Brian Insapient of the Irrational Response Squad Refuses to Put His Money Where His Mouth Is

The Rational Response Squad (RRS) is a group of amateur atheologians who, like thousands of other people, have a basement radio show.

They have recently risen in popularity due to the forming of "The Blasphemy Challenge."

The sophomoric attempts at ridicule, which is the substance of the RRS, have not been enough to cause me to worry that the intellectual credibility of Christianity is threatened.

Their modus operandi has been to bushwhack rather ignorant theists on their show, mock them, and fire off myriad questions their way without giving them an equal amount of time to respond.

As they've grown in popularity, I wondered where the cry from the intellectually respectable atheists were. A few, like atheist Jim Lazarus, have called them out on their ridiculous behavior and attitude. See here, here, here, and here.

Other than the above, I haven't really seen many atheists rightly taking this embarrassing wart off of the posterior of atheism.

Theists and atheists alike should clean up their own backyard. No one can doubt that T-blog has been just as hard on erroneous versions of theism, and over-reaching theists, as we have on atheists. We try to clean up our backyard as well. Since atheists have chosen to let the rust covered beaters sit in their lawn for this long, some in the Blogosphere feel the need to enact Eminent Domain, appropriating the atheist's land for the purposes of removing blight. After the blight is removed, we'll sell the land back to the highest atheist bidder. Of course if the atheists chose to clean up their own property, take out their own trash, then there might not be a need for the invoking of Eminent Domain.

And so I'll embark on a cleaning mission over the next few posts, taking out the atheist's trash for them. After all, I'm just trying to be a good neighbor.

The first thing I'd like to point out, before launching my first salvo, is that one of the co-founders of the RRS, Brian Insapeint, was recently interviewed on Nightline.

Insapient was overconfidently arrogant. He somewhat reminded me of a high school bully who causes fear in the weak due to running in bigger numbers and running a bigger mouth.

I had heard his show once before where he and his crew attacked a youth group leader, who obviously was not prepared for having the type of discussion the RRS had in mind. The tactics: mock, ridicule, bushwhack, pick on the weak. Just like a bully.

Well, in the RRS's interview on Nightline Brian Insapient issued a debate challenge to all theists. He said, "If they want to come to the table, we can present my evidence, and they can present theirs, and we'll see whose is based on faith and whose is based on fact." He said this about "the millions of people who have believed in God."

And so I emailed Insapient and challenged him to a public debate. A moderated one where his bully tactics and microphone would be taken away. His friends removed. His security blanket gone. Like all bullies, he declined. Apparently he will only debate theists on his show, under his rules. And so I rightly pointed out that what he meant on Nightline was not what he said above, but what he meant was: "If someone wants to come on the our show and have 4 or 5 individuals laugh at him, not let him speak, and not be allowed to thoroughly analyze a position, then we'll show him that our arguments are based on fact and his are based on faith."

I had also pointed out that one of his basic positions, i.e., that theism is irrational because there are no reasons for believing in God, suffered from some serious difficulties. I had asked him what he thought about this particular analysis of his position,

You had said on nightline that a person's belief in God was irrational because it wasn't based on evidence or reason. Is your position that a person's S's belief B is rational R iff S has propositional evidence E for B? Let's apply this to your belief. Call this belief (B is R for S iff S has E for B) B1. Now, does B1 have E for it? If so, then for your new belief (that B1 has E), call it B2, to be R you'd need E* for B2. Do you have that? If you believe that you do, then we have B3. For B3 to be R we'd need E**, do you have that, Brain "Sapient?" In case you haven't noticed, we can do this ad infinitum.

So, Brian, is your objection to rational belief in God itself irrational, according to your own standards? If so, Brian, is your atheology a mind virus? Do you teach irrational things to children, Brian? Should you be locked up, Brian? Do we need a Rational Response Squad for the Rational Response Squad? Call it, the Cerebral Answer-backer Battalion.

At this point he backed down from what he had said on the show and told me "You know they have an editing room, right?"

This seemed odd. Why would Insapient tell me that? Especially since he said here that, "Beliefs with insufficient evidence deserve to be treated as they are, no different than a man claiming that 2+2= twelveteen"

So why during our email exchange would he try to say that he didn't mean what he said, that they had edited it to make him look like he said something that he didn't say, but nevertheless we see him espousing the exact same evidentialism elsewhere?

Is it possibly because without his gang to back him up, without control of the microphone, and without an easy target, he's exposed like every other bully?

Brian Insapient likes to pretend that theists are irrational idiots, that "theism is a mind virus," and that he could mop the floor with any theist walking. He even said he would put his own Christian mother in a mental institution! If you had a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being the most benighted theistic apologist, and 10 being the cream of the crop, I'm at about a 3 or 4. Yet Insapient would be shown to be an amateur, back-woods hay seed atheologian against myself. What would happen with him in the ring with a Plantinga? A Frame? A Helm? A Swinburne? A Byl? A Wise? A Moreland? A Sudduth? An Anderson? Et al?

Insapient dropped out of the above dialog, citing that his "lawyer" told him not to have any further communication.

Look, Insapient can continue to put forth this facade, but I think we should call a spade a spade. Are atheists really willing to go down with this ship?

The Dark Side

From Michael Sudduth:

Steve,

I concur with your point about the authenticity of psychic phenomena.

Anyone who believes that all psychic phenomena can be adequately explained by fraud is clearly mistaken. D.D. Home's physical mediumship, cannot be adequately explained in this manner. Nor can the mental mediumship of Piper and Leonard.

On the former, see Stephen Braude, Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science. On the latter, see Alan Gauld, Mediumship and Survival. David Ray Griffin's book Philosophy, Parapsychology, and Spirituality presents a pretty good argument against the fraud hypothesis. For a more recent examination of potentially fraudulent vs. authentic cases, see Braude's forthcoming book, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations (University of Chicago). I've read some of the chapter drafts. It's a good contribution to Braude's already extensive collection of contributions to parapsychological inquiry and survival of death.

Let me add, though, that I don't accept the "demonic hypothesis" as adequate to explain all the cases either. I find this approach, the common Christian one, to be largely based on a misunderstanding of what psychic phenomena are. Indeed, depending on whether psi-functioning can be naturalized or not, attributing such events to demonic agency would be akin to attributing airflight to necromancy. Christians need to develop more intellectual responsibility, especially since they tend to demand it of others with respect to understanding Christianity.

Since I have recently discussed this extensively on the H.H. Price Society group, interested parties may read my posts there, including my own encounters with the paranormal, which will eventually find their way into a more developed written form.

