Triablogue

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

A natural-looking supernaturally-created world

Ironically, here's an atheist cutting the legs out from under Jeff Lowder's evidence for naturalism:

Jonathan MS Pearce said...
Jeff,

Let me get this straight - you may have answered this in your objection.

Let's imagine that God created the universe and by fine-tuning all the laws, and creating ex nihilo, he is the supernatural explanation for everything. However, what he created were natural laws and a natural-looking universe. In fact, he's a bit like a classic deist God, stepping away after creation.

Where would this leave the argument, since one would find it difficult to differentiate a naturalistic universe from this supernaturalistic one? Or is it an argument that cannot make claims on first causes, but merely everything thereafter?

Excuse me if I have missed some nuances here.

June 18, 2012 5:34:00 PM CDT

Here’s a popular argument for evolution: the deeper we dig, the simpler the life forms we find. This, in turn, assumes the law of superposition: in any undisturbed sequence of rocks deposited in layers, the youngest layer is on top and the oldest on bottom, each layer being younger than the one beneath it and older than the one above it.

Deeper is older is simpler. Hence, the evolution of life from simple to complex.

I’m not a zoologist or paleontologist, but I find that inference pretty dubious.

i) According to evolution, dinosaurs are older than mammals, but are dinosaurs simpler than mammals? For instance, are Pterosaurs simpler than bats?

ii) From what I’ve read, most fossils are aquatic organisms. So their body plan would be keyed to the nature of their habitat.

iii) Are insects simpler than birds? If so, are insects simpler because they’re more primitive, or because they’re insects? What else would an insect be like–and still be an insect?

iv) I suppose earthworms are simpler than leopards. But the simplicity of an earthworm is related to its function. What does it do compared to what a leopard must do? What’s its distinctive contribution to the ecosystem? Doesn't that account for the difference?

v) I assume there’s a rough correlation between size and complexity. One reason an amoeba is simpler than a cat is because an amoeba is far smaller than a cat. It’s not physically possible for an amoeba to have the complexity of a cat. There's not enough “space.”

Assuming that organisms are simpler the deeper we dig, is that because they are older–or smaller?

vi) It’s often equivocal to say one organism is simpler (or more complex) than other, for the comparison operates at more than one level. An organism may be simpler in one respect, but more complex than another. Take the follow examples (see below). According to evolution, these species are far more “primitive” than humans, yet their senses are far more “advanced” or highly “developed.”

STOMATOPOD crustaceans, commonly named mantis shrimps, have compound eyes of unique design. A central band composed of six parallel rows of ommatidia separates two peripheral ommatidial groups, and all three regions view the same area of visual space1–3. In the central bands of members of the stomatopod superfamily Gonodactyloidea, four of the ommatidial rows are built of tiers of photoreceptors; in two of these rows, the photoreceptors themselves contain coloured filters4. Such a design could in principle produce many spectral classes of photoreceptors using only a single visual pigment4,5. We measured the absorption spectra of the coloured filters and the visual pigments in frozen sections of retinae of a typical species, Pseudosquilla ciliata, using end-on microspectrophotometry. The retina contains not one, but as many as ten visual pigments, each in a distinct photoreceptor class, having maximum absorbances at wavelengths from 400 to 539 nm. Because of the unique anatomy of stomatopod eyes, ten or more spectral types of photoreceptors exist in this species.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v339/n6220/abs/339137a0.html

Sharks’ electroreception sense is incredibly sensitive. According to Scientific American, sharks can detect electric currents as weak as one-billionth of a volt. Moreover, Discovery News reports that a shark could pick up the change in electrical current if two AA batteries were connected 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) apart and one drained out. It probably helps that sharks have plenty of ampullae of Lorenzini -- around 1,500 or so -- to catch those electrical impulses. In fact, shark specialists have theorized that hammerhead sharks are such excellent hunters because their flat faces have more surface area and are therefore riddled with more ampullae.

http://dsc.discovery.com/sharks/hsw/electroreception-04.html

Scientists recently found that edge detectors in the brain must reconstruct the heat distribution from blurry images to inform the snake of greater detail of its surroundings.

