Dawkins, Fermat, and Jesus

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account @RichardDawkins  17h17 hours ago17 hours agoMore 

Missing verse. Jesus said, no three positive integers a, b, and c shall satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n. Now that would be impressive.

Apparently, Dawkins is alluding to Fermat's Last Theorem. Several issues:

i) It's prudent not to endeavor to be more clever than you are, because a failed attempt will make you look less clever than you aspire to be. 

ii) I'm no expert, but it's my impression that Dawkins bungled the formulation by omitting n>2. He should leave math to mathematicians and stick to evolutionary biology.

iii) What is the implicit argument in his tweet? I suppose it's something like this: Gospel writers can fabricate reported miracles, but a scientific or mathematic theory, theorem, conjecture, or discovery that's centuries ahead of its time can't be faked. It would be unmistakably anachronistic and undeniably impressive. Assuming that's in the ballpark of what he was gesturing at:

iv) Since modern mathematical and scientific notation didn't exist in the 1C, how could that be expressed in Aramaic or Koine Greek?

v) Since the formula would be unintelligible to Christian scribes (as well as readers), it would almost inevitably be miscopied. 

vi) Unbelievers don't think the Gospels reliably record the sayings of the historical Jesus. So even if the Gospels contained something like Fermat's Last Theorem, unbelievers could chalk that up to the narrator, or his hypothetical source, rather than Jesus. He just put that in the mouth of Jesus.

vii) Assuming (ex hypothesi) that Jesus said that, it might prove that he was a mathematical genius, but human genius is no proof of deity, and it's irrelevant to his mission as the Redeemer and eschatological judge.

viii) Is Fermat's Last Theorem especially impressive–or the solution! 

ix) Premature scientific and mathematical theories and discoveries would alter the future course of history by kickstarting math and science. It's like those scifi scenarios in which the time-traveler inadvertently changes the future because he carries his modern knowledge with him when he goes back in time, where he says or does something that seeds the past with future know-how or technology. Indeed, he becomes trapped in the past because the future from which he came no longer exists, so he's now unable to return to that point in the erstwhile timeline. 

Too Skeptical To Be Reasonable

Here are some of Guy Playfair's comments about a report on the Enfield Poltergeist that he and Maurice Grosse delivered to a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). This occurred on March 29, 1978:

He [Grosse] kicked off with a very concise and factual account of the case to date, summarising the types of phenomenon we had observed or recorded from eye-witnesses under seventeen headings. These included knocks, movement of small and large objects, interference with bedclothes, appearance of water, apparitions, levitation of persons, physical assaults of several types, automatisms, psychological disturbance, equipment malfunction and failure, the passage of matter through matter, unidentifiable voice phenomena - both embodied and disembodied, and spontaneous combustion.

While he was reeling off this list, I looked around the audience. Some, like Professor [Hans] Bender, were listening intently, while elsewhere I saw a number of raised eyebrows. Clearly, this was a bit much for some SPR members, who had never witnessed anything paranormal all their lives.

Comey firing overdue

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/11/15625990/comey-deserved-fired-no-constitutional-crisis-liberals-hyperventilate

Trump, Mueller, and Muslims

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2017/05/russia-special-counsel-mueller-conspired-radical-islamic-groups-fbi-chief/

The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture

Today, our guest on EWTN is Christian Smith, author of The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture.

Interviewer: What's your basis thesis?

Smith: Interpretive pluralism disproves sola scriptura. 

Interviewer: Can you give an example?

Smith: Take "amen". 

Interviewer: What about "amen"?

Smith: The Bible uses "amen", but unlike a dictionary, it never provides the correct pronunciation. 

Interviewer: And how is that a problem?

Smith: It's spawned pluralistic pronunciations of "amen". That's a fundamental dividing line between Anglican and Baptist theology.

Interviewer: Can you illustrate?

Smith: Baptists use the déclassé pronunciation, where "a" rhymes with "grape", while Anglicans use the more elegant pronunciation, where "a" rhymes with "father" or "Chicago". Have you ever been in a Baptist service where you thought everyone around you was Baptist, but when the time comes for the congregation to say "amen" in unison, someone behind you uses the Anglican pronunciation? It's a dead giveaway that they strayed into the wrong church by accident.

Interviewer: And that's why we need the Magisterium?

Smith: Absolutely! The Bible writers are dead, so you can't ask them for the right pronunciation. That's why a living teaching office is indispensable. Absent that, there's no way of knowing for sure whether the gauche Baptist pronunciation is right or the Oxbridge Anglican pronunciation. 

Interviewer: And you think that's a big deal?

Smith: Are you kidding? "Amen" is the password to get into heaven. Millions of evangelicals have been turned away from the pearly gates because they couldn't give Peter the right pronunciation.  

The binding of Isaac

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen 22:1-2).

There's a striking similarity between the ordeal of Job and the binding of Isaac. Both accounts exhibit dramatic irony. In both cases, God puts an individual to the test, but he doesn't know it's a test. The reader knows something Job, Abraham, and Isaac don't, because the narrator explains to the reader what God is up to. But Job, Abraham, and Isaac aren't privy to that key piece of information.

In addition, the reader has the benefit of hindsight. He knows how the story ends. He knows that God has no intention of letting Abraham go through it with. But, of course, Abraham doesn't know the outcome in advance. He doesn't know that God will rescind the command at the last moment. 

Although expositions of Gen 22 often focus on Abraham's submission to the will of God, the success of the test depends as much on Isaac's submission to the will of God. In a way, Isaac's submissive attitude is more impressive because God didn't even speak to him. At best, he's getting his information secondhand from his father. 

Isaac was old enough to either overpower his elderly father or at least run away. Yet he cooperates in what appears to be his premature death. If anything, it's harder for a teenager to face the prospect of death. He had his whole life ahead of him. 

Pope Francis dissing Marian apparitions

Concerning the alleged current apparitions, the report expresses doubts.  Personally, I am more “mischievous”: I prefer Our Lady to be a Mother, our Mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time… this is not the mother of Jesus.  And these alleged apparitions have no great value.  I say this as my personal opinion.  Who thinks that Our Lady would say: “Come tomorrow at this time and I will give a message to that seer”; no. 

http://www.news.va/en/news/pilgrimage-to-fatima-in-flight-press-conference-fr

Depicting the Tempter

There's a conventional interpretation of Gen 3 which visualizes the Tempter as a bipedal reptile that's able to communicate with Eve due to Satanic possession. I'm curious about the historical origins of that tradition.