See especially these posts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

On my view, there are many cases of psychic phenomena that cannot be explained by the usual suspects (e.g., fraud, malobservation) or the demonic agency hypothesis. These phenomena must provide evidence for human cognitive functioning and causal powers beyond what can
presently be explained by scientific models of the world OR they provide evidence of the post-postmortem survival of some aspect of the human person. The latter would of course entail the former, but since the converse isn't true, it's best to distinguish between these two hypotheses.

I'm presently teaching a course that goes into considerable detail about the concept and evidences of survival. In addition to various handouts, there is an archive of some of the best on-line materials on the question of survival and related issues.

Michael

What would you do in my shoes?

Some militant unbelievers resort to the suffering of children as their trump card in the argument from evil. The objection goes something like this: “If you were in a position to intervene in order to prevent a child from suffering, what would you do? If you would intervene, and God would not, then what does this say about God? Put another way, if you were God, what would you do in the same situation?”

There are several issues to sort out here.

1.The unbeliever is appealing to our instinctual protectiveness regarding the young.

Remember, though, that according to naturalistic evolution, we have been programmed to feel this way about children (especially our own) by a mindless, amoral process.

It’s no different than the way a crocodile feels about her young—assuming that a crocodile has any feelings. She’s just as protective of her young as any human mother—maybe more so (in the age of abortion).

And, from a secular standpoint, the fate of a human child has no more objective moral significance than the fate of a newly-hatched crocodile.

We can’t help feeling protective about our young, but unlike the crocodile, we are aware of our evolutionary programming, and we are therefore aware of the fact that our parental instincts are the product of a mindless, amoral process.

Hence, the militant unbeliever is bilking the moral and emotional resonance of a spectacle which, if he’s true to his own beliefs, is a genetic illusion. Our genes have tricked us into feeling this way to perpetuate the species. But, of course, there’s no moral imperative to perpetuate the species. Natural selection is a blind, indifferent watchmaker.

2.Why do unbelievers raise an objection that is inconsistent with their worldview? For a couple of reasons:

i) Some of them are simply unscrupulous. Their hatred of God is such that they will use any club to bash the Christian faith, even if they regard the argument as intellectually disreputable.

ii) Deep down, the unbeliever is conflicted. Deep down, he does believe in moral absolutes. He cannot escape the fact that he is living in God’s universe. So he constantly reverts to a moralistic position that is out of whack with his official creed.

It’s too tiring to play a role 24/7. You tend to forget the role from time to time and slip back into the real man behind the mask. You don’t have the energy to maintain your stage persona day and night, week after week.

3.The argument that if I were you, what would I do in your situation can quickly degenerate into a very unethical appeal.

For example, there’s a reason why we don’t think it’s a good idea for a judge to be related to the accused. If he’s related to the accused, he’s tempted to give his relative special treatment.

The judge is no longer impartial. He has a conflict of interest. That’s why a judge ought to recuse himself in such cases.

4.Suppose we were to use the atheistic argument in a judicial case. Your son shoots my son. Neither father is in a position to exact justice. I feel differently about my son than your son, and vice versa.

This is why such case should be turned over to a second party who has no personal investment in the outcome.

Now, suppose the atheist were to say, “ If it were your son, and if you were the judge, what would you do?”

Well, it’s quite possible, in this situation, that my personal feelings would, indeed, affect my judgment.

And it would also make a difference which father was the judge. The father of the shooter might be very lenient, while the father of the victim might be very harsh.

Is this an argument for why the judge should identify with the next-of-kin? No, to the contrary, this is an argument for why the judge should be a disinterested party.

5.Take another case. Suppose my brother is a junkie. The duty of a policeman, if he catches my brother in the act, is to arrest him. Is it also my duty to turn him in to the authorities? Not necessarily.

There are times when a family member does have a moral obligation to the common good. But maybe my brother’s addiction is mainly self-destructive, or harmful to his immediate family.

My concern is for my brother’s welfare, while the lawmaker’s concern is for the social welfare. What he’s doing is wrong. But it’s a family matter.

Suppose we were to ask the policemen, “What would you do if he were your brother?”

Once again, in a situation like that the policeman might try to cover for his own brother. But should that be public policy? Do we think that policemen should make exceptions for their own next-of-kin, and if they do so, that they should exempt everyone else’s next-of-kin as well? The result would be the complete abrogation of law-and-order.

6. Or, to take one more example, supposed I’m driving along and I see a car on the side of the road. I pull over and it turns out that Sophia Loren is in driver’s seat. Her car has broken down and she needs a lift.

Where she wants me to take her is way out of the way. But because she’s Sophia Loren, I’ll do a favor for her that I wouldn’t necessary do for just anyone.

Is that unfair? Maybe. Do I care? No.

Suppose an atheist were to ask, “If you were God, would you do her any special favors?”

Well, if I were God, I wouldn’t feel the same way about her. She wouldn’t have the same effect on me. Indeed, she wouldn’t have any effect on me. The face, the figure, the charisma would make no impact on God. The fact that she could charm just about anything out of the average man doesn’t mean she either could or should be able to charm anything out of God.

7.The unbeliever is attempting to trap the believer into a dilemma: “If you wouldn’t do what God did, then you’re a hypocrite!”

Yet, as we’ve seen, this pressure tactic is poised on the unethical assumption that that everyone has the same social role, that every has the same obligations to everyone else; that if I wouldn’t invariably do what you would in the same situation, then I’m a hypocrite.

But our duties are not interchangeable. Everyone should not always do the same thing in the same situation. Even if the circumstances are identical, the social obligations may vary.

A policeman or a judge does not have the same responsibilities as the family of the accused.

This doesn’t address every aspect of the question. But it does address the facile assumption that I either would or should do whatever God would do if I were God, or God were in my situation.

For there are many counterexamples wherein that superficially plausible appeal breaks down, and becomes a license for moral anarchy.

Energumen

ANONYMOUS SAID:

Hey Steve, this touches slightly on something that I've had a lot of questions on. Are unclean spirits still operating in the same manner that they did during the first century? I realize that some of the people in the time of Jesus had mental ailments that they were set free from, but unclean spirits were cast out of others. Do unclean spirits still possess people today? Why or why not? Is there anything in the Bible that can clear this up one way or the other? Thanks, Bro!

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/02/out-of-eden.html#comments

A good place to start is the article by Vern Poythress:

http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles/1995Territorial.htm

The short answer to your question is, yes, I believe that spiritual warfare, including the occult, is a fixture of the church age.

The early church had a category of persons called energumen. This included demoniacs, but it was a broader classification. It also included individuals who, while they were not evidently possessed, did exhibit paranormal powers of one sort or another.

