Suffering for My Name

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

Stripped to his waist and forced on his stomach by the authorities, Paul shut his eyes. A pair of sandals shuffled in the dirt behind him. He heard the crowd quiet down, heard the breath taken, the whistle of the leather, and—snap!—felt its bite. The guard found his rhythm and the beating began in earnest. The flogging was characteristically Jewish: thirty-nine applications of a triple lash. Thirty-nine, not forty. Mosaic law permitted up to forty, but better not risk overstepping the bounds.

By the thirtieth blow, Paul’s tongue lagged in the sand. Before his career’s end, he would taste the dust outside of five such synagogues. He would also know scar-opening sessions under the rod of Rome, barely elude assassination, cling to ship’s wreckage in the open sea for a day and a night, mark years in chains, and be left for dead after stoning-by-mob (2 Corinthians 11:24-27).

He could avoid it all. A few disclaimers would do, even just a discreet silence at critical moments. But Paul never could hold things in. His enemies came to hate his endless spewing of quotations, not to mention his formidable intellect. They couldn’t fool Paul. He knew their deeper objection. What his enemies truly loathed was the unseen figure behind every debate and discussion he entered—the one, as the Baptizer put it, whose sandals he wasn’t good enough to untie. It was the memory of this unseen man that kept Paul going. Of course, what always set everyone off was that thing above “three days in the tomb and then…” Hadn’t the Greeks guffawed over that one! A corpse hopping off his stone slab? A stiff traipsing about town? Hah! But what entertained the Greeks incenses the Jews. How dare a mere mortal claim the same rank with the Almighty! Especially a bastard rabbi from the backwoods who polluted the Sabbath with his so-called healings and infested teachings! He was double a fool for having gotten himself crucified!

But Paul had seen this Rabbi. After he burial. Less than a decade afterwards. This Rabbi had appeared to Paul and his caravan on the road to Damascus—enveloped in eye-sizzling glory, speaking from the third heaven, and majestic beyond words. Unquestionably risen from a stone-cold tomb. This incident alone convinced Paul that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the long prophesied Son of God—come to meet death for the sins of the world in order to grasp life again and lavish it on others. Hours later this same risen Christ had appeared in softer tones to a Christian man in Damascus, telling him to find and baptize Paul. The message ended with an announcement: “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:15-16).

The proclamation proved true. Paul was destined to spread the fame of Jesus more than the other apostles combined. Yet he suffered intensely in the process.

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

–Jonie Eareckson Tada and Steven Estes, When God Weeps, p. 24-25

The pitchfork revolution

JC [John Curry]: When this statement was offered by Samuel to Saul it wasn't a book of the bible at all. It was presumably spoken first, then written perhaps years later.

SH [Steve Hays]: This flawlessly illustrates the problem of acontextual exegesis.

i) The explanation in 1 Sam 15:2 would be unintelligible apart from a historical knowledge of the event alluded to.

The record of that event, as well as the oracle of judgment, is to be found in the Pentateuch.

So the statement cannot be understood apart from its canonical context.

That includes the Pentateuch.

But between the Pentateuch and 1-2 Samuel (originally one book) are other historical books of the Bible narrating a continuous history up to that point.

ii) The prophet Samuel’s statement is recorded in a book. The book operates at two levels. There’s the historical level of the original events and speeches. And there’s also the narrative level of the authorial viewpoint, after the fact.

The author of 1-2 Samuel is writing with a target audience in mind.

JC: This is the tack taken by Christians. You offer reasons for the executions. None appear anything like the reason actually offered in Scripture. Why do you want to invent other reasons beyond what is in the text? Is it because you can see that the reason offered is evil? I think you can see that this is evil. Because it is wrong to kill someone because of the sins of his long dead ancestors. Do you agree?

SH: It’s not a question of what I’m adding, but what your brother left out.

i) I’m framing my response the way he framed the original challenge. This is how your brother put it:

“Samuel claims that God wants the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, infant, cattle, etc. That in itself may not be wrong, however note the motive that Samuel attributes to God. This attack is punishment for crimes committed over 300 year prior. The sentence is carried out on infants and nursing mothers who cannot have taken part in the act that caused the judgment.”

ii) I’ve drawn attention to the intervening history, as well as the subsequent history, because your brother was the one who left out the intervening history and subsequent history.

All I’ve done is to rectify his omission. I responded to him on his own level.

iii) Your brother is acting as if Samuel’s statement was made in a historical vacuum. If that were the case, it would be unintelligible.

How does your brother know that this verse is alluding to an event which occurred 300 years earlier? Can he find that information in the verse itself? No.

You see, in order for you and your brother to make a case, both of you must also “go beyond what is in the text.” Your brother’s chronology is not based on 1 Sam 15:2 alone, but on the relation between 1 Samuel and the Pentateuch.

iv) This illustrates the illusion of presuppositionless exegesis. You and your brother imagine that you two are sticking to the words of the text while Gene and I are adding to the text.

No, both sides are construing the text in its canonical context.

The only difference is that Gene and I are not as artificially selective as you and your brother are.

v) I could limit myself to the rationale given in 1 Sam 15:2. I accept the principle of corporate responsibility.

The reason I didn’t limit myself to that rationale is because your brother framed the issue is a misleading way, and so I corrected his deceptive framework.

JC: Saul is not reading. He's listening.

SH: This misses the point in several respects:

i) Even Saul would be unable to grasp the historical allusion without a historical knowledge of the event in question.

This is both a historical allusion and a literary allusion. The source of the historical information is the literary record of the Pentateuch.

ii) 1-2 Samuel are addressed to a Jewish audience. They would bring a cultural preunderstanding to the text.

iii) You and your brother are also assuming the role of readers.

JC: What do you mean by this?

SH: I already discussed the conditionality of oracles of judgment. Cf. Jer 18:7-10.

God could exact judgment without announcing judgment beforehand. The point of an oracle of judgment is give the offending party a forewarning of judgment to come, which, in turn, gives the offending party an opportunity to repent and avert the impending judgment.

That’s a presupposition underlying oracles of judgment.

JC: That is apparent. But I think Samuel is a wicked individual.

SH: Now that you’ve offered your personal opinion, how would you propose to justify your value-judgment?

JC: You are not interacting with the point I've made. Obviously the text doesn't say that it is wrong to kill nursing babies because of the sins of their long dead ancestors. What Bill does is he reads the text in context and talks about the reasons for the execution given by God via Samuel.

SH: So you go beyond the immediate text to construe the text in light of the larger context.

Welcome to the club. That’s what Gene and I are doing as well.

JC: His appeal to J.P. Moreland then demonstrates that the motives that attach to an action determine whether it is moral or immoral, and further that this particular motive attributed to God would make the action immoral.

SH: That’s an inadequate basis for moral valuation. Motives are a necessary, but insufficient, condition of moral valuation. Other considerations are equally germane.

For example, the guilt or innocence of the recipient of the action is also germane to the justice or injustice of the action.

JC: As he explained he knows it through particularism.

SH: Beyond the above-stated inadequacy:

i) This also assumes that particularism is sufficient for the knowledge of right and wrong even after the truth-conditions of moral realism have been withdrawn.

You can’t answer the epistemic question in the affirmative until you address the metaphysical question of whether there is a right or wrong to be known in the first place.

What makes something right or wrong? What metaphysical conditions must be met for moral truths to exist?

ii) And that’s just the first step. Even if you came up with a well-founded system of secular ethics, the next step would be to show that human beings, as defined by secular science, are property-bearers of right and wrong attitudes and actions.

In other words, even if, from a secular standpoint, there’s such a thing as right and wrong, this doesn’t mean that human beings have rights or can be wronged.

A secular ethicist not only needs to establish a system of secular ethics, but he must also establish that his secular value system is applicable to human beings as human nature is also defined by secularism.

Secular ethics and the secular anthropology nature must coincide.

For example, Peter Singer regards infanticide as licit rather than illicit.

So, if we were to judge 1 Sam 15:2 by the yardstick of a secular ethicist like Singer, then it would not be an evil action.

JC: Moreland is not assuming theism in his argument.

SH: He may not be assuming theism at that stage of his argument, but according to your bother’s summary of the lecture, Moreland “goes on to make the case that a ‘Divine Law Giver’ makes the most sense of morality and moral knowledge.”

So Moreland’s lecture is an exercise in natural law theorizing, which is a subdivision of natural theology.

You unbelievers keep showing up at the battlefield in your underwear. You act as if you can wing it and learn on the job.

But if you’re going to go up against Christianity, then you need to be conversant with exegetical theology, historical theology, moral theology, natural theology, philosophical theology, polemical theology, and systematic theology, as well as working out you own worldview on such elementary issues as metaethics, metaphysics, metascience, and epistemology.

As it stands, you keep getting slaughtered because you don’t know either side of the debate. It takes more than pitchforks and attitude to get the job done.

When the gunfire begins, you unbelievers reach for your holsters and find them empty. You slap your forehead and exclaim: “Guns! We forgot the guns!”

The surviving half of your battalion skedaddle back to base, and return well-armed.

But when you pull the trigger, nothing happens. You slap your forehead and exclaim: “Bullets! We forgot the bullets!”