In my limited knowledge, early artistic representations of the Tempter depict a zoological snake (e.g. Trinity sarcophagus, sarcophagus of Junius Bassus) while later artistic representations depict the Tempter as a hybrid creature: a human-headed snake (e.g. Ghiberti, Mantegna, Masolino, Michaelangelo, Holbein the Younger)–although later artists sometimes continue to depict the Tempter as a zoological snake (e.g. Cranach). 

In Milton, the Tempter is a fallen angel who's cursed to become a snake, after the Fall. Hugo van der Goes depicts the Tempter as a human-headed lizard, standing on its hindlegs, leaning on the tree of knowledge. 

In none of these examples is the Tempter a Satanically possessed bipedal reptile that became a snake after the Fall. So I wonder when that exegetical tradition developed.

Luke, the beloved physician

Here are two useful excerpts on Luke as a physician or medical doctor:

1. Norval Geldenhuys' writes in his dated commentary The Gospel of Luke (1951) in the old New International Commentary on the New Testament series:

Fortunately, from very early times in the history of the Christian Church, there exists straightforward evidence that Luke² was Paul's fellow-traveller who wrote the Gospel and Acts³. The anti-Marcionite Prologue to the Third Gospel (between A.D. 160 and 180), which survives in both Greek and Latin, gives the following account:

"Luke was an Antiochian of Syria, a physician by profession. He was a disciple of the apostles and later accompanied Paul until the latter's martyrdom. He served the Lord without distraction [or 'without blame'], having neither wife nor children, and at the age of eighty-four he fell asleep in Boeotia, full of the Holy Spirit. While there were already Gospels previously in existence - that according to Matthew written in Judaea and that according to Mark in Italy - Luke, moved by the Holy Spirit, composed the whole of this Gospel in the parts about Achaia. In his prologue he makes this very point clear, that other Gospels had been written before his, and that it was necessary to expound to the Gentile believers the accurate account of the [divine] dispensation, so that they should not be perverted by Jewish fables, nor be deceived by heretical and vain imaginations and thus err from the truth. And so right at the beginning he relates for us the nativity of John - a most essential matter, for John is the beginning of the Gospel, being our Lord's forerunner and companion both in the preparation of the Gospel and in the administration of the baptism and the fellowship of the Spirit. This ministry [of John] had been mentioned by one of the Twelve Prophets [i.e. Malachi]. And afterwards the same Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles."

[...]

The statement by numerous church fathers and by Paul that Luke was a physician is also corroborated in the Gospel and in Acts. In 1882 W. K. Hobart, in The Medical Language of St. Luke, defended the thesis that the third Gospel and Acts are permeated by the medical terminology current during the first century. Harnack, Zahn, and Moffatt also, after a careful sifting of Hobart's data, came to the conclusion that the author of Luke and Acts was a physician. Later on Cadbury⁴, who is exceptionally critical and unwilling to assume Luke to have been the author of the Gospel and of Acts, maintained that the so-called medical words and terms in Luke and Acts also occur in the non-medical writers like Lucian and Josephus and that in those days there existed no noticeable difference between the technical and non-technical language.

Cadbury is right to the extent that the language of Luke and Acts does not of itself prove that the author was a physician. Nevertheless the fact remains that the language and terminology of Luke and Acts are of such a nature that they corroborate⁵ in a striking manner the tradition that the author was Luke the physician. The following may be cited as a number of examples of medically tinted language and terminology from Luke: Luke iv. 38 describes the disease of Peter's mother-in-law as a "great fever", while Mark merely describes it as "fever". Now it is a well-known fact that medical writers of those times were accustomed to describe fever as a "small" or as a "great" fever.⁶

Luke v. 12 describes the leper as "a man full of leprosy", while Mark and Matthew merely say "a leprous man". Here also the expression of Luke is typically medical, as is evident from the writings of Hippocrates.⁷

In the same way the precise manner in which Luke describes different cases of disease (e.g. xiii. 11, viii. 42, vi. 18, xiii. 32; Acts vi. 22, ix. 33, etc.) fits in with the fact that he was a physician.⁸

Taking all the data into consideration, one cannot but come to the conclusion that, although the language and style do not per se prove that the author of the books was a physician, the statement by Paul⁹ in Colossians iv. 14, and the unanimous assertions of the ancient church fathers that Luke was a physician, are clearly corroborated by the nature of the contents of the books.¹⁰

---

2 That the name "Lukas" is the abbreviated form of "Lukios" is generally accepted (cf. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 435). Zahn, however, thinks it is the abbreviation of Lucanus (Introduction to the New Testament, iii, p. 5).
3 Cf. Jülicher-Fascher, An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 330.
4 The Style and Literary Method of Luke, pp. 39-72.
5 Plummer, Moffatt, Creed and several others also favour this view.
6 Cf. Creed, op. cit., p. xx.
7 Ibid.
8 It seems probable that Luke, even after he became a companion of Paul, continued with his practice as a physician. "It is also possible that he rendered valuable services as a physician to the apostle himself, who was often severely ill" (Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, English transl., vol. iii, p. 1). This would make it clear why Paul calls Luke "the beloved physician" (Col. iv. 14). For would he have called him so if he had discarded his practice as a physician years before? And by calling him the beloved physician, does that not point to personal gratitude Paul felt towards him for services rendered to him by his physician companion?
9 That the Luke of Colossians, iv. 14 is the same as the author of Acts (and so of the Gospel) "is completely established by the content [of Acts], the thoroughly Pauline conception of Christianity, the accurate acquaintance with Paul's fortunes and the central role which is accorded to Paul" (Ed. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfränge des Christentums, i, p. 3). Only a companion of Paul, and a very close companion at that, could and would have written the book of Acts, in which so much prominence is given to the apostle.
10 Cf., for a fuller exposition, Harnack, Luke the Physician, pp. 175-98; and Ramsay, Luke the Physician, p. 16.