I think we need to draw a number of distinctions:

1.There are demoniacs. This is the most extreme case of occultic bondage.

2. Beyond that extreme are individuals who exhibit paranormal powers. This isn’t necessarily diabolical.

It’s possible for God to give a Christian a prophetic dream or premonition of death or deathbed vision, &c.

3.Then there’s the question of whether a Christian can be subject to occultic influence. I’m talking about something less extreme than possession. There are a number of ways in which this might possibly happen:

4.An individual may have dabbled in the occult before he came to Christ. Even as a Christian, there is some lingering influence from his exposure to the dark side.

5.A Christian may have a family background in which parents or grandparents or other close relatives were trafficking with the dark side, and the child inherits their paranormal abilities. This would be a mediumistic form of occultic empowerment or oppression.

6.A Christian may unwittingly live in a haunted house—or a missionary may live in an area permeated by the occult.

Where the source of the problem is external (#6), the simplest solution, and perhaps the only solution, is to leave the area.

Where the influence is internal (#4-5), Kurt Koch and Martyn Lloyd-Jones have helpful advice (see below).

Since the evidence is anecdotal, I don’t think we can be dogmatic one way or the other. But experience can be a genuine source of knowledge.

For Further Reading:

The Haunting of Bishop Pike: A Christian View of the Other Side (Tyndale House 1971)
by Merrill Frederick Unger

Demon Possession: Papers Presented at the University of Notre Dame (Bethany House 1975)
by John Montgomery (Editor)

Occult Bondage and Deliverance (Kregel 2006)
by Kurt E. Koch

Occult ABC (Kregel 1978)
by Kurt E. Koch

Christian Counseling and Occultism (Kregel 1972)
by Kurt E. Koch

Healing and the Scriptures (T. Nelson 1988)
by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption (Free Press 2005)
by M. Scott Peck

An Exorcist Tells His Story (Ignatius Press 1999)
by Gabriele Amorth (Author), Nicoletta V. Mackenzie

An Exorcist: More Stories (Ignatius Press 2002)
by Gabriel Amorth (Author), Nicoletta V. Mackenzie

Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans (HarperSanFrancisco 1992)
by Malachi Martin

http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2006/07/carl-jung-beware.html

Why is there something instead of nothing?

john w. loftus said...

"I don't see any reason for God to create anything...anything at all."

Loftus has leveled this objection to David Wood's position. And he also brought it up in his book, Why I Rejected Christianity:

"Why did God create us rather than not create us at all?...This God needed nothing, and they must stress here that God needed NOTHING, otherwise there are problems with the Christian understanding of God needing anything. So why did God create us? Why ruin this prefect existence he previously had?...Why do this at all, if life was already perfect for him" (85-86).

As I've pointed out before, the problem with this objection is that the goodness of the world doesn't add to the goodness of God, since God is not the world. And, by the same token, the badness of the world doesn't subtract from the goodness of God since, once again, God is not the world, or vice versa.

The world does not affect God. It doesn't ruin *his* perfect existence. Life doesn't cease to be perfect *for God* if there is evil in the world.

At the same time, the creation of the world does bring good to some of God's creatures. It is good *for them.*

It is not good for all of them. But those who lose out, justly suffer, and they suffer for a greater good.

One of Loftus' tactics, when his objections have been answered, is to ignore the answers and dust off the same objections in a different forum. Like a crooked businessman who, once he acquires a bad reputation, moves to a new town, Loftus recycles the same discredited objections by finding a new audience, hoping that his reputation won't precede him.

Now, one of the problems with trying to address this objection is that the question is equivocal. By asking what *reason* God may have had, this could either mean:

1. What was God's motive or rationale for creating the world?

Or:

2. What was God's justification or warrant for creating the world?

Loftus seems to be asking #1, but he's really asking #2.

He's trading on #2, and tacitly reading that back onto #1.

That is to say, the unspoken assumption behind his question is that the existence of the world needs to be justified. That there's some antecedent presumption against it.

Not what reason did God have to make the world, but what right did he have?

This ties into the argument from evil, as Loftus's views it. He acts as if making the world were an injustice against its creatures. They were wronged by merely existing.

That would make some sense if he were asking about the existence of a fallen world. But he is conflating two different questions:

1. What reason did God have for making *any* world?

And:

2. What reason did God have for making a *fallen* world?

Now, his objection to #1 is, as we have seen, muddle-headed.

The only antecedent presumption against #1 would be his argument about the creation of *any* world somehow subtracting for the optimal state of God's solitary existence.

But if that object is muddle-headed, then there is no presumption to overcome. No need to *justify* the existence of creation qua creation.

The only direction in which one could find such a negative presumption would be in the creation of a fallen world.

However, the mere existence of evil is insufficient to launch the argument from evil. What is needed, among other things, is the identification of *gratuitous* evil.

And there are only two possible grounds for establishing the existence of gratuitous evil:

1. An external argument from evil, predicated on the unbeliever's value-system;

Or:

2. An internal argument from evil, predicated on the believer's value-system.

A necessary condition to meet in the case #1 is a version of moral realism consistent with secularism.

Another necessary condition to meet the case of #1 is the existence of beings who are capable of suffering pain or injustice.

Conversely, a necessary condition to meet the case of #2 is to show that certain evils are gratuitous in the light of Christian theology *as a whole.*

Loftus has consistently failed on both counts.

He thinks that he can generate a logical dilemma by simply abutting three premises: (i) God is good; (ii) God is sovereign; (iii) there is evil.

But that is a grossly simplistic syllogism because it leaves out of account many other premises in Christian theology which relieve the logical and evidential problem of evil, internally considered.

Loftus generates an artificial dilemma by artificially isolating and limiting the relevant premises to just three in all.

But such an arbitrarily restrictive version of the internal argument from evil is a straw man argument.

The case for physicalism

The primary direct argument for physicalism is the correlation between brain states and mental states. To take a few examples:

It has become possible in recent years to use magnetic and positron scanning devices to observe what is happening in different parts of the brain while people are doing various mental tasks. For example, brain scans have identified the regions of the brain involved in mental imagery and word interpretation. Additional evidence about brain functioning is gathered by observing the performance of people whose brains have been damaged in identifiable ways. A stroke, for example, in a part of the brain dedicated to language can produce deficits such as the inability to utter sentences.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/

Let’s extend this inference to a couple of analogous cases:

1. Using a polygraph, we can tell when a person is probably lying based on certain *physiological* (rather than neurological) correlations.