The surviving quarter of your battalion skedaddle back to base and return with ammo.

But as you’re loading your guns, your comrades are dropping like flies. You slap your forehead and exclaim: “Helmets! Flack-jackets! We forgot our armor!”

The surviving eighth of your battalion skedaddle back to base and return well-armored.

When you come under aerial bombardment, and look for cover, you slap your forehead and exclaim: “Maps! We forgot the maps!”

The surviving one-sixteenth of your battalion…

I’m sorry, John, but debating with the Debunkers is too much like a turkey shoot to feel very sporting.

If time and again you’re caught up short, then your negative assessment of Christianity was intellectually premature in the extreme.

If every time I debate one of the Debunkers I’m having to tutor the Debunker on both sides of the argument, then the Debunker is in no position to render an informed judgment against the Christian faith.

You guys need to step back several paces, take a deep breath, and seriously reconsider the miniscule data-base on which you decided to jettison the faith.

For Charles N' Bob: The Flyswatter Clock Is Still Counting

Okay, gentlemen. You didn't call, yet again. I thought Dr. White was afraid to interact with you.
Come on, surely one of you will call in and talk to him one on one "live," or do you really not have the courage of your convictions at all? So, here's the schedule. Tomorrow's Thursday, and if you can't make it tomorrow, why not just make an appointment on your schedule for the week after.

Most Tuesday Mornings at
11:00am MST and
Most Thursday Afternoons at 4:00 MST
(pre-feeds begin 30 minutes or so before start of program)

Truth unchanged, unchanging

***QUOTE***

Travis White said:

Steve:

First, I want to make it clear that I have loads of respect for you. I read Triablogue daily (I've read every single post for months now) and it's truly my favorite site on the entire web. You do a fantastic job and I praise God for your amazing work in dismantling all kinds of heresies and atheists. I know of few, if any, who do it better.

Second, I want to make it clear that I see the possibility that my disagreement is merely borne out of my misunderstanding you here.

But it appeared to me, at least, that your initial post here seemed to imply that the "harshness" or "brutality" (without a value judgment being rendered, I realize) is due to the brutality around Israel. And this seemed to be communicating the point that the penal sanctions of the Older Testament were given because the nations around Old Testament Israel were brutal and not because those penalties are precisely what is deserved by the crimes for which they are prescribed.

That just doesn't appear to square with Scripture, in my estimation. The Bible seems to make it clear that the laws of the Older Testament prescribe what they prescribe simply because that is exactly what the crimes for which they are given deserve--that is, "an eye for an eye." The author of the book of Hebrews, moreover, proffers an argument for the justice of hell on the premise that, according to the Mosaic law, "every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution" (Heb. 2:2). The term "just retribution", I think, communicates what I am getting at here: that the particular penal sanctions of the Mosaic Law were given just because they are what those particular transgressions deserve.

Of course, granting what I'm claiming here, the atheist's objection to the Mosaic Law, Christian ethics in general, and Christian socio-political ethics in particular, still can't even approach getting off the ground at this point for reasons you have already so aptly mentioned, not the least of which their lack of objective moral absolutes with which to measure Biblical law, and which could serve in an alterative moral system.

Could you clarify a bit or let me know what you think about my thoughts here? It could be that I merely misinterpreted you, perhaps by taking your claim regarding the brutality of the pagans round Israel, and the fact that you didn't mention the inherent justice of the laws as meaning that you didn't think those laws were inherently exactly what the crimes deserve.

To be as transparent as possible, I'll freely admit here that I'm coming from a staunchly theonomic perspective. Thanks, Steve.

Soli Deo Gloria!

***END-QUOTE***

Hi Travis. Always nice to hear from you.

Readers of T’blog should take the occasion to mouse over to Mr. White’s fine blog.

1.I wasn’t talking about the penalties, per se. That came up in the combox in response to my post, but not in the course of my post.

2.Unbelievers object to things like OT holy war, “slavery” (e.g. indentured servants, war captives), gender-specific regulations, imprecatory Psalms, &c.

They also object to some or all of the capital offenses.

This material is not all of a kind.

3.To evoke a distinction I drew in my post on just-war criteria, there’s a difference between retribution and self-defense.

Retribution is supposed to be proportional. But self-defense need not be proportional.

Indeed, proportionality in self-defense might be self-defeating.

Self-defense, to be effective, will defend the subject by any means necessary, although it may not be licit to win at any cost.

4.In the past you yourself have noted that we have two sets of precepts covering the laws of war in the Mosaic code: one for holy war and the other for conventional war.

This is, to some degree, adapted to the concrete circumstances, right? To the threat level and the measures appropriate to repel the threat.

A war can be punitive, defensive, or both.

The tactics used in war are not necessarily punitive. They may merely be practical. The most efficient way of winning.

5.Divine legislation never punishes the guilty more severely that he deserves.

But it may punish him less severely. And where the threat-level is lower, there are times when one can afford to be more merciful.

6.I’m also not drawing a principled, diachronic line between then and now, but simply using temporal or circumstantial distinctions for illustrative purposes.

For the distinction I’m drawing is applicable to any time and place wherein the same conditions are operative.

Going back to the OT laws of warfare, two sets of laws could function simultaneously. They differed in place, but not in time.

So the situational context can be a differential factor.

Gagging on Agag

Jon Curry said:

JC [John Curry]: Bill did not assert that Scripture didn't cover any Amelekite history between the time they came out against Israel when Israel came out of Egypt and the time Saumel claimed God ordered the death of the descendents. In fact he repeatedly agreed that in some cases what appears to be horrific actions can be justified, depending on the motive. What he argued though was that these are not the reasons offered by God. We actually have the reasons from God in Scripture. They make the action evil.

SH [Steve Hays]: This assumes that Jewish readers would ignore the canonical context, as if the Book of Judges had never been written, or later parts of Samuel in which David must also contend with the Amalekites.

There’s a reason why the OT chronicles a continuous history of Israel and her adversaries.

Books of the Bible were never meant to be understood in isolation to other books of the Bible.

The reason given in 1 Sam 15:2 is not exclusive of other aggravating circumstances presented in Scripture.

A Jewish reader would know the history of the Amalekites.

And he would also appreciate the conditionality of oracles of judgment.

JC: Bill does not deny this. And if this were the reason offered by God for killing the nursing babies, perhaps you could make a case that it was justified. Unfortunately for you these are not the reasons offered by God. We actually have the reasons from God in Scripture. They make the action evil.

SH: i) See above.

ii) You think they make the action evil. That does not, however, reflect the narrative viewpoint.

JC: This statement is simply the opposite of the truth. Bill quoted the text, which provided the context and the reason. You simply assert this is "acontextual spin." Where is your evidence? Why don't you show us how he's violated the context.

SH: Samuel does not characterize God’s motive as immoral. That value-judgment reflects your brother’s extraneous and tendentious characterization. He is projecting his own moral assumptions onto the text.

JC: Again, your question is dealt with in Bill's post. Just read it. Bill isn't denying the existence of God. If you want to say God is the ground for morality, Bill does not object. What he's saying is that he knows certain things about right and wrong (based on J.P. Moreland's argument). Whether morality is grounded in God or something else, he knows certain things regardless. This motive attributed to God by Samuel is evil. So if God is good, then Samuel is not speaking for God.

SH: How does your brother know that certain things are right or wrong? What is his secular justification for this question-begging claim?

Moreland is arguing as a theist, not an atheist.

Christian altruism

***QUOTE***

Daniel Morgan said:

Steve and others,

I have been on the "defensive" in justifying foundational tenets of a non-theistic worldview for a while now.

What I would love to see is the Christian solution and justification to the Trolley Car Problem, or in Steve's dilemma, the sinking of the Titanic.

I find it hard to believe that you can extract some sort of "Biblical support" for these dilemmas with more surety than I possess for non-Biblical ethical approaches.

Regarding the sinking of the Titanic -- there is only room for two on a rescue raft, and a father, mother, and child will perish unless they jump aboard. Does the father sacrifice himself? The mother? According to the Bible, the man is the "head" of the family, but does this imply that he is responsible to take the fall, or that the woman is subservient and of less value? Should the man sacrifice the wife, since women are treated as baby factories by most of the OT ethic? (I esp. love Num 31:17 where non-virgin women are worthy of death but virgins are kept as "spoil") If the man is ultimately responsible for the child's welfare, shouldn't he be the one to go on and make sure it is raised properly?

Does everyone act altruistically at all times? Is this practical, or reasonable?

***END-QUOTE***

To begin with a couple of general principles:

1. From a Protestant perspective (sola Scriptura as our rule of faith), revelation is the measure of responsibility. Revelation and responsibility are conterminous.

In Scripture, God has revealed a set of general moral norms along with some specific case studies which illustrate the application of the general norms to concrete situations.

The case studies are illustrative rather than exhaustive. It’s possible to infer a general principle from a special case, or infer a special application from a general norm.

However, there are many topical questions or borderline cases in personal and social ethics for which there’s no Biblical answer.

In such instances, there may be more than one licit course of action. It’s not always a choice between right or wrong.

Bible ethics are minimal, not maximal. They address our minimal duties to God and to our fellow man.

