, is not a defeater for Christian theism.
Also, the fact that we may not know why every individual evil takes place does not mean that we are in the dark regarding the general role of evil in a Christian theodicy.
“Perhaps you are the kind of theist who upon witnessing a rape, thinks ‘I’d better not do anything to stop it, I’m sure my personal god has a good reason for allowing this evil to occur.’
This is false with respect to the preceptive and decretive will of God alike. Rape is a sin. Rape is contrary to God’s moral law for man.
Conversely, if God had decreed me not to intervene, then I’d be unable to intervene. If I’m able to intervene, then my intervention does not run counter to his decretive will.
***QUOTE***
I thought I explained that in my reply. That's a really nasty fallacy spread by theists, in order to distract from any argument, that has a moral component. Theists, especially Muslims and Christians, certainly don't have the patent on human morality. Nor do their alleged killer gods.
If you want to argue with me over rape being wrong, thats fine. If you agree its wrong, please don't pretend we don't share that same moral standard, in an effort to sidetrack the main discussion.
"Rape" is wrong by definition. The value judgment is contained in its definition. Just like it is in the word murder.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a couple of basic problems with this reply:
1.The association of moral relativism with secular humanism isn’t a malicious rumor spread by Christians.
It was Hume who brought up the is-ought problem. It was Moore who brought up the naturalistic fallacy.
Various unbelievers subscribe to some version or another of moral antirealism, whether emotivism, non-cognitivism, social constructivism, cultural relativism, descriptive relativism, &c.
These debates crop up all the time in varieties of evolutionary ethics, such as social Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, and sociobiology.
For an overview, cf.:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evol-eth.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/
And this is applied to cases of rape. Consider academic studies such as:
A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (MIT 2000)
by Randy Thornhill, Craig T. Palmer, Margo I. Wilson
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Mariner Books 1997)
by Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham
Or consider the following exchange between Bertrand Russell and Fr. Copleston:
***QUOTE***
R: You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don't say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
C: Yes, but what's your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
R: I don't have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
C: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
R: By my feelings.
C: By your feelings. Well, that's what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
R: Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn't been gone into in the same way and I couldn't give it [to] you.
C: Well, let's take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
R: No, I shouldn't quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. If you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You're making a mistake.
C: Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
R: It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler's emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
C: Granted. But there's no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
R: No more than there is for the color-blind person who's in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn't it because he's in the minority?
C: I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
R: Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn't say that.
C: Then you'd say that there's no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
R: The feeling is a little too simplified. You've got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
C: They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
R: Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
C: Yes, quite true in imagination. But that's my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don't approve of them, but I don't see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they're pleasant, those actions.
R: Yes, but you see I don't need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can't prove that the things are not yellow, there isn't any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
C: Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
R: Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking -- yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
C: Well, do you think that the word "ought" simply has an emotional connotation?
R: No, I don't think that, because you see, as I was saying a moment ago, one has to take account of the effects, and I think right conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible balance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and you’ve got to take account of the probable effects of your action in considering what is right.
C: Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think that one can approach the question of God's existence in that way. The vast majority of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some consciousness of an obligation in the moral sphere. It's my opinion that the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral law. I do mean by "author of the moral law" an arbitrary author of the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern atheists who have argued in a converse way "there is no God; therefore, there are no absolute values and no absolute law," are quite logical.
R: I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
C: Well, I don't see that differences in particular moral judgments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral law. Let's assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values, even on that hypothesis it's only to be expected that different individuals and different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into those values.
R: I'm inclined to think that "ought," the feeling that one has about "ought" is an echo of what has been told one by one's parents or one's nurses.
C: Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the "ought" merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don’t see how it can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to be that if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that that moral order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
R: Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind -- which happens to include yourself -- or He deliberately says things are not true in talking to the consciences of savages.
C: Well, you see, I'm not suggesting that God actually dictates moral precepts to the conscience. The human being's ideas of the content of the moral law depends entirely to a large extent on education and environment, and a man has to use his reason in assessing the validity of the actual moral ideas of his social group. But the possibility of criticizing the accepted moral code presupposes that there is an objective standard, and there is an ideal moral order, which imposes itself (I mean the obligatory character of which can be recognized). I think that the recognition of this ideal moral order is part of the recognition of contingency. It implies the existence of a real foundation of God.
R: But the lawgiver has always been, it seems to me, one's parents or someone like. There are plenty of terrestrial lawgivers to account for it, and that would explain why people's consciences are so amazingly different in different times and places.
C: It helps to explain differences in the perception of particular moral values, which otherwise are inexplicable. It will help to explain changes in the matter of the moral law in the content of the precepts as accepted by this or that nation, or this or that individual. But the form of it, what Kant calls the categorical imperative, the "ought," I really don't see how that can possibly be conveyed to anybody by nurse or parent because there aren't any possible terms, so far as I can see, with which it can be explained. It can't be defined in other terms than itself, because once you've defined it in other terms than itself you've explained it away. It's no longer a moral "ought." It's something else.
R: Well, I think the sense of "ought" is the effect of somebody’s imagined disapproval, it may be God's imagined disapproval, but it's somebody's imagined disapproval. And I think that is what is meant by "ought."
