From Christmas to Easter

Historically, Christmas has captured the Christian imagination, and even the popular imagination, in a way that Easter never caught on. Although there's some nice Easter music, Easter hasn't inspired composers and hymnodists nearly as much as Christmas. Why is that?

i) Probably a variety of reasons. Nostalgia. We associate Christmas with childhood. It takes us back to childhood. If we had a happy childhood, Christmas benefits from those wistful associations. Moreover, Christmas may be a part of what made it a happy childhood. Of even if you had an unhappy childhood, Christmas might have been a bright exception.

Likewise, the idea of God born into the world as a baby can clearly resonant with children. In time of high infant mortality, when children watched their siblings buried, Easter might be resonant, too–if they understood the theology. 

ii) The subliminal power of elemental symbolism may be another reason. A Christmas Eve service is typically held after dark. Traditionally, the sanctuary is ablaze with candlelight. That conveys the emblematic message of light appearing in darkness. 

Which corresponds to the original event. Jesus was born at night (Lk 2:8), heralded by a luminous angel (Lk 2:9). Likewise, although the visit of the Magi is conflated with the birth of Jesus in Christian iconography and folklore, that also apparently happened at night, when the Star of Bethlehem was visible (Mt 2:9-11). 

So we associate Christmas with the symbolism of light appearing in darkness. By contrast, dawn is the natural symbol of the Resurrection, which is why many churches have a sunrise service on Easter. 

And that, too, corresponds to the original event. Jesus rose from the dead in the wee hours of the morning. The empty tomb was discovered around dawn. 

The relevance is that if you attend an Easter service, no matter how edifying the music or preaching, once you leave church it's hard to maintain an Easter mindset. A fallen world is more like Christmas Eve than Easter. More like flickering candlelight at night than the eternal dawn.

In this life we don't experience what Easter represents. So it's more abstract. The closest we come to tasting the Easter message is a funeral service rather than an Easter service. The hope of future reunion in the flesh with our dearly departed. The hope of Christmas lies on this side of the grave while the hope of Easter lies on the other side of the grave. Christmas signals the journey's commencement, and Easter the destination. 

In a sense, the position of Christians in relation to Easter is analogous to the position of OT Jews in relation to Christmas. Yes, the first Easter lies in the past, but what Easter points to–the resurrection of the just–lies ahead. 

It takes more effort to maintain an Easter outlook. That's something you have to work at. I think Christmas comes more naturally. It begins where we begin while Easter ends where we will end. 

Why is postmortem salvation false?

Why doesn't God save anyone after they die? Isn't death an arbitrary cuff-off point? No second chance just because you're dead?

The answer depends on unspoken assumptions behind the question. In the case of Calvinism, the traditional position isn't based, in the first instance, on starting with a theological principle, then drawing an inference. Rather, it's based on what Scripture indicates about the fate of the dead. In many places, Scripture indicates that at the moment of death, the dying individual is either heavenbound or hellbound, and the trajectory they were already on at the moment of death continues in the same direction into the afterlife. Calvinism simply accepts that revelation.

However, another way of viewing the issue is the point at which a person's salvation or damnation is settled. From a Reformed standpoint, one reason there's no postmortem salvation is because their eternal destiny was never unsettled. It's not as if their eternal destiny was unsettled during their lifetime, while the moment of locks in a particular outcome. Rather, there's a sense in which that was settled before they ever existed. It's not as if their ultimate fate is still indeterminate after they die, so that the final outcome remains open-ended. Rather, the plot was written ahead of time. 

If God intends to save someone, he can save them before they die. He can save everyone he intends to save prior to death. There's no logjam at the moment of death, that must be broken after death. That was all sorted out in advance.   

In freewill theism, by contrast, the problem is the opposite. Why is their destined ever settled, once and for all time? According to inclusivism, you're not necessarily heavenbound or hellbound at the moment of death. Even if you die an unbeliever, you weren't on one pathway or the other at the moment of death. You had no set direction in this life. You had no set direction at the time of death. It was open-ended heading into death.

But that presents a dilemma for freewill theism. Even if God can save you in the afterlife, what makes that stick? Why can't you lose your salvation in the afterlife? 

Sophisticated freewill theists allow for will-setting, where prior libertarian choices in the past may fix the direction of our future choices. But that means your damnation may already be cemented well before you die rather than when you die–much less after you die.

The cult of the dead

Protestant England was particularly troubled after the war [WWI] was over, because most of its very Protestant churches were unable to permit prayers fro the dead that so many bereaved families would have liked to offer. Spiritualism, with its promise of renewed contact with the departed briefly flourished because of this, prompting Rudyard Kipling to write his poem "En-Dor," warning the bereaved that they were being cruelly manipulated for gain. P. Hitchens, The Rage Against God (Zondervan), 117. 

The cult of the dead is widespread in paganism. Necromancy is a common expression. And this remains popular with mourners who attend a séance in the desperate hope of contacting a departed loved one. A way to exploit people in crisis. 

There are different paradigms for the cult of the dead. In the West, Catholicism is the best known. That includes prayers for the dead. On that paradigm, your eternal destiny is fixed at the moment of death, but prayers can expedite the passage from Purgatory to heaven. Prayers for the dead are only availing for souls in Purgatory. You must die in a state of grace. If you die in mortal sin, you're out of luck. That's an exclusivist paradigm, although modern Catholicism is increasingly inclusivist. When traditional Protestant theology forbids prayers for the dead, that's the specific context. 