They do not address every actual or hypothetical situation.

2. In Scripture, social ethics are concentric. I have a higher obligation to God than I have to my family. I have a higher obligation to my family than I have to your family. I have a higher obligation to a friend than to a stranger.

Ideally these obligations are complementary, but in case of conflict, due to life in a fallen world, the higher obligation suspends the lower obligation.

Moving along:

1.Concerning the Trolley Car Problem, I think that, as a rule of thumb, the good of the many trumps the good of the few.

The Trolley Car Problem presents a forced option in which someone is going to die one way or the other.

This is a traditional scenario in Christian ethics, under the principle of the double effect.

That said, the end doesn’t justify any means whatsoever. Sizing up the consequences of one’s action is a necessary condition of moral valuation, but it’s not a sufficient condition.

The common good cannot justify an injustice to the few, or to the one.

2.As to the Titanic, the duty of the father and husband is to take the fall for his wife and kids.

While this entails a hardship for the survivors, he’s done his duty, and the rest is left to providence.

Who goes down with the ship?

Daniel Morgan said:

DM [Daniel Morgan]: 1) I'm confused as to how there is "secular vs Christian" warrant. Perhaps I misunderstand your position Steve, but you seem to imply that certain levels of proof/evidence/support are necessary in one worldview, and different in another, with special pleading.

SH [Steve Hays]: I’m not distinguishing between different kinds of warrant, as if an atheist has a burden of proof to discharge, but a Christian does not, or as though the Christian has a lower burden of proof to discharge. Each side has its own burden of proof.

My immediate point is that you put forward a circular argument for your own position.

DM: If X is necessary for Y, and Y is a normative ethic, then X is subsumed as a part/component of Y. Thus X becomes a necessary means to the ethical end.

SH: The problem is not with the validity of your reasoning, but with the veracity of your premise.

Your argument was predicated on noble values/virtues. What you did was to posit noble values/virtues as second-order values, then argue since these second-order values could not exist absent the first-order value of survival, that the second-order values validated the first-order value.

But one problem with this line of argument is that you failed to validate the operating premise: are there second-order values?

What is your secular argument for the existence of these higher virtues?

As it stands, you left your operating premise dangling in thin air.

DM: In considering your position, this would be akin to God's command to "keep the Sabbath" -- the means of which are not working, but on any other day of the week, not working is not an ethical imperative. Context and necessity exist within your ethical framework and I see little value in labeling "secular vs Christian".

SH: Okay, but to play along with your parallel, a Christian apologist would need to establish the value of Sabbath-keeping for the end to justify the means.

DM: 2) Survival of existing life cannot be equivocated as an "obligation" to reproduction or nonentities.

SH: Fine, but that admission undercuts another leg of your argument.

No, the survival of the present generation doesn’t depend on the existence of a future generation. But the survival of the species does depend on reproduction.

You tried to validate the value of survival by positing second-order values, and then contend that, absent survival, there would be no agents to exemplify these values.

Yet the force of that argument assumes an obligation to reproduce in order to have agents that exemplify these second-order values.

But in what sense do we have an obligation to nonentities? Given the existence of moral agents, said moral agents enjoy mutual obligations, including the exemplification of second-order values.

But absent their existence, nonexistent agents have no obligations, and we, as existing agents, have no obligation to nonexistent agents.

So I don’t see how you can’t bootstrap the first-order value of survival from your second-order values.

Your second-order values are not free-floating obligations which compel the existence of property-bearers. Rather, they only kick in given the existence of a suitable property-bearer.

DM: 3) THis is a very good question. I have been reading a little bit on social contracts, and it appears to me that any tenable ethos is set up such that individual rights and freedoms are established as a foundation upon which societies and social contracts are framed. In this sense, we a priori rule against the infringement of basic rights (life, liberty, property), unless the person forfeits their claim to the protection of the contract by breaking its terms (breaking a law).

SH: And what’s your secular justification for social contractualism?

DM: Now, we can get bogged down in particulars about questions of "eminent domain" or the trolley car problem. In cases where we have no choice but to lose life, or lose property, and the question is "how much, and how many", then I suppose one word is key -- minimal.

SM: That doesn’t harmonize self-interest over altruism.

The trolley care problem doesn’t pose a choice between my survival and the survival of the many.

Rather, it poses a choice between the survival of the few (if I don’t intervene, and thereby let them die), and the survival of the many (if, in effect, I kill a lesser number to save a greater number).

The question I’m posing for secular ethics is different. Let’s say I’m an atheist. Let’s say I’m put in a position where I must choose between either saving my own life, or sacrificing my life to spare many others from destruction.

How should a secularist choose?

There is only one of me, and while I’m expendable in the great scheme of things, I’m not expendable to myself.

Am I, as an atheist, under some obligation to forfeit my life for the common good?

Why can’t I just be a selfish SOB? It’s not as if a godless universe is going to reward me for my altruism.

DM: Do you want me to reinvent the wheel of utilitarian thinking? I can't.

SH: No, you don’t have to reinvent utilitarianism. But your challenge is twofold:

i) How do you derive utilitarian ethics from evolutionary ethics?

ii) How do you derive egalitarianism from utilitarianism?

DM: In cases where an individual may die in order to save many others, we would have to get specific. Does the individual have a choice? What is the dilemma? Whose responsibility is it for getting into the dilemma? If you want me to answer these questions, it would probably be futile for me to generalize, as I attempted to do above. Let's get down to the "nitty gritty"

SH: At this stage of the argument, I don’t see that we need to get specific. Is there any case in which, from a secular standpoint, I should put altruism ahead of self-interest? Collective survival above (my) personal survival?

Is there ever such an obligation in secular ethics? If so, why?

On a side note, readers should observe, in the recent exchanges with Danny, that it’s quite possible for a believer and an unbeliever to have a civil exchange of views.

Horny Monkeys R Us

***QUOTE***

Robert Wright

The Moral Animal - Why we are the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology
(Vintage)

The basic premise behind the (somewhat ironically) titled Moral Animal is this: The human brain is far too complex and well adapted to come about by accident. You can't accept that everything in creation (irony intended) is the end result of millions of years of evolution except the human brain. Uh, uh. The 2 kg mass of grey matter is the only reason us hairless apes are on top of the food chain, feverishly breeding like cockroaches in a garbage dump. Simply put, it's the ultimate evolutionary weapon.

The genetic imperative and human behaviour isn't a new idea: the third Reich were pretty hep on their own twisted interpretation of Social Darwinism (as are the Tory youth who debate outside the VOX office on a daily basis). So it's no wonder that in the last twenty years scientists have adopted a new name (evolutionary psychology) and armed themselves with an arsenal of modern research methods designed to empirically illustrate that all of us are nothing but horny monkeys with a thinly veiled "To Do" list: "1. Maximize reproductive opportunity; 2. Get laid." Happiness, art and all other intellectual pursuits are filler: stuff that helps us survive or get better reproductive opportunities (like a better way to kill mammoths.) Your genes don't care how happy you are, they'd just like to make it to the next generation.

Robert Wright's book is a very readable, cohesive outline of the new "world-view" research scientists have taken in the area of evolutionary psychology/socio-biology. As the sub-title explains Wright sets out to examine the "way we are," (or the way we believe we are) and looks at the behaviour, or the genetic self- interest, that lead to this state of affairs. The questions posed are intriguing and fascinating, even for those who have never lingered on the Discovery channel: Are men and women really built for monogamy? (No.) Is hierarchy inherent in human society? (Yes.) Are we prisoners of our gender? (Yes.) Is intellectual honesty possible? (Yes, but difficult.)

The result of this book is a ruthlessly logical essay that peels off the thin veneers of culture and emotion to reveal what Wright believes are the genetic roots of our behaviour and resulting social systems. By way of example he cleverly uses the life and times of Charles Darwin, both as a history of "Darwinism" and an examination of Victorian England and Darwin's own prolific life-time - historical snap-shots of gussied up monkeys on the make.

Controversial is perhaps a somewhat mild way to gauge Wright's approach. His calculated approach and smooth narrative belie the fact that much of what is presented is subject to interpretation and the object of considerable debate within the communities he is surveying. His own agenda is written between the lines, but as a conservative thinker the critical reader will challenge some of the context while relishing in the ideas. The ideas are very big.

So why do we act the way we do? The answers presented in this book are unsettling to say the least. If Wright is right (heh, heh), then morality, reason, art - all the trappings we use to elevate our status in creation - are a sham. A behavioural exercise carefully perpetrated by our smirking genes, confident of seeing another generation. This book might change your life.

Don McSwiney

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/students/VOX/Books/Moralanimal.htm

***END-QUOTE***

Regarding Steve's Post to Danny Morgan on The Value of Values

SOURCE


A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 106 (October 2000): 57-63.

Singer in the Rain
A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation. By Peter Singer. Yale University Press. 64 pp. $9.95.

Reviewed by Nancy Pearcey

Back when E. O. Wilson first promoted his newly hatched theory of sociobiology, protesters doused him with a pitcher of water. Since then, sociobiology has come a long way, baby. Dolled up with fancy new monikers like “evolutionary psychology,” it now saunters boldly into the academy claiming to be not only a valid field of investigation but much more—a comprehensive synthesis of biology and philosophy, a guide to ethics and policy. Many scholars are now scrambling for the lady’s hand, eager to claim her for their own philosophical programs.