Some snakes have infrared vision. Also called “heat vision,” the infrared rays, which have longer wavelengths than those of visible light, signify the presence of warm-blooded prey in 3 dimensions, which helps snakes aim their attacks. Pit vipers and boids, the two snake types that possess this ability, have heat-sensitive membranes that can detect the difference in temperature between a moving prey—such as a running mouse—and its surroundings on the scale of milliKelvins.

“The information of the infrared and the visual system are both represented in the optic tectum,” Sichert told PhysOrg.com. “This information forms a neuronal map, where, for example, the front part of the optic tectum represents the part of visual space in front of the snake. How exactly the two systems merge is as yet unknown.

In fact, Sichert added that snakes’ heat vision presents such a clear image when reconstructed that it surpasses even many human devices. “The infrared system of snakes is still as good as—and, in fact, far better than—any technical uncooled infrared camera with a similar number of detector cells,” he said.

http://phys.org/news76249412.html

Compound eyes in living arthropods such as insects are very sensitive to motion, and it is likely that they were similarly important in predator detection in trilobites. It has also been suggested that stereoscopic vision was provided by closely spaced, but separate eyes. Vertebrate lenses (such as our own) can change shape (accommodate) to focus on objects at varying distances. Trilobite eyes, in contrast, had rigid, crystalline lenses, and therefore no accommodation. Instead, an internal doublet structure (two lens layers of different refractive indices acting in combination) corrected for focusing problems that result from rigid lenses. The shapes of some trilobite lenses, in fact, match those derived by optical scientists over 300 million years later to answer similar needs. Compare, for example, the optical designs of the 17th century physicists Descartes and Huygens shown below, with those of two trilobite species. The result is that, even without the benefit of accommodation, the rigid trilobite doublet lens had remarkable depth of field (that is, allowed for objects both near and far to remain in relatively good focus) and minimal spherical aberration (distortion of image).

http://www.trilobites.info/eyes.htm

vii) Finally, here’s a useful discussion:

http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/fossilrecord.html#From%20Simple%20to%20Complex

And so is this: Kurt P. Wise, “The Origin of Life’s Major Groups,” in Moreland (ed.) The Creation Hypothesis, chap. 6.

Apostolic Origins of the New Testament Canon

In a way, I’ve been like a kid in a candy shop, working through Michael Kruger’s Canon Revisited. Not only is the work itself just an incredibly rich source of information about the Apostolic period and the early and late second centuries, but it ties together so many other things as well.

And of course, key for me is the opportunity to tell Roman Catholics that yes, the New Testament Scriptures came first, and then the idea of “apostolic succession” was much later and not foundational to “the church that Christ founded”. That the notion of “a succession of bishops” was later and secondary to the “succession” of the message. That Apostles held a unique, foundational, non-repeatable (and “non-succeedable” role) in earliest Christianity. That they were more concerned that “the Apostolic message”, the “Apostolic paradosis”, whether spoken or written, be the thing that is focused on. Any concept of “a succession of bishops” was later than, and secondary to the content of this new message that the Apostles preached.

Kruger’s chapter, “The Apostolic Origins of the Canon” is such a rich source of details about this that I’m going to continue to spend some time in this area. All the while, though, keep in mind that what Kruger is saying comes far earlier (in the 50’s AD, vs the 150’s AD) about what’s truly important in the church.

* * *

Kruger’s first purpose, however, seems to be to address the generations of critical scholars who caused so much confusion and difficulty in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. And he does an exceptional job of this:

For many scholars, particularly from the historical-critical model, the idea of a canon arose well after the books of the New Testament were written—and thus was retroactively imposed upon books originally composed for another purpose. Thus, it is argued, the existence of a New Testament canon could not have been anticipated or expected ahead of time, but finds its roots squarely in the theological and political machinations of later Christian groups. Koester argues that “the impelling force for the formation of the canon” was the second-century heretic Marcion. In order to counter Marcion, the “New Testament canon of Holy Scripture … was thus essentially created by Irenaeus.” For reasons such as this, McDonald argues that “no conscious or clear effort was made by these [New Testament] authors to produce Christian Scriptures,” and Gamble contends that “nothing dictated that there should be a NT at all.” Barr is even more direct: “The idea of a Christian faith governed by Christian written holy Scriptures was not an essential part of the foundation plan of Christianity” (Kruger 160-161).