2. D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo write in their An Introduction to the New Testament (2nd ed.):

Analysis of the Greek of Luke and Acts has been used to bolster this identification, the argument being that the books use a great deal of medical language.¹³ But H. J. Cadbury has called this argument into question, noting that most of the alleged medical vocabulary appears in everyday Greek writings of the period.¹⁴ Nevertheless, if the language falls short of proving that the author was a doctor, it certainly is compatible with the hypothesis. And some passages may indicate the particular outlook of a doctor, as, for example, when Luke speaks of a “high” fever, where Matthew and Mark speak only of a fever (Luke 4: 38; Matt. 8: 14; Mark 1: 30).¹⁵

---

13 See especially W. K. Hobart, The Medical Language of St. Luke (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1882), and note also Adolf von Harnack, Luke the Physician (New York: Putnam, 1907).
14 H. J. Cadbury, The Style and Literary Method of Luke, HTS 6 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919).
15 Alfred Wikenhauser agrees that the language does not prove a medical author, but then adds, "Nevertheless the tradition need not be abandoned, and it may still be sustained, for the author displays familiarity with medical terminology (cf. e.g., Lk. 4,38; 5,12; 8,44; Acts 5,5 10; 9,40), and he indisputably describes maladies and cures from the point of view of a medical man (e.g., Lk. 4,35; 13,11; Acts 3,7; 9,18)" (New Testament Introduction [ET New York: Herder, 1963], 209); his conclusion is only slightly softened in the latest (German) edition (Wikenhauser, 254-55). Loveday Alexander has argued that Luke’s preface finds its closest parallels in the technical prose or "scientific treatises" of the Hellenistic world - just the kind of book for a doctor to write (The Preface to Luke's Gospel, 176-77).

For the love of God

To an outside observer, God's providence is often unaccountable. For instance, why does God keep some Christians here after they live too long for their own good even though he takes others when they had so much to offer, so much unrealized promise?

I don't pretend to have the official answer. But I think it illustrates a comforting principle if we think about it and take it to heart: God doesn't love us because he needs us.

God isn't dependent on any particular individual to achieve his aims. There are others who could do the same job. Or God could do it himself.

There's a certain insecurity which comes with the knowledge that people love you because they need you. I had an elderly relative who used to be very considerate, conscientious, and helpful. She tried to be helpful to as many people as she could over the course of a long lifetime. But age finally caught with her. She become bedridden. Somewhat senile.

I used to lean over and hug her in bed so she wouldn't feel so isolated and alone, lonely, or abandoned. I don't know for sure what she felt.

Sometimes, when she sat lengthwise on a park bench, I sit right behind her and briefly cradle her in my arms to make her feel loved and cherished at a time of life when it's easy to feel unloved and unwanted.

Will people still love you when you've outlived your usefulness? When you used to help others, but you become helpless, and depend on others to do everything for you, will you be an object of affection or resentment?

Yesterday I was standing in line at the DMV. It was a long line when I got there. There was an elderly woman right ahead of me. About 80, give or take. Elegant, but I could see the strain in her face. I offered to let her sit down, then I'd motion her to resume her place ahead of me as I advanced to the front of the line. She was grateful for the offer and took me up on the offer (one of my fleeting finer moments).

What happens to you if people only love you for what you could do for them, when you can no longer help out? This is why many men find unemployment so devastating. This is why many elderly women are apprehensive about their situation. They're just one broken hip away from disaster.

But God doesn't love us because he needs us. Rather, God loves us because we need him.

Did Adam and Eve Exist? A New Population Genetics Model of Human Origins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDiSqS7ENR8&feature=youtu.be

Sheet lightning

For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man (Mt 24:27). 

The imagery may be describing sheet lightning. That phenomenon lights up the sky because lightning inside clouds illuminates the clouds, diffusing brilliant light over a wide expanse–like a light behind a screen. If clouds cover the night sky, a lightning flash embedded in clouds will instantly radiate out to illuminate the entire sky. In addition, some electrical storms have constant flashes of lightning, so that light and dark momentarily alternate in a continuous cycle until the storm passes over. 

The imagery of lightning emanating from the east may suggest an electrical storm approaching from the east. The eastern orientation has positive connotations because the sun rises in the east. Sunrise has positive connotations, whereas sunset and nighttime have naturally apprehensive connotations, especially for primitive people. But even in the modern age, nighttime is more dangerous than daytime.    

Nabeel

Nabeel spoke to us on the opening morning. He told us that the doctors have given up hope and that there will be no surgical intervention (which was to have happened only if the chemo and radiation had worked). Medicine feels it has done all it can. 

http://rzim.org/global-blog/torn-emotions-a-visit-with-nabeel-qureshi/

Too many people, including charismatics, fed him false hope. What does it say about their "revelations" that God would heal him? They need to examine themselves regarding what they take to be divine revelations. 

From the time he first received the dire diagnosis and prognosis, he needed to prepare himself intellectually for the likelihood that he had terminal cancer. He needed to make preparations for death.

That doesn't mean he had to give up hope–even now. But you can do two things at once. Throughout the process he was grasping at straws. That makes the landing far harder when medical options fail. Coming to terms with the eventuality of death, early on, would soften the landing. Too late for that now. 

One of Nabeel's stated concerns is that Muslims will say Allah struck him down as punishment for his apostasy from Islam. Although it's precarious to speculate on why God might cause Nabeel to die young, yet since people are bound to speculate, including malicious explanations, I'll offer a few suggestions. I don't think there's anything inherently disreputable about theological speculation, especially in reference to theodicy, so long as we admit at this outset that this is conjectural:

i) Cancer is hardly unique to Christians. Muslims die of cancer. Do Muslims die of cancer at lower rates than Christians? Is there any demonstrable correlation between immunity from cancer among devout Muslims and liability to cancer among devout Christians? It would be self-incriminating for Muslims to attribute Nabeel's plight to divine judgment, since that allegation will ricochet. 

ii) Nabeel is at high risk of being abducted and tortured to death. He's a prime target for jihadis. And this wouldn't be a garden variety honor-killing. Rather, they'd make an example of him to deter others. Make a video. Upload it onto YouTube. "This is what happens to traitors!" So they might well execute him by the slowest, most painful method imaginable. And as ISIS has demonstrated, Muslims can be very imaginative when it comes to excruciating ways of killing the infidel. 

I found it concerning that he's in a doctoral program at Oxford. Very prestigious, but England has a far higher concentration of Muslims than the USA, so it would be much easier for him to be spotted there by jihadis. Kidnapped. Videotaped. 