Yet evolutionary psychology turns out to be disturbingly fickle, capable of supporting a wide range of ethical conclusions. For even if we grant that certain human behaviors have an evolutionary origin, that does not tell us which behaviors are normative or morally good. In his latest book, A Darwinian Left, Peter Singer joins the line of suitors, hoping to win over evolutionary psychology to his particular liberal agenda. Whether he succeeds is another matter.

Sociobiology originally raised hackles, Singer explains in an interview, because it was regarded as a revival of “nasty, right–wing biological determinism”—a revival, that is, of Social Darwinism, which has long harnessed the idea of the survival of the fittest to notions of progress through competition and the ruthless pursuit of self–interest. In evolutionary psychology, the selfish individual has merely been replaced by the selfish gene.

Interestingly, Singer does not deny this unpleasant view of human nature; indeed, he urges the left to face up to its truth. Leftist utopianism is based on the assumption of the malleability of human nature, leading to dreams of “the Perfectibility of Man.” Nor are these merely idle dreams—they have inspired attempts to remake society and human nature, issuing in the totalitarian state.

But Darwinism implies that human nature is not completely malleable, Singer argues: the left must “face the fact that we are evolved animals, and that we bear the evidence of our inheritance, not only in our anatomy and our DNA, but in our behavior too.” Thus humans possess “evolved dispositions”—for example, to act from self–interest and to form hierarchical social arrangements—and political thinkers need to take these dispositions into account. Not that Singer thinks leftists should give up their ideal of, say, an egalitarian society; but they should understand that it “is not going to be nearly as easy as revolutionaries usually imagine.”

Yet this dark view of human nature is only half the picture, Singer insists. Recent Darwinians have shown that humans are hard–wired by natural selection for cooperative as well as competitive behavior, even for altruism. Singer cites now–familiar studies of kin altruism, where apparently sacrificial behavior on the part of a mother for her child is “explained” as a strategy for passing on her genes. He also describes game theory experiments showing that cooperative strategies—tit for tat—work best in getting what we want. Of course, neither of these examples represents altruism in the ordinary sense; they are merely extended forms of self–interest. Nevertheless, they are enough to satisfy Singer that Darwinism may now be harnessed to support the left’s vision of a more cooperative society.

Does Singer ultimately succeed in crafting a Darwinian left? Not exactly. To begin with, for all his eagerness to be identified as a man of the left, Singer shows a cavalier disregard for the concerns of real leftists. Historically, the left focused on the ownership of the means of production; in today’s “identity politics,” the enemy is no longer capitalism but racism, sexism, and homophobia. Yet Singer says nothing about any of these; instead he offers a definition of the left so broad as to be meaningless. “[T]he core of the left is a set of values,” he writes. A person of the left sees “the vast quantity of pain and suffering that exists in the universe” and wants “to do something to reduce it.” Under this expansive definition, everyone who favors social amelioration—including, no doubt, everyone reading this review—is a leftist.

Clearly, Singer is just not all that interested in leftist political theory. Neither is he very interested in evolutionary psychology, it turns out. For all his eagerness to woo Darwinism away from the right, he recognizes that evolution cannot provide a basis for the “set of values” he wants to defend. Earlier sociobiologists like Wilson had hoped that evolution would reveal “ethical premises inherent in man’s biological nature,” challenging “the traditional belief that we cannot deduce values from facts.” But those earlier hopes have been chastened, and today most proponents of evolutionary psychology vigorously disavow the naturalistic fallacy of seeking to derive “ought” from “is.”

“Evolution carries no moral loading, it just happens,” Singer writes. “Even an evolved disposition . . . cannot serve as the premise of an argument that tells us, without further ethical input, what we ought to do.” Darwinism tells us merely what barriers exist in human nature to enacting a given political agenda, allowing us to better assess costs and benefits; it does not provide a justification for values. And “since to be of the left is to hold certain values,” Singer writes, “Darwin’s theory has nothing to do with whether one is left or right.”

So why did he write the book, one wonders. It turns out that the most important function Darwinism performs for Singer is to debunk certain pre–Darwinian ideas: to wit, the biblical account of human origins and the ethic that goes along with it—especially the idea that humans are unique and ought to be treated differently from nonhumans. That view has been “thoroughly refuted by evolution,” Singer asserts. By positing an unbroken historical continuum from animals to humans, “Darwinian thinking provided the basis for a revolution in our attitudes to non­ human animals.” Thus a Darwinian left would “work towards a higher moral status for nonhuman animals, and a less anthropocentric view of our dominance over nature.” Here we recognize Singer’s familiar profile as a supporter of animal rights (and of euthanasia and infanticide—for humans at least). And here is also where his real interest lies: in supporting an ethic of “impartial concern” for all sentient beings.

But how to support such an ethic? Having ardently courted evolutionary psychology through most of the book, in the final pages Singer drops it suddenly like an old mistress when true love comes along. And true love for Singer is . . . reason. In some unexplained way, natural selection has made us “reasoning beings,” which enables us to transcend the impulses instilled by natural selection. Through reason we are able to develop genuine altruism, not merely kin altruism or enlightened self–interest. “We do not know,” Singer writes wistfully, “to what extent our capacity to reason can . . . take us beyond the conventional Darwinian constraints on the degree of altruism that a society may be able to foster.”

In other words, Darwinian evolution has produced a capacity—reason—that transcends Darwinian evolution. Singer hopes that the insights of reason may eventually “overcome the pull of other elements in our evolved nature” until we embrace “the idea of an impartial concern for all of our fellow humans, or, better still, for all sentient beings.”

Singer doesn’t account for this novel capacity that frees us to act against our evolved nature—he simply pulls it out of a hat. Quoting arch–Darwinian Richard Dawkins, he holds out the prospect of “deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism—something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.” In other words, reason is presented as a mysterious capacity capable of creating something de novo, something that has never existed before—one might even say ex nihilo. With this godlike power, we can rise above our evolutionary origins. “Although ‘we are built as gene machines,’” he says, quoting Dawkins again, “‘we have the power to turn against our creators.’”

The eloquence of Singer’s language signals that here we have tapped his most ardent beliefs. This is not Singer the “thinking machine,” as he has been labeled for his cool, calculating utilitarianism regarding euthanasia and infanticide. No, this is Singer the true believer. Here reason is treated as far more than a utilitarian instrument. It is nothing less than the means of achieving freedom—metaphysical and moral freedom. Singer alludes to Hegel, who “portrayed the culmination of history as a state of Absolute Knowledge, in which Mind knows itself for what it is, and hence achieves its own freedom.” We don’t have to buy Hegel’s metaphysics to see that “something similar really has happened in the last fifty years,” Singer enthuses: “For the first time since life emerged from the primeval soup, there are beings who understand how they have come to be what they are.” In short, through scientific rationality, Hegel’s vision of absolute freedom now shows promise of realization: “In a more distant future that we can still barely glimpse, [scientific knowledge] may turn out to be the prerequisite for a new kind of freedom.”

This is an astonishing finale to a book that is otherwise sober and restrained. Singer prides himself on being a realist, offering “a sharply deflated vision of the left, its utopian ideas replaced by a coolly realistic view of what can be achieved.” That may be true when he describes the biological constraints on human possibilities. But when he promises “a new kind of freedom” from those same biological constraints, he becomes a flaming utopian, as passionate as any revolutionary.

In the end, Singer’s hope of giving the left a solid basis in science fails—not merely because of ongoing debates over whether Darwinism really explains human behavior but because Darwinism is ultimately irrelevant to his moral vision. Darwinism has its uses in debunking Christian theology, but when it comes to constructing his own ethic, Singer makes a leap of faith to a mystical notion of reason that transcends Darwinian biology.

Needless to say, such a leap renders Singer’s position hopelessly self–contradictory. For the same Darwinian premise that undercuts morality by rendering all behavior merely survival strategies, also undercuts epistemology by rendering the ideas in our minds likewise merely survival strategies. As Richard Rorty has written, “keeping faith with Darwin” means understanding that the human species is not oriented “toward Truth,” but only “toward its own increased prosperity.” Truth claims are just tools to “help us get what we want.” Or as Patricia Churchland puts it, an improvement in an organism’s cognitive faculties will be selected for only if it “enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

Darwin himself wrestled repeatedly with the skeptical consequences of his theory. Just one example: “With me,” he wrote, “the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” (Significantly, Darwin always expressed this “horrid doubt” after admitting an insistent “inward conviction” that the universe is not the result of chance after all, but requires an intelligent Mind, a First Cause. In other words, he applied his skepticism selectively: when reason led to a theistic conclusion, he argued that evolution discredits reason. But since reason was also the means by which he constructed his own theory, he was cutting off the branch he was sitting on.)