C: It seems to me to be external customs and taboos and things of that sort which can most easily be explained simply through environment and education, but all that seems to me to belong to what I call the matter of the law, the content. The idea of the "ought" as such can never be conveyed to a man by the tribal chief or by anybody else, because there are no other terms in which it could be conveyed. It seems to me entirely....
R: But I don't see any reason to say that -- I mean we all know about conditioned reflexes. We know that an animal, if punished habitually for a certain sort of act, after a time will refrain. I don't think the animal refrains from arguing within himself, "Master will be angry if I do this." He has a feeling that that's not the thing to do. That's what we can do with ourselves and nothing more.
C: I see no reason to suppose that an animal has a consciousness or moral obligation; and we certainly don't regard an animal as morally responsible for his acts of disobedience. But a man has a consciousness of obligation and of moral values. I see no reason to suppose that one could condition all men as one can "condition" an animal, and I don't suppose you'd really want to do so even if one could. If "behaviorism" were true, there would be no objective moral distinction between the emperor Nero and St. Francis of Assisi. I can’t help feeling, Lord Russell, you know, that you regard the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen as morally reprehensible, and that you yourself would never under any circumstances act in that way, even if you thought, or had reason to think, that possibly the balance of the happiness of the human race might be increased through some people being treated in that abominable manner.
R: No. I wouldn't imitate the conduct of a mad dog. The fact that I wouldn’t do it doesn't really bear on this question we're discussing.
C: No, but if you were making a utilitarian explanation of right and wrong in terms of consequences, it might be held, and I suppose some of the Nazis of the better type would have held that although it’s lamentable to have to act in this way, yet the balance in the long run leads to greater happiness. I don't think you'd say that, would you? I think you'd say that sort of action is wrong -- and in itself, quite apart from whether the general balance of happiness is increased or not. Then, if you're prepared to say that, then I think you must have some criterion of feeling, at any rate. To me, that admission would ultimately result in the admission of an ultimate ground of value in God.
R: I think we are perhaps getting into confusion. It is not direct feeling about the act by which I should judge, but rather a feeling as to the effects. And I can't admit any circumstances in which certain kinds of behavior, such as you have been discussing, would do good. I can’t imagine circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect. I think the persons who think they do are deceiving themselves. But if there were circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect, then I might be obliged, however reluctantly, to say -- "Well, I don't like these things, but I will acquiesce in them," just as I acquiesce in the Criminal Law, although I profoundly dislike punishment.
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm
***END-QUOTE***
To finish up on George:
“The fact remains, the alleged, caring, omnipotent, Christian god chooses not to stop rape, in the worldview of Christians. He doesn't stop rape in my worldview, because he doesn't exist, he's a figment of theist imagination. Thus his failure to act, to protect, and to cure, like any loving parent would, is a problem for Christians to rationalize, and they've become very good at it over the years.”
This is not an internal critique of Christian theism. All George has ever done in this course of this thread is to pull certain adjectives like “loving” and “caring” out of the air, apply them to God, point to some instance of evil, then exclaim: “Aha! God doesn’t exist!”
You are attacking your own homegrown version of Christian theism.
Jim said:
Steve,
Interesting post. However, I don't think that it applies in every case of an atheologian's use of the "problem of evil."
Usually the a-theologian will claim that "evil happens" (therefore there is no God) and your criticism would apply. However, he doesn't NEED to do this to formulate an argument. All he needs to state is that "'evil' - as a theist would define it - exists" while maintaining a relativist position, and he could sidestep your objection.
BTW - I believe your criticism of George is accurate - he is clearly appalled by the actions he posits. But what if he formulated his argument by saying that the THEIST should see these things as evil - even though he views them reserved nonprescriptive stance?
***END-QUOTE***
Jim,
Good questions.
1.Yes, it is possible for a moral relativist to mount a purely internal critique of the Christian faith.
Since, however, George and Sam Harris are clearly including their own moral intuitions in the way they frame the problem of evil against Christianity, I didn’t bother to address your example.
2.But let’s play along with your example a little further. A moral relativist can press the problem of evil against Christian theism, but he will pay a price.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that he’s successful in showing that the problem of evil disproves the existence of the Christian God. What has he accomplished?
As a moral relativist, he doesn’t think it’s wrong to hold false beliefs. So even if the Christian faith were a false belief-system, there would be nothing morally objectionable, from his viewpoint, about continuing to adhere to the Christian faith.
So his victory would be a Pyrrhic victory.
***QUOTE***
George said:
“I don’t have to do any such thing, I just have to point to what theists consider evil, and show that their myriad gods are doing nothing to stop it.”
There are a couple problems with this claim:
i) Yes, you can point to events which a Christian would regard as evil. But that’s not enough to make an internal case against the Christian.
Rather, you need to point to events which a Christian would regard as gratuitous evils.
ii) To say that God is doing nothing to stop evil is fatally ambiguous.
It’s true that God doesn’t prevent every evil. But by common grace, he prevents many evils.
And in terms of Christian eschatology, there will be a day of reckoning.
“Most theists don’t want to die, or have their loved ones die slow painful deaths from diseases. Thus, they pray to their gods to intervene and provide a supernatural cure for these illnesses.”
This does nothing to disprove Christian theism. Christian theology doesn’t deny the existence of death and disease.
And prayer is not unconditional in Scripture.