Although gastric cancer is an unpleasant way to go, it's better to die with the benefit of IV painkillers and anti-nausea medication than death by torture. So perhaps God is taking his life to spare him a far more gruesome fate at the hands of jihadis.

iii) Sex scandals have ruined not a few Christian ministries. In one of his vlogs, I think Nabeel said, before his ministry was sidelined by cancer therapy, that he spent something like 250 days a year on the road. That's a lot of time in hotels and motels. Presumably away from his wife for most of those junkets. 

That presents opportunities for sexual temptation. Imagine if he gave into temptation. If he's anxious about how Muslims will gloat over his untimely death by cancer, that's nothing compared to what would happen if he was caught in a sex scandal. 

iv) His celebrity could go to his head. That happens. 

If he dies of cancer, that may actually be a merciful act of divine intervention–to protect him from greater harm, or preserve his reputation intact.

Atheism and immortality

There are atheists who try to make a virtue of necessity by saying mortality is what makes life precious. It's actually immortality that cheapens the value of life.

However, you have secular transhumanists who hope to achieve immortality by digitizing the mind, then uploading the contents into video games. An indestructible simulated paradise. 

If atheists who say mortality is what makes life valuable had a shot at immortality, would they turn it down? Really? Eventually, they might become bored and commit suicide, but would they turn down the initial offer? 

The dove and the flood

In his recent book on Genesis, Iain Provan recycles a number of stock objections to Noah's flood, specially on a global interpretation. I'm not going to respond to most of those objections, in part because I've discussed that issue on multiple occasions, in part because these don't pose the same challenge for the local flood interpretation, and in part because young-earth creationists (e.g. Jonathan Sarfati, Andrew Snelling, Kurt Wise) have propose solutions–which Provan simply ignores. But I'd like to comment on one particular objection, which is somewhat unusual:

At its most extreme, this approach results in a highly literalistic reading of the flood story that leads us into  very problematic areas when it comes to squaring its perceived truth-claims with what is otherwise known (especially nowadays) about reality…If the sea level rose all over the earth as high as the peak of Mount Ararat (c. 16,946 feet), the oceans would have had to triple in volume in the corse of 150 days and then speedily return to normal…And after the floodwaters receded, how did the dove fly down the mountain to find an olive tree (only found at low elevations) and then back up again to the top of the mountain, given that doves are not physically equipped to fly at such altitudes? How did Noah, his family members and the animals make the trek down such a formidable mountain? I. Provan, Discovering Genesis (Eerdmans, 2015), 117-18.

A few issues:

i) I don't know what Provan means by "literalistic". Does he mean the account is stylized? Or does he mean the account is legendary? 

ii) Since I'm not an ornithologist, I can't assess Provan's claim. Sarfati says:

Doves and pigeons have very strong light muscles, around a third of their weight. So they are powerful flyers… J. Sarfati, The Genesis Account (2015), 574.

iii) Be that as it may, the text doesn't say the ark ran aground on Mt. Ararat. Rather, it bottomed out somewhere in that general mountain range:

4 and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen (Gen 8:4-5).

Many of us have seen mountain ranges from above when we flew over them in airplanes. At least in my experience, arial views of mountain ranges frequently show rows of mountains with a trough in-between. Parallel ridges. Small areas may be encircled by the massif. 

I can envision the ark becoming caught within a mountain range. Mountains on all four sides would be higher than the draught of the ark. The ark wouldn't rest on a mountain peak, but in a basin within the massif. Water would drain through slopes. As the waters lowered, the ark lowered until it bottomed out on the floor of the basin. So it wouldn't be at anything like the elevation of Mt Ararat. 

Do the "tops of the mountains" refer to all the mountains the region, or just the cluster that trapped the ark within their well? 

Noah's party and the animals could climb out or climb down the slope or dip, between mountains, which functions like a natural mountain pass. 

I'm not saying that's necessarily correct. I wasn't there. I don't know exactly or even approximately where the ark came to rest. But on the face of it, Provan's objection lacks imagination. Is he really trying to visualize the scene? 

Abraham, Isaac, and extraterrestrials

Atheists, as well as "progressive Christians", commonly attack the binding of Isaac (Gen 22). One challenge is to ask, "What would you do if God ordered you to sacrifice your child?"

I've discussed this before but now I'd like to approach it from a different angle. This is not a uniquely Christian dilemma. It's easy to recast the dilemma in secular terms. 

For instance, many atheists subscribe to ufology. Ufology is basically a secular hobby. Indeed, a secular alternative to religion. The hope that extraterrestrials will parachute in just the nick of time to save the human race from its self-destructive impulses.

Suppose a secular ufologist begins to hear voices. The voice tells him that he must assassinate the president to avert WWIII. Unless he does so, the president will trigger WWIII, causing a thermonuclear exchange that will plunge our planet into a nuclear winter. Only high-ranking government officials will survive in underground cities, as they, or their descendants, wait for surface radiation to drop to hospitable levels. 

Should the ufologist act on what the extraterrestrial voices are telling him? Perhaps an atheist will say the ufologist should ignore the voices. Extraterrestrials aren't really in communication with the ufologist. Rather, hearing voices is symptomatic of psychosis.

Of course, a problem with this response is that a psychotic is in no position to make that evaluation. If he was in his right mind, he wouldn't be hearing voices in the first place. He lacks that objectivity. The psychotic diagnosis has to be made by a second party who is not psychotic. 

Insanity can afflict the religious and irreligious alike. So it's easy to dream of a parallel dilemma for the atheist.

Now let's vary the hypothetical. Suppose that SETI picks up an outer space transmission. This was clearly sent by an extraterrestrial civilization with superior technology. The message tells earthings that if they summarily execute one billion humans, the other six billion humans will be spared, but if they refuse to do so, the human race will be wiped out. 

From a secular standpoint, should we comply with the message? Many atheists espouse consequentialism. Taking the lives of one billion humans to save the lives of six billion humans is morally justifiable according to that ethical calculus. Do we dare to defy the ultimatum of the extraterrestrials, given a credible threat, backed up by their vastly superior technology? 

From a secular standpoint, how is that different, in principle, from obeying Yahweh's command to sacrifice Isaac, or Yahweh's command to mass execute the Canaanites if they refuse to evacuate Palestine? 

"Why are Christians such homophobic bigots?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC_Gk_-_O-I

Coloring book

In substance dualism, I'd say the relation between soul and body is analogous to the relation between nature and nurture. The soul is the foundation of human personality. The source of character traits. Where memories are stored. And so on. 