By parity of argument, wouldn't this imply the identity of mental states with physiological states like blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity?

But if this inference is obviously absurd, then doesn't that undercut the parallel argument from brain scans, and so on?

2. Likewise, a good poker player can predict, in large part, what a bad poker player will do, or what hand he has, by being able to *read* the player's body language.

By parity of argument, wouldn't this imply the identity of mental states with body language? But if this inference is obviously absurd...

So it seems to me that the argument for physicalism from the correlation between brain states and mental states either proves too much or too little.

Irreformable Mormonism

Mormonism is undergoing a stereotypical identity crisis. I say “stereotypical,” because this is something it shares in common with a number of other sects, cults, and denominations.

Many religious movements begin on the margins of society. At first, their fringe status is self-reinforcing. By being persecuted or ostracized, this only serves to confirm and bolster their sense of in-group identity and solidarity.

But over time, they may become the victims of their own success. Or they simply grow weary of being on the outside, looking in.

As long as they operated as a closed subculture, they could maintain their own mythology. But when their kids begin to attend mainstream institutions, the in-house view of history doesn’t hold up.

This is the crisis facing Mormonism. When the intellectual cream studies abroad, under someone like Kenneth Kitchen or I. H. Marshall, the Mormon scriptures, the Mormon view of church history, and the Mormon exegesis of the Bible can’t survive the scrutiny. The result is a lot of soul-search and retrofitting.

Now, some religious movements are capable of internal reform. In principle, Seventh Day Adventism could reform itself to become an evangelical denomination. And that’s because, apart from its aberrant deviations, its theology isn’t all that different from, say, 19C Methodism.

I’m not saying that’s going to happen. Unfortunately, it seems to be headed in the direction of open theism. So maybe the window of opportunity is gone, assuming it was ever open a crack.

But there is a difference between Seventh Day Adventism and, say, Mormonism or the Watchtower.

Cults like Mormonism are irreformable because there’s nothing to work with. It’s rotten from the top down.

People like Owen act as if it’s possible to graft something more orthodox or evangelical onto Mormonism.

But you can’t do that with Mormonism, for Mormonism is thoroughly heretical. It’s a homegrown brand of paganism.

There’s no foundation to build on. Pruning won’t do. You’d have to cut it down root and branch. Completely excise the writings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young at al. and start from the ground up.

Or, to put it another way, you wouldn’t attempt to start from scratch. You would simply ditch Mormonism and either attach yourself to some preexisting evangelical tradition or mix-and-match one evangelical tradition with another.

Mormonism itself is a lost cause. There’s nothing to salvage. You might as well attempt to graft Evangelicalism onto Scientology. Don’t seek the living among the dead.

Mormons, to have any hope of salvation, must make a clean break with their religious traditions. Their spiritual heritage is a yellow brick road to hell.

Watchdogs

There’s a dogfight going on between the iMonk and Fide-O.

Jason reproduced part of an essay by Spencer to document his charge that Spencer has a liberal view of Scripture.

http://fide-o.blogspot.com/2007/02/spencers-essay-vs-sprouls-message.html

Apparently, Spencer then emailed Scott, demanding either an apology or evbidence to back up the allegation:

http://fide-o.blogspot.com/2007/02/imonk-says-he-is-misrepresented-again.html

Spencer’s reaction is illogical, but predictable.

The documentation was provided in the very post he takes exception to. Jason simply quoted Spencer verbatim. What further documentation do the Fide-O boys need to provide? This wasn’t a roundabout inference from some oblique statement of Spencer’s. His essay speaks for itself.

The essay articulates boilerplate liberalism. It could have been penned by Fosdick.

To say that Spencer has a liberal view of Scripture is not, in the first instance, a value-judgment, but a simple statement of fact.

Why does he get on the defensive? It’s his stated position which was put on public display. Either he stands by his own words or he doesn’t. Does he believe what he said in his essay?

By contrast, the email is pretty orthodox. There's no obvious way of harmonizing these two statements.

The only way to reconcile the two statements is to read the email with a set of mental reservations supplied by the essay. Spencer is like a politician who makes contradictory policy statements depending on the time, place, and audience.

He is capable of making perfectly orthodox statements. But these have to be caveated by his perfectly heterodox statements.

I think Spencer's problem is twofold:

1.He’s an emotional reactionary.

In this respect he belongs to a stereotypical character type. There are men and women who feel that they’ve been burned by the church, or by some Christians they know.

And they react by turning their back on the Christian faith or—which amounts to the same thing—liberalizing their theology.

And some of these people have a legitimate grievance. There are people have been mistreated by individuals in the church or by members of the Christian community.

But, of course, you can only become disillusioned if you harbor illusions in the first place. If you begin with false expectations about the church, your expectations are bound to be dashed sooner or later.

The best remedy is preventive medicine. Cultivate a realistic view of the church.

I’d also add that some people merely pretend to be mistreated by the Christian community. In fact, the church was right, and they were wrong.

But due to their need for self-justification, they retaliate by attacking the church and all it stands for.

2.This, in turn, can degenerate into a vicious cycle. In the course of defending themselves, they make increasingly unorthodox claims.

Ironically, their reaction only serves to confirm the original charge. They themselves pile up ever more supporting material to substantiate the accusation that got them so riled up in the first place.

When they are accused of making a left turn, they react by moving further to the left.
They try to show that their accusers are in the wrong, but they do so by admitting the original charge. The accusers were correct in what they alleged, but their beliefs are mistaken.

If we can take him at his word, then it’s clear from what he wrote that Spencer has turned a corner on what he believes about Scripture (unless this is what he always believed, but kept mum about it in the past). He has given a series of reasons for his belief.

There is no way for him to back down without retracting his arguments. On the face of it, he's crossed a line of no return.