Then you have inclusivism in freewill theism, which may include postmortem salvation. On that view, you're not heavebound or hellbound at the moment of death. Your eternal destiny is indeterminate at the moment of death. That will be settled after you die. This is driven by one or more theological assumptions. Primarily, freewill theism's belief that everyone should have an equal opportunity to be saved, yet in this life, spiritual opportunities are highly inequitable, so postmortem salvation compensates for disparities in this life. It's also a way to reconcile inclusivism with the Gospel demand that indexes salvation to faith in Christ. If that's not possible in this life, you get a second chance in the afterlife. 

Another paradigm extrapolates from the principle of retroactive prayer. This can be combined with exclusivism. On this view, prayers for the dead don't change the decedent's postmortem condition. Rather, if availing, they affect his spiritual trajectory before he died. 

The basic idea is that God's relation to time is different from the supplicant. It isn't always necessary to pray before the event, as if God must wait to find out what we pray for, then act after the fact. If God is outside of time, or God knows the future, then God can set the answer to prayer in motion before we pray. That's consistent with exclusivism, but fundamentally different from the traditional Catholic paradigm. If you think about it, many prayers require the chain of events to be underway prior to prayer for the prayer to be answerable. On this view, prayers for the dead are just a special case of that general principle. The decedent's eternal destiny is fixed at the moment of death, yet postmortem prayers may retroactively affect his final destiny prior to death.  

I've discussed this before. Now I'd like to quote from a recent article that provides some additional argumentation: William M. Webb, "Petitionary Prayer for the Dead and the Boethian Concept of a Timeless God," International Philosophical Quarterly 59/1 (2019), 65-76. 

I disagree with Webb's characterization of God's viewpoint as a timeless present. I regard God as strictly timeless. But his argument doesn't turn on that nuance. 

The Fakers

1. I recently read The Fakers: Exploding the Myths of the Supernatural (Fleming Revell 1980), by Dan Korem and Paul Meier. 

It's similar to secular debunking books except that it was written by two Christians. At the time, Korem was a magician while Meier is a big name in Christian counseling. It has a foreword by Josh McDowell.  

I used to own one or more books by Meier. (I may still have them in a box somewhere.) I was bothered by his cookie-cutter approach. As I recall, he has a classification system adapted from depth psychology, and he pigeonholes people according to that formulaic taxonomy. He also has a rather mechanical view abnormal psychology, like there's a recipe book. 

In this book, Meier frequently appeals to his extensive professional experience with patients ("thousands of patients"). However, the book was published in 1980. I assume the manuscript was submitted for publication no later than 1979. Meier graduated from Duke University in 1975. So wasn't his professional experience pretty limited at the time of writing?

I'm also somewhat dubious about his coauthor. More recently, Korem produced this profiling system:

https://medium.com/@dvsdv_55178/new-releases-the-art-of-profiling-reading-people-right-the-first-time-by-dan-korem-237828f06949

That looks really flaky to me. It raises the specter of one charlatan denouncing other charlatans. 

2. One aim of the book is to debunk popular candidates for the paranormal like dowsing, the pendulum, Ouija board, automatic writing, table tilting/rapping, firewalking, psychic surgery, necromancy, and fortune-telling (e.g. psychics, cartomancy). 

i) I'm happy to stipulate that some of this is flimflam. If I were making a case for the paranormal, I wouldn't cite some of those as evidence.

ii) However, the authors fail to distinguish between necromancy and apparitions of the dead. There's a difference between initiating contact with the dead and the dead initiating contact. I think there's credible evidence for grief apparitions and crisis apparitions. That doesn't involve a medium.

iii) I think the authors miss the point about the Ouija board. The question at issue isn't so much if that's a way to discover the future but whether people who play with Ouija boards sometimes open a door to the dark side which they can't close. 

iv) Although fortune-telling in the pop culture is bunk, that doesn't mean there's no evidence for precognition. 

v) Psychic surgery might well be a good candidate for sleight of hand. However, I find the studies of Sidney Greenfield on occult healing intriguing, so I don't rule it out tout court:

https://www.concordia.ca/content/dam/artsci/research/polanyi/docs/conference-2014-papers/Greenfield%20Sydney%20Montreal%202014.pdf

3. One of their targets is the Lutheran exorcist Kurt Koch. The allegation is that Koch was hoodwinked because he's unfamiliar with how magicians fool viewers. I think there's some validity to that criticism. If someone like Koch had training as a magician, he'd be better equipped to spot the tricks of the trade. Some candidates for the paranormal may well be legerdemain. 

However, the authors only interact with a handful of Koch's voluminous case studies. That's hardly representative. Moreover, Koch is by no means the only source of information on the paranormal and the occult, although he was a very prominent figure at the time of writing. 

4. The authors lean on the work of debunkers like Milbourne Christopher. However, he was a member of CSICOP, founded by Paul Kurtz. That's an organization of militant atheists committed to naturalism. They rule out the paranormal and supernatural a priori because they think the physical universe is all there is, and that's a closed system. Another example is D. H. Rawcliffe. 

This doesn't mean secular debunkers can't expose charlatans. It's a target rich environment. 

5. The authors are skittish on demonic possession. They affirm it in principle, but are dismissive in practice. However, I've read psychiatrists who refer some of their patients to exorcists, after ruling out natural causes. Meier's experience isn't representative. 

6. A basic problem with the book is a double standard, where they accept biblical reports without question, but default to naturalistic explanations for extrabiblical reports about similar phenomena. When it comes to extrabiblical reports, they explain that away by appeal to coincidence, chicanery, the law of large numbers, psychosomatic illness. But that's an artificial dichotomy which smacks of special pleading. It's the same way secular debunkers automatically discount all healing miracles, answered prayers, premonitory dreams, &c.

In the case of Meier, no one is disputing that some people experience hallucinations. Those are easy to call. The real test are hard cases which resist or defy naturalistic explanations. 