For you to successfully mount an internal critique of the Christian faith based on the problem of evil, you need to cite phenomena inconsistent with Christian theology.
Your anecdotal examples don’t achieve that objective.
“Yet these alleged caring gods who allegedly ‘intelligently designed’ these killer viruses and cancers, don’t cure theists, or Reformed Protestant Christians, with any greater frequency than Buddhists or humanists or atheists.”
All you’ve done is to frame a straw man argument.
1.If some Christians labor under the misimpression that God will answer every prayer, the fact that their false expectations will be disappointeed does nothing to falsify the Christian faith. To falsify a false belief does nothing to falsify a true belief.
George, you need to try a little harder to be logical. You are letting your emotionalism get the better of the argument.
2.Also, I expect that Christians are healed at a higher rate than Buddhists or humanists or atheists.
“Again, if you want to claim that your god wants a little 12 year old Christian girl, to die a slow, painful death of cancer, and have her parents and her whole church, racked with anquish, as their prayers to this god go unanswered, that’s fine. I'm sure it can all be rationalized as "god's plan". But please don’t pretend that this god ‘cares’ about the welfare of this little girl or her family in this life and this world.”
Again, George, you’re substituting hysteria for reason. As Paul Helm has stated:
“There is no reason to think that God intends the details of the universe separately; there is one divine will, which encompasses all events. It would be fallacious to suppose that the divine attitude is the same with respect to every detail of what god wills…As Aquinas put it, ‘God, and nature, and indeed, every causal agent, does what is best overall, but not what is best in every part, except when the part is regarded in its relationship to the whole.’ We may suppose that when God knowingly and willingly permits certain events he does so in furtherance of some wider consideration wholly consistent with his character with respect to which they are a logically necessary condition. And likewise, some of those things which he causes are means to some further end,” J. Beilby & P. Eddy, eds. Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (IVP 2001), 182.
“Your gods, as usual, are nowhere in sight.”
You are falling into a fallacious all-or-nothing argument. The fact that God doesn’t intervene every time doesn’t mean that God doesn’t intervene anytime.
Once again, try to be rational about this.
“As far as your cliché strawman that I can’t critique your invisible god’s impotence, in the face of the death and destruction of his loyal followers, ‘without an external standard of comparison’. I believe if I commissioned a poll, most Christians would agree that they don’t want to die slow, painful, premature deaths. Nor do they want their children to. And I believe the same poll would show most of these Christians believe they can petition the Christian god to change the course of events should they be stricken with a deadly disease. They may even say that there god is ‘watching out for them’ or perhaps he has assigned an angel the task, or some such superstition.”
This is not an internal critique of the Christian belief-system. Every step of the way you fail to make good on your stated claim.
The fact that some churchgoers get their theology from “Touched By An Angel” rather than the Bible is irrelevant to the coherence of Christian theism.
“I’m not sure who told you that naturalists can’t believe that certain human behaviors are atrocious or gratutious or even ‘evil’ without the benefit on your three headed Hebrew tribal deity. But I assure you, you’re wrong. Just because someone accepts the universe and natural world for what it is, and perhaps can even identify the causes of disease or violent tendencies in certain humans, doesn’t mean we surrender our value judgments of what we believe is good or right behavior.”
If you are a naturalist, then where are you getting your value judgments if not from the natural world? So why are you so disapproving of what you seen around you? For a naturalist you’re pretty ill-adapted to your natural surroundings.
“No, the ‘problem of evil’ only exists when there is an allegedly omnipotent god that could prevent evil...but doesn't, for unknown reasons that theists like to rationalize.”
This is a simple-minded caricature of the problem. The fact that God doesn’t prevent every instance of evil, here and now, is not a defeater for Christian theism.
Also, the fact that we may not know why every individual evil takes place does not mean that we are in the dark regarding the general role of evil in a Christian theodicy.
“Perhaps you are the kind of theist who upon witnessing a rape, thinks ‘I’d better not do anything to stop it, I’m sure my personal god has a good reason for allowing this evil to occur.’
This is false with respect to the preceptive and decretive will of God alike. Rape is a sin. Rape is contrary to God’s moral law for man.
Conversely, if God had decreed me not to intervene, then I’d be unable to intervene. If I’m able to intervene, then my intervention does not run counter to his decretive will.
***QUOTE***
I thought I explained that in my reply. That's a really nasty fallacy spread by theists, in order to distract from any argument, that has a moral component. Theists, especially Muslims and Christians, certainly don't have the patent on human morality. Nor do their alleged killer gods.
If you want to argue with me over rape being wrong, thats fine. If you agree its wrong, please don't pretend we don't share that same moral standard, in an effort to sidetrack the main discussion.
"Rape" is wrong by definition. The value judgment is contained in its definition. Just like it is in the word murder.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a couple of basic problems with this reply:
1.The association of moral relativism with secular humanism isn’t a malicious rumor spread by Christians.
It was Hume who brought up the is-ought problem. It was Moore who brought up the naturalistic fallacy.
Various unbelievers subscribe to some version or another of moral antirealism, whether emotivism, non-cognitivism, social constructivism, cultural relativism, descriptive relativism, &c.
These debates crop up all the time in varieties of evolutionary ethics, such as social Darwinism, evolutionary psychology, and sociobiology.