Similar self–contradictions are endemic in the literature on evolutionary psychology. A prime example is The Moral Animal, where author Robert Wright spends hundreds of pages describing human beings as “robots,” “puppets,” “machines,” and “Swiss watches” programmed by natural selection. He insists that “biochemistry governs all” and that free will is sheer illusion. He unmasks our noblest moral impulses as survival “stratagems of the genes,” as mere devices “switched on and off in keeping with self–interest.” But then, in a grand leap of faith, Wright insists that we are now free to choose our moral ideals, and he urges us to practice “brotherly love” and “boundless empathy.”

This persistent inner contradiction stems from the fact that evolutionary psychology is essentially a search for a secular morality. Darwinism cut the modern world loose from religious traditions and systems of meaning; the result is a culture adrift in a sea of relativism. Now Darwinism is itself being plumbed as a source of meaning, a cosmic guide for the problems of living. Yet the Darwinist view of human nature is so negative, so counter to traditional notions of human dignity, morality, and reason (not to mention common sense), that there is an almost irresistible impulse to take a leap of faith back to those traditional notions, no matter how unsupported by the theory. For who can live with a theory that tells us that “ethics is illusory,” and that “morality is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends,” in the words of Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson? Who can live with a theory that tells us that if “natural selection is both sufficient and true, it is impossible for a genuinely disinterested or ‘altruistic’ behavior pattern to evolve,” in the words of M. T. Ghiselin?

Peter Singer, for one, cannot. One solution would have been to revive the traditional theism that made disinterested altruism a moral ideal in the first place (albeit with a distinction between humans and other “sentient beings”). Instead, he tries to graft that moral ideal onto the Darwinian tree. The graft will not take, and the result is a fatal incoherence.


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Nancy Pearcey is a fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and managing editor of the journal Origins and Design. She is coauthor (with Charles Colson) of How Now Shall We Live?


http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0010/reviews/pearcey.html

Joshua's Long Day Revisited and Other Commentary

Since this is getting long, I'm moving it up here to a separate entry for Mr. Morgan and Pastor Segers to interact. Y'all can thank me later. Yeah, Dustin, I know, the check's in the mail, blah, blah, blah. :)

Daniel Morgan writes:

the Christian theist has sufficient epistemological warrant to believe in the uniformity of natural and logical law because the Biblical worldview provides the necessary preconditions for such (cf. Gen. 8:22)

Um, but this verse says, "while the earth remains..." and you have some verses which say that the earth will never pass away, and some say that the earth will be melted down to the elements. Which is it? When will it happen? How many times will it happen?

Also, this verse is wrong -- we have in Joshua the earth's rotation stopping for an entire day, supposedly, so in that sense, "time" sure didn't continue uniformly, now did it?

I have heard it repeated over and over that: i) the Christian worldview 'better accounts' for logic/morality/science/X, or ii) that the atheist 'cannot account' for the same

I have yet to see a detailed explanation as to why this is, in light of what I presented above, and Martin's TANG...and you don't present it to me here, all you do is quote from other people who had beliefs about God in an ancient text.

Your author above says, Another approach from a Christian standpoint, is to say, “There can be no certainty regarding anything without Christianity.” because he thinks the other approach employs "secular standards" of epistemology. Where this bifurcates from reality is that there are no "Christian" and "secular" standards of reality or knowledge. There are only man-made and mad-derived ones, which I would label neither "secular" nor "Christian", but all human. Your claim that yours are divine is a claim made by humans, based on a demonstrably human set of documents, codified and canonized in a very human process, and subject to very human interpretation.

What your author (and all presups) attempt to do is be "card sharps" -- they want to presuppose themselves as based on the truth, and so when you challenge their premises and presuppositions, you challenge "God's truth", and thus you are always wrong. Of course, Muslims can take this same approach, and tell Christians that they cannot say that Allah or the Qu'ran is wrong, since they are "arbitrary, subjective, human, etc.," and that they are "borrowing from the Muslim worldview".

It is a cheap parlor trick, and that is why most Christians don't employ presuppositionalism, outside the web and blogosphere and a few disciples of Van Till.

I loved his quote, "Unbelievers can count, but they can’t account for their accounting." Hilarious. Somehow, someway, Christianity can "account" for numbers and the existence of mathematical constructs, because God exists. Why does this immediately solve the problem? We aren't sure, but God is the answer for that too.

You presuppose God, and the Bible, in order to use God, and the Bible, to argue against everything else. Simply put, that is WHY no philosophers in academe even touch presuppositional arguments -- they recognize the futility and absurdity of the "preconditions".

Exbeliever has mounted an impressive refutation of these transcendental arguments, and clearly indicated the vacuity of theists in supporting the premise that God is a necessary precondition of knowledge/morality/logic/X. I challenge you to engage him there, as he has a forum set up for that very purpose.

You may also enjoy his conversational parody between an atheist/physicalist and a presuppositionalist.

7/25/2006 7:09 AM

Dustin Segars replies...

Mr. Morgan

You stated,

"Um, but this verse says, "while the earth remains..." and you have some verses which say that the earth will never pass away,"

Where does the Bible say that the "earth will never pass away"? It does say "heaven and earth WILL pass away . . ." (Matt. 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33)

You went on to ask,

"and some say that the earth will be melted down to the elements. Which is it? When will it happen? How many times will it happen?"

2 Peter 3:12 states that the elemental things of this world will be "melted/melted down” at the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth which will occur at the return of Christ. This is when the earth will no longer "remain” in the state it is currently in and the general uniformity of nature as we know it will cease to be. Remember that Gen. 8:22 says, "While the earth remains . . ." You go on to state,

"Also, this verse is wrong -- we have in Joshua the earth's rotation stopping for an entire day, supposedly, so in that sense, "time" sure didn't continue uniformly, now did it?"

The Bible doesn't say that TIME stopped. Just because the sun failed to go down doesn't make the passage of time for people experiencing the event mutually exclusive. The uniformity of nature is guaranteed IN GENERAL in Gen. 8:22 (i.e., the expectant cycle of the seasons, etc.) and doesn't automatically exclude the occurrence of miraculous events such as the parting of the Red Sea, resurrections, healings, etc. It is important to note here that other natural and logical laws on earth didn't fail to operate in a uniform fashion (i.e., gravity, physiology) while the sun "stood still." The Christian worldview necessarily accounts for and expects miraculous events as recorded in the historical narratives of Scripture while maintaining the overall uniformity of nature in the midst of said events. You go on to state,

"I have heard it repeated over and over that: i) the Christian worldview 'better accounts' for logic/morality/science/X, or ii) that the atheist 'cannot account' for the same

I have yet to see a detailed explanation as to why this is, in light of what I presented above, and Martin's TANG...and you don't present it to me here, all you do is quote from other people who had beliefs about God in an ancient text."

I linked Butler's argument against Dr. Martin's TANG because I was interested in saving time (I am very busy with a family, a ministry, and a secular job) and I also see no point in reinventing the wheel, especially when Butler can explain his refutation of TANG with much greater clarity than I can. I figured you’d rather read after a man who has greater skill and clarity with philosophical writing than myself. You state,

"Your author above says, Another approach from a Christian standpoint, is to say, “There can be no certainty regarding anything without Christianity.” because he thinks the other approach employs "secular standards" of epistemology. Where this bifurcates from reality is that there are no "Christian" and "secular" standards of reality or knowledge."

With all due respect, I believe you missed the point of that section of my article. The standards of testing are “secular” in the sense that when the naturalist posits that Christianity must pass those standard tests and measures in order to be considered valid, then Christianity becomes the mere appendix to the system or worldview rather than the heart of it. So, when the Christian apologist concedes this to the naturalist, they are compromising their faith in a sense by saying that those very standards are sufficient in and of themselves for determining the truthfulness of Christianity and thus, they become guilty of arguing in an autonomous fashion that is ultimately dishonoring to the Lord Jesus Christ. You go on to state,

"What your author (and all presups) attempt to do is be "card sharps" -- they want to presuppose themselves as based on the truth, and so when you challenge their premises and presuppositions, you challenge "God's truth", and thus you are always wrong. Of course, Muslims can take this same approach, and tell Christians that they cannot say that Allah or the Qu'ran is wrong, since they are "arbitrary, subjective, human, etc.," and that they are "borrowing from the Muslim worldview"."

That would be a nice trick for the Muslim indeed, especially if he could demonstrate that his worldview is not internally contradictory from the get-go. Mr. Morgan, for you to say that any theistic religion can make such a claim demonstrates that you understand not the claims of the TAG, which has a very broad scope. Again, so as to not reinvent the wheel, Mike Butler answers your argument,"In Islam, Muslims teach that Allah is absolutely transcendent and unknowable to human minds. However, the Koran repeatedly speaks of Allah. But if Allah is truly unknowable then how could it say anything about him? Indeed how can it refer to Allah as "him" rather than "it?" If Islam were consistent it would say nothing about Allah. But if it had nothing to say about Allah, it would be an entirely vacuous religion.

There are other problems with Islam. For example, the Koran teaches that Jesus is a prophet. According to Islamic theology, prophets cannot lie. The problem with this is that a contradiction is generated from these two propositions. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God while the Koran declares that nobody is begotten of God. Thus if Jesus is the Son of God then the Koran is in error since it said there is nobody begotten of God. And if Jesus is not the Son of God the Koran is still in error since it called Jesus a prophet.