Defining “Social Justice”

I’ve watched most of the videos from the recent G3 conference, but this one, “Defining Social Justice” by Dr. Voddie Baucham was clearly the best. “I do not think [that phrase, ‘social justice’] means what you think it means”, he says. “The biggest problem with the terminology ‘social justice’ is that it doesn’t mean what we think it means”.



“Those who have decided to go ahead and use the terminology, they want first for the terminology to be understood according to their [own] intentions”.

He unpacks the term in a variety of ways.

“The biggest problem with the term ‘social justice’”, he said, “is that there is a ‘social justice’ ‘movement’ and that ‘movement’ has a ‘mission’.” It is a mission that is not consonant with Biblical Christianity.

He cites this article from Kevin DeYoung: Is Social Justice a Gospel Issue? -- in which DeYoung clearly seems to miss the boat on what he is talking about.

The primary division, according to Dr. Baucham, is whether “justice” is being intended at an individual level (wherein God Himself works for justice for individuals) or for “groups” (and this is where the modifier “justice” comes into play – in the sense that “social” justice requires an arbiter – usually the state – to provide “justice” not for individuals, but for aggrieved “groups” (in the Marxist “oppressor/oppressed” paradigm).

The larger point is, we need to understand what our political opponents are talking about, specifically in the form of the language they use. Because those individuals who ought to be on our side, unwittingly find themselves advocating things that they normally would not advocate, if it were the case that they actually knew that they were using what I’ll call here, pre-loaded terminology.

As an analogy for this kind of confusion, one of the most frequently confused terms, I think, involves the various uses of “begging the question”. In a world that has some intelligent interactions with philosophy, “begging the question” is a technical term that means “petitio principii”, essentially using the premises of an argument to define its conclusion. However, at a more popular level, many people use that phrase in the sense that what has come to mean “raises a question” or “invites a question to be asked”. But for philosophers and those speaking in the philosophical sense, it decidedly does not mean that.

In the case of the term “social justice”, its usage by Christians is problematic, because, first, God demands justice. Injustice is sin. So if ‘social justice’ is truly justice, then disagreement is sin.

But that is not the case at all. As Dr. Baucham points out, the “social justice” movement is not about Biblical, Godly justice.

In short, the mission of the “social justice” movement sees its mission as one to facilitate “state distribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their right to social and economic equality”

So as it is used on the left, the “social justice movement” is about societal (governmental) redistribution of virtually everything in society – not only goods and services, but all kinds of “advantages and resources”, including such things as access to education (through “affirmative action” programs), “reparations” for “slavery”, even such intangibles as prestige, ideology (weighted through “intersectionality” to provide advantages to those who can claim the most “oppression” in terms of the number of “oppressed groups” that they can claim membership in) and on and on.

So for “the political left”, the phrase “social justice” connotes their own use of the term with all the “Critical Theory” espoused by the “Frankfurt School”, otherwise known for its “Cultural Marxism” and the “Intersectionality” that goes along with it.

When Christians ask “is social justice a Gospel issue”, the phrase “social justice” does not imply actual justice. It is a “technical term”, a “code word” or even, say, a “dog whistle” for something far more well-defined and far more insidious.

Neil Shenvi has provided some helpful quotes from leading thinkers on the political left, illustrating how and why this is so.

We must not be afraid to confront our political opponents “on their own terms” and “in their own terms”. But we must also not be afraid to call a thing what it is, to say what it really is.

What is faith?

In Christian theology, faith is normally considered to be a necessary condition of salvation. I've discussed how, in Reformed theology, regeneration is more fundamental than faith. Regeneration is the source of faith (although faith also requires a mental object). 

One component of faith is belief. But that's ambiguous. Epistemologists distinguish between occurrent belief and dispositional belief. We aren't conscious of everything we know or believe. In that respect, belief is very similar to memory. It's available. On tap. Occurrent beliefs come and go but dispositional belief is relatively constant–although some beliefs undergo change. Even at a dispositional level, you don't believe all the same things throughout life. 

In that respect, belief has a hypothetical dimension. In part a matter of how you'd think and respond in case you found yourself in a particular situation. The situation brings outlook out to the fore. 

So, for instance, does a Christian cease to be a believer when he sleeps? He may have some occurrent beliefs in his dreams, but generally, his beliefs, including his Christian beliefs, are unconscious or subconscious when he sleeps. 

And even when he's awake, he isn't continuously aware of his Christian beliefs. More often, his Christian beliefs lie behind some of his choices and actions rather than in the forefront. They exert a subconscious influence.

This distinctions have some possible bearing on the nature of exclusivism. Insofar as salvation is contingent on orthodox beliefs, that generally operates at the dispositional level rather than occurrently. 

Overwhelming evidence for evolution

In this post I'll interact with Darrel Falk's chapter on "Overwhelming Evidence" for evolution in The Fool and the Heretic (Zondervan 2019). Falk is a leading propagandist for theistic evolution. 

It's now time to return to the question of just how solid the evidence for evolution is. In my narrative, I gave one clear example of evolutionary theory leading to a prediction  [about] animals intermediate between fish and four-legged land animals (135).

I understand how that's consistent with evolution, but how do intermediate forms provide evidence for evolution? How is that distinguishable from animals with hybrid features because it reflects the ecological zone in which they live (e.g. amphibians)?

