In a previous article, I discussed the sources of information on Jesus' background that were available to the early Christians and their opponents. In this post, I want to give some examples of the evidence we have that these sources would have been available during the formative years of Christianity. How do we know how long Mary lived? What if she died before Jesus' public ministry began? How do we know that the apostle John lived until late in the first century?
Though they differ in their focus and the details they address, all of the gospels agree on the general outlines of Jesus' family background. His father seems to have died during or prior to His public ministry, but His mother lived longer. He had siblings, and they were initially unbelievers. What I want to focus on here is the gospel authors' agreement that Mary was still alive during Jesus' public ministry. We have four early sources, with more than four sources behind them (Luke 1:1), reporting multiple events that involved Mary during Jesus' public ministry. None of the earliest sources argue that Mary died earlier, and many post-gospel sources agree with what the gospels report on the subject. Furthermore, some of the gospel accounts are particularly unlikely to have been fabricated, because of their embarrassing nature. Jesus' mother and brothers refer to Him as insane (Mark 3:20-35), Jesus considers His unbelieving brothers (future church leaders) incompetent to care for His mother (John 19:26-27), etc. John 19:27 tells us that Mary lived past Jesus' death for some unspecified period of time as well, which is corroborated by Acts 1:14 (which, like John 19, has Mary in the region of Jerusalem around the time of Jesus' death).
For John, we have more information. Acts refers to John living past Jesus' death and says nothing of John's death or martyrdom, though his brother's martyrdom is mentioned (Acts 12:2). Most likely, John was still alive when the book of Acts was completed, probably in the sixties. Paul mentions that he met John in Jerusalem more than a decade after Jesus' death (Galatian 2:9-10). Passages in John's gospel (for evidence of Johannine authorship, see here and here) such as 21:19 and 21:22-23 are best explained by a date of writing in the middle of the sixties or later. The condition of the churches in Revelation 2-3 suggests a date for that book late in the century rather than in the middle of the century, and the book seems to have been written by John (D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction To The New Testament [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005], pp. 700-712). Irenaeus refers to how John lived until the time of the emperor Trajan (Against Heresies, 3:3:4). Victorinus refers to John's authorship of Revelation at the time of the emperor Domitian (Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, 10:11). Clement of Alexandria refers to John as active in church leadership when he was "old", after returning from the island of Patmos, and Clement does so in relating an account of a tradition passed down outside of scripture (Who Is The Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?, 42). He also refers to John as the last of the gospel writers (cited in Eusebius, Church History, 6:14:7), and is corroborated by other sources on the point, another fact that would be consistent with John's living until late in the first century. Irenaeus repeatedly refers to John's opposition to the heretic Cerinthus (Against Heresies, 3:3:4), who was active around the turn of the century. Papias refers to a church leader named John who was his contemporary (cited in Eusebius, Church History, 3:39:3-4), and he probably was referring to the apostle. (For a refutation of the theory that another church leader named John was confused with the apostle, see here.) Irenaeus refers to Papias as a disciple of John (Against Heresies, 5:33:4), as do many other sources who had access to Papias' writings (see here). Polycarp, a disciple of John (Irenaeus, cited in Eusebius, Church History, 5:20:6; Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, 32; see also here), seems to have been born around 65-70 A.D. (Martyrdom Of Polycarp, 9), which also suggests that John lived until late in the century. Tertullian comments that the register of the church of Smyrna refers to Polycarp's appointment as the bishop of that church by John (The Prescription Against Heretics, 32), which, given Polycarp's age, suggests that John lived until late in the century. Much more could be cited, coming from a wide variety of sources in a wide variety of locations addressing a wide variety of topics, all stating or implying that John lived for a long time after Jesus' death, probably until late in the first century.
We have no good reason to reject the traditional view that Mary lived past Jesus' death and that John lived to the late first century. Mary would have known a lot about Jesus' background, since she was His mother. John was part of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples, with James and Peter, and he had met Jesus' mother and siblings and lived with Mary for a while (John 2:1-2, 19:26-27, Acts 1:13-14, Galatians 2:9-10). Similar evidence could be cited regarding Peter, James, and other relevant sources of information on Jesus' background. Sources like these would have been available to the early Christians and their critics for decades, several decades in the cases of sources like John and Jesus' cousin Symeon.
Friday, November 17, 2006
The Functional Hyper-Calvinism of Dr. Emir Caner or "Will the Real Hyper-Calvinist Please Stand Up?"
On the DL for 11/16/06, Dr. James White critiqued Dr. Emir Caner's sermon on Calvinism at Thomas Road Baptist Church. In his sermon, about 30 (give or take a few) minutes into it, Dr. Caner wanted to know of the Calvinist, "Can you honestly tell a person that Christ died for them...when you witness be honest and tell them that Christ might not have died for them..." He then proceeded to connect general atonement with evangelism, insinuating that unless you can tell a man Christ died for him in particular, you are being insincere and he has no reason to believe.
If I was to critique this in Dr. Caner's presence I would ask him if he's a hyper-Calvinist. In hyper-Calvinism, we are told that we need to have a gospel warrant to believe in order to convert. So, I don't think this is a case of putting a person on a "guilt trip," as Dr. White noted in his critique, rather Emir Caner is, in my opinion, "jonesing" for a good old fashioned warrant to believe. All he's done is deny that we can subjectively discern God's decretive will for a warrant to believe (hyper-Calvinism) and replace that particular epistemic warrant with general atonement. So, where the hyper-Calvinist has no concrete epistemic warrant to speak of, Dr. Caner has found a more concrete warrant, namely that Jesus died for everyone, therefore he died for you. Emir Caner is a functional hyper-Calvinist, the very thing that he calls Dr. White.
The logic is quite simple. Unless God seconds your call from the pulpit in some manner, then the call is not genuine. General atonement is a concrete marker. Since Christ died for everybody, you can know He died for you; thus you have a gospel warrant to believe. The problem is, Scripture never frames the gospel in those terms or the atonement in those terms. There is not a single text of Scripture that records anybody being told to believe because Jesus died for them. I would ask, if the only the elect believe it anyway, and the reprobate will not, then where's the harm in simply declaring that Christ died for sinners? The elect will believe Christ died for them by virtue of placing faith in Christ. Dr. Caner wants to offer assurance to the sinner. This only panders to his self-interest, and it conflates assurance and conversion. The warrant to believe is found not in discerning God's decretive will or in general atonement, but in the universal command of God that all sinners should believe in Christ and repent in order to be justified and be saved. Why is that not warrant enough? God did not give Abraham a list of detailed assurances that all would be well and instructions on how He would fulfill His promises when he called him out of Ur. He gave him a covenant that began with a command and continued with a promise. This is the same way it works in evangelism. Why can Dr. Caner and others like him not grasp this?
Moreover, Dr. Caner creates the impression that you must believe a particular doctrine of the atonement in order to be saved. That too is a function of some forms of hyper-Calvinism. If you don't believe me, remember that Dave Hunt has stated that he doesn't believe anybody who says he was saved and at that time believed the doctrines commonly called "Calvinism" is really a Christian.
Could someone who believes this false gospel of Calvinism be truly saved? Fortunately, many Calvinists (you among them) were saved before becoming Calvinists. They now malign God by saying that He is pleased to damn multitudes though He could save all—and that He predestines multitudes to the Lake of Fire before they are even born. But having believed the gospel before becoming Calvinists, they “shall not come into condemnation, but [have] passed from death unto life” (). Those who only know the false gospel of Calvinism are not saved, while those who are saved and ought to know better but teach these heresies will be judged for doing so.
Will the real hyper-Calvinist please stand up?
Thursday, November 16, 2006
The Evangelutionist
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“Want to be a scientist for a day? Pick a fossil, Steve. Pick a real one. They have labels and numbers and dig sites and museums... So I'll be waiting for you to pick a bone and pick it apart.”
Picking *a* fossil or *a* bone doesn’t establish an evolutionary *series* or lineal descent. For that would involve a *relation* between several fossils.
Sorry you have so much difficulty following the argument. But I guess we must make allowance for evolutionary throwbacks like you.
“The fossils that scientists call transitionals between humans and apes are real.”
No doubt the *fossils* are real. The issue is your classification scheme.
To establish that they are transitional forms, you would first need to establish lineal descent. Do you have a non-circular argument for that proposition?
And while we’re on the subject, what are your criteria for distinguishing between ecological intermediates (e.g. amphibians) and evolutionary intermediates?
Also, how do you distinguish between a macroevolutionary intermediate and a microevolutionary variant (e.g. subspecies of the horse)?
“Funny how ‘flood geology’ will come in at this point.”
I’m not the one who’s bringing up flood geology: you are—as a diversionary tactic.
The fact that you want to deflect attention away from the actual subject of the thread betrays your inability to address that question.
All you’re doing is to advertise your intellectual insecurity.
FREDK SAID:
“Your bias is totally relevant to any conversation you have concerning any science that contradicts your religious beliefs if you from a theological basis reject anything that contradicts your interpretation of the bible. Any in-depth conversation with you is impossible because it just becomes an assertion war with you poo-pooing any and all science that goes against what you already believe.”
1.To begin with, “bias” is a two-way street. Would you apply the same preemptory dismissal to the arguments of Dawkins, Dennett, or Lewontin on the basis of their irreligious bias?
Or do you give them a free pass because their irreligious bias just so happens to coincide with your own?
2.A blog is a public medium. The point is not whether you can persuade little old me, as if we were having a private conversation—mono a mono.
The point, rather, is whether you can acquit your position for the benefit of all the lurkers who tune into these debates. That’s the target audience.
TOUCHSTONE SAID:
“Here's a link (10 years old!) from Archaeology.org called ‘World's Oldest Spears’:”
http://www.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html
“So, that's 400,000 years ago, hominins using crafted spears. Now, if that's the case, what does that do for (proto-)man's capabilities? I'd say that a spear more than compensates for a pair of fangs, no?”
A couple of issues:
1.Notice that the Evangelutionist has conceded one of my primary arguments. For one of my basic contentions was that an unarmed man is no match for a major predator like a leopard or lion.
Some of my critics instantly denied my rather common sense observation as if I’d said something totally outlandish. However, the Evangelutionist agrees with me in that respect.
2.Does *a* spear more than compensate for a pair of fangs?
Hmm. Would you go up against a cave bear or a saber tooth tiger or a wolf pack with *a* spear?
“And, I'm wondering what more we need than this. There's plenty of other evidences to look at, but if we understand that hominins were crafting spears a half million years ago, don't we have more than we need to dismiss the idea that early man was defenseless?”
1.Yes, we do need more than this. For one thing, we need to know how they assigned this date to the artifacts. As one of scientists admitted:
“In the absence of age estimates from any absolute dating techniques, Roberts says that the new finds may be only 350,000 years old.”
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/3_1_97/fob2.htm
But if they didn’t employ any absolute dating techniques, then how did they come up with any particular estimate?
Is there a follow-up article which goes into more detail?
2.I never said that early man was defenseless. What I said, rather, is that man lacks the natural defense mechanisms of “other” primates.
So, in order to survive, he would need some artificial defense mechanism to compensate for the loss of his natural defense mechanism.
According to evolution, that would be a two-stage process:
i) The development of enough brainpower to invent weaponry and:
ii) The actual development of weaponry.
Timing is everything. So, do we have fossil evidence of a bridging device between the loss of his natural defense mechanisms and his compensatory adaptation? Did these transitional stages overlap?
“We can look at (proto-)man's social and collaborative organization, and the combat advantages of the brain itself, prior to even looking at available weapons. But, really, is anything more needed? If you say yes, I suggest this is one of those easy points to point out your YEC bias!”
The scientific burden of proof is not to point out my YEC bias, if that’s what I have.
Rather, the scientific burden of proof is to furnish specific evidence for specific claims.
“Second, (proto-)humans are social animals, and social in such a way as to make them extraordinarily dangerous and lethal. The ability to communicate verbally, whether looking back at the rudiments of spoken language very far back, or at full blown conversation more recently, the hominid social capability produced a strong survival advantage that other primates don't have.”
I agree with his conclusion. But what about the premise? Does the Evangelutionist have any archeological evidence of “rudimentary speech” 400,000 years ago?
“Third, and which should be so obvious that the original poster appears not to have thought things through before posting this, even without the defensive capabilities of living/traveling/hunting in coordinated teams or using weapons, the enlarged brain itself is the ultimate survival weapon. Long before our brains reached the size they are today, proto-human brains were far larger and more capable than the other beasts in their environment. As such, they possessed a ‘meta-weapon’, the ability to reason and plan in ways that transcended the ferocious capabilities of other animals.”
Ah, shame on me for my silly oversight! How could I have neglected to consider the “meta-weapon” of the brain itself, irrespective of weaponry or teamwork?
Yes sir…just lock an unarmed man in a cage with a Siberian tiger and watch how the “ultimate survival weapon” will best the tiger nine times out of ten. I'd say that a brain more than compensates for a pair of fangs, no?
“We learned the power of human ingenuity tragically on 9/11/2001, as a handful of primitive humans, armed with small, crude weapons, used their brains as weapons of cruelty to bring down the World Trade Center Towers. Proof that fangs and muscle, and even armor or computers are no match for ingenuity, a weapon put to horrifying use on that day.”
Yes, indeed, who can ever forget the horrifying sight of highjackers flying their Stone Age passenger-jets into the Twin Towers?
Or perhaps those were Pterodactyls disguised as passenger-jets.
Clearly I need to get a doctorate in Applied Troglodytology from Fred Flintstone University to keep up my end of the conversation.
Give my regards to Wilma.
On second thought, maybe it was it telekinetic. Using their meta-weapon to project laser-like brainwaves in the direction of the Twin Towers. The rest is history.
“Want to be a scientist for a day? Pick a fossil, Steve. Pick a real one. They have labels and numbers and dig sites and museums... So I'll be waiting for you to pick a bone and pick it apart.”
Picking *a* fossil or *a* bone doesn’t establish an evolutionary *series* or lineal descent. For that would involve a *relation* between several fossils.
Sorry you have so much difficulty following the argument. But I guess we must make allowance for evolutionary throwbacks like you.
“The fossils that scientists call transitionals between humans and apes are real.”
No doubt the *fossils* are real. The issue is your classification scheme.
To establish that they are transitional forms, you would first need to establish lineal descent. Do you have a non-circular argument for that proposition?
And while we’re on the subject, what are your criteria for distinguishing between ecological intermediates (e.g. amphibians) and evolutionary intermediates?
Also, how do you distinguish between a macroevolutionary intermediate and a microevolutionary variant (e.g. subspecies of the horse)?
“Funny how ‘flood geology’ will come in at this point.”
I’m not the one who’s bringing up flood geology: you are—as a diversionary tactic.
The fact that you want to deflect attention away from the actual subject of the thread betrays your inability to address that question.
All you’re doing is to advertise your intellectual insecurity.
FREDK SAID:
“Your bias is totally relevant to any conversation you have concerning any science that contradicts your religious beliefs if you from a theological basis reject anything that contradicts your interpretation of the bible. Any in-depth conversation with you is impossible because it just becomes an assertion war with you poo-pooing any and all science that goes against what you already believe.”