Of course, this is precisely the argument that Joseph Ratzinger made in 1961, which was repeated in the 1994 CCC, and re-issued as (and in fact, trumpeted as) a book written by “Pope Benedict XVI”, who relied on these very historical-critical arguments, all the while decrying the “historical-critical” method as a proper hermeneutic for Roman Catholics.

Kruger instantly focuses on what is wrong with this line of thinking:

But are we to really think that “the impelling force for the formation of the canon” goes no further back than the second century? We shall argue that the historical-critical model has been myopically focused on the time after the writing of the New Testament books and, as a result, has overlooked the critical time before and during the writing of these books, particularly the significance of the redemptive-historical epoch from which they came. In short, it has been preoccupied with the corporate reception of these books and has neglected their apostolic origins. It is here, then, that we come to the second of our three attributes of canonicity. The apostolic character of these books reminds us that their authority—indeed their very existence—does not depend on the actions of the later church but is rooted in the foundational role played by the apostles as “ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor 3:6). They are not regarded as canon because the church receives them; the church receives them because they are already canon by virtue of their apostolic authority (161).

Here, now, is a key to Kruger’s method. (Keep in mind, he has, by this point, already addressed the “divine qualities” of the New Testament canon – the fact that “God breathed” these scriptures into existence. Here, in this chapter, he will speak of the many different facets of “Apostolic origins” of these writings, before delving into some of the messy details about “corporate reception” of the canon by the early church.

The purpose of this chapter, then, is to explore the apostolic origins of these books in greater detail (while addressing a potential “defeater” to apostolic origins along the way. But we cannot begin there. The foundational role of the apostles must be understood within its proper context. Thus, we first want to examine the historical and theological matrix of the first century that gave birth to these books. Was this an environment in which canonical books would have naturally sprouted? Were the theological and historical conditions favorable for a new scriptural deposit to emerge? What do we know about early Christian beliefs, and how would they have affected their expectation of a new revelation from God? Although there are many ways to address these questions, we shall argue that there were two key factors in the historical context: (1) there was a structural framework for canon already in place [in the form of Christ’s naming of a New Covenant and a related expectation for “covenant documents]; (2) and there was a clear and powerful rationale for canon: redemption. After this historical context has been established, we will address the role of the apostles as the “agents” of the canon. When these three factors (covenant, redemption, and apostolicity) are viewed together, it will become clear that the idea of a canon was not an after-the-fact development with roots in church history, but rather a natural, early, and inevitable development with roots in redemptive history (162).

And in the process of bringing out these ideas, I’m going to continue to focus on notions of different kinds of “tradition”, the primary role of the Apostles and the lateness of the idea of “succession”, and more.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Luke 16, 2 Corinthians 12, And Near-Death Experiences

Tim Challies recently started another thread on near-death experiences (NDEs). There's a lengthy comments section that follows. The discussion doesn't go into much depth. And the alleged Biblical arguments raised against NDEs are highly problematic. So are the extra-Biblical objections. There's some good material there, but mixed with a lot that's bad.

You can find an index of my posts on NDEs here. For example, my introductory thread on the subject addresses some of the Biblical passages brought up in the Challies thread, like Luke 16:31 and 2 Corinthians 12:4. If you're interested in reading more about a particular passage, go to the page I just linked and do a Ctrl F search for that passage. For example, searching for "2 Corinthians 12", "Corinthians", "2 Cor", or something like that will take you to the posts in the thread that discuss 2 Corinthians 12:4. If I don't discuss a passage you're looking for in that thread, it may have come up in one of the others. My NDE index page covers hellish NDEs, dream-like aspects of NDEs, the moral standards of NDEs, shared death experiences, and a lot of other topics.