Rocks that are greater than one billion years old have never revealed a fossil of a multicellular plant or animal…But there is a progression as we move through time to examine rocks that are younger and younger. Fish first appear in rocks of about 500 million years…Amphibians appear beginning in rocks of about 370 million years…Reptiles appear a little later (about 320 million years) and mammals (230) million years) a little later still…The first primates are not found in the fossil record until rocks dated at 55 million years ago…thousands of hominid fossils have now been found, none are found in rocks older than about five million years (pp136-7).

i) What's the point of contrast? I see how that might be a problem for young-earth creationism, although YEC can appeal to mature creation or Omphalism. 

ii) However, I don't see how that's a problem for old-earth creationism. To my knowledge, OEC takes the position that God makes natural kinds ex nihilo, but makes them at different times, phasing them into natural history. The fact that organisms appear at different stages in natural history is consistent with OEC.  

iii) Moreover, that's not just a face-saving explanation to harmonize the natural record with Genesis. Rather, they say the evidence supports OEC. As a matter of fact, organisms with new body plans appear in the fossil record with no evolutionary precursors. 

Rock formations of between two million and five million years of age contain no hominin fossils the world over, except on one continent–Africa. Indeed, no hominin fossils have ever been found in North or South America that are older than about eighteen thousand years…In Asia, hominin fossils are found beginning at about 18 million years and in Europe about one million years. This regional localization is consistent with the hypothesis that hominins were created through a single evolutionary lineage in one area of the world (Africa)…the findings suggest that a group migrated out of African (perhaps over many generations) into Asia a little less than two million years ago, and that some of their descendants in turn eventually made it into Europe. The oceans presented a barrier, of course, to arrival in North and South America… (138).

i) How is that evidence for evolution? Notice that Falk is using an evolutionary narrative and evolutionary categories to interpret the evidence. To classify them as hominins and say hominins appear in the record at particular times takes for granted that these animals are ancestors to modern man. But that's the very question at issue! So his appeal is circular. He hasn't show how that's independent evidence for evolution. To the contrary, he uses the theory of evolution to explain the pattern.

ii) He ignores the multiregional alternative hypothesis. 

iii) Is there evidence that the reputed hominins display recognizably humanoid intelligence, viz. art, music, human problem-solving skills? At what date?

iv) Why would it take them so long to migrate out of Africa? Africa is a fairly inhospitable place to live. There'd be an incentive to explore other regions. 

v) The fact that we find evidence of human occupation in the Old World earlier than evidence for human occupation in the New World is what Genesis would lead us to expect. According to Genesis, man originated in the Old World (Mesopotamia) and fanned out from there.

I've written elsewhere that "the living process of a single cell, and the unfolding and coordination of the plan of a developing embryo, is like a magnificent symphony…Its beauty and process are exactly what we would expect if a loving God…works through time to bring about his purposes. God's initial design and God's providential oversight work through life's processes to bring about creation of new life forms (139). 

Embryology is awesome. How is that comparable to the haphazard evolutionary process, with its many dead-ends?

In chimpanzees and humans, many of the genetic elements are in the exact same location. (Functionally, it has been shown that there is no specific reason that they need to be in the same location.) This is consistent with the hypothesis that chimpanzees and humans descend from a common ancestral species that existed about five or six million years ago and that given how slowly the genetic elements jumped to a new location, most are still in the same location in that common ancestry. If one compares the position of these jumping elements in orangutans, there is a higher percentage that don't occupy the same position in the chromosomes. This is consistent with the hypothesis that orangutans and humans share a common ancestral species…but one that existed deeper in the past…If we examine the distribution of the jumping genetic elements in gibbons, many are still in  the exact same positions as in humans but a higher percentage have shifted. This is consistent with the hypothesis that gibbons and humans decend from a common ancestral species even deeper in the past, allowing even greater time for elements to jump (140-41).

I see how that's consistent with evolution, but it is that evidence for evolution? Suppose it's God's intention to create a world that reflects diversity. In that event, creatures will range along a continuum from most similar to most dissimilar. 

To take a comparison, a deck of cards has different possible combinations. In poker, some hands are more similar while others are more dissimilar, viz. royal flesh, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight three of a kind, two pair. Given diversity, there's bound to be spectrum where some are more alike while others are less alike. Where some are closer to the middle while others occupy the opposite ends of the spectrum. The fact that hands can be grouped that way is the logical result of diversity. By the same token, species can be sorted by degrees of similarity and dissimilarity. How are such variations evidence for common ancestry rather than the principle of the plenitude or adaptation to habitat? 

Todd and other young-earth creationists cannot bring themselves to make what I consider to be a very small shift in the way they read the early chapters of Genesis (146).

i) Falk acts as though the only reason evolution leads some people to be atheists is perceived conflict with the Bible. But even if Gen 1-3 (or Rom 5/1 Cor 15) never existed, evolution would still drive some people into atheism because they think the evolutionary record in itself is an indication that we inhabit a godless universe. They see no evidence of transcendent intelligence, benevolence, planning, or prevision in the evolutionary record. No evidence of a mind behind the process, guiding the process. William Provine is a good example. 

Indeed, many theistic evolutionists are antagonistic towards intelligent design theory. They read the evolutionary record the same way as secular evolutionary biologists and paleontologists. They reject the idea that we can detect divine intervention or direction in the record of natural history. 

ii) I can see how Falk's evidence for evolution would be devastating to Christians who are exposed to it for the first time. Christians who are intellectually defenseless.

iii) When I invoke mature creation, Omphalism, and/or the principle of plenitude, an evolutionist might object that this has nothing to do with science. That's pseudo-science.

However, the question at issue isn't just a scientific claim but a theological claim. The idea of divine creation. Special creation. Creation ex nihilo. It's not out of place to bring philosophical theology to bear when evaluating a theological claim. Indeed, that's unavoidable. 

So there's a methodological question. What's the starting-point? You can have a bottom-up starting-point. Look at the extant evidence and attempt to reconstruct the past from the surviving trace evidence. Reconstruct the past from lingering effects of past events. And that's a legitimate approach.