However, embodied experience has a tremendous conditioning impact on personality. Formative influences during maturation. Mood-altering hormones. Interaction with other humans. The sensible world as a frame of reference.

I don't think a soul is a blank slate. But embodied experience affects how we turn out. Take hypothetical scenarios about the kind of person I'd be if my mother died when I was young, if I was born in a different century, if I was born in a different country or different part of the country. Although I'd have the same core personality, I'd turn out differently if my formative influences were different.  

To take a simplistic illustration, the soul is like a coloring book with line drawings. Innate patterns. The body is like palette which colors the line drawings. 

That segues into the question of why the resurrection is necessary. An idealist would say that since a virtual world is indistinguishable from a physical world, what's the advantage of a physical world? 

i) To begin with, if the physical world is illusory, why does God create a collective psychological experience that mimics a physical world, including the natural limitations of physicality? For instance, we can do things in dreams that we can't do in real life. But if idealism is true, why isn't experience emancipated from what's physically possible–like a dream? 

If everything is mental, and God is starting from scratch, why the apparent physicality of the template? Why not something more surreal?

ii) Many saints die before the age when embodied experience informs the soul. The resurrection gives them a chance to catch up.

The new Jerusalem

I happen to hate big cities, so the last thing I wan ti the afterlife is another one. This means that the New Jerusalem doesn't work for me, and I'll never pueblos an article on Rev 21. I prefer to look forward to the new Maine coming down out of heaven from God…Those, however, who love life in the big city may find inspiration in Rev 21. D. Allison, Night Comes (Eerdmans, 2016), 83.

I share Allison's aversion to big cities, but his statement is strange even so. Admittedly, he's a liberal scholar–albeit independent–but it's odd that a sophisticated exegete would say that.

i) Presumably, he doesn't think John envisioned a modern metropolis like Tokyo, New York, Delhi, Cairo, Los Angeles, Mexico City, &c., with skyscrapers, traffic congestion, mechanical noise, wall to wall glass, asphalt, and concrete. With millions of denizens crammed into sidewalks, apartments, and office buildings. 

ii) Likewise, some smaller towns have handsome period architecture. 

iii) Moreover, John describes the New Jerusalem as a park-like "city" with a treelined river.  

iii) I myself don't think there's a city in outer space, waiting to touch down–like the mother ship in science fiction stories about alien invaders. The New Jerusalem is a literary amalgam of the Eden motif and the Jerusalem motif, not an actual, preexistent metropolis that's hovering in orbit. 

iv) Mind you, it's realistic to suppose that life in the world to come will have rural and urban elements. The saints have memories of life on earth. Life in different centuries. Technological knowhow. So they might combine the best. 

Neo-noir

Atheists sometimes stump for secular humanism–an idealistic version of atheism. However, a more realistic outworking of atheism is represented in neo-noir films like Serpico (1973); The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973); Farewell, My Lovely (1975); The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976); L.A. Confidential (1997); Mulholland Dr (2001), &c. Some characters in these stories are rotten to the core. Others have residual common grace virtues, but they are cynical. They wish they could intervene more often to make the world a better place, but they don't stick their neck out because they know a godless world won't reward heroic virtue. 

Characters in a neo-noir film believe there is no transcendent reality. This is it. Like gerbils who live and die in the confines of the aquarium. Eat, sleep, excrete, and copulate. That's all there is to look forward to. 

An even more authentic depiction of godless existence is Sin City (2005). I've read reviews. I saw a few minutes of the film when it played on TV. That was the cleaned up version. Despite the brilliant cinematography, which reproduces the comic book cityscape of the original, the content was too derange for me to keep watching. 

Angels and ghosts

http://bnonn.com/angels-and-ghosts/

Which Mark Wrote The Second Gospel?

In the recent second edition of his Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017), Richard Bauckham addresses a popular objection to the traditional authorship attribution of the second gospel. Supposedly, the name Mark was common in the world of that day, which makes it more difficult for us to identify which Mark was being cited as the author. After presenting some of the evidence against that argument, Bauckham writes:

"So were there 'innumerable Marks' in the first-century Christian movement? If we exclude Roman citizens who had the name Marcus as their praenomen but would never have been known by this name alone, as the Mark to whom the Gospel is attributed clearly was, then there were probably only a few. Jewish Christians of this name would certainly have been very few. Among Jewish Christian leaders or teachers, such as could have written a Gospel or were likely to have a Gospel attributed to them, there may well have been only one Mark. This evidence about the rarity of the name Marcus among Jews also bears on the question whether the New Testament references are to three, two, or only one Mark. It is very likely that they are to only one." (541)

A post I wrote a couple of years ago discusses some of the evidence that the New Testament is referring to only one Mark. That post also discusses some of the evidence that Markan authorship of the gospel wouldn't have been fabricated. See here on gospel authorship more broadly.

Caught up to meet him

16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord (1 Thes 4:16-17).

This is a highly significant, intriguing, and much-debated eschatological passage. I'll just comment on a few items:

i) On the face of it, v17 uses the imagery of levitation. It's naturally impossible for humans to levitate, but this could be miraculous. Many humans wish they could fly. That's a popular fantasy. We sometimes fly in dreams. And hang-gliders have settled for the next best thing. 

ii) What is meant by the "clouds"? In biblical usage, "cloud" often an idiom for the Shekinah. And that's because the Shekinah had a cloudy appearance (like plasma, dust devils, and fire devils). On that interpretation, Jesus is returning in or with the Shekinah.

iii) Yet the passage speaks of "clouds" in the plural. My guess is that it's a double entendre. The imagery is trading on the connotations of clouds overhead or clouds on the horizon to create a word-picture of Jesus descending from the sky. Obviously, we associate clouds with the sky. But the actual referent is probably the Shekinah, and not ordinary clouds (i.e. a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the atmosphere). It uses natural atmospheric imagery to depict the return of Jesus, but the same word triggers associations with the Shekinah. 

iv) It might be argued that the imagery is figurative. If, for instance, the trumpet in v16 is figurative, then it seems arbitrary to assume the imagery in v17 is literal. 

v) There's the question of whether v16 refers to three different things (command, voice of archangel, trumpet sound) or one thing under three different depictions. The command of Jesus is like the voice of an archangel or like a military trumpet. Implicit similes. 

vi) In principle, Jesus might well be accompanied by angels and archangels. However, I think this particular passage is using the "voice of an archangel" to describe the command of Jesus, and not a separate speaker. 

vii) The choice between literal and figurative might be a false dichotomy inasmuch as there could be a third option: something analogous to a trumpet sound. Something similar will happen. Something functionally equivalent. 