“A Jesuit’s Struggle for Homosexual Rights”

http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/new-documentary-depicts-jesuits-struggle-lgbt-rights

“The film offers a portrait of John McNeill, the Jesuit priest who was silenced in 1977 for his book The Church and the Homosexual and, nine years later, was expelled from his order for refusing to stay silent in his ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics.

“The film had its New York City premiere this weekend as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the New York chapter of Dignity USA, a community McNeill helped found. The film includes a number of insightful interviews from fellow priest activist Dan McCarthy, theologian Mary Hunt, openly gay priest Bernard Lynch, gay rights activist Ginny Appuzzo, and the late activist Jesuit Fr. Robert Carter.

“Fay's documentary offers a full depiction of McNeill's life as well as a window into the gay struggle for liberation in both church and society amid the terrifying backdrop of the AIDS crisis. Two sections of the film are particularly powerful: McNeill's calling to the priesthood and his calling forth out of the silence imposed on him by the Vatican.

“… viewers will also find inspiration in the fact that, only 25 years after McNeill's expulsion, [Roman] Catholics are now the strongest supporters of gay and lesbian rights and same-sex marriage in the United States.”

For anyone considering Eastern Orthodoxy

Here is a first person account by someone who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and who remained one for 13 uncomfortable years. He finally left Eastern Orthodoxy in favor of a conservative [“Continuing”] Anglicanism. He cautions people considering Eastern Orthodoxy to consider other alternatives (what follows is completely his own testimony):

A sizable number of Evangelicals … have opted to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy rather than to Roman Catholicism or Traditional Anglicanism. One can read the convert literature of (the increasingly unhinged) Frank Schaeffer and the ex-Campus Crusade folks (Peter Gillquist, et al.) for the standard panegyric about how these Evangelicals ”came home” to “the ancient Christian church”. Your blogger The Embryo Parson was one of them. I spent approximately 13 years in the Orthodox Church, and I can assure you that Schaeffer and Gillquist were smitten with romantic notions about the Orthodox Church church that bear little relation to reality. I could go into great detail about why I left, but I will confine myself here to four principal reasons.

1. Creeping liberalism. Here is an account from a Lutheran blog that refers to an article written by Orthodox academic and priest Gregory Jensen, who frankly admits the problem … the Orthodox Church is slowly but surely beginning to look like its increasingly “Episcopalianized” sister, the Roman Catholic Church. Both, to one degree or another, are aping the liberal Protestant “mainline.” Though officially “orthodox” in their respective theologies, there is much turmoil beneath the surface that is associated with the activity of liberals, and the Evangelical convert can’t miss it. I certainly didn’t.

2. Virulent anti-Western mentality. The Orthodox are openly hostile to just about everything Western. Any Evangelical who hopes to retain something of the Western theological framework in which he learned about his faith will be quickly disappointed in that hope if he enters the Orthodox Church. David B. Hart, an Orthodox theologian and brother of our own Anglican Catholic priest Fr. Robert Hart, says this about it:

The most damaging consequence . . . of Orthodoxy’s twentieth-century pilgrimage ad fontes—and this is no small irony, given the ecumenical possibilities that opened up all along the way—has been an increase in the intensity of Eastern theology’s anti-Western polemic. Or, rather, an increase in the confidence with which such polemic is uttered. Nor is this only a problem for ecumenism: the anti-Western passion (or, frankly, paranoia) of Lossky and his followers has on occasion led to rather severe distortions of Eastern theology. More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross.

3. Essentially Eastern European. The Orthodox Churches tend to be Eastern European or Middle Eastern cultural outposts. While they welcome converts from Western countries, the latter never really quite fit in. One person commenting over at the Stumble Inn writes:

Eastern Orthodoxy is a gigantic Eastern culture club. They have a saying for a sort of mania new converts (of the generic Anglo/Celtic/German-American variety) get - Convertitis. Basically it’s marked by a) aggressive appropriation of your parish’s ethnic culture, b) rabid defense of your theology. The second one is just the excitement of finding something you believe to be true - it’s an altruistic sort of joy with unintended negative consequences that go away over time.