But there's a top-down starting-point. If the world is the result of divine creation, then we need to consider the nature of creativity. For human agents, that begins with an idea. We make something that corresponds to our idea. The idea comes first. 

From that perspective, mature creation, Omphalism, and/or the principle of plenitude can't be ruled out. Suppose, in God's imagination, he has the concept of a world-history. How could he not? But the point at which the plot begins is arbitrary, in the sense that the plot could always begin a little sooner or a little later. The plot could end a little sooner or a little later. The challenge for a storyteller or screenwriter is how to begin the story and how to end the story.

Likewise, is there an antecedent metaphysical  presumption that the principle of plenitude is false? http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100331692

iv) I can see how some people find young-earth creationism ad hoc. And maybe it is ad hoc to some degree. I myself an not committed to YEC. But even if I was, that's not a fatal concession or a damaging concession. That's because I can see how some people find old-earth creationism ad hoc. 

What is more, theistic evolution is ad hoc. The foundation of theistic evolution is naturalistic evolution. Many or most theistic evolutionists think the evolutionary record is indistinguishable from naturalistic evolution. They don't think there's any discernible evidence of God's providential hand in natural history. That's why they attack intelligent design theory with such implacable ferocity. Instead, they appeal to evidence for God from disciplines outside evolutionary biology and paleontology.

So theistic evolution has a theistic tile floor on a foundation of naturalistic evolution. Some Christian theology (often progressive) tacked onto the framework of an empirically godless process. 

Finally, naturalistic evolution is ad hoc. For instance, it spawns a plethora of harmonistic devices, viz. analogy, ancestral homology, convergent evolution, derived homology, evolutionary reversal, exaptation, homoplasy, spandrel. 

Is it the natural record that yields these distinctions and categories? Or do evolutionists devise them to make the theory of evolution consistent with disparate evidence? So every side in this dispute as the appearance of makeshift explanations.  

v) I can see how evolution seems to be a reasonable explanation for the evidence he presents. Mind you, something can seem reasonable in isolation, but unreasonable when we take additional factors into consideration.

One problem is that his presentation is so one-sided. He cites prima facie evidence for evolution, but fails to mention prima facie evidence to the contrary.

vi) Here's another major problem with evolutionary theory: the evolutionary process is a physical process. The effects of the process are physical products. 

But that raises the question of whether human reason can be the result of evolution. Can something physical generate consciousness? Ironically, the hard problem of consciousness has been formulated by secular philosophers. Card-carrying physicalists. But they admit that the problem is inexplicable. As a matter of principle, mental properties are irreducible to physical operations. If so, that's a fundamental defeater for evolution. If it has no room for human minds, then it's drastically flawed.

A theistic evolutionist might posit evolutionary Cartesian dualism, where, once the brain evolved to a certain level of complexity, that furnishes the platform for embodied souls. But what is that if not a stopgap explanation? 

Is the appeal to consequences a fallacy?

For many Christian apologists, a stock argument in their gallery of arguments is the claim that consistent atheism commits the atheist to moral and/or existential nihilism. I myself deploy that argument. Some atheists respond by claiming that's a fallacious appeal to consequences. 

1. Sometimes this involves the angry accusation that Christians are misdefining atheism. Atheism is not a philosophy or worldview but simply disbelief in a god or gods–so we are told. 

i) There's no official definition of atheism. There are multiple definitions of atheism:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/#DefiAthe

ii) In popular usage, atheism is often a synonym for naturalism. And usage drives the meaning of words.

iii) But even in philosophical usage, atheism can be equivalent to naturalism, viz. "naturalism lies at the core of atheism," J. Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2003), 5. 

iv) I'd add that the word "entail" has a popular definition as well as a philosophical definition. You need to distinguish between ordinary usage and technical usage. Both are legitimate in their respective domains.  

2. There are several sites on the Internet that list and define fallacies. But I can't help noticing that most of them seem to be run by atheists. These sites exist for the specific purpose of attacking Christianity. That's often obvious from the examples they use to illustrate a fallacy (or alleged fallacy).

Another question is how many of these sites are run by professional logicians, or even professional philosophers. Why would I rely on someone who's not a professional logician, or even a professional philosopher, for definitions of a logical or informal fallacy? 

Moreover, I can't help noticing that these sites define fallacies with Christian theism as the target. The obvious danger that presents is a tendentious definition custom-made to single out the opposing position. That's a made-up fallacy masquerading under an impressive-sounding label. A philosophically serious category of logical or informal fallacies doesn't begin with what you oppose, then invent a corresponding fallacy to invalidate the opposing position. 

If you Google "appeal to consequences," and peruse the sites where that's discussed, there's a lack of uniformity as well as a conspicuously amateurish quality to the analysis. It would be more impressive to quote from up-to-date academic textbooks on logical or informal fallacies. Or articles in journals by professional logicians. 

3. It also depends on what precisely the Christian apologist is claiming. Is he claiming that the consequences of atheism disprove atheism? 

Even at that level, there's nothing necessarily fallacious about contending that certain kinds of consequences falsify a position. For instance, it's often said that global skepticism is self-refuting. Related examples include alethic nihilism or epistemic nihilism. These can be formulated in terms of per impossibile counterfactuals. There's nothing fallacious about that kind of argument. 

4. However, even if we grant for discussion purposes that the appeal to consequences is fallacious when employed to show that something is false, it doesn't follow that it's fallacious to take consequences into consideration when we evaluate the merits of a position. After all, atheists routinely appeal to consequences as part of their standard attack on Christianity. They gleefully quote "offensive" passages from the Bible. They rail against Christian ethics. They rail about how Christianity forces believers to commit intellectual suicide. They complain about how Christianity is a war with science. And so on and so forth. 