1.To begin with, “bias” is a two-way street. Would you apply the same preemptory dismissal to the arguments of Dawkins, Dennett, or Lewontin on the basis of their irreligious bias?
Or do you give them a free pass because their irreligious bias just so happens to coincide with your own?
2.A blog is a public medium. The point is not whether you can persuade little old me, as if we were having a private conversation—mono a mono.
The point, rather, is whether you can acquit your position for the benefit of all the lurkers who tune into these debates. That’s the target audience.
TOUCHSTONE SAID:
“Here's a link (10 years old!) from Archaeology.org called ‘World's Oldest Spears’:”
http://www.archaeology.org/9705/newsbriefs/spears.html
“So, that's 400,000 years ago, hominins using crafted spears. Now, if that's the case, what does that do for (proto-)man's capabilities? I'd say that a spear more than compensates for a pair of fangs, no?”
A couple of issues:
1.Notice that the Evangelutionist has conceded one of my primary arguments. For one of my basic contentions was that an unarmed man is no match for a major predator like a leopard or lion.
Some of my critics instantly denied my rather common sense observation as if I’d said something totally outlandish. However, the Evangelutionist agrees with me in that respect.
2.Does *a* spear more than compensate for a pair of fangs?
Hmm. Would you go up against a cave bear or a saber tooth tiger or a wolf pack with *a* spear?
“And, I'm wondering what more we need than this. There's plenty of other evidences to look at, but if we understand that hominins were crafting spears a half million years ago, don't we have more than we need to dismiss the idea that early man was defenseless?”
1.Yes, we do need more than this. For one thing, we need to know how they assigned this date to the artifacts. As one of scientists admitted:
“In the absence of age estimates from any absolute dating techniques, Roberts says that the new finds may be only 350,000 years old.”
http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/3_1_97/fob2.htm
But if they didn’t employ any absolute dating techniques, then how did they come up with any particular estimate?
Is there a follow-up article which goes into more detail?
2.I never said that early man was defenseless. What I said, rather, is that man lacks the natural defense mechanisms of “other” primates.
So, in order to survive, he would need some artificial defense mechanism to compensate for the loss of his natural defense mechanism.
According to evolution, that would be a two-stage process:
i) The development of enough brainpower to invent weaponry and:
ii) The actual development of weaponry.
Timing is everything. So, do we have fossil evidence of a bridging device between the loss of his natural defense mechanisms and his compensatory adaptation? Did these transitional stages overlap?
“We can look at (proto-)man's social and collaborative organization, and the combat advantages of the brain itself, prior to even looking at available weapons. But, really, is anything more needed? If you say yes, I suggest this is one of those easy points to point out your YEC bias!”
The scientific burden of proof is not to point out my YEC bias, if that’s what I have.
Rather, the scientific burden of proof is to furnish specific evidence for specific claims.
“Second, (proto-)humans are social animals, and social in such a way as to make them extraordinarily dangerous and lethal. The ability to communicate verbally, whether looking back at the rudiments of spoken language very far back, or at full blown conversation more recently, the hominid social capability produced a strong survival advantage that other primates don't have.”
I agree with his conclusion. But what about the premise? Does the Evangelutionist have any archeological evidence of “rudimentary speech” 400,000 years ago?
“Third, and which should be so obvious that the original poster appears not to have thought things through before posting this, even without the defensive capabilities of living/traveling/hunting in coordinated teams or using weapons, the enlarged brain itself is the ultimate survival weapon. Long before our brains reached the size they are today, proto-human brains were far larger and more capable than the other beasts in their environment. As such, they possessed a ‘meta-weapon’, the ability to reason and plan in ways that transcended the ferocious capabilities of other animals.”
Ah, shame on me for my silly oversight! How could I have neglected to consider the “meta-weapon” of the brain itself, irrespective of weaponry or teamwork?
Yes sir…just lock an unarmed man in a cage with a Siberian tiger and watch how the “ultimate survival weapon” will best the tiger nine times out of ten. I'd say that a brain more than compensates for a pair of fangs, no?
“We learned the power of human ingenuity tragically on 9/11/2001, as a handful of primitive humans, armed with small, crude weapons, used their brains as weapons of cruelty to bring down the World Trade Center Towers. Proof that fangs and muscle, and even armor or computers are no match for ingenuity, a weapon put to horrifying use on that day.”
Yes, indeed, who can ever forget the horrifying sight of highjackers flying their Stone Age passenger-jets into the Twin Towers?
Or perhaps those were Pterodactyls disguised as passenger-jets.
Clearly I need to get a doctorate in Applied Troglodytology from Fred Flintstone University to keep up my end of the conversation.
Give my regards to Wilma.
On second thought, maybe it was it telekinetic. Using their meta-weapon to project laser-like brainwaves in the direction of the Twin Towers. The rest is history.
Sugar-coated Darwinism
Let me say at the outset that I appreciate the good faith effort which a couple of Darwinian commenters are making to rise to the challenge and lay out the evidence.
“FREDK SAID:
follow this bouncing ball. reposting this response does nothing to further your "cause". Your premise remains nothing more than a dose of sugar to help you swallow your creation story.”
It didn’t take FREDK long to run out of arguments. He shot his wad in the first volley.
Moving along:
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“So Steve, going by your quote, we have little more than a box of identifiable hominid ancestors from between 5-10 million years ago. What of the last 5 million years?”
Fair question. A couple of points:
i) Since evolution is descent with modification, a Darwinian needs to document the earlier stages as well as the later stages to establish that one fossil species is, indeed, a lineal descendent of an earlier fossil species.
ii) Yes, indeed—what about the last 5 millions years?
How many hominian fossils are we talking about? Where did they come from? How were they dated? What was their state of preservation?
Why were they classified as hominian? How are the fossils from one time and place aligned with fossils from another time and place to establish lineal descent?
“Seems from the links and tree you were provided there are a ton of hominid fossils in that time frame, and from my understanding most of the changes leading to what we consider modern humans from our primate ancestor happened relatively recently (last few million years).”
Two problems:
i) The tree I was given is not given in the fossil record. Rather, the tree I was given is 1 part fossil to 99 parts interpolation.
So, is this direct evidence for an evolutionary tree? Or is evolutionary theory picking out a few discrete data-points, then rearranging them into an evolutionary tree according to evolutionary projections?
We have a few fossilized pearls, but the string is supplied by evolution.
ii) To address my original question, we would also need direct evidence that at the time early man was losing his natural defense mechanisms, he had acquired enough brainpower to compensate by the invention of weaponry to repel natural predators and hunt natural prey.
Does the fossil record actually show us such a transition?
“Since our difference in strength is something I've thought a bit about before, I'm sure you could explore it if you wished. First, for some clue on what to look for you'd probably want to explore the structure of muscle on these species,” &c.
How is this relevant to my examples? An unarmed man is essentially defenseless against a leopard, or lion, or pack of cape hunting dogs.
I’m using examples of African predators since Africa supplies the evolutionary point of reference.
Now, one can make allowance for the fact that modern-day predators are not identical with predators concomitant with early man (assuming the evolutionary narrative). But the earlier predators are just as formidable, just as deadly.
Likewise, modern man is not identical with early man (assuming the evolutionary narrative).
But as soon as our evolutionary ancestors leave the safety of the trees, they are easy pickings for the major predators of that time and place.
And they don’t have the natural defense mechanisms of mandrills, baboons, or gorillas.
So, in order for them to survive, you would have to document two stages of development:
i) By the time they came down from the trees, they had the brainpower to invent weapons.
ii) And, in fact, they did invent weapons by the time they came down from the trees.
Do we have fossil evidence for this crucial phase?
Or does the Darwinian simply reason in reverse: given that evolution is a fact, then if our early ancestors survived, they must have had whatever adaptations were requisite for survival.
But why should I buy into that backwards reasoning? It assumes what it needs to prove.
“You could probably also find a way to estimate the interval of these changes and accumulation and map it with say, cranial size changes to see if there is a correlation.”
You would only have evidence of encephalization if you had prior evidence of lineal descent. Absent evidence of lineal descent, you have no evidence that the same species underwent encephalization.
Do you have a non-circular argument for your inference?
Moving along:
“Steve, I must admit that I'm quite puzzled at what you would accept as ‘show us viable intermediates in the fossil records’? You realize that this data, as I pointed out, is based on all hominin fossils? Real, actual fossils?”
Yes, we have genuine fossils. But why do you classify them as hominian fossils?
You could only classify them as hominian fossils if you could establish lineal descent.
But to line up a number of fossils, scattered in time and place, to form an evolutionary sequence, smuggles the conclusion into the evidence.
“You realize that this data, as I pointed out, is based on all hominin fossils? Real, actual fossils? And that their morphology can be correlated by physical anthropological methods, just like anything else in forensic science? You know anything about physical anthropology?”
i) So you’re claiming that comparative anatomy can establish common descent?
I thought that, according to convergent evolution, unrelated taxa (e.g. placentals v. marsupials) may be morphologically alike?
ii) Moreover, how are homologies evidence of common descent?
Why would they not be evidence of common design?
Since there are only a handful of efficient body-plans, we would expect many variations on a few basic designs.
So how do homologies single out common descent over against common design?
“They can literally take a single good bone and tell you a whole lot about the individual it came from -- age of death, evidence of disease, approximate size...”
No doubt they can. But I’d also like to know what bone they’re using for their extrapolations.
“This is how many missing persons are eventually ID'd -- via a few bone fragments that lead back to age, size, approx date of death, etc.”
Sure, but in that case, we already know that the skeletal remains belong to a member of our own species.
And where they don’t, that’s easy to establish as well.
“Learn something about the methods before you criticize them.”
If you think that comparative morphology is sufficient to establish lineal descent, then I don’t believe that I’m the one who needs to bone up (pardon the pun) on the finer points of evolutionary methodology.
“If you are actually interested in studying this out, rather than just debunking evolution (snort chuckle), you can always track down the primary literature cited in those TO articles I linked. They would contain images and modern fossils are always reconstructed very precisely using CAT technology.”
The problem is not with the fossils, but the way in which the Darwinian fills the gaps.
Where does the evidence end and the theorizing begin? What is the proportion of hard evidence to hypothetical interpolations or extrapolations?
Is the evidence shaping the theory, or is the theory shaping the evidence? That’s the question?
“In other words, let's say we have pieces of bones. Put these bones into a CAT scanner. Then, use a simple computer graphics program to generate a mirror immage symmetry of what you see. Then, attach the virtual fossil to the real fossil…Is that ‘not allowed’?”
Allowed for what? To reconstruct a complete skeleton from fragmentary remains?
But that’s not the issue. The issue is correlating fragments from one site with fragments with another to infer an evolutionary series.
One what basis to you intercalate these disparate remains? If you already had a continuous series of fossils, then, perhaps, you could drop these isolated and fragmentary remains into their appropriate slots, but you are attempting do to the opposite: work these remains into a continuous series to form a continuous series in the first place.
How can you sequence the fossils unless you already have the sequence to supply your frame of reference? So which comes first—the fossils or the framework?
Do you have a non-circular argument for your inference?
“FREDK SAID:
follow this bouncing ball. reposting this response does nothing to further your "cause". Your premise remains nothing more than a dose of sugar to help you swallow your creation story.”
It didn’t take FREDK long to run out of arguments. He shot his wad in the first volley.
Moving along:
ANONYMOUS SAID:
“So Steve, going by your quote, we have little more than a box of identifiable hominid ancestors from between 5-10 million years ago. What of the last 5 million years?”
Fair question. A couple of points:
i) Since evolution is descent with modification, a Darwinian needs to document the earlier stages as well as the later stages to establish that one fossil species is, indeed, a lineal descendent of an earlier fossil species.
ii) Yes, indeed—what about the last 5 millions years?
How many hominian fossils are we talking about? Where did they come from? How were they dated? What was their state of preservation?
Why were they classified as hominian? How are the fossils from one time and place aligned with fossils from another time and place to establish lineal descent?
“Seems from the links and tree you were provided there are a ton of hominid fossils in that time frame, and from my understanding most of the changes leading to what we consider modern humans from our primate ancestor happened relatively recently (last few million years).”
Two problems:
i) The tree I was given is not given in the fossil record. Rather, the tree I was given is 1 part fossil to 99 parts interpolation.
So, is this direct evidence for an evolutionary tree? Or is evolutionary theory picking out a few discrete data-points, then rearranging them into an evolutionary tree according to evolutionary projections?
We have a few fossilized pearls, but the string is supplied by evolution.
ii) To address my original question, we would also need direct evidence that at the time early man was losing his natural defense mechanisms, he had acquired enough brainpower to compensate by the invention of weaponry to repel natural predators and hunt natural prey.
Does the fossil record actually show us such a transition?
“Since our difference in strength is something I've thought a bit about before, I'm sure you could explore it if you wished. First, for some clue on what to look for you'd probably want to explore the structure of muscle on these species,” &c.
How is this relevant to my examples? An unarmed man is essentially defenseless against a leopard, or lion, or pack of cape hunting dogs.
I’m using examples of African predators since Africa supplies the evolutionary point of reference.
Now, one can make allowance for the fact that modern-day predators are not identical with predators concomitant with early man (assuming the evolutionary narrative). But the earlier predators are just as formidable, just as deadly.
Likewise, modern man is not identical with early man (assuming the evolutionary narrative).
But as soon as our evolutionary ancestors leave the safety of the trees, they are easy pickings for the major predators of that time and place.
And they don’t have the natural defense mechanisms of mandrills, baboons, or gorillas.
So, in order for them to survive, you would have to document two stages of development:
i) By the time they came down from the trees, they had the brainpower to invent weapons.
ii) And, in fact, they did invent weapons by the time they came down from the trees.
Do we have fossil evidence for this crucial phase?
Or does the Darwinian simply reason in reverse: given that evolution is a fact, then if our early ancestors survived, they must have had whatever adaptations were requisite for survival.
But why should I buy into that backwards reasoning? It assumes what it needs to prove.
“You could probably also find a way to estimate the interval of these changes and accumulation and map it with say, cranial size changes to see if there is a correlation.”
You would only have evidence of encephalization if you had prior evidence of lineal descent. Absent evidence of lineal descent, you have no evidence that the same species underwent encephalization.
Do you have a non-circular argument for your inference?
Moving along:
“Steve, I must admit that I'm quite puzzled at what you would accept as ‘show us viable intermediates in the fossil records’? You realize that this data, as I pointed out, is based on all hominin fossils? Real, actual fossils?”
Yes, we have genuine fossils. But why do you classify them as hominian fossils?
You could only classify them as hominian fossils if you could establish lineal descent.
But to line up a number of fossils, scattered in time and place, to form an evolutionary sequence, smuggles the conclusion into the evidence.
“You realize that this data, as I pointed out, is based on all hominin fossils? Real, actual fossils? And that their morphology can be correlated by physical anthropological methods, just like anything else in forensic science? You know anything about physical anthropology?”
i) So you’re claiming that comparative anatomy can establish common descent?
I thought that, according to convergent evolution, unrelated taxa (e.g. placentals v. marsupials) may be morphologically alike?
ii) Moreover, how are homologies evidence of common descent?