For an overview, cf.:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/evol-eth.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/
And this is applied to cases of rape. Consider academic studies such as:
A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (MIT 2000)
by Randy Thornhill, Craig T. Palmer, Margo I. Wilson
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Mariner Books 1997)
by Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham
Or consider the following exchange between Bertrand Russell and Fr. Copleston:
***QUOTE***
R: You see, I feel that some things are good and that other things are bad. I love the things that are good, that I think are good, and I hate the things that I think are bad. I don't say that these things are good because they participate in the Divine goodness.
C: Yes, but what's your justification for distinguishing between good and bad or how do you view the distinction between them?
R: I don't have any justification any more than I have when I distinguish between blue and yellow. What is my justification for distinguishing between blue and yellow? I can see they are different.
C: Well, that is an excellent justification, I agree. You distinguish blue and yellow by seeing them, so you distinguish good and bad by what faculty?
R: By my feelings.
C: By your feelings. Well, that's what I was asking. You think that good and evil have reference simply to feeling?
R: Well, why does one type of object look yellow and another look blue? I can more or less give an answer to that thanks to the physicists, and as to why I think one sort of thing good and another evil, probably there is an answer of the same sort, but it hasn't been gone into in the same way and I couldn't give it [to] you.
C: Well, let's take the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen. That appears to you as undesirable and evil and to me too. To Adolf Hitler we suppose it appeared as something good and desirable, I suppose you’d have to admit that for Hitler it was good and for you it is evil.
R: No, I shouldn't quite go so far as that. I mean, I think people can make mistakes in that as they can in other things. If you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow. You're making a mistake.
C: Yes, one can make mistakes, but can you make a mistake if it’s simply a question of reference to a feeling or emotion? Surely Hitler would be the only possible judge of what appealed to his emotions.
R: It would be quite right to say that it appealed to his emotions, but you can say various things about that among others, that if that sort of thing makes that sort of appeal to Hitler's emotions, then Hitler makes quite a different appeal to my emotions.
C: Granted. But there's no objective criterion outside feeling then for condemning the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen, in your view?
R: No more than there is for the color-blind person who's in exactly the same state. Why do we intellectually condemn the color-blind man? Isn't it because he's in the minority?
C: I would say because he is lacking in a thing which normally belongs to human nature.
R: Yes, but if he were in the majority, we shouldn't say that.
C: Then you'd say that there's no criterion outside feeling that will enable one to distinguish between the behavior of the Commandant of Belsen and the behavior, say, of Sir Stafford Cripps or the Archbishop of Canterbury.
R: The feeling is a little too simplified. You've got to take account of the effects of actions and your feelings toward those effects. You see, you can have an argument about it if you can say that certain sorts of occurrences are the sort you like and certain others the sort you don’t like. Then you have to take account of the effects of actions. You can very well say that the effects of the actions of the Commandant of Belsen were painful and unpleasant.
C: They certainly were, I agree, very painful and unpleasant to all the people in the camp.
R: Yes, but not only to the people in the camp, but to outsiders contemplating them also.
C: Yes, quite true in imagination. But that's my point. I don’t approve of them, and I know you don't approve of them, but I don't see what ground you have for not approving of them, because after all, to the Commandant of Belsen himself, they're pleasant, those actions.
R: Yes, but you see I don't need any more ground in that case than I do in the case of color perception. There are some people who think everything is yellow, there are people suffering from jaundice, and I don’t agree with these people. I can't prove that the things are not yellow, there isn't any proof, but most people agree with him that they’re not yellow, and most people agree with me that the Commandant of Belsen was making mistakes.
C: Well, do you accept any moral obligation?
R: Well, I should have to answer at considerable length to answer that. Practically speaking -- yes. Theoretically speaking I should have to define moral obligation rather carefully.
C: Well, do you think that the word "ought" simply has an emotional connotation?
R: No, I don't think that, because you see, as I was saying a moment ago, one has to take account of the effects, and I think right conduct is that which would probably produce the greatest possible balance in intrinsic value of all the acts possible in the circumstances, and you’ve got to take account of the probable effects of your action in considering what is right.
C: Well, I brought in moral obligation because I think that one can approach the question of God's existence in that way. The vast majority of the human race will make, and always have made, some distinction between right and wrong. The vast majority I think has some consciousness of an obligation in the moral sphere. It's my opinion that the perception of values and the consciousness of moral law and obligation are best explained through the hypothesis of a transcendent ground of value and of an author of the moral law. I do mean by "author of the moral law" an arbitrary author of the moral law. I think, in fact, that those modern atheists who have argued in a converse way "there is no God; therefore, there are no absolute values and no absolute law," are quite logical.
R: I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.
C: Well, I don't see that differences in particular moral judgments are any conclusive argument against the universality of the moral law. Let's assume for the moment that there are absolute moral values, even on that hypothesis it's only to be expected that different individuals and different groups should enjoy varying degrees of insight into those values.
R: I'm inclined to think that "ought," the feeling that one has about "ought" is an echo of what has been told one by one's parents or one's nurses.
C: Well, I wonder if you can explain away the idea of the "ought" merely in terms of nurses and parents. I really don’t see how it can be conveyed to anybody in other terms than itself. It seems to be that if there is a moral order bearing upon the human conscience, that that moral order is unintelligible apart from the existence of God.