It wouldn't be surprising if the return of Christ is heralded by spectacular sounds as well as spectacular sights, to grab everyone's attention. Consider the literally earsplitting volume of the Krakatoa explosion:

It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”)…The British ship Norham Castle was 40 miles from Krakatoa at the time of the explosion. The ship’s captain wrote in his log, “So violent are the explosions that the ear-drums of over half my crew have been shattered. My last thoughts are with my dear wife. I am convinced that the Day of Judgement has come.”

http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-sound-so-loud-that-it-circled-the-earth-four-times

viii) in Acts 1:9-11, we have an account of the Ascension, from the viewpoint of earthbound observers. And that says the return of Christ will operate in reverse. Normally, it's hermeneutically illicit to use one writer to interpret another writer.  This, however, is more a case of using the underlying event as a frame of reference. That's a reason to view the description in 1 Thes 4:16-17 as more realistic than figurative. Mind you, even eyewitness accounts sometimes use poetic metaphors for vividness. 

John's Gospel and the Inklings

The [Fourth] Gospel is formally anonymous, which means that its author's name does not appear in the text of the work itself. This does not mean, however, that the text is intentionally anonymous, shielding its author's identity from the readers. From its beginning the Gospel speaks in a first person manner identical to other ancient books that were also formally anonymous but not intentionally anonymous (e.g. Lucian's Life of Demonax). For this reason, then, the Gospel was not intended to be formally anonymous, which almost certainly explains the title added to the Gospel sometime after its completion. Quite simply, book "publishing" in the ancient world was entirely different from today. Authors commonly spoke in the first person in a formally anonymous document because their works would have been circulated in the fist instance among friends or acquaintances of the author, who would know the author personally from the oral context in which the work was first read. Knowledge of authorship would would be passed on when copies were made for other (less familiar) readers, and the name would be noted with a brief title on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll. 

No other title was ever used for any of the Gospels in known literature, a remarkable fact which demands that the titles be viewed as early or even original…To suggest a name other than "John" is to disregard the author-designating title affixed to the Gospel from its earliest stage of origin.  

There are several kinds of ancient literary forms which have appendices as a normative feature. This was especially common in legal documents, for which "to label this…an 'appendix' or a 'supplement' is consequently misleading; it was not a merely postscript, dispensable as such, but rather the crucial means by which the business at hand was made legally binding upon its principals." Chapter 21 bears many resemblances to such legal documents, especially 21:24, which assumed the disposition of eyewitness testimony. This makes the subscription a requirement for the witness to be official, certifying the veracity of the report.  

The Beloved Disciple declares himself to be an eyewitness of the things written in this book and therefore to be personally connected to the people and events themselves [21:24]. Although the character called the "Beloved Disciple" did not explicitly appear until chapter 13, he was almost certainly implicitly (i.e., anonymously) present in 1:40 with Andrew, Peter's brother, as one of the two first disciples of Jesus [cf. 146-47]. The placement of the Beloved Disciple as a witness at both the very beginning and the very end of the Gospel creates a technical literary device common in the ancient world called the inclusio of eyewitness testimony. This technique not only makes clear that this disciple fulfilled the requirements of apostolic testimony ("from the beginning you have been with me" [15:27]), but it also serves to solidify the witness as participating in the reliable practices of historiography. Edward Klink, John (Zondervan, 2016), 42-43; 892; 919.

Incidentally, the commentator's distinction between formal and intentional anonymity reminds me of the Inklings. Members of that literary circle (e.g. Tolkien, Lewis, Williams) shared drafts of their literary products with each other. These circulated anonymously, yet the identity of the authors was known to the recipients. 

Clean sweep

I'm a bit puzzled by reaction to Trump firing Comey. I'm not puzzled by the hypocritical reaction on the Left. That's predictable. Rather, I'm puzzled by why some conservative critics are attacking Trump's action.

i) I don't know what Trump's motive was and I really don't care. You can do the right thing for the wrong reason. 

Last year Comey held a press conference in which he systematically explained how Hillary broke the law. He dismantled her lies.

But he then held her to a lower standard than ordinary citizens are held to. He invented a condition (intent) which the statute doesn't require, and used that as an excuse not to recommend prosecution.

Mind you, even if we grant the intent criterion, Hillary's intention was undoubtedly to skirt the law. That was the whole point of the private server evasion. 

Comey's behavior was an example of how those in power protect others in power from the law. 

Moreover, the law in question isn't just some technicality. There are very good reasons for that law:

i) Hillary jeopardized the national security of the USA as well as our allies.

ii) Hillary obstructed the Freedom of Information Act, which is important to ensure a measure of transparency and accountability in gov't.

iii) Arguably, Hillary did this to cover her tracks so that she could solicit bribes as Secretary of State, for the Clinton Foundation.

Comey discredited himself and the FBI. Just another Executive agency politicized and weaponized by the Obama administration. For that reason alone, he richly deserved to be booted out.

I realize he was in a bind. He wanted to keep his job. His superiors were opposed to prosecuting Hillary. But that just goes to show that he's an apparatchik and timeserver. 

In addition, the FBI, during the election, obtained a FISA warrant to surveil the Trump campaign. Once again, the FBI, under Comey, was hopelessly compromised by the politicization and weaponization of Executive agencies during Obama's tenure.

If you wish the FBI to be truly independent, you need to sweep out Obama's cronies and make a fresh start. 

Now, it remains to be seen who will replace Comey. And it remains to be seen how Trump will conduct himself. But on this issue, thus far, I don't object to Trump's action. 

Here's a good article on the subject:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/james-comey-latest-victim-of-the-clintons/article/2622746

Tuggy's triad and the death of God

http://www.proginosko.com/2017/05/tuggys-triad-and-the-death-of-god/

A very present help in trouble

This is a new anecdote I've added to the bottom of a post from 5 years ago:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/07/dreams-and-visions.html

Even more important is what happened when, a few years after my own accident, another drunk driver plowed into the car of one of my dearest friends. Unlike me, she didn't survive. After a few weeks in a coma, she, along with her unborn child, went away. Less than a week after the funeral, however, she came back. I was awakened in the night to behold Barbara standing at the foot of my bed. She said nothing. She just stood there–beautiful, brightly luminous, intensely real. Her transfigured, triumphant presence, which lasted only a few moments, cheered me greatly.