The first one is a survival/assimilation technique that is pretty much necessary when one finds himself surrounded by Russians, or Greeks, or Arabs... Bulgarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Serbians, Georgians, Albanians and 20 different varieties of each. There’s nothing else. If you walk into an Orthodox church as an old stock American, you simply don’t belong there. You’re out of your league. You have to make yourself belong - and it’s difficult.

If not impossible.

4. Compromised soteriology. While we should certainly be grateful to the Greek Church Fathers for the triadology and christology that became the basis of the Creed, they were not so orthodox when it came to an issue that would come to bear upon the question of soteriology, or salvation:

Part of the fascination of the patristic era to the scholar lies in the efforts of its theologians to express an essentially Hebraic gospel in a Hellenistic milieu: the delights of patristic scholarship must not, however, be permitted to divert our attention from the suspicion voiced by the Liberal school in the last century - that Christ’s teaching was seriously compromised by the Hellenism of its earlier adherents. The history of the development of the Christian doctrine of justification lends support to such a suspicion. In particular, it can be shown that two major distortions were introduced into the corpus of traditional belief within the eastern church at a very early stage, and were subsequently transferred to the emerging western theological tradition. These are:

a. The introduction of the non-biblical, secular Stoic concept of autoexousia or liberum arbitrium in the articulation of the human response to the divine initiative in justification.

b. The implicit equation of tsedaqa, dikaiosune and iustitia, linked with the particular association of the Latin meritum noted earlier (p.15), inevitably suggested a correlation between human moral effort and justification within the western church. The subsequent development of the western theological tradition, particularly since the time of Augustine, has shown a reaction against both these earlier distortions, and may be regarded as an attempt to recover a more biblically orientated approach to the question of justification. . . .

The emerging patristic understanding of such matters as predestination, grace and free will is somewhat confused, and would remain so until controversy forced full discussion of the issue upon the church. Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil. . . . (Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Vol. I, pp.18-19)

This sub-biblical notion of free will would later inform the heresies of Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, and would also result in a soteriology in the East that would put a greater stress on theosis - sanctification - than on the atonement. Accordingly, Orthodox theology is deficient in its understanding of just how the atonement relates to sanctification. One need only listen to the narrative of this video to see an example of the man-centered nature of theosis. Note the repeated use of “I”, “me” and “my”. I call this the “Little-Christian-Who-Could” model. There is nothing in this video about what God did to effect man’s salvation, aside from a brief and vague reference to the destruction of sin and death at the beginning of the narrative.

Because the Orthodox reject the Augustinian view of original sin, and by implication the Pauline teaching on the inability of man to save himself, and because the Orthodox still labor under pagan notions about “free will”, their soteriology suffers. Frs. Hart and Wells discuss this deficiency at the [Anglican] Continuum, here and here.

Going after strange flesh

as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 1:17).

On the one hand:

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/06/divine_love_made_flesh/

On the other hand:

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2004-08-25/news/immaculate-deception/

Looks like the Cardinal’s ministry is less concerned with divine love made flesh than going after strange flesh.

Who wrote the Pentateuch?

I’ve been asked to give my case is for the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. I’m not going to take time to present a full-blown argument. I have 24 hours in a day, just like everyone else, and I’m not going to do what others can do for themselves. Rather, I’m going to sketch the basic outliens of the argument. An argumentative strategy.

i) In both the OT and the NT, the authority of the Mosaic law rests on the premise that Moses was a prophet of God. God spoke to Moses, and Moses, in turn, spoke the words God gave him to speak. Moses was God’s appointed mouthpiece.

ii) Not only does the Pentateuch depict Moses as a divine spokesman, but also as a writer. Moses wrote down what God told him.

iii) In addition, the Pentateuch is a literary unit. It’s interwoven with common themes. Foreshadowing and backshadowing.

Its literary unity is admitted by contemporary OT scholars ranging from liberal to conservative. The difference is the liberal scholars attribute this unity to a final redactor rather than a common author.

However, (iii), in combination with (i-ii), is an argument for common authorship–not merely common redaction.