R: Then you have to say one or other of two things. Either God only speaks to a very small percentage of mankind -- which happens to include yourself -- or He deliberately says things are not true in talking to the consciences of savages.
C: Well, you see, I'm not suggesting that God actually dictates moral precepts to the conscience. The human being's ideas of the content of the moral law depends entirely to a large extent on education and environment, and a man has to use his reason in assessing the validity of the actual moral ideas of his social group. But the possibility of criticizing the accepted moral code presupposes that there is an objective standard, and there is an ideal moral order, which imposes itself (I mean the obligatory character of which can be recognized). I think that the recognition of this ideal moral order is part of the recognition of contingency. It implies the existence of a real foundation of God.
R: But the lawgiver has always been, it seems to me, one's parents or someone like. There are plenty of terrestrial lawgivers to account for it, and that would explain why people's consciences are so amazingly different in different times and places.
C: It helps to explain differences in the perception of particular moral values, which otherwise are inexplicable. It will help to explain changes in the matter of the moral law in the content of the precepts as accepted by this or that nation, or this or that individual. But the form of it, what Kant calls the categorical imperative, the "ought," I really don't see how that can possibly be conveyed to anybody by nurse or parent because there aren't any possible terms, so far as I can see, with which it can be explained. It can't be defined in other terms than itself, because once you've defined it in other terms than itself you've explained it away. It's no longer a moral "ought." It's something else.
R: Well, I think the sense of "ought" is the effect of somebody’s imagined disapproval, it may be God's imagined disapproval, but it's somebody's imagined disapproval. And I think that is what is meant by "ought."
C: It seems to me to be external customs and taboos and things of that sort which can most easily be explained simply through environment and education, but all that seems to me to belong to what I call the matter of the law, the content. The idea of the "ought" as such can never be conveyed to a man by the tribal chief or by anybody else, because there are no other terms in which it could be conveyed. It seems to me entirely....
R: But I don't see any reason to say that -- I mean we all know about conditioned reflexes. We know that an animal, if punished habitually for a certain sort of act, after a time will refrain. I don't think the animal refrains from arguing within himself, "Master will be angry if I do this." He has a feeling that that's not the thing to do. That's what we can do with ourselves and nothing more.
C: I see no reason to suppose that an animal has a consciousness or moral obligation; and we certainly don't regard an animal as morally responsible for his acts of disobedience. But a man has a consciousness of obligation and of moral values. I see no reason to suppose that one could condition all men as one can "condition" an animal, and I don't suppose you'd really want to do so even if one could. If "behaviorism" were true, there would be no objective moral distinction between the emperor Nero and St. Francis of Assisi. I can’t help feeling, Lord Russell, you know, that you regard the conduct of the Commandant of Belsen as morally reprehensible, and that you yourself would never under any circumstances act in that way, even if you thought, or had reason to think, that possibly the balance of the happiness of the human race might be increased through some people being treated in that abominable manner.
R: No. I wouldn't imitate the conduct of a mad dog. The fact that I wouldn’t do it doesn't really bear on this question we're discussing.
C: No, but if you were making a utilitarian explanation of right and wrong in terms of consequences, it might be held, and I suppose some of the Nazis of the better type would have held that although it’s lamentable to have to act in this way, yet the balance in the long run leads to greater happiness. I don't think you'd say that, would you? I think you'd say that sort of action is wrong -- and in itself, quite apart from whether the general balance of happiness is increased or not. Then, if you're prepared to say that, then I think you must have some criterion of feeling, at any rate. To me, that admission would ultimately result in the admission of an ultimate ground of value in God.
R: I think we are perhaps getting into confusion. It is not direct feeling about the act by which I should judge, but rather a feeling as to the effects. And I can't admit any circumstances in which certain kinds of behavior, such as you have been discussing, would do good. I can’t imagine circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect. I think the persons who think they do are deceiving themselves. But if there were circumstances in which they would have a beneficial effect, then I might be obliged, however reluctantly, to say -- "Well, I don't like these things, but I will acquiesce in them," just as I acquiesce in the Criminal Law, although I profoundly dislike punishment.
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm
***END-QUOTE***
To finish up on George:
“The fact remains, the alleged, caring, omnipotent, Christian god chooses not to stop rape, in the worldview of Christians. He doesn't stop rape in my worldview, because he doesn't exist, he's a figment of theist imagination. Thus his failure to act, to protect, and to cure, like any loving parent would, is a problem for Christians to rationalize, and they've become very good at it over the years.”
This is not an internal critique of Christian theism. All George has ever done in this course of this thread is to pull certain adjectives like “loving” and “caring” out of the air, apply them to God, point to some instance of evil, then exclaim: “Aha! God doesn’t exist!”
You are attacking your own homegrown version of Christian theism.
The Evidence Of Prophecy
In an earlier post responding to Sam Harris, Steve Hays made a good point about Biblical prophecy:
"If a prophecy were too specific, it’s fulfillment could be thwarted. It would give people enough advance knowledge to frustrate the terms of fulfillment by doing something else—like tipping off a drug dealer that the cops are about to stage a raid on his base of operations."