More can be said of Islam (and Judaism), but this is sufficient to make my point. Only Christian theism can account for science (or logic, or ethics) since only Christian theism is internally consistent." http://members.ozemail.com.au/~seccomn/phil/martinrefute.htm

"You presuppose God, and the Bible, in order to use God, and the Bible, to argue against everything else. Simply put, that is WHY no philosophers in academe even touch presuppositional arguments -- they recognize the futility and absurdity of the "preconditions"."

You mean philosophers and scholars like Frame, Bahnsen, Strawson, Van Til, Welty, Mourad, Butler, etc. don't exist? Mr. Morgan, you clearly are unaware of the scholarship in this area. Nevertheless, thank you for willingness to interact on these issues.

Does Scripture condemn slavery?

Does Scripture condemn slavery?

The first rule in answering a question is in knowing where to look for an answer. If you were looking for a Biblical condemnation of slavery, where would be the logical place to find it?

Well, if it’s a condemnation you’re searching for, don’t you just suppose that an oracle of judgment might be the first place to look?

After all, that’s what oracles of judgment are for. Meting out condemnation.

In Ezk 27, we have an oracle of judgment against Tyre. And the slave-trade is placed in the emphatic position at the outset of the catalogue of vices for which Tyre is culpable (v13).

Tyre, as a seafaring power, was central to the ANE slave-trade.

This oracle is then picked up by John in his eschatological oracle of judgment against Roman, under the pseudonym of Babylon.

Once again, the slave-trade is placed in the emphatic position, but this time at the conclusion of the catalogue of vices for which imperial Rome is culpable (18:13).

Cf. Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy (T&T Clark), 350-71.

Thus, Ezk 27 and Rev 18 form two matching and opposing panels of judgment, with slavery accentuated at either end.

Now, if you were a slave-master who found your occupation prominently displayed in oracles of the great assize, then that might send just a wee bit of a hint that a career change was highly advisable.

Well, that’s if you could read the Bible—unlike John Loftus.

The George Speaketh...

HT: Ben Cole

This article, entitled "Southern Baptists After the Revolution," can be found in the August/September 2006 edition of First Things.

All ecclesial revolutions eventually run out of steam. New concerns emerge, and different leaders come to the fore. It is to early to tell whether the election of Frank Page as president of the Southern Baptist Convention signals such a change, but there are signs that a historic shift may be underway within America's largest Protestant denomination.

The pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, South Carolina, Page won a first-ballot victory this summer against two prominent candidates with close ties to what is sometimes called the college a cardinals -- a close knit circle of Southern Baptist Convention leaders who have handpicked the denomination's recent presidents. Even Page was surprised by his election. Since the conservative resurgence began in 1979, only once, in 1994, has a candidate not supported by those leaders been elected to head the Southern Baptist Convention.

Ever since the Southern Baptists were organized in 1845, there has been a machine with powerful personalities struggling to control it. In the 1950s, J.D. Grey, a New Orleans pastor, said of Louie Newton, an older leader from Georgia, "Louie and his buddies have run this convention for too long, and I'm going to take it away from them" -- which J.D. and his buddies did.

When the recent Southern Baptist upheaval -- called simply the Controversy -- began in the 1970s, many saw it as just another preachers' fight, a spectacle with all the charms of a late-night row among alley cats. But two factors distinguished this commotion from earlier power struggles: This was not a palace coup, but a grassroots revolution fueled by a strong sense of denominational alienation by many ordinary Baptists who resented the elitist rule of the Baptist bureaucrats who ran the machine at the time.

There was also a major theological concern, which gave the masses a cause for which to fight: the authority, inspiration, and inerrancy of the Bible. For centuries the Bible had been the central icon in Baptist life, and it seemed to be under attack by some Baptist scholars who questioned the historical and miraculous elements in Scripture. After struggling for more than a decade, conservatives seized control of the denominational machinery and began to implement changes in the boards and agencies of the convention.

In recent years, however, there has been a growing anxiety within the Southern Baptist Convention. Baptists support thousands of missionaries through a national giving plan called the Cooperative Program. But prolonged conflict within the denomination's two large mission boards has left many Baptists unhappy. And, as the Internet chatter on Baptist websites before Page's election showed, many feel the circle of fellowship has been drawn too tightly in recent years. They resent the angry spirit and bitter tone that have marked Baptist discourse. Some feel excluded and believe the Southern Baptist Convention is being distracted from its primary purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission. The commitment to an evangelical view of Scripture seems secure, but some of the other concerns that fueled the Controversy in the first place have surfaced again -- and this time, with a vengeance.

Doubtless, any voted for Page because of his strong support for the Cooperative Program, an important issue for a denomination that has to raise an annual budget of $200 million from voluntary giving. Still, his election was unexpected and can best be explained by an odd coalition of diverse subgroups within the Southern Baptist Convention that came together in Greensboro, North Carolina, to register their concerns. At least five such groups can be identified.

(1) Charismatics. Very few Southern Baptists engage in speaking in tongues or other Pentecostal practices. But the charismatic movement has influenced Baptist life in music, worship, and spirituality, including distinctive forms of prayer. Occasionally, congregations have been ousted from Baptist associations over charismatic issues. But recent efforts to exclude from missionary appointment all who have a "private prayer language" seemed to many ordinary Baptists both intrusive and unnecessary. As one person said to me, "If we are serious about sharing the gospel around the world, shouldn't we be glad that we still have missionaries who pray rather than setting up a bureau of prayer inspectors!"

(2) Neo-Calvinists. Early Baptists, both in England and America, were strongly influenced by Reformed theology, and there has been a growing interest in reclaiming this tradition within the Southern Baptist Convention. The "Calvinism boys," as one of their detractors dubbed them, have made some folks nervous for fear that too much emphasis on God's initiative in salvation might discourage human efforts in witness and evangelism. The issue was tackled head-on by Paige Patterson and Al Mohler, two Southern Baptist educators, in a public debate at this year's convention. While clearly holding to different views, they have agreed that both parties should have a place at the Baptist table. And Page, not a Calvinist himself, said the same thing. If this spirit prevails, there will not be a divisive fight over Calvinism, as some have predicted. No doubt, both hyper-Calvinism and five-point Arminianism are still out of bounds among Southern Baptists, but between those two extremes there is room for a healthy debate on the precise balance between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

(3) Women's Missionary Union. Another surprise event at this year's convention was the decision to reject the effort to change the auxiliary status of the Women's Missionary Union, a mission-support group, and bring it under the direct control of the convention. The decision should not be interpreted as an incipient feminism in Southern Baptist life (out of more than forty thousand churches, only a few dozen have female pastors), but rather as an affirmation of a pattern of cooperation that has served Baptist mission causes well for more than a century. As someone said, "Instead of telling women again what they cannot do, for once let's thank them for what they have done!"

(4) Baptist bloggers. These are younger, Internet-savvy pastors who represent diverse views across the spectrum of Southern Baptist Convention life. But they all have one thing in common: They aren't veterans of the Baptist wars over the past few decades. Some of them have been influenced by the Willow Creek and Saddleback mega-church models of church life. They are mostly conservative and committed to sharing the gospel in today's culture, which, they are quick to remind you, is not the culture of the 1950s. The bloggers are not a well-defined group, but they are adept at agitation and networking, key elements in any emerging revolution. These Baptist Bolsheviks are intelligent, articulate, and a force to be reckoned with.

(5) Younger Moderates. Most of the older moderate groups defeated in the long Baptist wars gave up on the Southern Baptist Convention years and established their own groups outside -- or, at best, on the margins of -- the denomination. Some still grieve the loss of the denominational empire that once was theirs. It seems unlikely, however, that such groups can capture the hearts of even the moderates among the rising Baptist generation. One thing is sure: The more such groups embrace the Kulturprotestantismus of the liberal mainline churches, the less likely this is it to happen. Yet some of the most substantive theology being written by Baptist scholars today comes from a little-known circle of mostly younger moderates who have shown a surprising interest in quite traditional themes such as the deeper meaning of baptism and the Lord's Supper, the covenantal disciplines of congregational life, and the positive role of creeds and confessions in the life of the church. Steven Harmon's recent book, Towards a Baptist Catholicity, is an example -- and it stands in marked contrast to the older libertarian, Emersonian version of Baptist identity. These younger scholars are not so much a part of the coalition that elected Page as they are potential allies for conservatives within a reconciled Baptist future.

But is such reconciliation possible? It will not be easy and it will not happen quickly. But this summer's meeting in North Carolina suggests opportunities for a renewed Southern Baptist Convention that can build on the gains of the past generation without refighting all its harsh battles. The coalition that elected Page is fragile and not likely to hold together very long in the absence of a compelling vision of a believable future, one that is faithful to the verities of the Baptist heritage and also generous, winsome, and filled with grace.

Perhaps this attitude is best seen in the most influential Southern Baptists in America today: Billy Graham, a "prophet with honor" and America's chaplain for more than fifty years; Chuck Colson, evangelist, prison reformer, and cofounder of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and Rick Warren, a pastor whose writings have touched millions of lives. In their commitment to Christ and the Bible, and their desire to share the gospel, these three represent the best of the Baptist vision today. Each in his own way has wrapped his arms around the world and drawn it closer to the Father's heart.