There are ways of trying to get around this:

i) In theory, one might take the position that the Pentateuch is a record of what Moses said, or God said to Moses, written by someone other than Moses.

However, that move is inconsistent with (ii-iii).

ii) In addition, those who deny Mosaic authorship typically deny, not only that Moses wrote what the Pentateuch imputes to him, but that he spoke what the Pentateuch imputes to him. They regard the entire presentation as fictitious. The anonymous author or redactor is putting words in the mouth of a fictional character. Indeed, Yahweh and Moses are both fictional characters.

Of course, on that view, the Pentateuch instantly loses the authority which both OT and NT ascribe to it. Moses can’t speak for God unless God spoke to him. Imaginary conversations between Yahweh and Moses don’t command our deference. Unless he was a real person, who actually had the numinous encounters that the Pentateuch attributes to him, he can’t properly speak on God’s behalf.

Beyond the argument from the OT we have certain NT ascriptions. For instance:

45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me (Jn 5:45-46).

And what is Jesus referring to? Within the confines of the Fourth Gospel, that denotes the various Pentateuchal allusions which undergird the story of Jesus. That’s what a literate reader would make of the statement, in the context of John’s unfolding narrative.

There are ways of trying to get around this:

i) One tactic is to treat NT ascriptions as conventional designations. But even if that’s consistent in some cases, that’s not consistent in this case. Jesus is making an argument from analogy. If Moses didn’t write about Jesus, then the argument falls apart.

ii) In response, one might try to say that this is a purely ad hominem argument. His Jewish opponents believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch, so Jesus is playing on their own turf.

But a problem with that argument is the integrity of the testimonial theme in the Fourth Gospel. There are many different witnesses to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. Multiple-attestation. It would be discordant for the Mosaic appeal to be purely ad hominem given role of testimony in John’s Gospel.

iii) A last-ditch tactic would be taking refuge in a kenotic Christology. Jesus was mistaken.

But whatever else we might say about that move, John’s gospel, with its lofty Christology, is a very inhospitable haven for kenoticism.

Clinging to a tidal sandbar

Here’s a commenter who shares Peter Enns’s low view of Scripture, but draws a more consistent conclusion:

Whether we like it or not, there is some sense of a “package deal” when it comes to the nature of the Bible and our Christian faith. If we conclude that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses (which many have), it is a hit to faith…for the one we call God-incarnate seemed to hold that false belief. If there is no historical Adam and no historical “fall”, it is a hit to faith! For Paul and others seem to have assumed as much. When we conclude that the Flood Narrative is comprised of two sources which can’t agree with one another on details (how many animals on the ark?, etc.), or that the Law is a mashup of various developing legal thoughts from Israel’s past, or that Abraham and the patriarchs may or may not have been historical figures, or that Paul (and I would argue the Gospel writers) was mistaken about the “end of the age” being near, it is a hit to faith! How much can you take away from traditional Christian assumptions and be able to stand?

For me it was all boiled down to the resurrection until I concluded that Paul, the Gospel writers, and (I believe) Jesus held false eschatological views. Is this another traditional Christian assumption (that there is a clear and correct eschatology in the New Testament) that we can jettison and still come away with the same faith? Could we stand an errant Paul or even an errant Jesus and still hang our hats on the resurrection?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/06/dont-be-a-the-sky-is-falling-christian/#comment-8552

Graying atheism

The secular old guard is…getting old. Peter Singer is 65. Philip Pullman is 65. Daniel Dennett is 70. Stephen Hawking is 70. Laurence Tribe is 70. Michael Ruse is 70. Richard Dawkins is 71. Victor Stenger is 77. Gloria Steinem is 78. Steven Weinberg is 79. Michael Martin is 80. Lewis Wolpert is 82. Murray Gell-Mann is 82. Noam Chomsky is 83. James Randi is 83. E. O. Wilson is 83. Kai Nielson is 86. Paul Kurtz is 86. Gore Vidal is 86. Adolf Grunbaum is 89. And so on and so forth.