Why would they not be evidence of common design?
Since there are only a handful of efficient body-plans, we would expect many variations on a few basic designs.
So how do homologies single out common descent over against common design?
“They can literally take a single good bone and tell you a whole lot about the individual it came from -- age of death, evidence of disease, approximate size...”
No doubt they can. But I’d also like to know what bone they’re using for their extrapolations.
“This is how many missing persons are eventually ID'd -- via a few bone fragments that lead back to age, size, approx date of death, etc.”
Sure, but in that case, we already know that the skeletal remains belong to a member of our own species.
And where they don’t, that’s easy to establish as well.
“Learn something about the methods before you criticize them.”
If you think that comparative morphology is sufficient to establish lineal descent, then I don’t believe that I’m the one who needs to bone up (pardon the pun) on the finer points of evolutionary methodology.
“If you are actually interested in studying this out, rather than just debunking evolution (snort chuckle), you can always track down the primary literature cited in those TO articles I linked. They would contain images and modern fossils are always reconstructed very precisely using CAT technology.”
The problem is not with the fossils, but the way in which the Darwinian fills the gaps.
Where does the evidence end and the theorizing begin? What is the proportion of hard evidence to hypothetical interpolations or extrapolations?
Is the evidence shaping the theory, or is the theory shaping the evidence? That’s the question?
“In other words, let's say we have pieces of bones. Put these bones into a CAT scanner. Then, use a simple computer graphics program to generate a mirror immage symmetry of what you see. Then, attach the virtual fossil to the real fossil…Is that ‘not allowed’?”
Allowed for what? To reconstruct a complete skeleton from fragmentary remains?
But that’s not the issue. The issue is correlating fragments from one site with fragments with another to infer an evolutionary series.
One what basis to you intercalate these disparate remains? If you already had a continuous series of fossils, then, perhaps, you could drop these isolated and fragmentary remains into their appropriate slots, but you are attempting do to the opposite: work these remains into a continuous series to form a continuous series in the first place.
How can you sequence the fossils unless you already have the sequence to supply your frame of reference? So which comes first—the fossils or the framework?
Do you have a non-circular argument for your inference?
Tweaking Triablogue
As regular readers will appreciate, Steve Hays is a man of many talents.
Sadly, computer literacy is not one of them, as he is the first to admit.
Firefox-users may therefore be interested to know about a Greasemonkey user script brewed up by Charles Sebold which will "clean up" (his words, not mine) Steve's posts by adding blockquote formatting, converting bare URLs to hyperlinks, and other clever stuff. Give it a whirl and send your feedback to Charles. At some point, we'll see whether the script can be incorporated into the blog template itself, so that new readers need never know about Steve's so-last-century computing practices.
By the way, if you have the Greasemonkey extension installed (or you're planning on installing it), you might also want to check out my Bible Refalizer scripts, which automatically add hyperlinks from Bible references on any web page to an online Bible. I think they rock, but you can be the judge.
Sadly, computer literacy is not one of them, as he is the first to admit.
Firefox-users may therefore be interested to know about a Greasemonkey user script brewed up by Charles Sebold which will "clean up" (his words, not mine) Steve's posts by adding blockquote formatting, converting bare URLs to hyperlinks, and other clever stuff. Give it a whirl and send your feedback to Charles. At some point, we'll see whether the script can be incorporated into the blog template itself, so that new readers need never know about Steve's so-last-century computing practices.
By the way, if you have the Greasemonkey extension installed (or you're planning on installing it), you might also want to check out my Bible Refalizer scripts, which automatically add hyperlinks from Bible references on any web page to an online Bible. I think they rock, but you can be the judge.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Save Iraq's Persecuted Christians
Save Iraq's Persecuted Christians
Christian Freedom International Urges Action on Behalf of
Persecuted Christians in Iraq
The growing collapse of law and order in Iraq is a tragedy. All Iraqis are affected, but the country's Christian minority is bearing the heaviest burden. Explains Jim Jacobson, president of Christian Freedom International: "what began as liberation for Iraqi Christians has turned into a wave of deadly persecution."
Christianity in the territory now known as Iraq dates back to at least the 4th century A.D., well before the advent of Islam. The church survived various forms of persecution over the centuries, but faces what may be its greatest challenge yet.
Although Saddam Hussein was no friend of Christianity-no dictator can be-he did not target Christians for their faith. They were no more free than anyone else, but at least they were insulated from jihadist violence.
The overthrow of Hussein initially created space for evangelism, and thousands of Iraqis responded. New believers flocked to new churches.
But the explosion of crime and lawlessness, rise of domestic insurgents, and influx of foreign jihadists have made life impossible for many Christians. Gangs have targeted Christians for extortion and kidnapping. Bombings and shootings have caught Christians as well as Muslims. And Islamic extremists, notes Jacobson, "have targeted Christians for everything from violating Islamic dress codes to simply being Christians."
By some estimates half of the pre-war population of 1.2 million Christians-a mix of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox faiths-have fled Iraq, many going to Syria. Other Iraqi Christians have sought to emigrate to America and Europe.
Time is running out to save Iraq's Christians.
First, Washington must insist that successfully protecting religious minorities is one of its benchmarks it will use in assessing the effectiveness of the new Iraqi government-and America's willingness to continue offering support. "The Bush administration must insist that it did not invade Iraq simply to replace one form of repression with another," says Jacobson.
Second, American forces in Iraq should respond to requests for assistance from local Christians. In an attempt to appease Islamists, the U.S. has held Iraqi Christians at arms length, even though they are being targeted because jihadists identify them with Washington.
Third, the U.S. should accept Christians seeking to flee oppression. So far Washington has kept America's doors largely closed, in an attempt to not admit that persecution exists in Iraq. But politics cannot hide reality.
Washington bears a heavy burden, having unintentionally loosed the furies of sectarian war on Iraq's Christian community. Argues Jacobson: "At minimum, the Bush administration should push for additional protection for religious minorities and accept those Iraqis forced to flee because of religious persecution."
CFI has distributed humanitarian assistance to Christians in Iraq and is currently seeking donations for another shipment of much needed aid.
Christian Freedom International is a nondenominational human rights organization, helping persecuted Christians.
For more information contact Christian Freedom International at 540-636-8907 or visit online: www.christianfreedom.org
Christian Freedom International Urges Action on Behalf of
Persecuted Christians in Iraq
The growing collapse of law and order in Iraq is a tragedy. All Iraqis are affected, but the country's Christian minority is bearing the heaviest burden. Explains Jim Jacobson, president of Christian Freedom International: "what began as liberation for Iraqi Christians has turned into a wave of deadly persecution."
Christianity in the territory now known as Iraq dates back to at least the 4th century A.D., well before the advent of Islam. The church survived various forms of persecution over the centuries, but faces what may be its greatest challenge yet.
Although Saddam Hussein was no friend of Christianity-no dictator can be-he did not target Christians for their faith. They were no more free than anyone else, but at least they were insulated from jihadist violence.
The overthrow of Hussein initially created space for evangelism, and thousands of Iraqis responded. New believers flocked to new churches.
But the explosion of crime and lawlessness, rise of domestic insurgents, and influx of foreign jihadists have made life impossible for many Christians. Gangs have targeted Christians for extortion and kidnapping. Bombings and shootings have caught Christians as well as Muslims. And Islamic extremists, notes Jacobson, "have targeted Christians for everything from violating Islamic dress codes to simply being Christians."
By some estimates half of the pre-war population of 1.2 million Christians-a mix of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox faiths-have fled Iraq, many going to Syria. Other Iraqi Christians have sought to emigrate to America and Europe.
Time is running out to save Iraq's Christians.
First, Washington must insist that successfully protecting religious minorities is one of its benchmarks it will use in assessing the effectiveness of the new Iraqi government-and America's willingness to continue offering support. "The Bush administration must insist that it did not invade Iraq simply to replace one form of repression with another," says Jacobson.
Second, American forces in Iraq should respond to requests for assistance from local Christians. In an attempt to appease Islamists, the U.S. has held Iraqi Christians at arms length, even though they are being targeted because jihadists identify them with Washington.
Third, the U.S. should accept Christians seeking to flee oppression. So far Washington has kept America's doors largely closed, in an attempt to not admit that persecution exists in Iraq. But politics cannot hide reality.
Washington bears a heavy burden, having unintentionally loosed the furies of sectarian war on Iraq's Christian community. Argues Jacobson: "At minimum, the Bush administration should push for additional protection for religious minorities and accept those Iraqis forced to flee because of religious persecution."
CFI has distributed humanitarian assistance to Christians in Iraq and is currently seeking donations for another shipment of much needed aid.
Christian Freedom International is a nondenominational human rights organization, helping persecuted Christians.
For more information contact Christian Freedom International at 540-636-8907 or visit online: www.christianfreedom.org
To hell and back
Clint Eastwood is one of those “iconic” movie stars. In that respect, he seems to be the last of his kind.
Growing up in the Great Depression, his film persona has stayed close to his working class roots.
One of the striking features of his filmography is the presence of Scriptural motifs. This is all the more striking since Eastwood is not a Christian.
But the Scriptural themes crop up in various ways. As one critic has noted:
“In the first of the Leone films, Clint's character was styled as "a grizzled Christ figure" (to use critic Richard Corliss' phrase) who undergoes a calvary and a resurrection before bringing redemption--at the end of his gun barrel--to the hellish Mexican border town of San Miguel. In the first film Clint's Malpaso Productions produced, Hang 'Em High, his character, Jed Cooper, is hanged and left for dead in the movie's opening minutes. Rescued, he becomes a lawman who liberates an entire frontier territory from lynch law. In High Plains Drifter, the first western Clint directed, his character quite possibly represents a figure reincarnated to bring justice to a town every bit as evil as San Miguel. In Pale Rider, his Preacher is unquestionably such a figure--returned from the grave to defend the meek and the weak from their earthly tormentors. In the two most aspiring of the films he has directed, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven, he plays a man broken in spirit who finds redemption through altruistic actions reluctantly undertaken (and in the latter, more ambiguously stated).”
http://www.clinteastwood.net/
High Plains Drifter is a parable of the damned. The movie opens with a long shot of a God-forsaken desert, out of which a mysterious man on horseback emerges—or should we say, materializes?— in the simmering distance.
He descends from the mesa to a small town along the lake. At first the townsfolk greet him as a savior. He will defend them against a band of violent convicts, recently paroled.
But it turns out to be a Faustian bargain. He milks the townsfolk for all they're worth, and destroys the village in order to save it. They are ordered to paint the town red, and rename it hell. Gallows humor from start to finish.
Another tough of biblical and bitingly irony is his elevation of the town dwarf from the lowest rung of the social ladder to the town’s mayor and sheriff. The midget’s name is Mordecai—a name reverberant with OT overtones.
The character of Mordecai lies in the venerable Christian tradition of the holy fool. The meek and weak whom the worldly-wise despise—who will, in due time, inherit the earth while the high and mighty are cast down (i.e. the Magnificat; Isa 14; Ezk 28; 1 Cor 1-3).
The town stands under judgment for a guilty secret. For the townsfolk engineered the assassination of their sheriff, and the stranger is the murdered sheriff incognito, returning from the grave to wreak vengeance on his killers and their collaborators.
Pale Rider is a thematic sequel to High Plains Drifter. The later film is the mirror image of the earlier.
In the opening scene, the protagonist once again descends from above.
His role is, again, to deliver the defenseless from their enemies. And he is, once more, an avenging wraith returning from the grave to dole out retribution to his killers.
But the parallels exist to accentuate the contrast between the two movies.
Instead of descending from a dry, searing mesa, he comes down from the snow-capped Sierra Madres.
He comes in answer to prayer. He comes in prophetic fulfillment—as death incarnate, under the guise of a pale rider (Rev 6:8).
He calls himself “the Preacher,” and dons a clerical collar.
In this case, the people he comes to save are worthy of his services.
Eastwood’s manipulation of Biblical motifs is often unorthodox. But the arresting and unforgettable power of his best work is owing, in large part, to the use of Biblical themes, metaphors, and plotlines.
Growing up in the Great Depression, his film persona has stayed close to his working class roots.
One of the striking features of his filmography is the presence of Scriptural motifs. This is all the more striking since Eastwood is not a Christian.
But the Scriptural themes crop up in various ways. As one critic has noted:
“In the first of the Leone films, Clint's character was styled as "a grizzled Christ figure" (to use critic Richard Corliss' phrase) who undergoes a calvary and a resurrection before bringing redemption--at the end of his gun barrel--to the hellish Mexican border town of San Miguel. In the first film Clint's Malpaso Productions produced, Hang 'Em High, his character, Jed Cooper, is hanged and left for dead in the movie's opening minutes. Rescued, he becomes a lawman who liberates an entire frontier territory from lynch law. In High Plains Drifter, the first western Clint directed, his character quite possibly represents a figure reincarnated to bring justice to a town every bit as evil as San Miguel. In Pale Rider, his Preacher is unquestionably such a figure--returned from the grave to defend the meek and the weak from their earthly tormentors. In the two most aspiring of the films he has directed, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven, he plays a man broken in spirit who finds redemption through altruistic actions reluctantly undertaken (and in the latter, more ambiguously stated).”
http://www.clinteastwood.net/
High Plains Drifter is a parable of the damned. The movie opens with a long shot of a God-forsaken desert, out of which a mysterious man on horseback emerges—or should we say, materializes?— in the simmering distance.
He descends from the mesa to a small town along the lake. At first the townsfolk greet him as a savior. He will defend them against a band of violent convicts, recently paroled.
But it turns out to be a Faustian bargain. He milks the townsfolk for all they're worth, and destroys the village in order to save it. They are ordered to paint the town red, and rename it hell. Gallows humor from start to finish.
Another tough of biblical and bitingly irony is his elevation of the town dwarf from the lowest rung of the social ladder to the town’s mayor and sheriff. The midget’s name is Mordecai—a name reverberant with OT overtones.
The character of Mordecai lies in the venerable Christian tradition of the holy fool. The meek and weak whom the worldly-wise despise—who will, in due time, inherit the earth while the high and mighty are cast down (i.e. the Magnificat; Isa 14; Ezk 28; 1 Cor 1-3).
The town stands under judgment for a guilty secret. For the townsfolk engineered the assassination of their sheriff, and the stranger is the murdered sheriff incognito, returning from the grave to wreak vengeance on his killers and their collaborators.
Pale Rider is a thematic sequel to High Plains Drifter. The later film is the mirror image of the earlier.
In the opening scene, the protagonist once again descends from above.
His role is, again, to deliver the defenseless from their enemies. And he is, once more, an avenging wraith returning from the grave to dole out retribution to his killers.
But the parallels exist to accentuate the contrast between the two movies.
Instead of descending from a dry, searing mesa, he comes down from the snow-capped Sierra Madres.
He comes in answer to prayer. He comes in prophetic fulfillment—as death incarnate, under the guise of a pale rider (Rev 6:8).
He calls himself “the Preacher,” and dons a clerical collar.
In this case, the people he comes to save are worthy of his services.