Another surprise happened in Greensboro this year: Condoleeza Rice became the first secretary of state to address the Southern Baptist Convention, and she received a thunderous ovation. The media focused on her stirring patriotic speech and the political implications of her appearance. Since Southern Baptists abandoned native son Jimmy Carter and joined the Reagan revolution in 1980, they have become an increasingly important part of those values-voters who have made the Republican party in American political life. Rice was there, in part, to shore up that alliance.

But something else about her visit should not go unnoticed. Rice, who grew up in the segregated South, became the second Alabama-born African American woman (Coretta Scott King was the first) ever to speak to the Southern Baptist Convention. The symbolism was poignant: This great-granddaugher of slaves was addressing a denomination once led by slave owners. Such an event would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago -- but so would the election of someone like Frank Page during the long years of Controversy that roiled the Southern Baptist Convention. Some changes are for the better."

The Amalekites

***QUOTE***

Samuel claims that God wants the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, infant, cattle, etc. That in itself may not be wrong, however note the motive that Samuel attributes to God. This attack is punishment for crimes committed over 300 year prior. The sentence is carried out on infants and nursing mothers who cannot have taken part in the act that caused the judgment.

Notice that Samuel attaches an evil motive to the action. This makes the action evil. Thus, if someone believes that there is a God who is the basis for the moral law written on our hearts, they are justified in concluding that the God is not the one referred to in the Bible.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/particularism-and-christianity.html

***END-QUOTE***

Here’s the umpteenth example of an apostate who launches into a clueless attack on Scripture.

1.If Bill Curry had bothered to brush up on the history of the Amalekites, he’d see that Scripture is not simply skipping over 300 hundred years of intervening history, as if nothing else had happened.

2. The enmity between the Israelites and the Amalekites began with the wilderness wandering, but it didn’t end there.

During the days of the Judges, the Amalekites continued to form military alliances hostile to Israel (Judg 3:13; 6:3-5,33).

And it didn’t end with King Saul, for David also had to contend with the Amalekites (1 Sam 27:6; 30:1-20).

And it came to a head with Haman, a man of Amalekite extraction,* who attempted to exterminate the Jews once and for all time.

*Cf. D. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Eerdmans 1992), 293.

So the Amalekites were Israel’s mortal enemy from start to finish.

3.The Amalekites were given fair warning when they first opposed the children of Israel (Exod 17:8-16; Num 24:20; Deut 25:17-19).

Oracles of judgment are implicitly conditional (cf. Jer 18:7-10). If a nation repents, God will withhold judgment.

The Amalekites did not repent. To the contrary, they remained impenitent and implacable to the bitter end.

4.The acontextual allusion to Jer 31:33 has actual reference to members of the new covenant, not to the universality of human conscience.

And, in any event, a God-given conscience can become calloused (1 Tim 4:2).

5.The prophet Samuel did not attribute an evil motive to God. That is Curry’s acontextual spin.

6.Curry fails to explain why, from a secular standpoint, it’s ever wrong for one meat machine to terminate another meat machine.

The value of values

Daniel Morgan said...

“I would argue that:
1) Values and goals are not capable of being fulfilled unless we survive
2) Noble values (the virtues) and goals which confer benefits to self and others (such as meeting needs and desires) ought to be fulfilled and practiced
3) The ability to do what ought to be done is dependent upon survival
4) Therefore, we ought to survive, and foster survival in others around us.”

Sorry, Daniel, but this won’t fly:

1.You seem to be using survival as a first-order value which is justified as a precondition of second-order values (noble values/virtues).

But this only relocates the original problem. What’s the secular warrant for second-order values?

2.Moreover, obligation attaches to actual agents, not to nonentities. If there were no human beings, then there’d be no obligations for human beings to discharge.

You might as well contend that birth control is intrinsically evil because it preempts the existence of moral agents who would otherwise come into being.

But we have no automatic obligation to nonentities or unexemplified possibilities—to what might have been, but never was. We can’t very well deprive or defraud nonentities of something they never had in the first place.

3.Furthermore, you maintain your failure to prioritize personal survival over collective survival, or vice versa. Which is it, and how do you justify priorities in case of conflict between the two? Who goes down with the ship?

OT ethics in OT times

Among the many objections to the Christian faith raised by unbelievers, one of the favorite lines of attack so to cite one or more examples of OT morality which they find offensive.

Of course, to merely contrast their morality, or lack thereof, with OT morality, does nothing to demonstrate the superiority of their own morality.

Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, all they ever do is to cite something from the OT, and leave it at that, as if quotation were a substitute for argumentation.

Their procedure is: quote>roll your eyes>case closed.

Their inability to mount an actual argument against OT morality only proves the rational vacuity of their own position.

That said, what about OT ethics? It’s true that there’s a brutal streak to some OT injunctions.

And unbelievers appeal to the element of brutality to disprove the OT, and thereby disprove the Bible as a whole.

But this is quite ironic and self-defeating.

The reason for the occasional brutality of OT morality is due to the brutality of ANE culture.

OT law and practice were adapted to the real world situation of Jews living within a predominately pagan culture.

The ancient world was brutal because the ancient world was heathen.

Because Jewish culture was a subculture of ANE culture, there was only so much it could do to refine and humanize the barbarity of the surrounding culture.

To take a contemporary comparison, our military culture is subculture of the general culture. And the culture of the military is harsh compared with the general culture.

That’s because our soldiers are trained to fight our enemies. Our soldiers are trained to kill.

That’s not very nice. But it’s a necessary evil in a fallen world.

It would be nice if we could be nicer, but social relations are a two-way street.

To take a modern illustration, in WWII we used flame-throwers against the Japanese. That’s a very nasty tactic. But their soldiers left our soldiers no choie.

The Japanese war machine was fanatical and ruthless to the nth degree.

That doesn’t mean we should be quite as ruthless in return. But it does mean that, up-to-a-point, it’s necessary to adjust our tactics to the threat level if we hope to survive.

The irony of the unbeliever is that, left to his own devices, he would return us to the brutality of a pre-Christian culture, which is what necessitated the severity of OT injunctions in the first place.

Inspiration and providence operate in tandem. The inspired law code of Moses didn’t function in a vacuum. Ancient Israel was surrounded by enemies and infiltrated by idolaters.

Her law code was suited to the challenges she was facing at that time and place. And to the extent that contemporary conditions revert to pre-Christian conditions, thanks to the Far Left, it will be necessary to take more sterner measures to deal with the unremitting brutality of the threat to civilized behavior.

Just-war criteria

We’re living in time of war, and many men take just-war criteria as their frame of reference. Even those who either oppose just-war theory or oppose our current strategy may reference just-war criteria, if only as a foil.

What are the criteria? And are they valid criteria?

1.Just cause

2.Just intent

3.Official authorization

4.Last resort

5.Probable success

6.Noncombatant immunity

7.Proportionality

Let’s evaluate the criteria:

1.JUST CAUSE

i) The classic example would be a counteroffensive to repel an unprovoked attack or invasion.

a) But in the age of a potential first strike, that’s a bit unrealistic. If you’re crippled by a first strike, you will be in no position to defend yourself.

b) Also, if we were to intercept a battle plan, should we not act preemptively?

c) Should we wait until the enemy has massacred a certain percentage of the population and destroyed certain infrastructural assets before we return fire?

ii) What about a military alliance in which an ally is attacked?

iii) What about a war of liberation (crusade) or a war of restore the status quo ante?

iv) These can be logical extensions of the core principle.

At the same time, it’s easy for the inner logic of the core principle to become pragmatically overextended.

There’s always another enemy over the next hill. Entangling alliances can escalate a local conflict. And it’s not always possible to turn back the clock.

2.JUST INTENT

i) This criterion is related to (1). We shouldn’t wage imperialistic wars of aggression just to enrich ourselves, viz. colonialism.

ii) That said, while it’s better to do the right thing for the right reason, isn’t it preferable to do the right thing for the wrong reason rather than refrain from doing the right thing by second-guessing our motives?

iii) This criterion flirts with personification. A nation is a corporate entity or high-level abstraction, not a moral agent. A nation has no motives.

So to what political unit or governmental agency do we assign intent?

3.OFFICIAL AUTHORIZATION

i) It’s unclear if this is meant to confer moral warrant on the enterprise, or if it’s merely meant to limit the frequency of warfare by limiting the number of players who can declare war.

It’s more a matter of process than principle.

ii) This criterion overlooks the possibility of civil wars against a tyrannical government. An oppressive military dictator is not highly motivated to legitimate his opponents.

4.LAST RESORT

The unstated assumption is that war should be the last resort because war is the worst resort.

But what if war is the best resort? What if procrastination only serves to strengthen the enemy, which will make the war more damaging if and when it finally comes?

5.PROBABLE SUCCESS

This generally makes sense.

But what about cases of genocide or national survival where the citizenry has nothing to lose by fighting to the last drop of blood?

6.NONCOMBATANT IMMUNITY

This is a humane distinction. But it’s also quite limited.

i) In every war, civilians are killed. We should avoid gratuitous killing, but there’s a difference between wanton carnage and killing to secure a strategic objective.

ii) Where the enemy uses the civilian population as a human shield by situating its assets in population centers, the enemy is to blame for collateral damage.

iii) It’s a bit idealist to automatically assume that noncombatants are by no means complicit in the war effort. They often allow themselves to be used as human shields. They often supply and support the combatants in various ways.