The Gospel Of The Beloved Disciple

"Most scholars agree that vv. 24 and 25 [of John 21] belong together, and when they are read together it is impossible to read them as referring only to chapter 21. They are plainly a conclusion to the whole Gospel and 'these things' must be the deeds of Jesus recounted throughout the Gospel. It also seems inadequate to take the sense in which the Beloved Disciple wrote them to be only that he wrote a source used by the author. Later we shall show that 20:30-31 and 21:24-25 form together a carefully composed two-stage conclusion to the Gospel. This requires that 'written' has the same sense in both 20:30-31 and 21:24. In both cases it refers to the writing of 'this book,' not of a source. John 21:24 means that the Beloved Disciple composed the Gospel, whether or not he wielded the pen. He could have received assistance of various kinds in the process of composition or his work could have been edited by someone else, but the statement requires that he was substantially responsible both for the content and for the words of the book....that 'we' [of John 1:16] seems to be deliberately distinguished from the 'we' of v. 14 in that the former is no mere 'we' but 'we all.' There is a distinction here between eyewitness testimony ('we have seen his glory') and the experience of all Christians, who are not all eyewitnesses but who have all received grace from the fullness of grace in Jesus Christ....The preceding context of this statement [in John 1:14] reads: 'The Word became flesh and lived among us...' Whether the 'us' in this case are humanity in general or the eyewitnesses in particular, there is undoubted reference here to the physical presence of the Word in the midst of physical humanity. In this context, to 'see his glory' must surely be to recognize his divine glory in this physical presence....This understanding of [John] 1:14 means that the basis of the Gospel in eyewitness testimony is already indicated in the Prologue, but in such a way that empirical observation and theological perception are inextricable. It is the testimony of those - or of one - who saw the glory of God in the flesh of Jesus Christ, something that neither Jesus' unbelieving contemporaries nor later Christian believers did." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 362, 381, 404)

Around the World in Eighty Daze

It looks like Paul Owen has gone from being a Mormon to being…to being…well, it doesn’t appear that he’s gone anywhere except for taking the long way round to end up right back at square one. He’s racked up a lot of mileage just to come full circle. He could have saved himself a lot of gasoline by sparing himself the roundtrip from Salt Lake City to Salt Lake City.

Jesus on the outside, Moroni on the inside. Welcome to the Church of the Latter Day Repaint.

Isn’t catholicity wonderful?

http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?p=941

Mark's Gospel Of Peter

"We have seen that Mark's Gospel has the highest frequency of reference to Peter among the Gospels, and that it uses the inclusio of eyewitness testimony to indicate that Peter was its main eyewitness source....In a neglected article published in 1925, Cuthbert Turner argued that a characteristic aspect of Mark's narrative composition shows that the story is told from the perspective of a member of the Twelve and that this must be because Mark closely reproduces the way Peter told the story. Major English Gospels scholars of the mid-twentieth century were impressed by the evidence: Thomas Manson accepted the argument but proposed that it be used to distinguish Petrine and non-Petrine sources in Mark, while Vincent Taylor, though partly critical, thought that 'it would be fair to claim that these usages suggest that Mark stands nearer to primitive testimony than Matthew or Luke.' I am not aware that the evidence adduced by Turner has been subsequently discussed, but it certainly deserves reconsideration. Turner drew attention to twenty-one passages in Mark in which a plural verb (or more than one plural verb), without an explicit subject, is used to describe the movements of Jesus and his disciples, followed immediately by a singular verb or pronoun referring to Jesus alone....Matthew and Luke have a clear tendency to prefer a singular verb to Mark's plurals encompassing both Jesus and the disciples. Moreover, this same tendency is also, very strikingly, reflected in the variant readings of Mark. In no less than eleven of Mark's twenty-one instances of this narrative feature, there is a variant reading (more or less well supported) that offers a singular verb in place of the plural....Turner thought the Markan third-person plurals in these passages were modifications of a first-person plural, used by an eyewitness 'to whom the plural came natural as being himself an actor in the events he relates.' If 'we' is substituted for 'they' in these passages, they read more naturally, since a distinction between first and third-person is then added to the difference between plural and singular. Turner argued that one passage, awkwardly expressed in Mark's Greek, makes better sense if an underlying 'we' is reconstructed. This is 1:29, where the 'they' can scarcely include more people than Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, since these four are so far the only disciples (cf. 1:21): [quoting Cuthbert Turner] In one passage in particular, i.29, 'they left the synagogue and came into the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John', the hypothesis that the third person plural of Mark represents a first person plural of Peter makes what as it stands is a curiously awkward phrase into a phrase which is quite easy and coherent. 'We left the synagogue and came into our house with our fellow-disciples James and John. My mother-in-law was in bed with fever, and he is told about her....' [end quote of Cuthbert Turner]...Turner was right to see this narrative feature as adopting the 'point of view' of the group of disciples or of someone within the group. If we are to construe this point of view consistently through all these passages, then it should be that of one of the inner group of disciples - Peter, James, and John - since in some cases it is only they and Jesus who are the understood subject of the plural verb....Peter is both the first and the last disciple to be named in the Gospel, encompassing the whole scope of Jesus' ministry, while Peter is also the most often named disciple in Mark, as well as being named proportionately more often in Mark than in the other Gospels. It is also relevant to observe that Mark first uses the plural-to-singular narrative devise on the first and last occasions Jesus goes anywhere with a group of disciples (1:21, 14:32)....Several literary features combine to give readers/hearers Peter's 'point of view' (internal focalization), usually spatial and visual or auditory, sometimes also psychological. It is this literary construction of the Petrine perspective that has so far gone almost unnoticed in Markan scholarship. Not only has Mark carefully constructed the Petrine perspective; he has also integrated it into his overall concerns and aims in the Gospel so that it serves Mark's dominant focus on the identity of Jesus and the nature of discipleship. Thus, in deliberately preserving the perspective of his main eyewitness source through much of the Gospel, Mark is no less a real author creating his own Gospel out of the traditions he had from Peter (as well as, probably, some others). The perspective is that of Peter among the disciples, whether the inner group of three or more generally the Twelve. The perspective is Peter's 'we' perspective, the perspective of Peter qua member of the group of disciples, rather than an 'I' perspective, that of an individual relating to Jesus without reference to the others....it is Peter's teaching, not his autobiographical reminiscence, that lies behind Mark's Gospel. The Gospel reflects the way Peter, as an apostle commissioned to communicate the gospel of salvation, conveyed the body of eyewitness traditions that he and other members of the Twelve had officially formulated and promulgated....The author of Mark seems to have been bilingual, competent in both Greek and Aramaic, a characteristic that suggests a Palestinian, and most plausibly a Jerusalem Jew. Martin Hengel points to the many Aramaic terms that have been preserved in the Gospel: 'I do not know any other work in Greek which has so many Aramaic or Hebrew words and formulae in so narrow a space.' More recently Maurice Casey has argued that substantial parts, at least, of this Gospel were translated from Aramaic." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 155-159, 161, 179-180, 239)

Do Modern People Have Room for the Wrath of God?