Eastwood’s manipulation of Biblical motifs is often unorthodox. But the arresting and unforgettable power of his best work is owing, in large part, to the use of Biblical themes, metaphors, and plotlines.
Once upon a time
I asked: “And can you actually show us a series of viable intermediates in the fossil record, or is this just rhetorical bluff and bluster on your part?”
To which a commenter answered:
***QUOTE***
This timeline shows that teeth size, like the other features, gradually changed over time, like cranial capacity.
This graph demonstrates the change in cranial capacity for all available hominin fossils. (also see the previous post)
Note that different characters separate species than *just* cranial capacity, so don't think it's a matter of "rigging" by graphing by size and then assigning species. Dentition, spine curvature, feet, etc., all make the delineations between species possible.
***END-QUOTE***
The problem with this material is that it doesn’t “show” us a “series” of viable intermediates “in the fossil record.”
What it does, instead, is to present a hypothetical, evolutionary reconstruction of the evidence using a few fossils and a lot of fudge factors.
Here’s the rub:
***QUOTE***
But Henry Gee, chief science writer for Nature (and an evolutionist), ahs pointed out that all the evidence for human evolution between about 10 and 5 million years ago “can be fitted into a small box.” According to Gee, the conventional picture of human evolution as lines of ancestry and descent is “a completely human invention create after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Putting it even more bluntly, Gee wrote in 1999: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific (11).
There are at least two problems with interpreting these fossils as evidence for Darwinian evolution. First, it is impossible to determine whether one fossilized species is ancestral to another. According to Henry Gee, “the intervals of time tha separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definition about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”
Second, mere similarity does not demonstrate an ancestor-descendant relationship (40).
http://www.reviewevolution.com/
***END-QUOTE***
So, is this direct evidence *for* evolution, or is this an imaginary reconstruction *according * to evolution?
From another commenter:
FREDK SAID:
“You mean, such as a rabbit, a fish, or a mouse? What a strange comment on your behalf with no basis in fact. We are neither defensless 'uniquely' or otherwise.”
Mice have high reproductive rates, as do rabbits—which also have speed. Humans have neither.
FREDK has a problem paying attention to what I wrote.
As to “fish,” what species does he have in mind?
“As compared to what? Our viz is better (and worse) than some other animals..our speed is better (and worse) than some other animals, our strength is better (and worse)than some other animals.”
FREDK has a problem connecting the dots, so just follow the bouncing ball: defenseless in relation to natural predators.
Human speed or strength as compared with lions, leopards, cape hunting dogs, &c . You know—animals that might like to include us on their menu?
And while we’re on the subject, our lack of natural speech and strength is also a problem when it comes to animals we might like to include on our menu, viz. the zebra, wildebeest, &c.
To which a commenter answered:
***QUOTE***
This timeline shows that teeth size, like the other features, gradually changed over time, like cranial capacity.
This graph demonstrates the change in cranial capacity for all available hominin fossils. (also see the previous post)
Note that different characters separate species than *just* cranial capacity, so don't think it's a matter of "rigging" by graphing by size and then assigning species. Dentition, spine curvature, feet, etc., all make the delineations between species possible.
***END-QUOTE***
The problem with this material is that it doesn’t “show” us a “series” of viable intermediates “in the fossil record.”
What it does, instead, is to present a hypothetical, evolutionary reconstruction of the evidence using a few fossils and a lot of fudge factors.
Here’s the rub:
***QUOTE***
But Henry Gee, chief science writer for Nature (and an evolutionist), ahs pointed out that all the evidence for human evolution between about 10 and 5 million years ago “can be fitted into a small box.” According to Gee, the conventional picture of human evolution as lines of ancestry and descent is “a completely human invention create after the fact, shaped to accord with human prejudices.” Putting it even more bluntly, Gee wrote in 1999: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific (11).
There are at least two problems with interpreting these fossils as evidence for Darwinian evolution. First, it is impossible to determine whether one fossilized species is ancestral to another. According to Henry Gee, “the intervals of time tha separate fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definition about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”
Second, mere similarity does not demonstrate an ancestor-descendant relationship (40).
http://www.reviewevolution.com/
***END-QUOTE***
So, is this direct evidence *for* evolution, or is this an imaginary reconstruction *according * to evolution?
From another commenter:
FREDK SAID:
“You mean, such as a rabbit, a fish, or a mouse? What a strange comment on your behalf with no basis in fact. We are neither defensless 'uniquely' or otherwise.”
Mice have high reproductive rates, as do rabbits—which also have speed. Humans have neither.
FREDK has a problem paying attention to what I wrote.
As to “fish,” what species does he have in mind?
“As compared to what? Our viz is better (and worse) than some other animals..our speed is better (and worse) than some other animals, our strength is better (and worse)than some other animals.”
FREDK has a problem connecting the dots, so just follow the bouncing ball: defenseless in relation to natural predators.
Human speed or strength as compared with lions, leopards, cape hunting dogs, &c . You know—animals that might like to include us on their menu?
And while we’re on the subject, our lack of natural speech and strength is also a problem when it comes to animals we might like to include on our menu, viz. the zebra, wildebeest, &c.
Adam and evolution
In conspicuous contrast to other species, human beings are uniquely defenseless. We lack any of the standard defense mechanisms that enable other species to survive, viz. speed, strength, stench, horns, hooves, fangs, tusks, quills, claws, wings, venom, camouflage, thick skin, or high reproductivity.
We’re even quite defenseless when compared to “other” primates, with which the Darwinias have classified us. The major defense mechanism for most primates is their arboreal lifestyle.
A few primates are basically land animals, but they have compensatory defense mechanisms. Baboons and mandrills have fangs and travel in packs.
Gorillas have size, strength, and fangs.
Man’s only survival advantage is his brainpower. Yet, according to Darwinism, he brainpower is, itself, a long, evolutionary adaptation.
How did the human species survive in the transitional period when it was lost its natural defense mechanisms without having as of yet acquired the mother wit to invent weapons?
Man is exactly what you would expect if Gen 1-3 is true. A creature designed to live in a semitropical paradise with abundant food and no natural predators. A creature ill-adapted to survive outside such a charmed existence.
This is one reason, among others why banishment from his natural habitat was genuinely punitive. Life outside that natural sanctuary was far less hospitable, and man was ill-equipped to survive, apart from the singular gift of reason.
We’re even quite defenseless when compared to “other” primates, with which the Darwinias have classified us. The major defense mechanism for most primates is their arboreal lifestyle.
A few primates are basically land animals, but they have compensatory defense mechanisms. Baboons and mandrills have fangs and travel in packs.
Gorillas have size, strength, and fangs.
Man’s only survival advantage is his brainpower. Yet, according to Darwinism, he brainpower is, itself, a long, evolutionary adaptation.
How did the human species survive in the transitional period when it was lost its natural defense mechanisms without having as of yet acquired the mother wit to invent weapons?
Man is exactly what you would expect if Gen 1-3 is true. A creature designed to live in a semitropical paradise with abundant food and no natural predators. A creature ill-adapted to survive outside such a charmed existence.
This is one reason, among others why banishment from his natural habitat was genuinely punitive. Life outside that natural sanctuary was far less hospitable, and man was ill-equipped to survive, apart from the singular gift of reason.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
From Descartes to Churchland
One of the clearest and most forceful denials of animal consciousness is developed by Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who argues that animals are automata that might act as if they are conscious, but really are not so (Regan and Singer, 1989: 13-19). Writing during the time when a mechanistic view of the natural world was replacing the Aristotelian conception, Descartes believed that all of animal behavior could be explained in purely mechanistic terms, and that no reference to conscious episodes was required for such an explanation. Relying on the principle of parsimony in scientific explanation (commonly referred to as Occam's Razor) Descartes preferred to explain animal behavior by relying on the simplest possible explanation of their behavior. Since it is possible to explain animal behavior without reference to inner episodes of awareness, doing so is simpler than relying on the assumption that animals are conscious, and is therefore the preferred explanation.
Descartes anticipates the response that his reasoning, if applicable to animal behavior, should apply equally well to human behavior. The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. First, human beings are capable of complex and novel behavior. This behavior is not the result of simple responses to stimuli, but is instead the result of our reasoning about the world as we perceive it. Second, human beings are capable of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. Descartes was aware that some animals make sounds that might be thought to constitute speech, such as a parrot's "request" for food, but argued that these utterances are mere mechanically induced behaviors. Only human beings can engage in the kind of speech that is spontaneous and expresses thoughts.
Descartes' position on these matters was largely influenced by his philosophy of mind and ontology. According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Although all people are closely associated with physical bodies, they are not identical with their bodies. Rather, they are identical with their souls, or the immaterial, mental substance that constitutes their consciousness. Descartes believed that both the complexity of human behavior and human speech requires the positing of such an immaterial substance in order to be explained. However, animal behavior does not require this kind of assumption; besides, Descartes argued, "it is more probable that worms and flies and caterpillars move mechanically than that they all have immortal souls" (Regan and Singer, 1989: 18).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/anim-eth.htm
Modern versions of eliminative materialism claim that our common-sense understanding of psychological states and processes is deeply mistaken and that some or all of our ordinary notions of mental states will have no home, at any level of analysis, in a sophisticated and accurate account of the mind. In other words, it is the view that certain common-sense mental states, such as beliefs and desires, do not exist.
Eliminative materialists argue that the central tenets of folk psychology radically misdescribe cognitive processes; consequently, the posits of folk psychology pick out nothing that is real. Like dualists, eliminative materialists insist that ordinary mental states can not in any way be reduced to or identified with neurological events or processes. However, unlike dualists, eliminativists claim there is nothing more to the mind than what occurs in the brain. The reason mental states are irreducible is not because they are non-physical; rather, it is because mental states, as described by common-sense psychology, do not really exist.
Some writers have suggested an eliminativist outlook not just with regard to particular states of consciousness, but with regard to phenomenal consciousness itself. For example, Georges Rey (1983, 1988) has argued that if we look at the various neurological or cognitive theories of what consciousness might amount to, such as internal monitoring or the possession of second-order representational states, it seems easy to imagine all of these features incorporated in a computational device that lacks anything we intuitively think of as "real" or robust consciousness. Rey suggests that the failure of these accounts to capture our ordinary notion of consciousness may be because the latter corresponds with no actual process or phenomenon; the "inner light" we associate with consciousness may be nothing more than a remnant of misguided Cartesian intuitions (see also Wilkes, 1988; 1995).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
Descartes anticipates the response that his reasoning, if applicable to animal behavior, should apply equally well to human behavior. The mechanistic explanation of behavior does not apply to human beings, according to Descartes, for two reasons. First, human beings are capable of complex and novel behavior. This behavior is not the result of simple responses to stimuli, but is instead the result of our reasoning about the world as we perceive it. Second, human beings are capable of the kind of speech that expresses thoughts. Descartes was aware that some animals make sounds that might be thought to constitute speech, such as a parrot's "request" for food, but argued that these utterances are mere mechanically induced behaviors. Only human beings can engage in the kind of speech that is spontaneous and expresses thoughts.
Descartes' position on these matters was largely influenced by his philosophy of mind and ontology. According to Descartes, there are two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive kinds of entities or properties: material or physical entities on the one hand, and mental entities on the other. Although all people are closely associated with physical bodies, they are not identical with their bodies. Rather, they are identical with their souls, or the immaterial, mental substance that constitutes their consciousness. Descartes believed that both the complexity of human behavior and human speech requires the positing of such an immaterial substance in order to be explained. However, animal behavior does not require this kind of assumption; besides, Descartes argued, "it is more probable that worms and flies and caterpillars move mechanically than that they all have immortal souls" (Regan and Singer, 1989: 18).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/anim-eth.htm
Modern versions of eliminative materialism claim that our common-sense understanding of psychological states and processes is deeply mistaken and that some or all of our ordinary notions of mental states will have no home, at any level of analysis, in a sophisticated and accurate account of the mind. In other words, it is the view that certain common-sense mental states, such as beliefs and desires, do not exist.
Eliminative materialists argue that the central tenets of folk psychology radically misdescribe cognitive processes; consequently, the posits of folk psychology pick out nothing that is real. Like dualists, eliminative materialists insist that ordinary mental states can not in any way be reduced to or identified with neurological events or processes. However, unlike dualists, eliminativists claim there is nothing more to the mind than what occurs in the brain. The reason mental states are irreducible is not because they are non-physical; rather, it is because mental states, as described by common-sense psychology, do not really exist.
Some writers have suggested an eliminativist outlook not just with regard to particular states of consciousness, but with regard to phenomenal consciousness itself. For example, Georges Rey (1983, 1988) has argued that if we look at the various neurological or cognitive theories of what consciousness might amount to, such as internal monitoring or the possession of second-order representational states, it seems easy to imagine all of these features incorporated in a computational device that lacks anything we intuitively think of as "real" or robust consciousness. Rey suggests that the failure of these accounts to capture our ordinary notion of consciousness may be because the latter corresponds with no actual process or phenomenon; the "inner light" we associate with consciousness may be nothing more than a remnant of misguided Cartesian intuitions (see also Wilkes, 1988; 1995).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
Science as ideology
Some telling excerpts of a book review:
***********************************
Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond
Ullica Segerstråle
Oxford University Press (2000)
Just as Arthur Jensen can take the most credit for resurrecting the study of racial differences after the World War II-era blackout, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson can claim the most credit for reestablishing the scientific connection between genes and human behavior. His motives for this important achievement may have been surprisingly personal. He is a Southerner who was reared as a Baptist, and was "born-again" at age 15. However, he soon fell away from the faith, and Prof. Segerstråle suggests that it was his desire to find a biological, non-theological basis for morality that drove his interest in sociobiology. She says that for him, the chief riddle for understanding behavior in genetic terms was altruism – self-sacrifice for others – which seems contrary to the Darwinian struggle for survival. It was the Englishman William Hamilton and his theory of inclusive fitness through kin selection that gave Prof. Wilson the solution to the riddle.
(Put in the simplest terms, inclusive fitness suggests that genes for altruistic behavior can spread through a population if those who benefit from the altruist's sacrifice are closely-enough related to him to carry the same genes. A man who dies to save his kin or tribe can therefore act to ensure the continuation of his own genes because his relatives, who carry the same genes, will survive to reproduce. Obviously, this effect is lost when altruists act for the benefit of strangers and aliens.)
Leading the attack was biologist Richard Lewontin, who was also at Harvard and had an office in the same building as Prof. Wilson. Prof. Lewontin, an avowed Marxist, was active in forming lefty groups like Science for the People and the Committee against Racism. He was joined in the United States most notably by another avowed Marxist at Harvard, Steven Jay Gould, and in England by Steven Rose.
Although Prof. Segerstråle tries her best to make Prof. Lewontin sound reasonable, what she tells us makes him appear almost a caricature, an ideologue driven by his own politics who is convinced everyone else operates in the same way. He argued that students of IQ simply could not be motivated by genuine scientific interest, and "proved" that Arthur Jensen's research was only a reflection of racist bias. He agreed with fellow lefty and psychologist Leon Kamin that scientists "sometimes tell deliberate lies" in order to advance larger political purposes. With co-author Richard Levins he was even capable of writing, "As working scientists in the field of evolutionary genetics and ecology, we have been attempting with some success to guide our own research by a conscious application of Marxist philosophy."