I would add that God could also have a variety of other reasons for making prophecies more or less detailed, depending on how the details would influence people, how He wanted the events to be perceived, etc. There's no way for us to know what all of the reasons would be for the degree of detail we're given, so our primary concern in evaluating the evidential significance of these prophecies should be whether the prophecies are sufficient to suggest foreknowledge, not whether they're exhaustive. If there is no credible naturalistic explanation for a prophecy with five details, then objecting that there aren't eight or ten details instead isn't enough to overcome the evidential significance of the prophecy.
Books like Isaiah and Daniel, or portions of the books, are dated late largely in an attempt to explain the fulfillment of highly detailed prophecies contained in those books. Critics have long acknowledged that the prophecies are detailed enough to suggest the supernatural. But the arguments for dating the books late are highly speculative, and we have better evidence for dating the books early. See, for example, here, here, and here on the book of Daniel.
Some of the prophecies can't be dated at or past the time of their purported fulfillment, so critics have attempted to dismiss these prophecies as taken out of context or not detailed enough, for example. The prophecies most often discussed in this context are the ones associated with Jesus, partly because there's agreement that Jesus was born after the prophecies in question were written. While many of the prophecies associated with Jesus are of a typological nature, and so they aren't of much evidential value individually, there are others that are non-typological. There's nothing unclear about the prediction that the Messiah would be a descendant of David, for example, and it isn't difficult to discern whether Jesus was perceived as a descendant of David by His contemporaries and whether evidence about His ancestry was available to those early sources. Much the same can be said about Micah 5 and Bethlehem, for example.
Even with prophecies that are more open to a variety of interpretations, such as Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy, there are limits to that variety. The city Daniel names is Jerusalem. That's not vague. He refers to the city and the temple being destroyed, something that could have been avoided, and the city could have been overtaken without the destruction of the temple, for example. He gives specific timeframes. Even if people disagree over whether the years in question consist of 360 or 365 days, for example, there are only so many plausible candidates for the number of days in a year. Nobody is going to be able to credibly argue that a year lasts 5 days or 820 days, for example. While some elements of the prophecy are flexible, the flexibility is highly limited by the details that are given. Jesus would have to fit into a narrow window in order to fulfill the passage. Objecting that the window could have been made even narrower by giving more detail doesn't change the fact that the window is narrow without such additional details or the fact that Jesus fulfills it. (See here for a discussion of the fulfillment.)
The implausibility of the critical position on some of these prophecies can be seen in the attempts critics make to find some fulfillment of these passages outside of Jesus. On Isaiah’s Suffering Servant prophecy, John Oswalt writes:
"Despite myriad attempts to find a figure in the sixth century B.C. who might be the referent in this passage, none has been successful. By contrast, the congruence with Jesus' life is remarkable...The most concerted recent attempt to do so [find a sixth century B.C. referent for Isaiah 52-53] was by R.N. Whybray in his Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet. But the fact that he has to go to great lengths to show that the apparent meaning of the text is not correct suggests that the undertaking is a futile one." (The NIV Application Commentary: Isaiah [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003], pp. 587-588)
The Suffering Servant prophecy tells us that the figure in question will die in a way that significantly disfigures his body rather than by some other means (Isaiah 53:14); tells us that this figure will be a Jew (53:2), yet will be highly influential among not only Gentiles, but even Gentile rulers (52:15); tells us that he’ll have an ordinary appearance (Isaiah 53:2); tells us that he’ll be rejected by his own people (Isaiah 53:3); tells us that he’ll die an atoning death (Isaiah 53:6); tells us that he’ll remain silent at an important time before those who condemn him (Isaiah 53:7); tells us that he would be associated with the rich in his death (Isaiah 53:9); tells us that he’ll be unusually righteous (Isaiah 53:9); tells us that his life will be prolonged, in the context of discussing his physical death, thus suggesting a physical resurrection (Isaiah 53:11); tells us that his atoning death was deliberate (Isaiah 53:12); etc. To say that the Suffering Servant prophecy isn’t detailed enough to be of much evidential significance is absurd. How many people in world history, even if we don't limit ourselves to the Jewish people, have been perceived as deliberately giving their lives to make atonement for the sin of others? That one element of the prophecy is enough to eliminate almost every human from consideration, and the window for fulfillment narrows even further when the other details are added. If the prophecy is detailed enough to single out one human being among the billions who have lived, how can specificity that singles out one among billions be considered insufficient specificity?
Many skeptics of Biblical prophecy have a mindset similar to that of Celsus, a second century critic of Christianity:
"Christians claimed that the facts of Jesus' life were proclaimed beforehand in the Jewish prophecies, but [according to Celsus] in fact the 'prophecies could be applied to thousands of others far more plausibly than to Jesus' ([Origen’s Against Celsus] 2.28)." (Robert Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], p. 115)
As Origen explained in response to Celsus, the claim that "thousands" could fulfill the prophecies better than Jesus is absurd. It’s the sort of vague and unthinking objection that you would expect from somebody more interested in avoiding the truth than in finding it. Nobody other than Jesus has ever come close to fulfilling a passage like Isaiah 52-53 or Daniel 9. Jesus not only has fulfilled these passages, but also has fulfilled many others. Even some of the more vague prophecies, such as His being both a king and a priest (Psalm 110) and His causing the Gentile nations to follow the God of Israel (Isaiah 49:6, 52:15) are unusual and significant. In contrast to the irrational mindset of Celsus, Theophilus of Antioch, a Christian contemporary of Celsus, gives us a more truthful assessment:
"The Egyptian or Chaldaean prophets, and the other writers, should have been able accurately to tell, if at least they spoke by a divine and pure spirit, and spoke truth in all that was uttered by them; and they should have announced not only things past or present, but also those that were to come upon the world. And therefore it is proved that all others have been in error; and that we Christians alone have possessed the truth, in as much as we are taught by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the holy prophets, and foretold all things. And, for the rest, would that in a kindly spirit you would investigate divine things - I mean the things that are spoken by the prophets - in order that, by comparing what is said by us with the utterances of the others, you may be able to discover the truth." (To Autolycus, 2:33-34)
"If a prophecy were too specific, it’s fulfillment could be thwarted. It would give people enough advance knowledge to frustrate the terms of fulfillment by doing something else—like tipping off a drug dealer that the cops are about to stage a raid on his base of operations."