As people grow old they become an increasing drain on the healthcare system. In the age of rationed medical care, if we apply secular bioethics to prioritizing medical services, shouldn’t aging atheists go to the back of the line? Indeed, shouldn’t there be an automatic cutoff, above a certain age?

Anti-sharia laws

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2012/06/antisharia_it_has_a_point.html

Sunday, June 17, 2012

The buck stops with the Bible or the Church?

According to Catholic philosopher Mike Liccione:

I rely on the authority of the Church to know who Jesus was, what he said, and why it matters.

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/05/joshua-lims-story-a-westminary-seminary-california-student-becomes-catholic/#comment-32878

Notice how this is directly opposed to the viewpoint of the Gospel writers:

3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (Lk 1:3-4).

31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (Jn 20:31).

Luke and John don’t point people to “the Church” to know who Jesus was, what he said, and why it matters. Rather, they direct people to their gospels for that information and assurance.

Divine Timelessness and Human Longing

http://walkingthroughthecityofgod.blogspot.com/2012/01/divine-timelessness-and-human-longing.html

Jeff's persistent equivocation

Jeffery Jay Lowder said...

Aside: I see that Steve Hays has responded to my article with one of his own, but his article only quotes the informal statement of the argument, not the formal statement. The answer to at least one, if not more, of his questions are explicitly discussed in the formal statement of the argument. It's unfortunate when critics of an argument have to resort to uncharitable interpretations, selective quotations, or both.

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/06/evidential-argument-from-history-of.html?showComment=1339956183184#c1307375671464945645

It’s unfortunate that Jeff can’t follow his own argument. Let’s take an example from the formal statement of his argument:

1. So many natural phenomena can be explained naturalistically, i.e., without appeal to supernatural agency.
2. The history of science contains numerous examples of naturalistic explanations replacing supernatural ones and no examples of supernatural explanations replacing naturalistic ones.

N: metaphysical naturalism: the hypothesis that the universe is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.

This fails to differentiate natural causes from naturalistic explanations. As he himself defines his own terminology, a “naturalistic” explanation presumes the universe to be a closed system, viz. nothing that’s not a part of the natural world affects it.

However, when science assigns natural causes to phenomena in the nature world, that’s hardly synonymous with a “naturalistic” explanation–for natural causes are fully consonant with a Christian doctrine of divine providence. Jeff keeps iterating the same basic mistake.

Moreover, selective quotation is perfectly adequate in this case. If his argument is vitiated by a fallacy of equivocation, then I don’t need to engage his entire argument to invalidate his argument.

Higher Critics and Forbidden Fruit

http://www.scribd.com/doc/85617415/Higher-Critics-and-Forbidden-Fruit-Cyrus-H-Gordon

"Gatekeepers"

Brendan says:

June 17, 2012 at 4:29 am

It’s not just evangelicals that have the sad cycle; it’s liberals too. And it’s been this way for a long time.

My grandfather was a bright scholar who wanted to teach in the schools of his liberal denomination, but when they found out he believed the Bible was God’s inerrant Word, the denominational seminaries branded him an “evangelical” and refused to offer him a job. So he worked at a conservative evangelical seminary for a few years, because they were training missionaries and doing some good to advance the gospel, until they decided he was too “liberal.” He taught at several places, including Wheaton for some years, and certainly proved his mettle as a scholar without giving up on his evangelical faith, but found that there are always some gatekeepers on both evangelical and liberal sides that put ideology above scholarship.

In general, liberals often hold to long since disproven ideas like the Documentary Hypothesis, which just doesn’t make sense in light of ANE research of the past several decades; it was founded on assumptions long since proven wrong by scholars 100+ years ago who knew nothing about ANE writing conventions and projected what they knew about the Brothers Grimm onto the Pentateuch’s composition. Yet if you breathe a word against the Documentary Hypothesis, or argue that it’s bunk based upon faulty assumptions (which it is), then you’re regarded as “unscholarly.” Liberal gatekeepers have many other sacred cows that they don’t like to be tipped, just as some evangelicals have.