In fact, Prof. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, a British sociobiologist whom the Marxists attacked with equal vigor, are committed liberals. In Sociobiology, Prof. Wilson downplayed IQ and even took an early lead in promoting the view that race is not a biologically valid concept.
It made such a stink over the name sociobiology, though, that people following in Prof. Wilson's footsteps tried to take cover under different names: evolutionary psychology, behavior genetics, behavioral ecology.
As the field gained momentum, the critics were forced to attack it not just on political but scientific grounds. Prof. Segerstråle describes some of these battles but shows that many critics were never able to separate politics from science. People like Professor Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould have insisted on impossibly high scientific standards exclusively for genetic explanations of behavior. Prof. Lewontin has even argued that such explanations cannot be considered valid or even plausible unless there is proof "at the molecular level." Such proof will eventually come, thanks to human genome research, but it is pure obscurantism to insist until then that behavior genetics must be false. As Prof. Segerstråle delicately puts it: "[S]o perhaps might we interpret the critics' unusually strict criteria for 'good science' as an attempt to hold back potentially undesirable results."
Another defect in Prof. Segerstråle's analysis is that despite an otherwise exhaustive account of the controversy that attempts to examine it from every perspective, she ignores the ethnic one. Is it pure coincidence that the most vocal opponents of sociobiology – Richard Lewontin, Stephen Gould, Steven Rose, Leon Kamin – were Jews? She notes it was common to claim that any recognition that humans were not completely free actors but constrained by human nature could be used as an exoneration of the Nazis, who had to be held fully accountable for their acts. Who would have come up with this labored argument? Prof. Segerstråle mentions that Steven Rose was worried sociobiology could lead to a "repetition of the tragedies of the 1930s," but might Jews have a particular interest in wishing that they not be repeated? For a book that seeks to explore every ramification and implication, this one must have been deliberately omitted.
http://www.amren.com/009issue/009issue.html#cover
***********************************
Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond
Ullica Segerstråle
Oxford University Press (2000)
Just as Arthur Jensen can take the most credit for resurrecting the study of racial differences after the World War II-era blackout, Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson can claim the most credit for reestablishing the scientific connection between genes and human behavior. His motives for this important achievement may have been surprisingly personal. He is a Southerner who was reared as a Baptist, and was "born-again" at age 15. However, he soon fell away from the faith, and Prof. Segerstråle suggests that it was his desire to find a biological, non-theological basis for morality that drove his interest in sociobiology. She says that for him, the chief riddle for understanding behavior in genetic terms was altruism – self-sacrifice for others – which seems contrary to the Darwinian struggle for survival. It was the Englishman William Hamilton and his theory of inclusive fitness through kin selection that gave Prof. Wilson the solution to the riddle.
(Put in the simplest terms, inclusive fitness suggests that genes for altruistic behavior can spread through a population if those who benefit from the altruist's sacrifice are closely-enough related to him to carry the same genes. A man who dies to save his kin or tribe can therefore act to ensure the continuation of his own genes because his relatives, who carry the same genes, will survive to reproduce. Obviously, this effect is lost when altruists act for the benefit of strangers and aliens.)
Leading the attack was biologist Richard Lewontin, who was also at Harvard and had an office in the same building as Prof. Wilson. Prof. Lewontin, an avowed Marxist, was active in forming lefty groups like Science for the People and the Committee against Racism. He was joined in the United States most notably by another avowed Marxist at Harvard, Steven Jay Gould, and in England by Steven Rose.
Although Prof. Segerstråle tries her best to make Prof. Lewontin sound reasonable, what she tells us makes him appear almost a caricature, an ideologue driven by his own politics who is convinced everyone else operates in the same way. He argued that students of IQ simply could not be motivated by genuine scientific interest, and "proved" that Arthur Jensen's research was only a reflection of racist bias. He agreed with fellow lefty and psychologist Leon Kamin that scientists "sometimes tell deliberate lies" in order to advance larger political purposes. With co-author Richard Levins he was even capable of writing, "As working scientists in the field of evolutionary genetics and ecology, we have been attempting with some success to guide our own research by a conscious application of Marxist philosophy."
In fact, Prof. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, a British sociobiologist whom the Marxists attacked with equal vigor, are committed liberals. In Sociobiology, Prof. Wilson downplayed IQ and even took an early lead in promoting the view that race is not a biologically valid concept.
It made such a stink over the name sociobiology, though, that people following in Prof. Wilson's footsteps tried to take cover under different names: evolutionary psychology, behavior genetics, behavioral ecology.
As the field gained momentum, the critics were forced to attack it not just on political but scientific grounds. Prof. Segerstråle describes some of these battles but shows that many critics were never able to separate politics from science. People like Professor Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould have insisted on impossibly high scientific standards exclusively for genetic explanations of behavior. Prof. Lewontin has even argued that such explanations cannot be considered valid or even plausible unless there is proof "at the molecular level." Such proof will eventually come, thanks to human genome research, but it is pure obscurantism to insist until then that behavior genetics must be false. As Prof. Segerstråle delicately puts it: "[S]o perhaps might we interpret the critics' unusually strict criteria for 'good science' as an attempt to hold back potentially undesirable results."
Another defect in Prof. Segerstråle's analysis is that despite an otherwise exhaustive account of the controversy that attempts to examine it from every perspective, she ignores the ethnic one. Is it pure coincidence that the most vocal opponents of sociobiology – Richard Lewontin, Stephen Gould, Steven Rose, Leon Kamin – were Jews? She notes it was common to claim that any recognition that humans were not completely free actors but constrained by human nature could be used as an exoneration of the Nazis, who had to be held fully accountable for their acts. Who would have come up with this labored argument? Prof. Segerstråle mentions that Steven Rose was worried sociobiology could lead to a "repetition of the tragedies of the 1930s," but might Jews have a particular interest in wishing that they not be repeated? For a book that seeks to explore every ramification and implication, this one must have been deliberately omitted.
http://www.amren.com/009issue/009issue.html#cover
Oppy on atheism
Among secular philosophers, Graham Oppy is one of the most astute. His recent book on Arguing About Gods (Cambridge 2006) is a carefully reasoned and generally fair-mined analysis many theistic proofs.
It is, of course, slanted to atheism, so I don’t agree with him at many points. But it’s one of the best entries in contemporary atheology.
In the same year the book as published, he also published an essay in which he reviews and updates Bertrand Russell’s celebrated essay.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/whynot.html
In a way, Dawkins and Harris are easy targets. They are worth targeting due to their media penetration.
Daniel Dennett is more sophisticated, but in defending his secularism and attacking the faith, he substitutes science fiction for hard science.
In fairness to atheism, let’s move up the food chain and see how a more responsible and competent unbeliever lays out a case for atheism. As is my wont, I’ll offer a running commentary on his major arguments.
“Apart from identifying failings in some theistic arguments, Russell also makes some observations about the true wellsprings of belief in God. On his view, the main reason why people believe in God is simply because this belief is inculcated in them from early infancy. Furthermore, according to Russell, the other important motives for belief in God are fear of the unknown (including, in particular, fear of death), and a desire for safety (including, especially, a desire for a big brother who will look after your interests and guarantee the satisfaction of your most deeply held wants). While I agree with Russell that nonbelievers are committed to merely causal stories about the prevalence and strength of belief in God, I think that any such story will be much more complicated than Russell (or Freud, Marx, Engels, or Durkheim) allows. There has been some interesting recent work in this area--see, for example, Lawson and McCauley (1990), and Atran (2002)--but I do not think that we are yet close to a fully satisfying account.”
This is a candid and quite welcome admission.
“While I think that there is some truth in each of these observations, there is also a considerable amount of overstatement. For example, that organized Christian churches have often been enemies of moral progress is uncontroversial, but it is unclear that they have been worse than other religious and social institutions in this regard. As we all know, it is very easy to mistake mere correlations for causal relations; we should not be too quick to suppose that widespread correlation of Christian belief with ignorance, misery, and suffering is evidence that Christian belief has been a major causal agent in the production of that ignorance, misery, and suffering.”
Another candid and long overdue admission.
“Reality is described by science; there are no metaphysical spooks hiding behind the scenes.”
There are a number of problems with this claim:
i) How does he deal with varieties of scientific antirealism?
ii) What is the relation between appearance and reality? Is the world the way we perceive it?
iii) What is his theory of abstract objects?
iv) Does evolutionary psychology cut the nerve of rationality?
v) His claim is self-refuting, for science must postulate a number of metascientific assumptions. As Del Ratzsch has pointed out:
***QUOTE***
Empirical data by themselves can neither generate, identify, drive us to, nor conclusively confirm some single theory from among all possible competitors. Underdetermination, then, presents us with a forced choice between empirical purity (at a cost of the theoretical) and theoretical legitimacy (at the cost of empirical rigor). Thus, when we do single out a particular theory, whatever selection process we employ will of necessity involve 'extra-empirical' factors - factors beyond the purely empirical.[5] A genuine realist science thus cannot survive on just empirical observation and logic, but requires richer conceptual resources and is of necessity integrally embedded in a deeper conceptual matrix from which, I shall argue, it cannot be cleanly detached intact. What are those resources?
Among the operative presuppositions upon which science unavoidably depends, many are conceptually unproblematic, and various of them are so familiar as to ordinarily escape special attention. The following list is not presented as exhaustive.
1. General metaphysics.
a. Intelligibility of nature. For any robust idea of science itself to make sense, the cosmos must be assumed to be to some degree understandable by the minds doing the science. Historically science has assumed that nature embodies an inherent intelligibility - that properly conceived, nature's mechanisms and structures make sense.
b. Basic character of nature. Relevant presuppositions concerning nature include e.g.: that there really is a real world, that it is largely 'out there', that it exists largely independent of us, that it persists, that change is real, that events in that world have effects, etc. Although change is real, there are also stabilities and uniformities extending through time and space. There is a unity to reality - we live in a cosmos, rather than a random and arbitrary patchwork of different jurisdictions. And whatever their ultimate character, there are 'laws' of nature, that seem to inhabit a region somewhere between logical necessity and accidental generalization. The laws of nature, and nature itself, manifest a logical contingency, but an ordered - not a chaotic - contingency. There are other sorts of presuppositions as well, which I will not pursue here.[6]
http://homepages.utoledo.edu/esnider/scirelconference/ratzschpaper.htm
***END-QUOTE**
vi) I’ll introduce another difficulty below.
“If there is anything contingent in the world, then there is brute--i.e., inexplicable--contingency in the world.”
On the face of it, this claim is straightforwardly fallacious. How does he reason for “anything contingent” in the world to brute factuality?
In principle, you could reason from brute factuality to pure contingency, but you can’t reason from local (or global) instances of contingency to brute factuality.
The existence of contingent facts is not itself an evidence of brute factuality, for a contingent mode of existence may well be ontologically dependent on something necessary.
That’s what makes it contingent. It’s contingent on something else.
Of course, Oppy can try to deny this connection, but that will require an argument. He cannot infer brute factuality from contingency without a supporting argument.
“Hence, if there is anything contingent in the world, then there are things--events, facts--that simply have no explanation.”
Several problems:
i) Even if valid, this piggybacks on a false premise (see above).
ii) He is admitting that, at rock bottom, reality is irrational. What does that say about the secular worldview?
iii) In addition, what does it say about his commitment to scientific explanation?
“In particular, then, there is no justification for supposing that belief in God is justified simply because the truth of that belief would account for otherwise inexplicable contingency in the world. If we are puzzled by why the world is one way rather than some other way that it might have been, our puzzlement cannot be removed by supposing that the world is the way it is because God chose to make it that way. If we are worried by unexplained contingency, we shall want to know why God chose to make the world that way: postulating God does not remove the unexplained contingency, but it does land us with a whole new raft of explanatory burdens and commitments. This is not progress.”
A couple of problems:
i) To say that positing an agent fails to provide a complete explanation is far from saying that such a posit an agent is devoid of explanatory value.
If a homicide detective fingers the butler as the killer, this has a lot more explanatory value than treating the murder as a brute fact. It’s a sufficient explanation to account for the immediate circumstances.
In principle, this raises a whole new set of questions. How do we explain the existence of the butler? When was he born? Where was he born? Where did he go to school? Who were his parents? Who is his best friend? Does he have a girlfriend? Does he prefer cheddar cheese to Swiss cheese? What were his motives?
But it isn’t necessary to answer all of these incidental questions for the “butler-hypothesis” to be an adequate explanation of the crime scene.
ii) Oppy is assuming that we don’t know why God chose this world over another. But suppose we do have a source of information in answer to that question?
Oppy doesn’t even consider the possibility that God may have revealed his reasons to one degree or another.
“If we suppose that there is a concept of cause that has proper application to our world, then there are events and occurrences that simply lack causes, including, in particular, events and occurrences where entities come into existence and processes commence.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this is true, where does it leave his commitment to scientific explanation as our only window onto reality?
“Consequently, I do not think that the thought that God might be the initial cause for what would otherwise be uncaused initial events and occurrences justifies belief in God--for God's actions and decisions are also events and occurrences that, on the intuition in question, stand in need of causes.”
This claim is simply inept. According to classical Christian theism, God is a timeless agent. Hence, his actions and decisions are not another set of events or occurrences, but rather, a timeless state of being instead of a temporal process of becoming.
To be sure, there are Christians who regard God as in some sense temporal. Process theology is an extreme example.
But Oppy also needs to adapt his objection to the traditional conception of God’s relation to time and eternity.
“If we suppose that there is some intelligible sense to an objective conception of ‘perfection,’ then it is highly plausible that, if there were a perfect being, it would simply be unable to create an imperfect universe: i.e., a universe whose history was less than optimal on any dimension of evaluation.”
i) This assumes, without benefit of argument, that there is such a thing as an optimal world. But why make that assumption?
Why not assume that different possible worlds may exemplify alternative or incommensurable goods?
So there may be no such thing as a best possible world.
ii) Apropos (i), he is also assuming, without benefit of argument, that a suboptimal world is equivalent to an imperfect world. But what does that mean?
If one possible world exemplifies lesser goods, while another possible world exemplifies greater goods, how is the lesser world imperfect? One possible world may be better than another, but as long as a possible world is good, how is such a world imperfect?
“In particular, it is highly plausible that if there were a perfect being, it would simply be unable to create a universe in which there are departures from moral perfection.”
A departure from moral perfection would not involve a choice between lesser and greater goods, but a choice between good and evil, or the lesser of two evils.
“But it is very plausible--if not utterly obvious--that the universe that we inhabit is populated with events and occurrences that do mark departures from moral perfection. So it is highly plausible to suppose that, on our initial assumption about objective perfection, there is no perfect being.”
A couple of problems:
i) He is equating moral perfection with a static state of affairs. But what if the present imperfection of the world is a means to a greater good or second-order good?
ii) Where does he get his ideal standard over against which he judges our world to be morally imperfect? If this world is the only world there is, then how is he in any objective position to contrast the actual world with a more perfect or optimal state of affairs?