Then, one afternoon, several weeks after that, I was typing in my study, wholly focused on my work. Suddenly I sensed someone else in the room. The presence seemed to be located up, behind, and to my left. I understood immediately, I know not how, that it was Barbara. Unlike the first time, when I saw her and heard nothing, this time I heard her and saw nothing. She insisted that I visit her distraught husband as soon as possible. Overwhelmed by this urgent communication, I immediately picked up the phone. D. Allison, Night Comes,(Eerdmans, 2016), 14.

Vicarious properties

I've been discussing substance dualism with apostate Dale Tuggy. My immediate concern is not with dualism. I'm just using that as analogy for the two-natures of Christ, to expose the fallacy of Tuggy's "inconsistent triad". 

It's entertaining to witness Tuggy's philosophical ineptitude. Take his latest statement:

No, when a human person dies, we don’t only say that. We also think that the human person himself died, and not only his body. This is obvious, and doesn’t need arguing for. Clearly, a theoretical commitment is getting in the way of his seeing this as obvious. That’s a serious danger of theories!

There is only one who died a human death, e.g. when Lincoln died: the man Abraham Lincoln. On dualism, his body is a different thing, if it is a thing. So on dualism, his body did not also die a human death.

http://trinities.org/blog/hays-denies-that-jesus-died/

Let's compare that to the exposition and analysis of a real philosopher:

The dualist believes that human persons have a "dual" nature…The dualist will concede that we frequently make assertions by which we appear to ascribe physical properties to human persons, assertions like, "John weights 90 kilograms" or "Alice is 165 centimeters tall." But according to the dualist, it is not strictly true that John weights 90 kilograms or has any other weight, and it is not strictly true that Alice is 165 centimeters tall or has any other height. John and Alice, rather, possess such properties only vicariously; strictly speaking, it is not they but their bodies that have weights and heights. This does not mean there is anything wrong with saying "John weighs 90 kilograms" in ordinary contexts; this statement is to be understood as a kind of shorthand expression of the assertion that John's body weighs 90 kilograms, just as Alice's statement "I'm carrying 1,400 tons of pig iron" is a shorthand expression of the assertion that the ship of which she is the cargo officer is carrying 1,4000 tons of pig iron. Peter  van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Westview Press, 4th ed., 2015), 225-26. 

By parity of argument, there's nothing logically inconsistent about statement like "the Immortal dies" or "God the might Maker died". "God died" or the "Immortal died" in the vicarious sense that the body of God Incarnate died. That's entirely consonant with the essential immortality of Christ, by virtue of his deity. 

The ghost in the cellphone

Gilbert Ryle is famous for a catchy, quotable phrase he used to caricature Cartesian dualism: "the ghost in the machine". 

The connotation of that metaphor is that if substance dualism is true, the soul is located somewhere in the body. If the soul exists, you ought to be able to find it by poking around inside the body. 

My point isn't to do an exposition of Ryle's philosophy, but to use a different metaphor to illustrate substance dualism. Nowadays, not only do people have cellphones that enable to them to talk to other people, but cellphones can function as miniature TV screens which enable them to see the person they are talking to. 

To take a cliche situation, suppose anthropologists discovered a tribe in the rain forest. The natives have no idea what a cellphone is or how it works. When they see faces and hear voices emanating from the cellphone, they imagine the cellphone took possession of the speaker's soul. His soul is trapped inside that little box. 

But as we know, the speaker isn't actually in the device. Rather, the device is just an interactive medium to project himself. 

That's analogous to the mind-body relation.  

Why I Am an Atheist: A Conversation with Dr. Stephen Law

Jonathan McLatchie recently did a webinar with militant atheist philosopher Stephen Law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Tp1Gn6Gag

Some comments I made about Law's conversation:

In his presentation, Law compared theistic explanations to gremlins. That, however, reduces the discussion to hypothetical entities and hypothetical comparisons. It presumes that God is analogous to gremlins. And that's a diversion from having to study or investigate actual, specific evidence for Christianity in particular. 

Out of curiosity, what literature, if any, has Law read on miracles? For instance, Craig Keener has compiled many case-studies in his two-volume monograph on miracles (Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts). Likewise, Robert Larmer has written two recent books on miracles that contain case studies in the appendices (cf. The Legitimacy of Miracle; Dialogues on Miracle).

How, if at all, does Law propose to address that ostensible evidence for divine action in the world?

Law appealed to the evidential problem of evil as one reason he's an atheist. In particular, he cited human suffering (and animal suffering) on an "industrial scale". 

However, his alternative seems to be that those humans (or animals) would be better off if they never existed in the first place. Better not to live at all then have a short, poor, nasty brutish life. 

After all, in a nicer world, you won't have the same set of people. Different people will be born into a nicer world than would be born into a harsher world. A world with high infant mortality will have a different history than a world with low infant mortality. 

If that's what he means, what's his frame of reference? Is he saying they'd be better off if they never had a chance to live from their perspective or his perspective?

One issue that came up towards the end of the presentation was whether Law can justify objective morality, given atheism. Law said he didn't need to present a secular justification. He could appeal to intuition. He could "feel in his bones" that torturing children for fun is morally wrong. 

One problem with his response is that it's not merely a question of not having a secular justification, but whether atheism (or naturalism) generates undercutters or defeaters for belief in objective morality. And that isn't just a Christian view of atheism. Many atheist thinkers reject moral realism. 

Another problem is that early in the presentation, Law expressed distain for Christians who say they cannot or need not provide arguments for their position. They simply know in their heart that it's true.

But isn't that the same appeal to intuition that Law is resorting to? Why is it legitimate for Law to fall back on intuition rather than argumentation in defense of his belief in secular ethics, but illegitimate for some Christians to fall back on intuition rather than argumentation in defense of their faith? Law seems to be operating with a double standard?

Blake Giunta, who was pressed for time, used the following argument. (He has ten theodicies at his fingertips). He said suffering induces humans to seek God while having it too easy breeds religious apathy and indifference. 

Parenthetically, that might be why Christian miracles are reported more often in Third World countries. For one thing, places like Africa are very hazardous. Worn-torn areas, famine, tropical disease, many dangerous animals, limited access to good medical care. That's an incentive to prayer!