7.PROPORTIONALITY

This criterion confuses retribution with military tactics. Retribution should be proportional. The punishment fits the crime.

But the point of fighting a war is to win the war, and—if possible—to win a decisive victory which will deter a replay of hostilities in the near future. This is practical, not punitive.

Proportional force is responsible for the so-called “cycle of violence.” What puts an end to the “cycle of violence” is the strategic application of overwhelming force to disarm the enemy.

Some Resources On Docetism And The Resurrection

In my response to Matthew Green yesterday, I mentioned my previous replies to him and other relevant articles I've posted here in the past. I want to link to some of those articles, for those who are interested. See here and here, for example. Anybody interested can find a lot of other relevant material in the archives of this blog.

Here are some of N.T. Wright's comments on the argument that Luke and John were fabricating details in the resurrection accounts in response to Docetism:

"The idea that traditions developed in the church from a more hellenistic early period (in this case a more 'non-bodily' view of post-mortem existence) to a more Jewish later period (in this case, a more embodied 'resurrection') is in any case extremely peculiar and, though widely held in the twentieth century, ought now to be abandoned as historically unwarranted and simply against common sense....In the cases before us, it makes no sense to think of Luke sitting down to compose an anti-docetic narrative about the genuine human body of Jesus and allowing himself so far to forget this important purpose as to have Jesus appear and disappear, not to be recognized, and finally ascend into heaven. Similar things must be said of John." (The Resurrection of the Son of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], p. 606)

Notice also that Matthew Green acknowledges that some groups denied the physicality of Jesus' pre-resurrection body without denying the physicality of the resurrection body. But he speculates that there might have been some group that did deny the physicality of the resurrection body, a group large enough to warrant responses in the gospels, and he further speculates that the group may have existed as early as the 70s. He doesn't have any particular group in mind or any specific evidence. He just speculates that what would be needed to maintain his theory might have existed.

Were Some Of The Gospel Resurrection Accounts Fabricated In Response To Docetism?

Matthew Green of Debunking Christianity has posted another article on the resurrection. As before, he's largely speculating without any evidence to support his position and in opposition to the evidence we do have. He asserts that "visions" occurred while distancing himself from "hallucinations", but he doesn't tell us what specific type(s) of visions he has in mind or how he knows that the people in question were in a condition to experience whatever specific type(s) of visions he wants to propose. He ignores a lot of the evidence against his position, including evidence presented in articles he claims to have read, such as my responses to him and an article on the vision theory at J.P. Holding's web site. As I've said before, Matthew Green isn't seeking the best explanation of the evidence. He's seeking the best naturalistic explanation.

Near the beginning of the article, he makes some comments that reflect the sort of mindset he has in approaching this issue:

"I have already spoken elsewhere what the personal consequences for me would be if I came to conclude the Christian gospel was valid: I would take my own life; I would see no reason to delay the inevitability of Hell. Never-the-less I enjoy a challenge and the more confrontational it is, the more I love to rise to the challenge, especially if answering it means putting confrontational Christian apologists in their places and just shutting them up!"

Later in the article, Matthew will cite the work of Richard Carrier while distancing himself from Carrier at the same time, as he's done before. Matthew tells us that he doesn't know enough about the relevant evidence to be confident about Carrier's conclusions. But he tells us that he doesn't trust any critique of Carrier coming from J.P. Holding. For those who are interested, Holding's responses to Carrier can be found here, and others have responded to him here, here, and here, for example.

Most of what Matthew argues in his latest article is already addressed in my previous responses to him or in other material linked above. Compare his comments on 1 Corinthians 15 to the comments in the article here, for example. Compare his comments on the alleged development of material in the gospels to what I've written in past articles on the subject at this blog. After you read his claim that in the gospel of Matthew "the disciples see Jesus but don't touch him", read Matthew 28:9. Read Luke 24:6 and ask yourself whether Luke committed the error Matthew Green claims he did. Ask yourself whether an apologetic response to Docetism is the best explanation for why people living and writing in a Jewish context would seek and write about physical evidence for a resurrection. If the gospels' interest in physical evidence for a physical resurrection makes sense in a first century Jewish context and in the context of human nature, isn't an appeal to the influence of Docetism superfluous? Ask yourself whether the resurrection witnesses were in circumstances in which they were likely to experience naturalistic visions. How well do Matthew Green's speculations explain what we know about the genre of the gospels, the authorship of the gospels, how the early enemies of Christianity responded to the movement, etc.? Ask yourself whether eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Jesus and the apostles were still alive when the gospels were being composed and whether the scenario Matthew Green proposes is likely in such a setting. A lot of this ground has already been covered sufficiently in other articles, so there's no need to say much more here.

Note to Bob N' Charles

Hey guys. It's Monday night, and we all know what tomorrow is.... Don't forget that Rich Pierce is back at work this week, and James White will be taking calls again. So, the clock is now ticking for you again. He invited y'all to call last week, and you're always talkin' about him and how he doesn't want to talk to ya0 and telling us how you'd so totally trounce him in a debate, and we all know that's just soooo true, right, because James denies instrumentality and you've got the goods on him anyway, right? So, the call's free and the invitation is out there for either one or both of ya to call and actually talk to him. Let's see you actually have the courage of your convictions! So just in case you forgot, here's the 411:

Most Tuesday Mornings at
11:00am MST and
Most Thursday Afternoons at 4:00 MST
(pre-feeds begin 30 minutes or so before start of program)

Hope to hear ya!

An acquired characteristic

“I believe correct reasoning is definitely an acquired characteristic. It is something we develop if only we are fortunate enough to start this life with the basic cognitive abilities nature provided.”

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/07/line-must-be-drawn-here.html

Before Holman places an order for an automated back-patting machine, perhaps we can save him some money by examining how well his cognitive faculties exemplify the acquired characteristic of correct reasoning.

“For me, the findings of assessing Christianity had only one consistent pull -- away from being considered the products of any divine origins at all. The pieces of the puzzle had to fit, and they finally did. I was forced to naturalize what had been pounded into my head as supernatural. Those horses and chariots of fire that took Elijah to heaven had to mean something that would click with my rational mind. Well, in time, they did, but the answer I came to did not bring God any glory. The Bible was a complete work of fiction. That was the answer I came to embrace.”

Speaking for myself, but obviously not for Holman, I’ve always thought one prerequisite of correct reasoning was the “basic cognitive ability” to acquaint yourself with the subject-matter under review. For example:

“Elijah was taken up to heaven in the whirlwind, not in the chariot of fire and horses of fire which merely ‘came between the two of them’ (Heb.) and cut him off from human sight,” D. J. Wiseman, 1 & 2 Kings (IVP 1993), 195.

Continuing with Holman:

“Contemporary apologists want you to forget that it was this same god of old who has been an opponent of science (I Timothy 6:20-21).”

Again, someone with the basic cognitive equipment for correct reasoning should exhibit a modicum of semantic sophistication and thereby know better than to equate an Elizabethan transliteration (“science,” KJV) of a Latin translation (“et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiæ”, Vulgate) of a Koine Greek word (gnosis) with modern science.

“The cause of abortions (Hosea 13:16; Numbers 31:15-18)”

Num 31:15-18 contains no reference to abortion.

And even if it did, is Holman an opponent of Roe v. Wade?

Hos 13:16 refers to the pagan practice of disemboweling pregnant POWs.

“Racism (Genesis 9:24-27).”

Once again, someone with the basic cognitive faculty for correct reasoning would make an informed effort to actually exegete Gen 9:24-27.

“And a fierce bringer of judgment on his many enemies (homosexuals, Leviticus 20:13, witches, Exodus 22:18, Sabbath breakers, Exodus 31:14, and those who worship other gods, Exodus 22:20, see also Luke 19:27).”

Aside from the fact that God has no enemies in the usual sense, seeing as God is impervious to harm, all Holman has illustrated his disapproval of OT ethics.

His cognitive faculties fall short of the basic ability to actually show what is wrong with OT ethics, or furnish a secular alternative.

“Realizing this, I am now compelled to go down the list of less than admirable qualities and fantastic ideas attributed to this deity and accept the biblical testimony about him. The God of the Bible made the sun stand still (Joshua 10:12-13).”

We’ve exegeted this passage over at Triablogue.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/06/joshuas-long-day.html

“An ax head [to] float (2 Kings 6:6).”

This idea is only fantastic if you don’t believe in miracles, which only makes sense if you’re an atheist. Hence Holman is reasoning in a circle. Another splendid specimen of evolutionary epistemology on display.

“And a chariot of fire, led by actual horses of fire (2 Kings 2:11) to take Elijah to Heaven.”

The idea is only fantastic if you either can’t read the original or are way too lazy to consult a standard commentary.

All said, if correct reasoning is an acquired characteristic, then it’s a characteristic that Holman has yet to acquire. Apparently he got off to a sorry start in life, which accounts for his arrested development. Such are the vicissitudes of naturalistic evolution.