“While this claim hardly cuts against the claim that the Christian God exists--since the Christian God is continuous with the God of the Old Testament, and it is hardly contentious that the God of the Old Testament is less than morally perfect--it is equally clear that this claim does cut against the views of many contemporary Christian philosophers of religion.”
Is it “hardly contentious” to an observant Jew that the God of the OT is less than morally perfect?
The Jewish race is not extinct. There are contemporary Jewish intellectuals to believe in the OT and look to the OT for moral guidance.
“If we suppose that claims about human free actions are intelligible, then it seems to me that it is a mistake to think that human beings have what philosophers call 'libertarian' freedom, as opposed to 'compatibilist' freedom. To act freely is simply to act on one's normally acquired beliefs and desires in the absence of certain kinds of constraints, and there is no inconsistency in the thought that actions that possess this kind of freedom have physical causes. On the libertarian conception of freedom, one acts freely only if, in the very circumstances in which one acted, it was within one's power to do otherwise--which is incompatible with efficient causation of action. But as I see it, the only alternative to efficient causation is absence of causation; and, if one's actions are only 'free' because they have no causes, then this is not a kind of 'freedom' worth wanting. Among the consequences of this view, two are particularly important. First, it is a mistake to suppose that the free choices of a supernatural agent might be 'ultimate' explainers: for if 'freedom' is libertarian, then what is appealed to ultimately has no explanation; and if 'freedom' is compatibilist, then free choices are no less in need of explanation than any other kinds of events. Second, given that freedom is 'compatibilist,' it is very hard to see how the presence of evil in the world might be explained in terms of the value that freedom possesses; for there surely are possible worlds in which agents always freely choose the good, and it is very hard to see why a perfect creator either could not or would not make one of those worlds if it made any world at all.”
I agree.
“If we suppose that our ordinary mentalistic vocabulary should be given a realistic construal, then I take it that our 'mental' states are nothing other than certain kinds of states of our brains.”
Are they? Suppose we apply his statement to the statement itself. Is his statement true? Can I entertain a true belief about his statement?
But if my belief is a physical state, then to what does it correspond? The physical state of my brain isn’t like the letters and words composing his sentence. It isn’t descriptive or symbolic of his sentence, or the propositional content thereof.
So, in the absence of any resemblance between the two, how does my brain state represent or refer to his sentence about brain states? What accounts for the alethic relation between a brain state and a sentence about a brain state?
“I do not deny that there are imperfections in our current understanding of consciousness; but I do not see how the postulation of spooky mental stuff promises to give any additional insight.”
i) One wonders how much reading he’s done in the philosophy of mind.
ii) Notice, too, his appeal to the argumentum ad ignorantiam. This is a godless-of-the-gaps appeal. He fills in the lacunae of his physicalism by a leap of blind faith in the inexorable progress of science.
“Moreover, I take it that the welter of information that we possess concerning neural deficits, and the nature of various kinds of physical impacts on our 'minds,' provides very strong reason for denying that we are essentially nonphysical spooks who are only contingently wired up to our bodies.”
i) Dualism is well-aware of the very same data. No surprises here.
ii) In theistic dualism, the body, via the senses, is a source of information by which the soul acquires some of its knowledge of the external world.
“Of course, there is some alleged data that supports the distinct existences hypothesis; but I take it that, after due consideration, we should find that reports of out-of-body experiences, astral travel, and the like are not reflections of how the world really is.”
Has he given “due consideration” to the standard literature? Cf.:
R.W.K. Paterson, Philosophy and the Belief in a Life After Death (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1995.
Michael Stoeber and Hugo Meynell, Eds., Critical Reflections on the Paranormal (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996).
James Houran and Rense Lange, Eds., Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2001).
David Lester, Is there Life After Death? (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2005).
David Fontana, Is There An Afterlife: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence (O Books, 2005).
Lance Storm and Michael A. Thalbourne, eds., The Survival of Human Consciousness: Essays on the Possibilities of Life After Death, ed (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2006).
“If asked to engage in fundamental metaphysical speculation about the nature of our world, I would give greatest credence to a kind of supervenient naturalism. Alas, it is no easy matter to give an exact characterization of supervenient naturalism.”
So supervenient naturalism is not an actual alternative, but a secular faith-commitment. A voucher in place of a detailed, working model.
“If asked to provide a broad outline of the history of the universe since the Big Bang, I would--to the best of my ability--outline the history that is delivered to us by our best sciences. In particular, I would insist that life appeared on Earth some billions of years ago, and that human beings are directly descended from those ancestral life forms.”
i) I disagree with him, but I’ll ignore than for now.
ii) How is his faith in science consistent with his denial of the principle of sufficient reason? If, by his own admission, the world is ultimately unintelligible, given the occurrence of surd events, then what happens to the principle of induction?
“Moreover, I would insist that there is no need to appeal to the hypothesis of intelligent design to explain any of the features that our universe has possessed over the course of its history.”
ID theorists would demur, but I’ll delegate that debate to the respective parties.
“Furthermore, I would say that any impulse to postulate intelligent designers to explain structural or organizational features of the universe should be matched by an impulse to postulate further intelligent designers for those intelligent designers--to explain the structural or organizational features of the beliefs, desires, and intentions of the initial intelligent designers.”
i) This is inept, for it compares the incomparable. It assumes tht causes resemble their effects.
ii) It also fails to distinguish between abstract complexity (e.g. the Mandelbrot set) and cumulative, composite complexity.
“If asked to provide a broad outline of recent human history--say, the last 10,000 years--I would provide an outline in which there is no mention of the actions of supernatural agents, and no mention of the occurrence of miraculous events. Of course, I might mention well-known reports of the actions of supernatural agents, and well-known reports of the occurrence of miraculous events; but I would insist that all such reports are simply mistaken.”
“All such reports are simply mistaken.” That’s a sorry excuse for an argument.
“In particular, I would insist that none of the religions that have a place in recent human history have supernatural origins; and I would insist that there have been no miraculous events that provide support for particular religious beliefs.”
This assumes that most religions lay claim to a supernatural origin and miraculous attestation.
“All of the religions that have a place in recent human history--and all of the writings that are associated with those religions--can be happily accommodated within the supervenient naturalism outlined earlier.”
How “can they be happily accommodated within the supervenient naturalism” when, by his own admission, “it is no easy matter to give an exact characterization of supervenient naturalism.”
Oppy is resorting to secular fideism to overthrow religious claims.
“Moreover, in principle, there are purely naturalistic explanations for all religions, religious beliefs, religious writings, religious experiences (and reports thereof), and so forth--though, in practice, we may not always be able to fix on those explanations, owing to lack of data and theoretical sophistication.”
Yet another appeal to secular fideism. We lack the supporting evidence, but we’ll keep on believing in “purely naturalistic explanations for all religions,” &c. no matter.
“If asked to say how much of the Christian Gospels is historical truth, I would say that I don't know. It might be that they are entirely works of the imagination; or it might be that there was a historical figure who became the focus for what are, in significant part, works of the imagination. I am not impressed by the claim that if we suppose that the Gospels are largely works of the imagination, then we shall need to suppose that the rest of ancient history is so as well. For we have the best of reasons for thinking that much in the Gospels does spring from the imagination--namely, the fantastic nature of the events that are described therein--but we have no such reason for thinking that everything else that is recorded in ancient history must also spring from that source.”
The Gospels are “imaginary” because they are “fantastic.” This objection assumes that miracles never happen. Where’s the supporting argument?
In his section (7.4) on the argument from miracles (Arguing About Gods, 376-81), he admits that Humean objections are a failure.
“Moreover, while there are ancient histories that bear marks of methodological sophistication, including explicit discussion of the principles that apply when weighing the reliability of sources and the like, the Gospels are plainly not amongst those histories.”
This depends on the distance between the timing of the event and the timing of the record. Where contemporaries are reporting on contemporaneous events, we wouldn’t expect the same methodological caveats as apply to a historical reconstruction of events from the distant past.
“In particular, if there are basic truths about values, then those truths are necessary, and hence not capable of having a 'grounding' in anything.”
A couple of elementary problems:
i) There’s no reason why moral norms must be necessary truths. Especially where Christian ethics is concerned, moral norms are, in some measure, preadapted to natural kinds. To the way in which God has constituted the human race. So moral norms could well be contingent facts.
ii) Even if we assume that moral norms are necessary truths, does naturalism enjoy the metaphysical resources to underwrite necessary truths? What is the status of abstract objects (of which necessary truths are a subset) in Oppy’s ontology?
“Many Christians suppose that there can be no virtuous behavior in the absence of Christian belief.”
That’s a simplistic statement of the contention. The real position is more like this:
i) The primary question is not whether unbelievers can be virtuous, or whether, in fact, they are virtuous, but why they should be virtuous, given their outlook.
It’s a de jure question rather than a de facto question.
ii) Due to common grace, unbelievers are often better than their unbelieving creed.
iii) But the more consistently and self-consciously secular their outlook, the less virtuous they will be, if they are free to act with impunity.
It is, of course, slanted to atheism, so I don’t agree with him at many points. But it’s one of the best entries in contemporary atheology.
In the same year the book as published, he also published an essay in which he reviews and updates Bertrand Russell’s celebrated essay.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/graham_oppy/whynot.html
In a way, Dawkins and Harris are easy targets. They are worth targeting due to their media penetration.
Daniel Dennett is more sophisticated, but in defending his secularism and attacking the faith, he substitutes science fiction for hard science.
In fairness to atheism, let’s move up the food chain and see how a more responsible and competent unbeliever lays out a case for atheism. As is my wont, I’ll offer a running commentary on his major arguments.
“Apart from identifying failings in some theistic arguments, Russell also makes some observations about the true wellsprings of belief in God. On his view, the main reason why people believe in God is simply because this belief is inculcated in them from early infancy. Furthermore, according to Russell, the other important motives for belief in God are fear of the unknown (including, in particular, fear of death), and a desire for safety (including, especially, a desire for a big brother who will look after your interests and guarantee the satisfaction of your most deeply held wants). While I agree with Russell that nonbelievers are committed to merely causal stories about the prevalence and strength of belief in God, I think that any such story will be much more complicated than Russell (or Freud, Marx, Engels, or Durkheim) allows. There has been some interesting recent work in this area--see, for example, Lawson and McCauley (1990), and Atran (2002)--but I do not think that we are yet close to a fully satisfying account.”
This is a candid and quite welcome admission.
“While I think that there is some truth in each of these observations, there is also a considerable amount of overstatement. For example, that organized Christian churches have often been enemies of moral progress is uncontroversial, but it is unclear that they have been worse than other religious and social institutions in this regard. As we all know, it is very easy to mistake mere correlations for causal relations; we should not be too quick to suppose that widespread correlation of Christian belief with ignorance, misery, and suffering is evidence that Christian belief has been a major causal agent in the production of that ignorance, misery, and suffering.”
Another candid and long overdue admission.
“Reality is described by science; there are no metaphysical spooks hiding behind the scenes.”
There are a number of problems with this claim:
i) How does he deal with varieties of scientific antirealism?
ii) What is the relation between appearance and reality? Is the world the way we perceive it?
iii) What is his theory of abstract objects?
iv) Does evolutionary psychology cut the nerve of rationality?
v) His claim is self-refuting, for science must postulate a number of metascientific assumptions. As Del Ratzsch has pointed out:
***QUOTE***
Empirical data by themselves can neither generate, identify, drive us to, nor conclusively confirm some single theory from among all possible competitors. Underdetermination, then, presents us with a forced choice between empirical purity (at a cost of the theoretical) and theoretical legitimacy (at the cost of empirical rigor). Thus, when we do single out a particular theory, whatever selection process we employ will of necessity involve 'extra-empirical' factors - factors beyond the purely empirical.[5] A genuine realist science thus cannot survive on just empirical observation and logic, but requires richer conceptual resources and is of necessity integrally embedded in a deeper conceptual matrix from which, I shall argue, it cannot be cleanly detached intact. What are those resources?
Among the operative presuppositions upon which science unavoidably depends, many are conceptually unproblematic, and various of them are so familiar as to ordinarily escape special attention. The following list is not presented as exhaustive.
1. General metaphysics.
a. Intelligibility of nature. For any robust idea of science itself to make sense, the cosmos must be assumed to be to some degree understandable by the minds doing the science. Historically science has assumed that nature embodies an inherent intelligibility - that properly conceived, nature's mechanisms and structures make sense.
b. Basic character of nature. Relevant presuppositions concerning nature include e.g.: that there really is a real world, that it is largely 'out there', that it exists largely independent of us, that it persists, that change is real, that events in that world have effects, etc. Although change is real, there are also stabilities and uniformities extending through time and space. There is a unity to reality - we live in a cosmos, rather than a random and arbitrary patchwork of different jurisdictions. And whatever their ultimate character, there are 'laws' of nature, that seem to inhabit a region somewhere between logical necessity and accidental generalization. The laws of nature, and nature itself, manifest a logical contingency, but an ordered - not a chaotic - contingency. There are other sorts of presuppositions as well, which I will not pursue here.[6]
http://homepages.utoledo.edu/esnider/scirelconference/ratzschpaper.htm
***END-QUOTE**
vi) I’ll introduce another difficulty below.
“If there is anything contingent in the world, then there is brute--i.e., inexplicable--contingency in the world.”
On the face of it, this claim is straightforwardly fallacious. How does he reason for “anything contingent” in the world to brute factuality?
In principle, you could reason from brute factuality to pure contingency, but you can’t reason from local (or global) instances of contingency to brute factuality.
The existence of contingent facts is not itself an evidence of brute factuality, for a contingent mode of existence may well be ontologically dependent on something necessary.
That’s what makes it contingent. It’s contingent on something else.
Of course, Oppy can try to deny this connection, but that will require an argument. He cannot infer brute factuality from contingency without a supporting argument.
“Hence, if there is anything contingent in the world, then there are things--events, facts--that simply have no explanation.”
Several problems:
i) Even if valid, this piggybacks on a false premise (see above).
ii) He is admitting that, at rock bottom, reality is irrational. What does that say about the secular worldview?
iii) In addition, what does it say about his commitment to scientific explanation?
“In particular, then, there is no justification for supposing that belief in God is justified simply because the truth of that belief would account for otherwise inexplicable contingency in the world. If we are puzzled by why the world is one way rather than some other way that it might have been, our puzzlement cannot be removed by supposing that the world is the way it is because God chose to make it that way. If we are worried by unexplained contingency, we shall want to know why God chose to make the world that way: postulating God does not remove the unexplained contingency, but it does land us with a whole new raft of explanatory burdens and commitments. This is not progress.”
A couple of problems:
i) To say that positing an agent fails to provide a complete explanation is far from saying that such a posit an agent is devoid of explanatory value.
If a homicide detective fingers the butler as the killer, this has a lot more explanatory value than treating the murder as a brute fact. It’s a sufficient explanation to account for the immediate circumstances.
In principle, this raises a whole new set of questions. How do we explain the existence of the butler? When was he born? Where was he born? Where did he go to school? Who were his parents? Who is his best friend? Does he have a girlfriend? Does he prefer cheddar cheese to Swiss cheese? What were his motives?