5. The fact that many atheists are so defensive about the claim that atheism entails moral and/or existential nihilism demonstrates that they do think that's damaging, if true. Otherwise, they'd shrug it of by saying, "What's the big deal?"

6. As I've documented in detail, many atheist thinkers are moral and/or existential nihilists. In my reading, moral nihilism is more common. Some atheists edge right up to existential nihilism, but blink. Is that because their position doesn't commit them to existential nihilism–or because it's too unbearable to go there, so they slam on the brakes artificially short of that outcome? 

Secular neutrality

On Twitter, Jeff Lowder attempted to respond to my post (unless his tweets are sheer coincidence):

Did you know that “I (the speaker) exist” and “It’s hot on the surface of the sun” are both consistent with nihilism? No one worries about that, so why do some apologists think it’s a big deal that atheism is consistent with nihilism?

For the glaringly obvious reason that logical consistency with the surface temperature of the sun has no bearing on whether human life is important or worthwhile–which is hardly analogous to the logical consistency of atheism with nihilism. 

To take a comparison, suppose I'm a churchgoing member of the Khmer Rouge. Suppose I defend my behavior by saying Christianity is neutral on the Khmer Rouge. It's theologically consistent for a Christian to support or oppose the Khmer Rouge. 

Or suppose I'm a churchgoing Stalinist. I helped Stalin plan the forced famines. Suppose I defend my behavior by saying Christianity is neutral on Stalinism, It's theologically consistent for a Christian to support or oppose policies that starve millions of men, women, and children. 

Would that be "uninteresting"? To the contrary, it would be extremely discrediting. 

While atheism is consistent with nihilism, that fact is uninteresting because an atheist can consistently hold other beliefs which entail that nihilism is false. (Again, atheism doesn’t entail nihilism.)

Aside from the fact that Jeff is begging the question (since it's arguable that atheism does entail nihilism), his response illustrates his persistent blindspot. Is it really uninteresting to say a consistent atheist can be or not be a moral and existential nihilist? 

Suppose we said Buddhism is neutral on nihilism, so that a consistent Buddhist may rape little girls and torture elderly women while other Buddhists may, with equal consistency, disapprove of that behavior. Buddhism is indifferent about raping little girls and torturing elderly women. 

Would that be an uninteresting fact about Buddhism? Or would that be a revealing and disreputable fact about Buddhism?

Iconoclastic science

1. Recently I read The Fool and the Heretic (Zondervan 2019). It's a dialogue between young-earth creationist Todd Wood and theistic evolutionist Darrel Falk. I haven't read the sections by Falk. I bought the book for Wood's contributions. I think the book would be better without the patronizing, handholding interludes by Rob Barrett. And that would free up more space for Wood. 

To judge by what he said in a post:

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/01/about-that-book.html

I was expecting Wood's side of the dialogue to be rather concessive. Instead, he was quite confrontational–which is refreshing.

2. I find Todd's hermeneutic rather roughhewn. However, he's right about the big picture issues. He stresses the ad hoc way theistic evolutionists treat Gen 1-9 as pious fiction or allegory–while they don't treat other narratives in Scripture the same way, even though other narratives in the Pentateuch or Gospels have the same supernaturalism. 

3. Theistic evolutionists complain that young-earth creationists drive people away from the faith by positing a false dichotomy. And there's certainly a danger of alienating people from the Christian faith if we make a particular interpretation of Scripture identical to what Scripture means–assuming that's just one possible, and possibly mistaken, interpretation.

At the same time, we can't be Christian unless we commit to certain interpretations. Moreover, the danger cuts both ways. Belief in evolution drives many people away from Christianity, even if young-earth creationism didn't exist. 

4. A common objection to young-earth creationists is that they only believe it because they believe the Bible. They don't begin with the scientific evidence but the Bible. They don't have any positive evidence for their alternative. They are just poking holes in the standard paradigm. 

Even if that rather jaundiced characterization were true, science benefits from having sharp, rigorous, relentless critics who spot weaknesses in the prevailing scientific orthodoxies. 

In addition, scientific progress is strategically driven by gifted mavericks. Sometimes their theories are blind alleys, but sometimes they make midcourse corrections or original, fundamental contributions to science as an ongoing research program. 

Compare Todd Wood to Dennis Venema. As a probing, intellectually dissatisfied scientist, Wood has the potential to make original, fundamental contributions to science that a company man like Venema lacks. Science requires balance between creative iconoclasm and stability. It's useful to work within a paradigm. Exhaust the paradigm. But it's sometimes necessary to question the paradigm. 

It's easy for scientists to become prematurely settled in their ways. They stop asking questions because they think they know the answers. Sometimes they discount evidence to the contrary as anomalous. But the mavericks keep extending the frontiers. Ironically, some scientists lack intellectual curiosity. They are satisfied with the received answers. 

Wood objects that commitment to evolution results in losing an amazingly fruitful and exciting avenue of scientific research that goes deeper than Darwin (36).

5. Some of what Wood writes might foster the impression that he isn't only a creationist because he believes the Bible, and not because he thinks there's any evidence for creationism. But based on cluster analysis, he thinks there are patterns in nature that evolution can't explain (154, 200). 

Likewise, he thinks the evolutionary explanation for the PAM matrix (i.e. protein similarities between disparate species) has it upside down (60-62). He wouldn't be motivated to consider the issue from a different angle unless he was motivated by creationism. Scientists who lack that motivation neglect to consider what might be a superior alternative explanation. 

6. It's also important to emphasize that this isn't just about raw natural evidence. The debate over methodological atheism demonstrates a key philosophical component. The mainstream scientific paradigms treat nature as a closed system, a machine. They interpolate and extrapolate, reconstruct the past, fill in the evidential gaps, based on that secular philosophical postuate. 