Do Modern People Have Room for the Wrath of God? by Vern Poythress

Names In The Gospels And Acts

"Thus the names of Palestinian Jews in the Gospels and Acts coincide very closely with the names of the general population of Jewish Palestine in this period, but not to the names of Jews in the Diaspora. In this light it becomes very unlikely that the names in the Gospels are late accretions to the traditions. Outside Palestine the appropriate names simply could not have been chosen. Even within Palestine, it would be very surprising if random accretions of names to this or that tradition would fit the actual pattern of names in the general population....Onomastics (the study of names) is a significant resource for assessing the origins of Gospel traditions. The evidence in this chapter shows that the relative frequency of the various personal names in the Gospels corresponds well to the relative frequency in the full database of three thousand individual instances of names in the Palestinian Jewish sources of the period. This correspondence is very unlikely to have resulted from addition of names to the traditions, even within Palestinian Jewish Christianity, and could not possibly have resulted from the addition of names to the traditions outside Jewish Palestine, since the pattern of Jewish name usage in the Diaspora was very different. The usages of the Gospels also correspond closely to the variety of ways in which persons bearing the same very popular names could be distinguished in Palestinian Jewish usage. Again these features of the New Testament data would be difficult to explain as the result of random invention of names within Palestinian Jewish Christianity and impossible to explain as the result of such invention outside Jewish Palestine. All the evidence indicates the general authenticity of the personal names in the Gospels." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 73-74, 84)

Out of Eden

I’ve been asked to answer the question, why has no one discovered the tree or life or the cherubim who were stationed at the entrance to the garden of Eden (Gen 3:24)?

There are many interrelated reasons why this is so.

1.We need to locate the garden in time and space. The narrator situates the garden somewhere in Mesopotamia (Gen 2:10-14). And, indeed, a river valley would be a logical place for God to plant a garden, since the river system would supply a natural irrigation system.

But where in Mesopotamia? Upper or lower Mesopotamia? The natural landmarks are a bit difficult to pin down at this distance in time.

Rivers can change courses or dry out over time. Natural resources can become depleted. Place names can change.

Some scholars locate Eden in lower Mesopotamia. Indeed, they place in what is today the Persian Gulf.

It that event we couldn’t find Eden because Eden is under water!

The alternative location would be somewhere around modern Armenia.

2.On a traditional dating scheme, Eden was planted about 6000 years ago.

For an explanation of how that ballpark figure is calculated, see here:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/biblical-chronology.html

In the 19C, W. H. Green famously argued that the genealogies have missing links. See his “Primeval Chronology”:

http://www.geocities.com/athens/thebes/7755/PrimevalChronology.html

If you find his exegetical argument plausible or persuasive, that would extend the timeline to some degree, although—even if you think the genealogies have gaps—it would violate the narrative viewpoint to turn Adam into a caveman living in Lascaux or Kenya 200,000 years ago.

OECs also extend the timeline by challenging the diurnal sequence of Gen 1 in various ways. That’s not my own position, but I’ll take a rain check on that debate for now. For some counterarguments, see here:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/days-of-creation.html

What all can happen in thousands of years?

3.Since Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, it went untended. What happens to a garden when it’s left untended? It becomes overgrown. Reverts to a state of nature.

Eden would eventually blend into the surrounding wilderness, like those ancient, Mesoamerican ghost towns which were reclaimed by the forest—only Eden had no permanent structures.

4.In a fallen world, nothing lives forever. Trees die. Even redwoods and bristlecones have a finite lifespan.

5.Parts of the Middle East have become desiccated over the millennia. A forest can turn into a desert.

6.Then there’s whatever impact the flood would have had. How much of the flora could survive submersion for a year?

The loss of groundcover could also mean the loss of topsoil when the floodwaters began to recede.

And if Eden was located in the highlands of Armenia, it might also be subject to considerable erosion.

Eyewitness Memory

"There is no evidence that the Pharisees abstained from writing their 'traditions of the fathers.' There is even less reason to suppose that an insistence on oral transmission alone characterized other Jewish groups at the time of Jesus, such as the (highly literary) Qumran community. However, again it is not true that Gerhardsson entirely neglected the role of written materials: he postulated that, just as private notebooks were in fact used by the rabbis and their pupils, so writing, as an aid to memory, could have been used in early Christian circles prior to the Gospels....In a predominantly oral society, not only do people deliberately remember but also teachers formulate their teachings so as to make them easily memorable. It has frequently been observed that Jesus' teaching in its typically Synoptic forms has many features that facilitate remembering. The aphorisms are typically terse and incisive, the narrative parables have a clear and relatively simple plot outline. Even in Greek translation, the only form in which we have them, the sayings of Jesus are recognizably poetic, especially employing parallelism, and many have posited Aramaic originals rich in alliteration, assonance, rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay. These teaching formulations were certainly not created by Jesus ad hoc, in the course of his teaching, but were carefully crafted, designed as concise encapsulations of his teaching that his hearers could take away, remember, ponder, and live by. We cannot suppose that Jesus' oral teaching consisted entirely of such sayings as these. Jesus must have preached much more discursively, but offered these aphorisms and parables as brief but thought-provoking summations of his teaching for his hearers to jot down in their mental notebooks for frequent future recall. (Obviously, therefore, it was these memorable summations that survived, and when the writers of the Synoptic Gospels wished to represent the discursive teaching of Jesus they mostly had to use collections of these sayings.) This kind of encapsulation of teaching in carefully crafted aphorisms to be remembered was the teaching style of the Jewish wisdom teacher. As Rainer Riesner puts it, 'Even the form of the sayings of Jesus included in itself an imperative to remember them.' Jesus' hearers would readily recognize this and would apply to memorable sayings the deliberate practices of committing to memory that they would know were expected....Such notebooks [as ancient rabbis used] were in quite widespread use in the ancient world (2 Tim 4:13 refers to parchment notebooks Paul carried on his travels). It seems more probable than not that early Christians used them....The eyewitnesses who remembered the events of the history of Jesus were remembering inherently very memorable events, unusual events that would have impressed themselves on the memory, events of key significance for those who remembered them, landmark or life-changing events for them in many cases, and their memories would have been reinforced and stabilized by frequent rehearsal, beginning soon after the event. They did not need to remember - and the Gospels rarely record - merely peripheral aspects of the scene or the event, the aspects of recollective memory that are least reliable....We may conclude that the memories of eyewitnesses of the history of Jesus score highly by the criteria for likely reliability that have been established by the psychological study of recollective memory....[quoting Gillian Cohen] Research has tended to emphasize the errors that occur in everyday memory functions. The picture that emerges is of an error-prone system. This emphasis is partly an artefact of research methodology. In experiments it is usually more informative to set task difficulty at a level where people make errors so that the nature of the errors and the conditions that provoke them can be identified....People do make plenty of naturally occurring errors in ordinary life situations, but, arguably, the methodology has produced a somewhat distorted view of memory efficiency. In daily life, memory successes are the norm and memory failures are the exception. People also exhibit remarkable feats of remembering faces and voices from the remote past, and foreign-language vocabulary and childhood experiences over a lifetime. As well as such examples of retention over very long periods, people can retain large amounts of information over shorter periods, as when they prepare for examinations, and sometimes, as in the case of expert knowledge, they acquire a large amount of information and retain it for an indefinitely long time. Considering how grossly it is overloaded, memory in the real world proves remarkably efficient and resilient. [end quote of Gillian Cohen]" (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 252, 282, 288, 346, 357)