I myself graduated from an evangelical seminary and found that some of the professors equipped me well to respectfully and critically engage with liberal scholarship, while others went the easy route with “safe” evangelical books. I’m impressed that Wheaton College, observing the vicious cycle that Dr. Enns has noted, has been teaching NT Criticism for the past 15 years or so. I pray other evangelical institutions will follow. I find engagement with liberal scholarship fruitful (if sometimes frustrating for its assumptions), but I do not agree with the implicit assumption in Enns’ article that bright students can’t hold to evangelical beliefs. I certainly believe evangelical scholarship can not only stand its own but, done right, is a lot better than liberal scholarship, much more convincing. I just wish more evangelical institutions would see that they win on a level playing field and let down their gates more — and more liberal institutions would let down their gates, too. But until both liberal and conservative groups open up, we’re unlikely to see an escape from this sad cycle, both in evangelical and liberal scholarship.

(on Documentary Hypothesis (DH): to clarify, the “by scholars 100+ years ago” and following refers to the founders of the DH, not those who disproved it; the DH has been proven wrong since 1941 by Umberto Cassuto’s essay of the same name, which sadly was not translated into English until 1961, well after Cassuto’s death, apparently due to the academic arrogance of those who thought any attack on the DH was not worth translating into English).

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/06/if-they-only-knew-what-i-thought-the-sad-cycle-of-evangelical-biblical-scholarship/#comment-9920

Jeff's Quixotic history of science

I’m going to comment on this post.

If there is a single theme unifying the history of science, it is that naturalistic explanations work.

i) One problem with this claim is Jeff’s equivocation of terms. For instance, a natural cause is not equivalent to a naturalistic explanation. A natural cause involves a created medium. That’s entirely consistent with a Christian doctrine of providence.

By contrast, “naturalistic” goes beyond natural causation to a worldview that excludes supernatural agency in principle.

ii) Put another way, what makes Jeff imagine that Christian theism is incompatible with science? How are natural causes out of character with divine providence?

The history of science contains numerous examples of naturalistic explanations replacing supernatural ones and no examples of supernatural explanations replacing naturalistic ones.

Of course, Jeff is dusting off the old warfare chestnut of John Draper and Andrew White. And there are several problems with that popular myth:

i) Mainstream Christian theology always made allowance for second causes. To take a classic formulation:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (WCF 3.1)
God, in His ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure (WCF 5.3)

Likewise, folks in Bible times knew that you usually had to plant seed, water the ground, and weed the garden, to have a crop. They knew that to make a baby, normally a man had to impregnate a woman. And even the Virgin Mary had to nurse baby Jesus. They could also see that rain came from clouds. And so on and so forth.

On the other hand, they also made allowance for the possibility of direct divine interaction. Both principles were always in play. One doesn’t replace the other.

ii) There are Christian physicians who pray for their patients, medicate their patients, and operate on their patients. They don’t exclude either natural or supernatural causes, as if these were contradictory principles.

iii) Intelligent design theorists like Behe and Dembski don’t think natural causes systematically replace supernatural causes. Lowder may disagree with them, but he can’t act as though Christians buy into his historical narrative.

iv) To take another example: M. Scott Peck was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who treated two patients for demonic possession. Peck didn’t start out believing in demonic possession. His professional bias was to seek natural causes. His professional bias was “naturalistic.” He arrived at his demonic diagnosis in spite of his prior beliefs.

So here’s a reversal. A supernatural explanation replacing a natural or “naturalistic” explanation.

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

Indeed, naturalistic explanations have been so successful that even most scientific theists concede that supernatural explanations are, in general, implausible, even on the assumption that theism is true.

What is Jeff’s evidence for that sweeping claim?

Such explanatory success is antecedently more likely on naturalism...

Why?

--which entails that all supernaturalistic explanations are false--than it is on theism.

How does he go from probability to necessity? How does he go from what’s (allegedly) “unlikely” to a logical entailment of falsity?

Thus the history of science is some evidence for naturalism and against theism.[1]

How does he go from “some evidence for naturalism” to entailing the falsify of theism?

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