And it's true that nature is machine-like. But what if creation is dualistic rather than materialistic? What if there's interaction between mind and matter? What if there are discarnate agents who sometimes intervene, who sometimes contribute to the outcome? Incidentally, there's empirical evidence for that.

In that event, secular science isn't simply following the evidence wherever it leads, but disregarding inconvenient evidence and superimposing an artificial filter on what science is allowed to discover. So it's simplistic to frame the issue in terms of one side having the evidence while the other side has dogma. 

There's a certain tension in science because scientists like things to be predictable. They like to be in control. But what if there are uncontrollable variables due to factors like mental causation, discarnate agents, miracles, the efficacy of prayer, and paranormal phenomena (for which there's tremendous evidence). What if that's actually a part of reality? Then, like it or not, that imposes certain limitations the ability of science to achieve mastery over the material world. It will be frustrated in its godlike quest to know and manipulate the world around us.

And that's beneficial. Science is marvelous and dangerous. It has enormous potential for good and evil. We should be grateful for barriers that curb the power of science. 

7. Suppose Gen 1-9 was obviously true. Suppose there was abundant evidence for Gen 1-9 (or the Exodus, to take another example).  

That would make it easy to believe. And that wouldn't leave room for faith. Conversely, that would make it much tougher to be an atheist.

But what if God made a world that's ambiguous in some respects? Where Gen 1-9 isn't obviously true or obviously false? 

Now a critic might object that I'm guilty of special pleading. Yet that's not unique to Genesis. In Scripture, faith is hard. Faith is meant to be hard. That's a principle which antedates the "conflict" between science and Scripture by centuries or millennia. 

On the one hand there's overwhelming evidence for Christianity. On the other hand, there are perennial emotional, physical, and intellectual obstacles along the walk of faith. That's always been the case. It didn't begin with the advent of modern science.

Although there are many lines of evidence for Christianity, it's difficult to be a Christian. God could make it a lot easier. He doesn't. 

So the creation/evolution debate is just one more test of faith. That's nothing new. Generations of Jews and Christians before us had obstacles to overcome, and generations to come will face their own obstacles. The Christian pilgrimage is demanding. A winnowing process. Some pilgrims drop out before the finish line. 

Reviewing Mike Licona’s Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?

http://www.globaljournalct.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Global-Journal-15.3-Lydia-McGrew-Review-of-Why-Are-There-Differences-in-the-Gospels.pdf

Killing newborns

To some extent, infanticide is a wedge issue. I suspect early term abortion is easier to rationalize emotionally and psychologically because, at that stage of gestation, the baby looks less human, less like you and me. That makes it easier to treat the baby as subhuman. 

But when the issue turns to a newborn, it's undeniable that we're killing a human child. That can't be masked. "The blob of tissue" just doesn't jive. And that makes some people who support abortion balk. It's like the difference between bombing villages at 30,000 feet and hand-to-hand combat. 

But the logic is regressive. Is any point where you draw the line before birth arbitrary? 

Many people are so selfish and morally hardened that they just don't care. The sociopath next door. More common than you imagine. But it puts Democrats on the defensive, because it's so hard to rationalize without exposing their viciousness. 

Raising the saints

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2019/02/on_that_infamous_saints_rising.html

Dodo bird Catholicism

1. I'm going to comment on key sections in Robert Bellarmine's Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei adversus hujus temporis hereticos (1586–93). I'll quote/refer to this edition: Kenneth Barker (trans), Controversies of the Christian Faith (Keep The Faith, Inc; 2016).

Bellarmine has quite a Catholic résumé, as a saint, Cardinal, and Doctor of the Church. His Disputationes is the classic exposition and defense of Counter-Reformation theology. It became the foil for many Protestant theologians. 

Nowadays, the value of his work lies in documenting the hiatus between Counter-Reformation theology and post-Vatican II theology. Bellarmine is the staunch defender of an organization that no longer exists. The Roman Catholic church he passionately defends became an endangered species during the papacy of Pius XII and went extinct after Vatican II. If successful, his arguments falsify the modern Catholic church. 

2. I'll be very selective about what I comment on. I'll ignore his section on translations of the Bible because that's terribly dated. He has a 100-page section on whether the pope is the Antichrist, which is historically interesting, but peripheral to my concerns. He has a very long historical defense of Roman/papal primacy which I'll ignore because it's very dated. I'm going to skip the section on Christology. 

I'm going to focus on the sections about canonics and sola scripture (necessity, sufficiency, perspicuity of Scripture). I'm not sure how much I wish to say about his exegetical case for the papacy. For one thing, I have a post on Catholic prooftexts. In addition, some of his arguments are so ludicrous that they really don't require comment: to quote them is to refute them. 

3. Some of his arguments are circular. For instance, he often quotes from church fathers or even popes to establish his position. But that begs the question when engaging the Protestant position since we don't regard the church fathers as authority figures–much less the pope. So that's an illicit argument from authority.

However, he may include this material because he's writing for the benefit of Catholic missionaries, so the supporting material from popes and church fathers is for their own benefit. They consider that authoritative even though Protestants do not. 

4. Bellarmine was responding to 16C Protestants like Calvin, Luther, and Chemnitz. As a 21C Protestant, I have my own ways of defending Protestant theology. I think there are times when he has the better of the argument. That doesn't mean he's right. That just means there's a better argument for the position he's opposing. In the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, both sides had to think on the fly. Protestant apologists can defend classic Protestant theology without repristinating all the apologetic strategies of 16C Protestant theologians. Sometimes we can improve on the arguments. There a difference between traditional positions and traditional arguments for traditional positions. 