But it isn’t necessary to answer all of these incidental questions for the “butler-hypothesis” to be an adequate explanation of the crime scene.
ii) Oppy is assuming that we don’t know why God chose this world over another. But suppose we do have a source of information in answer to that question?
Oppy doesn’t even consider the possibility that God may have revealed his reasons to one degree or another.
“If we suppose that there is a concept of cause that has proper application to our world, then there are events and occurrences that simply lack causes, including, in particular, events and occurrences where entities come into existence and processes commence.”
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this is true, where does it leave his commitment to scientific explanation as our only window onto reality?
“Consequently, I do not think that the thought that God might be the initial cause for what would otherwise be uncaused initial events and occurrences justifies belief in God--for God's actions and decisions are also events and occurrences that, on the intuition in question, stand in need of causes.”
This claim is simply inept. According to classical Christian theism, God is a timeless agent. Hence, his actions and decisions are not another set of events or occurrences, but rather, a timeless state of being instead of a temporal process of becoming.
To be sure, there are Christians who regard God as in some sense temporal. Process theology is an extreme example.
But Oppy also needs to adapt his objection to the traditional conception of God’s relation to time and eternity.
“If we suppose that there is some intelligible sense to an objective conception of ‘perfection,’ then it is highly plausible that, if there were a perfect being, it would simply be unable to create an imperfect universe: i.e., a universe whose history was less than optimal on any dimension of evaluation.”
i) This assumes, without benefit of argument, that there is such a thing as an optimal world. But why make that assumption?
Why not assume that different possible worlds may exemplify alternative or incommensurable goods?
So there may be no such thing as a best possible world.
ii) Apropos (i), he is also assuming, without benefit of argument, that a suboptimal world is equivalent to an imperfect world. But what does that mean?
If one possible world exemplifies lesser goods, while another possible world exemplifies greater goods, how is the lesser world imperfect? One possible world may be better than another, but as long as a possible world is good, how is such a world imperfect?
“In particular, it is highly plausible that if there were a perfect being, it would simply be unable to create a universe in which there are departures from moral perfection.”
A departure from moral perfection would not involve a choice between lesser and greater goods, but a choice between good and evil, or the lesser of two evils.
“But it is very plausible--if not utterly obvious--that the universe that we inhabit is populated with events and occurrences that do mark departures from moral perfection. So it is highly plausible to suppose that, on our initial assumption about objective perfection, there is no perfect being.”
A couple of problems:
i) He is equating moral perfection with a static state of affairs. But what if the present imperfection of the world is a means to a greater good or second-order good?
ii) Where does he get his ideal standard over against which he judges our world to be morally imperfect? If this world is the only world there is, then how is he in any objective position to contrast the actual world with a more perfect or optimal state of affairs?
“While this claim hardly cuts against the claim that the Christian God exists--since the Christian God is continuous with the God of the Old Testament, and it is hardly contentious that the God of the Old Testament is less than morally perfect--it is equally clear that this claim does cut against the views of many contemporary Christian philosophers of religion.”
Is it “hardly contentious” to an observant Jew that the God of the OT is less than morally perfect?
The Jewish race is not extinct. There are contemporary Jewish intellectuals to believe in the OT and look to the OT for moral guidance.
“If we suppose that claims about human free actions are intelligible, then it seems to me that it is a mistake to think that human beings have what philosophers call 'libertarian' freedom, as opposed to 'compatibilist' freedom. To act freely is simply to act on one's normally acquired beliefs and desires in the absence of certain kinds of constraints, and there is no inconsistency in the thought that actions that possess this kind of freedom have physical causes. On the libertarian conception of freedom, one acts freely only if, in the very circumstances in which one acted, it was within one's power to do otherwise--which is incompatible with efficient causation of action. But as I see it, the only alternative to efficient causation is absence of causation; and, if one's actions are only 'free' because they have no causes, then this is not a kind of 'freedom' worth wanting. Among the consequences of this view, two are particularly important. First, it is a mistake to suppose that the free choices of a supernatural agent might be 'ultimate' explainers: for if 'freedom' is libertarian, then what is appealed to ultimately has no explanation; and if 'freedom' is compatibilist, then free choices are no less in need of explanation than any other kinds of events. Second, given that freedom is 'compatibilist,' it is very hard to see how the presence of evil in the world might be explained in terms of the value that freedom possesses; for there surely are possible worlds in which agents always freely choose the good, and it is very hard to see why a perfect creator either could not or would not make one of those worlds if it made any world at all.”
I agree.
“If we suppose that our ordinary mentalistic vocabulary should be given a realistic construal, then I take it that our 'mental' states are nothing other than certain kinds of states of our brains.”
Are they? Suppose we apply his statement to the statement itself. Is his statement true? Can I entertain a true belief about his statement?
But if my belief is a physical state, then to what does it correspond? The physical state of my brain isn’t like the letters and words composing his sentence. It isn’t descriptive or symbolic of his sentence, or the propositional content thereof.
So, in the absence of any resemblance between the two, how does my brain state represent or refer to his sentence about brain states? What accounts for the alethic relation between a brain state and a sentence about a brain state?
“I do not deny that there are imperfections in our current understanding of consciousness; but I do not see how the postulation of spooky mental stuff promises to give any additional insight.”
i) One wonders how much reading he’s done in the philosophy of mind.
ii) Notice, too, his appeal to the argumentum ad ignorantiam. This is a godless-of-the-gaps appeal. He fills in the lacunae of his physicalism by a leap of blind faith in the inexorable progress of science.
“Moreover, I take it that the welter of information that we possess concerning neural deficits, and the nature of various kinds of physical impacts on our 'minds,' provides very strong reason for denying that we are essentially nonphysical spooks who are only contingently wired up to our bodies.”
i) Dualism is well-aware of the very same data. No surprises here.
ii) In theistic dualism, the body, via the senses, is a source of information by which the soul acquires some of its knowledge of the external world.
“Of course, there is some alleged data that supports the distinct existences hypothesis; but I take it that, after due consideration, we should find that reports of out-of-body experiences, astral travel, and the like are not reflections of how the world really is.”
Has he given “due consideration” to the standard literature? Cf.:
R.W.K. Paterson, Philosophy and the Belief in a Life After Death (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1995.
Michael Stoeber and Hugo Meynell, Eds., Critical Reflections on the Paranormal (New York: State University of New York Press, 1996).
James Houran and Rense Lange, Eds., Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2001).
David Lester, Is there Life After Death? (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2005).
David Fontana, Is There An Afterlife: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence (O Books, 2005).
Lance Storm and Michael A. Thalbourne, eds., The Survival of Human Consciousness: Essays on the Possibilities of Life After Death, ed (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2006).
“If asked to engage in fundamental metaphysical speculation about the nature of our world, I would give greatest credence to a kind of supervenient naturalism. Alas, it is no easy matter to give an exact characterization of supervenient naturalism.”
So supervenient naturalism is not an actual alternative, but a secular faith-commitment. A voucher in place of a detailed, working model.
“If asked to provide a broad outline of the history of the universe since the Big Bang, I would--to the best of my ability--outline the history that is delivered to us by our best sciences. In particular, I would insist that life appeared on Earth some billions of years ago, and that human beings are directly descended from those ancestral life forms.”
i) I disagree with him, but I’ll ignore than for now.
ii) How is his faith in science consistent with his denial of the principle of sufficient reason? If, by his own admission, the world is ultimately unintelligible, given the occurrence of surd events, then what happens to the principle of induction?
“Moreover, I would insist that there is no need to appeal to the hypothesis of intelligent design to explain any of the features that our universe has possessed over the course of its history.”
ID theorists would demur, but I’ll delegate that debate to the respective parties.
“Furthermore, I would say that any impulse to postulate intelligent designers to explain structural or organizational features of the universe should be matched by an impulse to postulate further intelligent designers for those intelligent designers--to explain the structural or organizational features of the beliefs, desires, and intentions of the initial intelligent designers.”
i) This is inept, for it compares the incomparable. It assumes tht causes resemble their effects.
ii) It also fails to distinguish between abstract complexity (e.g. the Mandelbrot set) and cumulative, composite complexity.
“If asked to provide a broad outline of recent human history--say, the last 10,000 years--I would provide an outline in which there is no mention of the actions of supernatural agents, and no mention of the occurrence of miraculous events. Of course, I might mention well-known reports of the actions of supernatural agents, and well-known reports of the occurrence of miraculous events; but I would insist that all such reports are simply mistaken.”
“All such reports are simply mistaken.” That’s a sorry excuse for an argument.
“In particular, I would insist that none of the religions that have a place in recent human history have supernatural origins; and I would insist that there have been no miraculous events that provide support for particular religious beliefs.”
This assumes that most religions lay claim to a supernatural origin and miraculous attestation.
“All of the religions that have a place in recent human history--and all of the writings that are associated with those religions--can be happily accommodated within the supervenient naturalism outlined earlier.”
How “can they be happily accommodated within the supervenient naturalism” when, by his own admission, “it is no easy matter to give an exact characterization of supervenient naturalism.”
Oppy is resorting to secular fideism to overthrow religious claims.
“Moreover, in principle, there are purely naturalistic explanations for all religions, religious beliefs, religious writings, religious experiences (and reports thereof), and so forth--though, in practice, we may not always be able to fix on those explanations, owing to lack of data and theoretical sophistication.”
Yet another appeal to secular fideism. We lack the supporting evidence, but we’ll keep on believing in “purely naturalistic explanations for all religions,” &c. no matter.
“If asked to say how much of the Christian Gospels is historical truth, I would say that I don't know. It might be that they are entirely works of the imagination; or it might be that there was a historical figure who became the focus for what are, in significant part, works of the imagination. I am not impressed by the claim that if we suppose that the Gospels are largely works of the imagination, then we shall need to suppose that the rest of ancient history is so as well. For we have the best of reasons for thinking that much in the Gospels does spring from the imagination--namely, the fantastic nature of the events that are described therein--but we have no such reason for thinking that everything else that is recorded in ancient history must also spring from that source.”
The Gospels are “imaginary” because they are “fantastic.” This objection assumes that miracles never happen. Where’s the supporting argument?
In his section (7.4) on the argument from miracles (Arguing About Gods, 376-81), he admits that Humean objections are a failure.
“Moreover, while there are ancient histories that bear marks of methodological sophistication, including explicit discussion of the principles that apply when weighing the reliability of sources and the like, the Gospels are plainly not amongst those histories.”
This depends on the distance between the timing of the event and the timing of the record. Where contemporaries are reporting on contemporaneous events, we wouldn’t expect the same methodological caveats as apply to a historical reconstruction of events from the distant past.
“In particular, if there are basic truths about values, then those truths are necessary, and hence not capable of having a 'grounding' in anything.”
A couple of elementary problems:
i) There’s no reason why moral norms must be necessary truths. Especially where Christian ethics is concerned, moral norms are, in some measure, preadapted to natural kinds. To the way in which God has constituted the human race. So moral norms could well be contingent facts.
ii) Even if we assume that moral norms are necessary truths, does naturalism enjoy the metaphysical resources to underwrite necessary truths? What is the status of abstract objects (of which necessary truths are a subset) in Oppy’s ontology?
“Many Christians suppose that there can be no virtuous behavior in the absence of Christian belief.”
That’s a simplistic statement of the contention. The real position is more like this:
i) The primary question is not whether unbelievers can be virtuous, or whether, in fact, they are virtuous, but why they should be virtuous, given their outlook.
It’s a de jure question rather than a de facto question.
ii) Due to common grace, unbelievers are often better than their unbelieving creed.
iii) But the more consistently and self-consciously secular their outlook, the less virtuous they will be, if they are free to act with impunity.
Can't We All Just Get Along, Part 2
Update to my earlier report:
Brother Chadwick Ivester from SC has been to their State Pastor’s Conference and has said that Danny Akin has said a few choice words on this topic too. Dr. Akin, who is, if I recall, an Amyraldian, believes the problem isn’t Calvinism, but bibically illiterate pastor-teachers.
From his notes (emphasis mine)
So, we've had the President of SEBTS and the Chairman of the North American Mission Board of the SBC both say some choice, public words about the anti-Calvinist rhetoric flying about the SBC. What's next, the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood?Then let’s step into our own family: oh, were at a crisis: We’re having debates about Baptism, both, the lack of them,
and just what constitutes Biblical baptism. . . We’re talking about tongues . . . We’re talking about alcohol. . .
We’re talking about church discipline. . .and we’re talking about church membership. . . and we’re talking about worship. . . and of course. . . WE’RE ALSO TALKING ABOUT CALVINISM.
And, yet, much of what I hear, today, IS SLOPPY . . .IT IS ILL-INFORMED. . .
THEOLOGICALLY AND BIBLICALLY, WE OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED OF OURSELVES!!! . . . OF SOME OF THE TRITE PUNCHLINES THAT WE HEAR COMING OUT OF
THE MOUTHS OF SUPPOSED LEADERS WITHIN THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION!
Now lest you misunderstand me. . . I am not a fivepoint Calvinist. . . . BUT I CERTAINLY BELIEVE WHEN YOU CRITIQUE SOMETHING, YOU OUGHT TO DO IT WITH INTEGRITY. . . .YOU OUGHT TO DO IT
FAIRLY. . . . AND YOU OUGHT TO DO IT WITH SOME SEMBLANCE OF KNOWING WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. . . BUT WE DON’T DO VERY GOOD AT IT RIGHT NOW! BECAUSE WE’RE NOT TEACHING
THE BIBLE. . . WE’RE NOT TEACHING THEOLOGY. . . AND WE, INDEED, HAVE LOST SIGHT OF OUR CALLING. . . .AS THE PASTOR/TEACHER OF EPHESIANS 4:11. . . OR IF YOU LIKE, THE CALLING TO BE A PASTOR/THEOLOGIAN.”
Monday, November 13, 2006
Don't Quit Your day Job
One of our little anonymous atheist T-blog groupies commented in my post on Chewbacca:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/end-of-chewbacca.html
Good point. Though we have already discussed those things here many times in the past, before we take up those things again we were going to talk about:
a) Lizards turning into birds.
b) Talking descendents of ape-like creatures. Talking birdies.
c) Whales walking on land.
d) The trustworthiness of our monkey brains.
e) The eating of Big Mac's as a form of "speciesism."
f) The idea that bats and humans had a common anscestor. Really, what's the problem with believing in Dracula?
g) The evolutionary possibility of donkey's developing the ability to speak.
So, stay tuned for those posts, and then we'll get into your horrible exegesis.
"Anonymous said:
Good call!!!
That is what I call a RIDICULOUS idea/belief.
What a nut!!!
Now, let's talk about the credible evidence for talking plants, snakes, and donkeys. Maybe we could also examine the "true" stories of the Tower of Babel and women that transform into table condiments."
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/11/end-of-chewbacca.html
Good point. Though we have already discussed those things here many times in the past, before we take up those things again we were going to talk about:
a) Lizards turning into birds.
b) Talking descendents of ape-like creatures. Talking birdies.
c) Whales walking on land.
d) The trustworthiness of our monkey brains.
e) The eating of Big Mac's as a form of "speciesism."
f) The idea that bats and humans had a common anscestor. Really, what's the problem with believing in Dracula?
g) The evolutionary possibility of donkey's developing the ability to speak.