I would add that God could also have a variety of other reasons for making prophecies more or less detailed, depending on how the details would influence people, how He wanted the events to be perceived, etc. There's no way for us to know what all of the reasons would be for the degree of detail we're given, so our primary concern in evaluating the evidential significance of these prophecies should be whether the prophecies are sufficient to suggest foreknowledge, not whether they're exhaustive. If there is no credible naturalistic explanation for a prophecy with five details, then objecting that there aren't eight or ten details instead isn't enough to overcome the evidential significance of the prophecy.
Books like Isaiah and Daniel, or portions of the books, are dated late largely in an attempt to explain the fulfillment of highly detailed prophecies contained in those books. Critics have long acknowledged that the prophecies are detailed enough to suggest the supernatural. But the arguments for dating the books late are highly speculative, and we have better evidence for dating the books early. See, for example, here, here, and here on the book of Daniel.
Some of the prophecies can't be dated at or past the time of their purported fulfillment, so critics have attempted to dismiss these prophecies as taken out of context or not detailed enough, for example. The prophecies most often discussed in this context are the ones associated with Jesus, partly because there's agreement that Jesus was born after the prophecies in question were written. While many of the prophecies associated with Jesus are of a typological nature, and so they aren't of much evidential value individually, there are others that are non-typological. There's nothing unclear about the prediction that the Messiah would be a descendant of David, for example, and it isn't difficult to discern whether Jesus was perceived as a descendant of David by His contemporaries and whether evidence about His ancestry was available to those early sources. Much the same can be said about Micah 5 and Bethlehem, for example.
Even with prophecies that are more open to a variety of interpretations, such as Daniel's 70 weeks prophecy, there are limits to that variety. The city Daniel names is Jerusalem. That's not vague. He refers to the city and the temple being destroyed, something that could have been avoided, and the city could have been overtaken without the destruction of the temple, for example. He gives specific timeframes. Even if people disagree over whether the years in question consist of 360 or 365 days, for example, there are only so many plausible candidates for the number of days in a year. Nobody is going to be able to credibly argue that a year lasts 5 days or 820 days, for example. While some elements of the prophecy are flexible, the flexibility is highly limited by the details that are given. Jesus would have to fit into a narrow window in order to fulfill the passage. Objecting that the window could have been made even narrower by giving more detail doesn't change the fact that the window is narrow without such additional details or the fact that Jesus fulfills it. (See here for a discussion of the fulfillment.)
The implausibility of the critical position on some of these prophecies can be seen in the attempts critics make to find some fulfillment of these passages outside of Jesus. On Isaiah’s Suffering Servant prophecy, John Oswalt writes:
"Despite myriad attempts to find a figure in the sixth century B.C. who might be the referent in this passage, none has been successful. By contrast, the congruence with Jesus' life is remarkable...The most concerted recent attempt to do so [find a sixth century B.C. referent for Isaiah 52-53] was by R.N. Whybray in his Thanksgiving for a Liberated Prophet. But the fact that he has to go to great lengths to show that the apparent meaning of the text is not correct suggests that the undertaking is a futile one." (The NIV Application Commentary: Isaiah [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003], pp. 587-588)
The Suffering Servant prophecy tells us that the figure in question will die in a way that significantly disfigures his body rather than by some other means (Isaiah 53:14); tells us that this figure will be a Jew (53:2), yet will be highly influential among not only Gentiles, but even Gentile rulers (52:15); tells us that he’ll have an ordinary appearance (Isaiah 53:2); tells us that he’ll be rejected by his own people (Isaiah 53:3); tells us that he’ll die an atoning death (Isaiah 53:6); tells us that he’ll remain silent at an important time before those who condemn him (Isaiah 53:7); tells us that he would be associated with the rich in his death (Isaiah 53:9); tells us that he’ll be unusually righteous (Isaiah 53:9); tells us that his life will be prolonged, in the context of discussing his physical death, thus suggesting a physical resurrection (Isaiah 53:11); tells us that his atoning death was deliberate (Isaiah 53:12); etc. To say that the Suffering Servant prophecy isn’t detailed enough to be of much evidential significance is absurd. How many people in world history, even if we don't limit ourselves to the Jewish people, have been perceived as deliberately giving their lives to make atonement for the sin of others? That one element of the prophecy is enough to eliminate almost every human from consideration, and the window for fulfillment narrows even further when the other details are added. If the prophecy is detailed enough to single out one human being among the billions who have lived, how can specificity that singles out one among billions be considered insufficient specificity?