Leaning on a weak reed

Many people don’t believe the Bible because the Bible is soooo unscientific. Here’s a revealing window on the world of contemporary physics:

**********************************************

Stringing physics along
Review: February 2007

The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next_Lee Smolin_2006 Houghton Mifflin 416pp £25.00/$26.00hb

"Hypotheses non fingo," wrote Isaac Newton 300 years ago in the second edition of his Principia Mathematica. It has been variously translated as "I do not make hypotheses" or "I do not feign hypotheses". Instead, Newton established laws of nature such as his theory of universal gravitation – simple, economical equations of broad explanatory power able to account for diverse phenomena both known and yet to be observed. His natural philosophy became the dominant paradigm of the mechanical world-view and, more generally, what we call the scientific method.

In the last few decades, however, physical theory has drifted away from the professional norms advocated by Newton and other enlightenment philosophers. A vast outpouring of hypotheses has occurred under the umbrella of what is widely called string theory. But string theory is not really a "theory" at all – at least not in the strict sense that scientists generally use the term. It is instead a dense, weedy thicket of hypotheses and conjectures badly in need of pruning.

That pruning, however, can come only from observation and experiment, to which string theory (a phrase I will grudgingly continue using) is largely inaccessible. String theory was invented in the 1970s in the wake of the Standard Model of particle physics. Encouraged by the success of gauge theories of the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces, theorists tried to extend similar ideas to energy and distance scales that are orders of magnitude beyond what can be readily observed or measured. The normal, healthy intercourse between theory and experiment – which had led to the Standard Model – has broken down, and fundamental physics now finds itself in a state of crisis.

Lee Smolin, a theorist at the Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada, has written a thoughtful, provocative book that squarely addresses these problems and advocates a solution in bold new approaches to physics. A principal aim of The Trouble with Physics is to re-engage theory with what actually occurs, or may occur, in the realm of observable phenomena. The book also addresses such core questions as: Why do quarks, leptons and gauge bosons have the diverse masses they possess? What are dark matter and dark energy? How can quantum mechanics and general relativity be combined into a single theory?

String theory originally shared most of these goals, but it got caught up in its own mathematical beauty. Like Narcissus, it increasingly began to contemplate its own reflection, to the exclusion of observable phenomena. To evade comparisons with dross reality, for instance, string theorists have invoked an unseen "metaverse" of parallel universes corresponding to the "landscape" of 10500 possible solutions that might exist. The fact that our universe has spawned galaxies, stars, planets and intelligent life is explained away by the anthropic principle. Of late, a few leading theorists have even begun to suggest a radical new philosophy of science, rejecting Newton, in which hypotheses no longer require observable evidence in order to be accepted as valid theories. To a hardened experimenter like me, this is blasphemy.

So it is refreshing to hear from a theorist – one who was deeply involved with string theory and championed it in his previous book, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity – that all is not well in this closeted realm. Smolin argues from the outset that viable hypotheses must lead to observable consequences by which they can be tested and judged. That is, they have to be falsifiable. Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, could later account for the orbit of Halley's Comet – not just those of the Moon and planets for which it was originally formulated. But string theory by its very nature does not allow for such probing, according to Smolin, and therefore it must be considered as an unprovable conjecture.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/review/20/2/1/1

The Real Reason Blogger Has Problems

All of us using Blogger know the drill. We sign in to the dashboard...oops, Blogger is down yet again; or we go visit a blog to read, and, oops, Blogger is down...again.

The intrepid reporters at Tominthebox have uncovered the real reason.

See: http://tominthebox.blogspot.com/2007/02/texe-marrs-tominthebox-brought-blogger.html

I must disagree, however, the real reason is that the Devil Priest James White is discussing textual criticism on the DL! Yes, that's right, all them 'xandrian manuscripts is whut's making God call down His judgment on us all!

John W. Montgomery on The "New" Atheism

John Montgomery was on Issues, Etc. yesterday (Feb. 5) dealing with The New Atheists, responding to audio clips, etc:

Part 1
Part 2

HT: Jeff Downs

The Great Divorce

Ebon Muse has posted a book review of The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis.

HT: Victor Reppert.

Let me begin by saying that, at an artistic level, I think The Great Divorce is one of Lewis's lesser efforts.

Lewis was both a man of ideas and a man of imagination. When the two come together, the fusion is ideal. But sometimes the ideas overpower the story.

I also think that there are some serious deficiencies in his theology. And his treatment of hell does disclose some tensions in his theological outlook. That said, let's consider Ebon's objections:

"Regrettably, Lewis has fallen into the same trap many proselytizing Christians fall into when they attempt to speak on behalf of nonbelievers: the black-and-white, us-against-the-world view of fundamentalism that recognizes no similarities between those who believe and those who do not, the mindset that will not for a second entertain the idea that anyone who believes differently might do so for honest or intellectually convincing (even if only to them) reasons, or that such people can ever be moral. In the pages of this book, all born-again Christians are portrayed as noble, kind-hearted, selfless and honest, while all nonbelievers are portrayed as evil, selfish and insincere. Well-poisoning, ad hominem attacks, and other fallacious tactics are frequently deployed, and the sincerity of non-Christians' motives is constantly questioned and slandered. Few converts will be won by such a distrustful attitude. Until Christian proselytizers recognize that those who disagree with them are still human beings with their own thoughts, feelings and honestly held opinions, no meaningful dialogue between the two groups will ever be possible."

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/books/greatdivorce.html

There are a couple of problems with this criticism:

1. One problem with this characterization is the way it overlooks the well-known fact that Lewis had been on both sides of this fence. He knew atheism from the inside out. So this is not a caricature.

One might also compare Lewis with a couple of his contemporaries, such as T. S. Eliot, both before his conversion (The Waste Land; The Hollow Men) and afterwards (Ash Wednesday; the Four Quartets). Or the early novels of Hemingway, reflecting postwar disillusionment.