So, stay tuned for those posts, and then we'll get into your horrible exegesis.
The End of Chewbacca
Sam Harris has written a book called, "The End of Faith."
In it we read such claims as this one:
"As we stride boldly into the Middle Ages, it does not seem out of place to wonder whether the myths that now saturate our discourse will wind up killing many of us, as the myths of others [terrorists] already have." [...] "We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. … It is imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most of our religious beliefs" (pp. 47, 48).
And when is this time?
"Two-hundred years from now, when we are a thriving global civilization beginning to colonize space, something about us will have changed: it must have; otherwise, we would have killed ourselves ten times over before this day ever dawned" (p.47).
See, aliens who had lived long enough to invent interstellar space travel would know the evils of religion.
Carrier writes,
"Of course, "God performed a miracle" is even less plausible than "Space aliens healed Jesus," because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus: the existence of a spacefaring species is well attested in at least one case: us; the technology to travel through interstellar space and restore life to a corpse is within the realm of known physics (faster-than-light travel would not be necessary for a species that has conquered death); etc."
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
But surely Carrier's aliens would be smart enough to know what a primitive and superstitious society would have believed about a man who came back from the dead!
And so it looks as if Harrris' aliens are the real evil ones. Harris should put an end to aliens.
It's not Christians who are to blame, but the Wookiee's!
I mean really, Richard, isn't it more plausible that space men who have developed the ability for interstellar space travel would be highly intelligent? And on your view isn't it most reasonable to assume that these highly intelligent beings would be atheists? And surely, given the evolutionary development of religion, wouldn't they have experienced religiosity in their more primitive days? And surely they knew the dangers of religion. And so why would it be plausible, Richard, that these intelligent beings would do something like bring back to life a highly religious figure? Wouldn't they want to put an end to faith?
I think that aliens would be involved in more technological and scientific enterprises. Like building pyramids. Don't you think?
And so why doesn't Carrier think it's more plausible that aliens built the pyramids?
In it we read such claims as this one:
"As we stride boldly into the Middle Ages, it does not seem out of place to wonder whether the myths that now saturate our discourse will wind up killing many of us, as the myths of others [terrorists] already have." [...] "We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. … It is imperative that we begin speaking plainly about the absurdity of most of our religious beliefs" (pp. 47, 48).
And when is this time?
"Two-hundred years from now, when we are a thriving global civilization beginning to colonize space, something about us will have changed: it must have; otherwise, we would have killed ourselves ten times over before this day ever dawned" (p.47).
See, aliens who had lived long enough to invent interstellar space travel would know the evils of religion.
Carrier writes,
"Of course, "God performed a miracle" is even less plausible than "Space aliens healed Jesus," because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus: the existence of a spacefaring species is well attested in at least one case: us; the technology to travel through interstellar space and restore life to a corpse is within the realm of known physics (faster-than-light travel would not be necessary for a species that has conquered death); etc."
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
But surely Carrier's aliens would be smart enough to know what a primitive and superstitious society would have believed about a man who came back from the dead!
And so it looks as if Harrris' aliens are the real evil ones. Harris should put an end to aliens.
It's not Christians who are to blame, but the Wookiee's!
I mean really, Richard, isn't it more plausible that space men who have developed the ability for interstellar space travel would be highly intelligent? And on your view isn't it most reasonable to assume that these highly intelligent beings would be atheists? And surely, given the evolutionary development of religion, wouldn't they have experienced religiosity in their more primitive days? And surely they knew the dangers of religion. And so why would it be plausible, Richard, that these intelligent beings would do something like bring back to life a highly religious figure? Wouldn't they want to put an end to faith?
I think that aliens would be involved in more technological and scientific enterprises. Like building pyramids. Don't you think?
And so why doesn't Carrier think it's more plausible that aliens built the pyramids?
Richard Carrier: Exopsychologist, PhET
In the past I’ve been known to level some rather harsh remarks about Richard Carrier. But permit me to take this occasion to offer him a public apology.
Although I hold his mastery of Pauline exegesis in low esteem, I can now see that I have grossly underestimated the staggering breadth of his scholarship. Forsooth, the sheer scope of his intellectual attainments is truly out of this world:
“Of course, ‘God performed a miracle’ is even less plausible than ‘Space aliens healed Jesus,’ because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
Imagine being privy to the inner motives of the little green men!
I do wonder, though, about the precise source of his credible evidence. Does Columbia offer a degree program in exopsychology?
Or is this something that Richard (may I call your Richard?) picked up first-hand?—assuming that he doesn’t wear his tinfoil cap in the shower.
Perhaps Richard is an alien abductee. Is that what accounts for his uncanny command of this rather elusive discipline?
I do wish that he would expand on his extraterrestrial insights. For example, what is the correct school of alien psychology?
Is it Adlerian exopsychology? Behavioral exopsychology? Folk exopsychology? Freudian exopsychology? Jungian exopsychology? Or Pavlovian exopsychology?
In case the SETI program should someday succeed, I think that Richard has a solemn duty to the human race to prepare us for first contact by offering a televised course in comparative alien/earthling psychology.
Although I hold his mastery of Pauline exegesis in low esteem, I can now see that I have grossly underestimated the staggering breadth of his scholarship. Forsooth, the sheer scope of his intellectual attainments is truly out of this world:
“Of course, ‘God performed a miracle’ is even less plausible than ‘Space aliens healed Jesus,’ because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
Imagine being privy to the inner motives of the little green men!
I do wonder, though, about the precise source of his credible evidence. Does Columbia offer a degree program in exopsychology?
Or is this something that Richard (may I call your Richard?) picked up first-hand?—assuming that he doesn’t wear his tinfoil cap in the shower.
Perhaps Richard is an alien abductee. Is that what accounts for his uncanny command of this rather elusive discipline?
I do wish that he would expand on his extraterrestrial insights. For example, what is the correct school of alien psychology?
Is it Adlerian exopsychology? Behavioral exopsychology? Folk exopsychology? Freudian exopsychology? Jungian exopsychology? Or Pavlovian exopsychology?
In case the SETI program should someday succeed, I think that Richard has a solemn duty to the human race to prepare us for first contact by offering a televised course in comparative alien/earthling psychology.
Secular credulity
The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.
A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything.
When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.
—G. K. Chesterton (attributed)
http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/any-everything.htm
Of course, "God performed a miracle" is even less plausible than "Space aliens healed Jesus," because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus: the existence of a spacefaring species is well attested in at least one case: us; the technology to travel through interstellar space and restore life to a corpse is within the realm of known physics (faster-than-light travel would not be necessary for a species that has conquered death); etc.
—Richard Carrier
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
A man who won’t believe in God will believe in anything.
When a Man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything.
—G. K. Chesterton (attributed)
http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/any-everything.htm
Of course, "God performed a miracle" is even less plausible than "Space aliens healed Jesus," because we do have credible evidence to believe that there could be space aliens with the means and the motive to heal Jesus: the existence of a spacefaring species is well attested in at least one case: us; the technology to travel through interstellar space and restore life to a corpse is within the realm of known physics (faster-than-light travel would not be necessary for a species that has conquered death); etc.
—Richard Carrier
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/TheftFAQ.html
Should Presuppositionalism Be Taken Seriously?
Jeff Lowder recently wrote a post asking how seriously presuppositionalism should be taken.
Jim Lazarus wrote a blog entry asking the same question. He answered in the affirmative, or, at least as seriously as other approaches to apologetics are taken.
Here's my answer: No, don't take it seriously.
Why?
Well, here's a few reasons:
1. The internet infidels has a newsletter relaying Stein's comments on his debate with Greg Bahnsen. It's reported that:
"Gordon Stein concedes that Greg Bahnsen was able to catch him off-guard with TAG (although Stein says he now has a refutation of the argument);..."
2. Further, Edward Tabash didn't take the debate between him and Bahnsen seriously - he doesn't distribute those tapes.
So, yes, don't take presuppositionalism seriously. Then there will always be an excuse after the debate doesn't go your way.
3. Dan Barker didn't take me seriously, but most people, including atheists, don't think the debate turned out so well for him.
4. Someone posted a comment on Lowder's blog where he said that our arguments are "silly" and "nonsense." We like that attitude because then if the debate doesn't turn out so well for the atheist he gets beat by someone who had "silly" and "nonsensical" arguments. (Also, we were never told what was "silly" and "nonsense," and so it looks like not taking us seriously leads one to make unfounded assertions like these!)
5. Lowder seems to equate the method of presuppositionalism with the transcendental argument. As long as presuppositionalism is not taken seriously, then mistakes like this will continue to be made. That only helps us.
6. Please, don't take us seriously, this way you'll have an excuse for attacking straw men like Michael Martin does in TANG (e.g., his claim that miracles are violates of natural laws, and his view that Christianity teaches voluntarism, his ignorance of covenant theology).
7. Apropos (6), presuppositionalism is tied in with reformed systematic theology. To the extent you don't take one seriously, you won't take the other seriously. This leads to non-Christians attacking straw men.
8. So, don't take us seriously, please. Ignoring us only helps us, and since we're theists, we need all the help we can get!
Jim Lazarus wrote a blog entry asking the same question. He answered in the affirmative, or, at least as seriously as other approaches to apologetics are taken.
Here's my answer: No, don't take it seriously.
Why?
Well, here's a few reasons:
1. The internet infidels has a newsletter relaying Stein's comments on his debate with Greg Bahnsen. It's reported that:
"Gordon Stein concedes that Greg Bahnsen was able to catch him off-guard with TAG (although Stein says he now has a refutation of the argument);..."
2. Further, Edward Tabash didn't take the debate between him and Bahnsen seriously - he doesn't distribute those tapes.
So, yes, don't take presuppositionalism seriously. Then there will always be an excuse after the debate doesn't go your way.
3. Dan Barker didn't take me seriously, but most people, including atheists, don't think the debate turned out so well for him.
4. Someone posted a comment on Lowder's blog where he said that our arguments are "silly" and "nonsense." We like that attitude because then if the debate doesn't turn out so well for the atheist he gets beat by someone who had "silly" and "nonsensical" arguments. (Also, we were never told what was "silly" and "nonsense," and so it looks like not taking us seriously leads one to make unfounded assertions like these!)
5. Lowder seems to equate the method of presuppositionalism with the transcendental argument. As long as presuppositionalism is not taken seriously, then mistakes like this will continue to be made. That only helps us.
6. Please, don't take us seriously, this way you'll have an excuse for attacking straw men like Michael Martin does in TANG (e.g., his claim that miracles are violates of natural laws, and his view that Christianity teaches voluntarism, his ignorance of covenant theology).
7. Apropos (6), presuppositionalism is tied in with reformed systematic theology. To the extent you don't take one seriously, you won't take the other seriously. This leads to non-Christians attacking straw men.
8. So, don't take us seriously, please. Ignoring us only helps us, and since we're theists, we need all the help we can get!
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Bill Harrell, Chairman of the SBC’s X Comm stated that two problems in the SBC were worship styles and Calvinism. Bill Curtis Chairman of Trustees of NAMB has some exceptionally good words about cooperation in the SBC that everybody would do well to heed.
I’d like to point out a few things. Mr. Harrell stated that Five Point Calvinism ignores and radically interprets the Bible. Not only did he not substantiate that statement, he is, by defintion, stating that the first presidents and theologians of the SBC were radically reinterpreting and ignoring the Bible. This would include at least, one, Dr. James Boyce, who served a total of 8 years as SBC President, and another, RBC Howell, who served three terms, including one by acclamation. What’s more all the churches that formed the SBC in the 1845 Charter were from churches that affirmed the Philadelphia Confession. In short if it wasn’t for Calvinism, the SBC that Mr. Harrell loves and serves would not exist. Mr. Harrell needs a lesson in Baptist history and theology. Will somebody please send him Dr. Boyce’s book? Until Nov. 30, it’s only $12.50 plus shipping. Surely, he would do well to read it.
I’d also like to point out the problems that Brother Bill Curtis names in the SBC at present. These are, in contrast to Bill Harrell’s observations, of much greater concern:
• SBC baptisms are at their lowest levels in 12 years;
• 73 percent of SBC churches are plateaued or declining;
• 11,740 SBC churches reported zero or one baptism in 2005;
• 55 percent of SBC churches baptized no youth between the ages of 12-17 in 2004;
• From 1991-2004, the number of unchurched adults in America increased from 39 million to 79 million;
• Every county in North America is at least 50 percent unchurched (statistics available from NAMB).
Amen, Brother Bill Curtis! This hits the nail on the head! This did not happen because of differences in worship styles, and it did not happen because of Calvinism, since, according to Lifeway, only 10 percent of SBC pastors identify as “five point Calvinists.” No, this problem goes far, far deeper, and is much more extensive than Mr. Harrell’s, dare I say, superficial analysis.
In fact, I’d like to remind you all of these ACP statistics from the church belonging to our last SBC President:
2001
3506 members
203 baptisms
253 other additions
2200 primary worship attendance
2002
3812 members
296 baptisms
190 other additions
2100 primary worship
2003
4011 members
209 baptisms
137 other additions
2031 primary worship attendance
2004
4163 members
237 baptisms
204 other additions
1874 primary worship
It went from a counted Sunday morning worship attendance of 2200 in 2001 to 1874 in 2004. If my math is correct, that is a 15% decline.
Granted, they have baptized 945 people during that 4 year period and they have added 784 people by other means. But the church membership only grew by 657. It took 1729 new members for the church to grow by 657 members.
In addition those 1729 new members resulted in 326 fewer worshipers! This was the state of the church of the man that asked us to “baptize a million.” I am reminded of the old nursery rhyme, “Here’s the church; there’s the steeple/Open it up; where’s the people?” This same SBC President also took time to blast Calvinism in his church newsletter.
No, Calvinism is not responsible for these problems in the SBC, and if a good dose of evangelistic Calvinism (or even Amyraldianism), church discipline and order, and solid Biblical and deep expository preaching from the pulpit and teaching in the classroom is what it takes to fix these problems, then I submit that Bill Harrell needs to open his arms wide and learn to cooperate with the Calvinists in the SBC just like Bill Curtis suggests. What’s more, if the anti-Calvinists would stop with the monologues, they might do well to consider that they would do well to allow healthy, reasoned debate and discussion about these issues, because it will have the effect of driving more people to the Bible and away from PDL and The Prayer of Jabez and into more serious Bible study, theology books, and our own Baptist history. One more time: These problems did not arise because of worship styles between the churches or the reassertion of Calvinism in the SBC. This did not happen while folks on our side of that particular theological aisle were in charge. In fact, I submit that it is largely the legacy of the other side’s approach which is filling the churches with unregenerate, baptized persons. Let’s not forget, we were told at this past year’s SBC that the truants on our rolls were, “Some of our best prospects for evangelism.” This is the legacy of unbridled revivalism and theological eclecticism on the one hand and, on the other, the toleration of theological latitudinarianism. Mix with a dose of denominational politics, and this is what you get.
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