Many skeptics of Biblical prophecy have a mindset similar to that of Celsus, a second century critic of Christianity:
"Christians claimed that the facts of Jesus' life were proclaimed beforehand in the Jewish prophecies, but [according to Celsus] in fact the 'prophecies could be applied to thousands of others far more plausibly than to Jesus' ([Origen’s Against Celsus] 2.28)." (Robert Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], p. 115)
As Origen explained in response to Celsus, the claim that "thousands" could fulfill the prophecies better than Jesus is absurd. It’s the sort of vague and unthinking objection that you would expect from somebody more interested in avoiding the truth than in finding it. Nobody other than Jesus has ever come close to fulfilling a passage like Isaiah 52-53 or Daniel 9. Jesus not only has fulfilled these passages, but also has fulfilled many others. Even some of the more vague prophecies, such as His being both a king and a priest (Psalm 110) and His causing the Gentile nations to follow the God of Israel (Isaiah 49:6, 52:15) are unusual and significant. In contrast to the irrational mindset of Celsus, Theophilus of Antioch, a Christian contemporary of Celsus, gives us a more truthful assessment:
"The Egyptian or Chaldaean prophets, and the other writers, should have been able accurately to tell, if at least they spoke by a divine and pure spirit, and spoke truth in all that was uttered by them; and they should have announced not only things past or present, but also those that were to come upon the world. And therefore it is proved that all others have been in error; and that we Christians alone have possessed the truth, in as much as we are taught by the Holy Spirit, who spoke in the holy prophets, and foretold all things. And, for the rest, would that in a kindly spirit you would investigate divine things - I mean the things that are spoken by the prophets - in order that, by comparing what is said by us with the utterances of the others, you may be able to discover the truth." (To Autolycus, 2:33-34)
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Whose problem?
For whom is the problem of evil a problem?
***QUOTE***
George said:
"1.He never explains, from a secular standpoint, why the problem of evil is a problem. What is problematic about natural or moral evil?"
The "problem of evil" is not a problem for the naturalist.
You are quite correct that natural disasters and illness and violence are to be expected in the natural world, and the natural world does not care about what individual humans think about how "evil" or "unfair" something seems to their social primate brains.
The problem of evil only exists when theists start postulating all kinds of supernatural, personal, caring gods, that are the patrons of faithful humans, and allegedly care and watch over these humans and respond to their prayerful petitions.
Yet there is nothing to suggest from human history that any god of any religious tradition favors anyone, or prevents any evil from happening.
***END-QUOTE***
This won’t work. For the problem of evil is not merely internal to theism. In order for the naturalist to raise the problem of evil as a problem for theism, the naturalist must be able to identify objective instances of moral and natural evil, then take these paradigm-cases as a frame of reference.
The naturalist is comparing Christian theism with what he—the naturalist—regards as real evil in the world.
The internal critique cannot achieve escape velocity without an external standard of comparison.
This is exactly what we see in the examples that Harris has paraded to illustrate his point:
“Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most.”
“One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda…Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants.”
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
But if naturalism were true, why does Harris act as if this is not the way things are supposed to be? “Atrocity.” “Gratuitous.”
Continuing with George:
***QUOTE***
I don't think anyone has summed it up better since Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
***END-QUOTE***
It may be that no one has done a better job of summing up the problem of evil, but it’s not as if theologians are speechless in the face of evil. Harris contents himself with stating the problem as if the problem remained unanswered. He might not agree with the answers, but to keep repeating the question while ignoring a number of answers is anti-intellectual.
***QUOTE***
George said:
"1.He never explains, from a secular standpoint, why the problem of evil is a problem. What is problematic about natural or moral evil?"
The "problem of evil" is not a problem for the naturalist.
You are quite correct that natural disasters and illness and violence are to be expected in the natural world, and the natural world does not care about what individual humans think about how "evil" or "unfair" something seems to their social primate brains.
The problem of evil only exists when theists start postulating all kinds of supernatural, personal, caring gods, that are the patrons of faithful humans, and allegedly care and watch over these humans and respond to their prayerful petitions.
Yet there is nothing to suggest from human history that any god of any religious tradition favors anyone, or prevents any evil from happening.
***END-QUOTE***
This won’t work. For the problem of evil is not merely internal to theism. In order for the naturalist to raise the problem of evil as a problem for theism, the naturalist must be able to identify objective instances of moral and natural evil, then take these paradigm-cases as a frame of reference.
The naturalist is comparing Christian theism with what he—the naturalist—regards as real evil in the world.
The internal critique cannot achieve escape velocity without an external standard of comparison.
This is exactly what we see in the examples that Harris has paraded to illustrate his point:
“Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most.”
“One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda…Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants.”
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
But if naturalism were true, why does Harris act as if this is not the way things are supposed to be? “Atrocity.” “Gratuitous.”
Continuing with George:
***QUOTE***
I don't think anyone has summed it up better since Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”
***END-QUOTE***
It may be that no one has done a better job of summing up the problem of evil, but it’s not as if theologians are speechless in the face of evil. Harris contents himself with stating the problem as if the problem remained unanswered. He might not agree with the answers, but to keep repeating the question while ignoring a number of answers is anti-intellectual.
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