2. Another problem is the way Ebon ignores the fact that this is a depiction of the afterlife. So it does accentuate the extremes of virtue and vice. Believers become their best selves while unbelievers become their worst selves.

It isn't meant to be true to life here and now. In the afterlife, the mixed motives and moral ambiguities are gone.

Moving along:

"I would also point out one further injustice of Lewis' conception: there is no real punishment in his Hell. Even the damned who were truly evil during life, those who deserve to be there as much as anyone does, are not made to pay for their deeds in any meaningful way - they are not made to see the wrongness of what they did."

But how does this square with Ebon's other accusations?

"As well, it might be argued that Lewis' Christianity itself - its gloomy and stifling claims about universal depravity and the inevitable damnation of the majority of humankind, its cruel and vengeful God."

"In essence, he is saying, the good people in Heaven should not be troubled by the suffering and misery of the damned."

"It further reinforces the facts that any god who would create Hell would be a monster."

Ebon can't seem to make up his mind. On the one hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned suffer no real punishment. They don't get what they deserve.

On the other hand, he objects that, in Lewis' depiction of hell, the damned endure so much misery and suffering that only a cruel, vengeful, and monstrous God would condemn people to hell.

So which is it?

Another problem, which is all too typical of those who oppose the doctrine of hell, is a traditional conception of hell which owes more to Dante, Hieronymous Bosch, Jonathan Edwards, and horrific B-movies than it does to the actual teaching of Scripture.

The opponent of hell has inherited a literary and artistic tradition of hell, and what he spends his time attacking is this extrascriptural tradition rather than the scriptural depiction.

We need to take a few paces back an exegete Scripture, making due allowance for a degree of figurative imagery.

On the one hand, I think that sound exegesis rules out universalism, annihilationism, and postmortem evangelism.

And hell is certainly a place of punishment, where retributive justice reigns supreme.

On the other hand, once you bracket the picturesque metaphors, the Bible doesn't have a whole lot to say about how justice is exacted on the damned.

This has been filled in over the centuries by literary license and artistic imagination. But let's not confuse that extrascriptural overlay with the core teaching of Scripture.

Finally, Ebon wraps up his attack on this hortatory note:

"What is the solution? Shall we dream up a universalist afterlife where all human beings, perhaps after undergoing a punishment commensurate with the harm they caused to others during life, will be admitted to an eternity of happiness? There is nothing stopping us from inventing such pleasant fantasies, but the problem is that all afterlife scenarios suffer alike from the same lack of confirming evidence. At best, such beliefs inspire complacency in the face of the world's troubles; at worst, they encourage people to throw away what may be the only life they will ever have in futile pursuit of a mirage. Rather than waiting for Heaven to come to us, we should seek to create it ourselves, and make this world a place where hopes of an afterlife where all injustices will be put right are unnecessary. We can only hope that when humanity finally matures, both the pleasing daydreams and the dark nightmares of theism will finally be set aside."

This is boilerplate humanism. And it suffers from two or three problems:

1. It disregards the many arguments for the truth of Christianity.

2. Ironically, it substitutes a secular millennialism for scriptural eschatology.

What is the source of all the world's injustices? Us. Human beings.

That is why human beings can never roll up their shirtsleeves and put an end to injustice. That's like asking the Gambinos to crack down on organized crime. The source of the problem cannot be the source of the solution.

In the end, it's Ebon Muse who pursues a utopian mirage. And that's been tried before.

3. Notice how angered and offended he is at Lewis' rather tame novella. Clearly Lewis hit a raw nerve. Cut too close to the bone of Ebon's insecurities.

In The Great Divorce, Lewis is, to some degree, the anti-Macdonald, opposing the universalism of his literary mentor.

Yet he is also the anti-Dante. The Great Divorce is the anti-Inferno. Lewis is trying to take the sting out of hell. Remove the stigma. Make hell more morally, emotionally, and intellectually respectable to modern sensibilities.

But even his kinder, gentler vision of hell is too threatening to Ebon Muse. Ebon fears the very thing he denies. Denies it because he fears it.

Eyewitness Testimony In Ancient Sources

"The ancient historians - such as Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus, and Tacitus - were convinced that true history could be written only while events were still within living memory, and they valued as their sources the oral reports of direct experience of the events by involved participants in them. Ideally, the historian himself should have been a participant in the events he narrates - as, for example, Xenophon, Thucydides, and Josephus were - but, since he could not have been at all the events he recounts or in all the places he describes, the historian had also to rely on eyewitnesses whose living voices he could hear and whom he could question himself...Of course, not all historians lived up to these ideals, and most employed oral traditions and written sources at least to supplement their own knowledge of the events and the reports of other eyewitnesses. But the standards set by Thucydides and Polybius were historiographic best practice, to which other historians aspired or at least paid lip-service. Good historians were highly critical of those who relied largely on written sources. That some historians pretended to firsthand knowledge they did not really have is backhanded support for the acknowledged necessity of eyewitness testimony in historiography....What mattered to Papias, as a collector and would-be recorder of Gospel traditions, was that there were eyewitnesses, some still around, and access to them through brief and verifiable channels of named informants. It is natural to suppose that those who were writing Gospels (our canonical Gospels) at the time of which Papias speaks would have gone about their task similarly, as indeed the preface to Luke's Gospel confirms. For the purpose of recording Gospel traditions in writing, Evangelists would have gone either to eyewitnesses or to the most reliable sources that had direct personal links with the eyewitnesses. Collective tradition as such would not have been the preferred source....In the present chapter we have shown that three of the Gospels - those of Mark, Luke, and John - make use of the historiographic principle that the most authoritative eyewitness is one who was present at the events narrated from their beginning to their end and can therefore vouch for the overall shape of the story as well as for specific key events....these three Gospels use the literary device we have called the inclusio of eyewitness testimony. This is a convention also deployed in two later Greek biographies, by Lucian and Porphyry, which may lend further weight to the identification of the inclusio of eyewitness testimony in three of the Gospels....Thus, contrary to first impressions, with which most Gospels scholars have been content, the Gospels do have their own literary ways of indicating their eyewitness sources. If it be asked why these are not more obvious and explicit in our eyes, we should note that most ancient readers or hearers of these works, unlike scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, would have expected them to have eyewitness sources, and that those readers or hearers to whom the identity of the eyewitnesses was important would have been alert to the indications the Gospels actually provide....Historians in antiquity did not name their eyewitness sources as a matter of course, but in specific cases they did...In their close relationship to eyewitness testimony the Gospels conform to the best practice of ancient historiography." (Richard Bauckham, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2006], pp. 8-9, 34, 146-147, n. 35 on p. 304, 310)