Law's appeal to the argument from evil appears to be circular. At the outset, he said, first of all, that he doesn't think the theistic proofs are good evidence for God's existence. And he said, secondly, that the problem of evil is good evidence against God's existence. 

But towards the end of the presentation, when he was challenged to justify his belief in moral realism from a secular standpoint, he said he didn't need to provide a justification because he'd already ruled out a theistic grounding for ethics, and you don't need to be able to provide an alternative explanation to know that the opposing position is false. 

But the only positive reason he's given for disbelieving in God is the problem of evil. If he excuses his failure to justify moral realism on secular grounds because he's ruled out a theistic alternative, and if his rationale for ruling out the theistic alternative is the problem of evil, then his argument appears to be viciously circular. The existence of evil disproves God, and God's nonexistence relieves him of the onus to show that evil really exists!

To take another stab at Law's apparently circular argument: the positive reason he gives for his belief in God's nonexistence is contingent on the problem of evil. And the reason he gives for why he has no burden to prove moral realism on secular grounds is contingent on having ruled out the existence of God, which is, in turn, contingent on the problem of evil, which is, in turn, contingent on the reality of evil, which is, in turn, contingent on moral realism…

So his positive reason for disbelief in God is dependent on the problem of evil, while his reason for not having to justify moral realism on secular grounds is dependent on God's nonexistence, given the problem of evil. So he's spinning in a circle. 

Q: Why don't you believe in God's existence?

A: The problem of evil.

Q: How does an atheist justify moral realism?

A: It's not incumbent on me to do so because I've ruled out God's existence.

Q: How did you rule out God's existence?

A: The problem of evil.

He hasn't provided any independent reason to establish moral realism. Yet his appeal to the problem of evil presumes moral realism. He says "It's wrong to make people suffer". 

In addition, his argument is a false dichotomy. Even if (ex hypothesi) you can't ground moral realism in God, the logical alternative isn't secular moral realism. The alternative might be nihilism. Indeed, many secular thinkers deny moral realism.

Technically, it's possible for someone who denies moral realism to present the argument from evil. The strategy is to show that Christian theism is internally inconsistent. That the triad of divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, benevolence) is mutually inconsistent.

But when he was questioned on his own position, Law said he inclined to moral realism (although there are days when he has serious doubts). He used the example of torturing children for fun. 

Mind you, there's a price atheists pay if they go that route. Many atheists derive great satisfaction from indulging in moralistic tirades about Biblical theism. Adopting the viewpoint of moral realism merely for the sake of argument deprives them of that satisfaction. 

Generally, atheists want to be able to say that their position is morally superior to Christianity. They have a lot to lose if they ditch moral realism. 

Indeed, if an atheist is a moral nihilist, what's the motivation for attacking Christianity? Why would you can what anyone does or believes? Why the passion?

My point is that it's illogical for someone who denies moral realism to attack Christianity. Even though they think Christianity is false, they don't believe people have a duty to believe what is true and disbelieve what is false. So why are they on a mission to dissuade folks from believing in Christianity? It can't be because they disapprove of Christian ethics, for if they deny moral realism, why would they care?

Hanky-panky

From an Eastern Orthodox perspective. Makes a point about how classical Protestant theology and Eastern Orthodox theology often operate with incommensurable paradigms. You can't just mix-n-match. Towards the end,  makes a point about Hanegraaff's lifestyle:

https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/a-hankadox-intermezzo/

No, Jesus didn't refute OT laws

http://www.therecapitulator.com/no-jesus-did-not-refute-old-testament-laws/

"God didn't say it!"

 If it’s not in the 66 books of the Bible, God didn’t say it. 

– John MacArthur

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/90-323

So MacArthur says "If it’s not in the 66 books of the Bible, God didn’t say it." 

But God didn't say that–MacArthur did! 

Goin' to the dawgs

It's alarming to see the rapidity with which some trends take over. One example is cellphone addiction. But another is the epidemic of dog owners. Especially singles or childless couples. A few random observations:

i) I wonder how many single women with dogs remain single because single guys take one look at an otherwise appealing woman with her one or two or three or four dogs and think to themselves, "Why in heck would I play second fiddle to that?" Does it even occur to some lonely single women that their dogs make them ineligible? That's the first (and last) impression they make on single men. A guy sees a girl out walking her dogs and says to himself, "No thanks!". He automatically strikes a woman with dogs off the list because he's looking for...a woman! He doesn't wish to compete with her dogs for her affection and attention.

Is this a vicious cycle? She has dogs because she's single and lonely, but she's single and lonely because she has dogs–which is a turnoff for single men. Unwittingly, she's sending out signals that deter eligible men from ever considering her. I don't know how common that is, precisely because it's one of those unspoken motivations. 

I'm not talking about what's fair, or single men with dogs. I just discussing priorities. Given a choice, would they rather be single with dogs or married without dogs? 

ii) Some of this is driven by a misanthropic philosophy of radical environmentalism and antinatalism. You have secular progressives who think it's morally wrong to have children. That it's virtuous to "adopt" pets rather than having kids. They think they're "saving the planet".

iii) I'm struck by how many people take their dogs with them when they drive somewhere. How many dogs like to sit in a parked car? That's no fun for the dog. 

iv) Unless you at least have a house with a fenced in frontyard or backyard, should you own a big dog? Is it fair to a medium to large dog to be stuck inside a condo or apartment most of the day? 

I once saw a video clip of restless dogs at home while the owner was at work. No doubt the dogs are waiting for the owner to come home. But why? Is it because they miss the owner? Is it because they're lonely? Or is it because they can't stand to be pent up inside that stuffy house, apartment, or condo all day long? 

I don't deny that dogs are eager to be reunited with the owner. But that's not the only reason or even the primary reason they are restless when the owner is away. Good sized dogs hate to be cooped up like that. They want to roam free.

It maybe different with insecure toy dogs. 

v) I've resided in both the frostbelt and the sunbelt. I've seen people with huskies and malamutes in the sunbelt, walking their dog on a hot summer day. Isn't there something cruel about having that dog breed in the sunbelt? It has a fur coat designed for Alaskan winters, not tropical summers. 

Fur babies

https://thefederalist.com/2017/05/09/pets-instead-kids-considered-psychiatric-disorder/