Retroactive abortion

By Clark Kent

Daily Planet staff reporter

Having legalized infanticide for 5-year-olds and euthanasia for men and women on their 30th birthday (inspired by Logan's Run), secular progressives were stymied. There wasn't much room left over to carry out their misanthropic policies in a forward direction. So it was more efficient to go backward by mandating retroactive abortion. This utilized time-travel technology. All citizens were ordered to report to abortifacient time-machines. This enabled secular progressives to implement a consistent policy. It was so successful that a week later, the human race was scrubbed from the space-time continuum. That timeline never happened. Earth instantly reverted to the Cretaceous age. 

Infallibility and authority

1. A common Catholic objection to the Protestant faith is that evangelicals lack certainty for their beliefs. Which presumes that Catholicism provides the remedy, but of course, Catholicism doesn't actually provide certainty–as I've often explained. But I'd like to make another couple of points:

2. There's a sense in which an evangelical can have beliefs that aren't merely true, but infallible. Although inspiration entails infallibility, infallibility doesn't require inspiration. It's possible for uninspired beliefs to be infallible.

This is what I mean. We typically say what's inerrant is without error but what's infallible is without possibility of error. 

Suppose the Protestant canon is true (to take one example). Suppose God cultivates belief in the Protestant canon by providentially arranging that many Christians are raised in evangelical churches. By virtue of their religious conditioning, they not only have a true belief about the canon, but they cannot fail to have a true belief about the canon. God intends for them to believe in the Protestant canon, and he's caused that belief through selective indoctrination. Even if some of they are exposed to the Catholic argument, let's say they are unable to overcome their engrained belief in the Protestant canon. Not only do they have a true belief in that regard, but it's not psychologically possible for them to change their true belief to a false belief. 

3. On a related note is the question of whether the use of reason to assess revelatory claimants makes reason more authoritative than revelation. However, evangelicals, unlike Rome, don't claim that their assessments have divine authority. So reason is not a rival to the divine authority of Scripture. Ironically, the alleged weakness of the Protestant position is a strength. We don't claim to be divinely authoritative arbiters of the canon or divinely authoritative interpreters of Scripture. We don't deify reason in the way Rome deifies the Magisterium, by ascribing divine authority to Magisterial judgments. So we, unlike Rome, remain subordinate to the authority of Scripture. 

Brexit and the papacy

What do Brexit and the papacy have in common? I'm so glad you asked. 

Even when Catholicism was strong in Europe, there was always a power struggle between the papacy and Catholic monarchs. On the one hand, the papacy had its own foreign policy. The papacy is an institution with international ambitions. So the papacy championed domestic and foreign policies that enlarged the scope and power of the papacy. On the other hand, a French monarch championed domestic and foreign policies that benefited France, a Spanish monarch championed domestic and foreign policies that benefited Spain.

So there was always a divergence between national self-interest and papal self-interest. By the same token, it's my impression that people who voted for Brexit were fed up with a supranational bureaucracy imposing policies on England that were not in England's self-interest. Many English voters are naturally partial to domestic and foreign policies that benefit the English.  

Sadism and atheism

It never ceases to amaze me many apologists confuse consistency with entailment: they will use words like “nihilism is consistent with atheism” when what they mean is “atheism entails nihilism.” The problem, however, is that the former is uninteresting while the latter is false.

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) January 31, 2019

i) Jeff doesn't bother to study what his own side is saying. This isn't just a Christian interpretation of atheism, but what many atheist thinkers admit. That's something I've documented in detail.

ii) In addition, I've presented arguments for how atheism entails moral and existential nihilism.

iii) Perhaps Jeff is using "atheism" in the artificial sense of nonbelief in the divine. 

iv) But suppose for discussion purposes that we agree with Jeff. Is it "uninteresting" that atheism is consistent with nihilism? If someone tells me to my face that as an atheist, his viewpoint is consistent with raping little girls or torturing elderly women for fun, that's a very revealing statement. 

Atheists complain that many Americans don't trust atheists. But if atheism is consistent with nihilism, what better reason not to trust an atheist. Would you feel safe sleeping in the same room with someone whose viewpoint is consistent with vivisecting human beings?

Does the Resurrection entail the deity of Christ?

1. As I recall, John Warwick Montgomery used to mount the following argument for the inspiration of Scripture: 

i) Bracket inspiration. Treat NT documents as 1C primary sources

ii) Sufficient to establish Resurrection

iii) Resurrection proves deity of Christ

iv) Testimony of divine Christ validates the historicity/inspiration of Scripture.

2. A potential weak link in that syllogism is (iii). Some scholars point out that the usual NT formula is that God raised Jesus from dead, not that Jesus raised himself. 

i) A partial exception is Jn 10:18, but even that depends on the Father's authorization.

ii) A more intriguing example is Heb 7:16, which attributes the immortality of Christ to the "power of an indestructible life". That suggests Jesus had the intrinsic ability to raise himself from the dead by virtue of his divine life. He is the "living God" (Heb 3:12; 9:14; 10:31; 12:22) Incarnate (Heb 1-2).

3. In addition, there's the ambiguity of "God". In the NT that's typically used as a proper name for the Father. 

To say the Father did X isn't equivalent to only the Father did X. To say Peter preached the Gospel doesn't mean Paul didn't preach the Gospel. 

An affirmation that someone did X isn't by itself a denial that someone else did X as well. To say someone did X is not an exclusive claim. To say Tom Brady won the Super Bowl doesn't mean no one else ever won the Super Bowl. 

4. The Resurrection may not entail the deity of Christ. There are more direct arguments for the deity of Christ. I think premise (iii) is too weak to yield Montgomery's conclusion. However, premise (iii) isn't demonstrably false–contrary to what some scholars say. It's a defensible claim.