Is God a science-stopper?

I'd like to revisit Richard Dawkins's "science-stopper" objection. He alleges that if you say "God did it," then there's no point seeking a scientific explanation.

i) At best, that only applies to miracles. Take a miraculous healing. There's no causal explanation beyond divine agency.

But even in that regard, there may still be a teleological explanation. If God miraculously heals somebody, there's still the question of why he healed that person rather than someone else. Does the healing have a larger purpose in terms of future outcomes?

ii) In addition, we can generalize the principle. Take the Antikythera mechanism. To ascribe the device to intelligent agency hardly nullifies a scientific investigation into how it works and what it's for. To the contrary, it's only because the product was designed that we presume it has a purpose. It if was like random patterns in sand dunes, we wouldn't ascribe any particular significance to the artifact. 

"Are you a Christian?"

To those who asked him [Peter Hare] if he was a Christian, his standard response was, "I don't know. I'll tell you what I believe, and then you tell me whether you count me a Christian or not. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 85. 

Although he's ducking the question, it does raise a practical issue. Because so many people have different preconceptions of what Christianity represents, and because, due to the prevalence of theological illiteracy, so many people have highly distorted preconceptions of Christianity, it may be that giving a direct answer isn't always the best strategy, since they will simply translate your affirmation into their preconception. A direct answer wouldn't tell them what I believe, but what they think it means to be a Christian. 

So it might be more instructive to say something like, "That's a good question! I assume you wouldn't ask that unless you had questions about Christianity. So why don't you ask me those questions."

Dawkins on simplicity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb4aanpsx6Q

Between 114-117 min, agnostic lapsed Catholic philosopher Kenny corrects Dawkins on simplicity.

Low audio but it has captions

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Leaving aside biblical theology for simple embodied experience, we all know that women are the glory of men. They are the thing that, when considering humanity as a whole, men themselves are most inclined to celebrate. If presented with the choice of saving either a man or a woman, we save the woman; we consider them of greater value. One woman’s face launched a thousand ships. Another’s is compared to a summer’s day. Just as the beauty of the lily is the glory of the pasture, so is the beauty of the woman the glory of the man.

https://bnonn.com/head-coverings-1/

i) I'd like to briefly revisit this claim. There's a lot of truth in this. Mind you, women have to compete with sports when it comes to what many men celebrate.

ii) Then there's the cliché example of the ambitious, competitive workaholic guy who puts career ahead of relationships. 

iii) As for considering women of greater value, so that we'd save a woman before we'd save a man, that's more complicated. Perhaps he means that all things being equal, if it's a choice between a random man and a random woman, the woman gets the nod. Rescuing strangers. 

iv) Even at that level, there are complications. What if it's a 5-year-old boy? I can't generalize. 

v) In addition, I wouldn't say men automatically value a wife or girlfriend more than they value their father, son, or brother. Unfortunately, many marriages come and go, but blood ties are nearly indestructible. Likewise, many male friendships outlast marriages. 

Is the Catholic church 2000 years old?

Catholic apologists compare their "2000-year-old" church to upstart Protestant denominations. I've discussed that before, but I'll expand on that:

1. Suppose a young couple buys a Fixer Upper. At the time it's all they can afford on their meager income. As their income rises, they remodel the house. As their income continues to rise, they make additions on either side. Finally, they demolish the original house, preserve the additions, and build a new house in-between the flankers. Is the final house the same house as the original house?

There's a kind of historical continuity in play. But no part of the original house exists. It's been replaced, part by part. And not even by the same kinds of parts, but different kinds of parts. It's unrecognizable compared to the Fixer Upper. So mere historical continuity doesn't make it the same house or even similar to the original house. 

Moreover, even if some of the original parts were preserved, it's undergone so much change that it's equivocal to say it's the same house. It's the same in some respects but not the same in key respects. 

2. There are different ways a faith-tradition might be new. On the one hand, it might have new doctrines, new interpretations. On the other hand, it might be a new combination of old doctrines and old interpretations. It might recombine them in different ways.

3. To some extent, Protestant theology was new. It emerged in the 16C. However, it didn't pop in out of the blue. In many respects it had theological antecedents. And Protestants claim it's older than Catholicism because it represents a restoration of biblical theology, from which Catholicism deviated. 

However, the Catholic church under Pope Francis, or even under Pope Benedict XVI or Pope John-Paul II, is a different church than it was under Leo XIII or Pius IX. The Catholic church under Pope Innocent X and Pope Clement IX is a different church from the medieval church. By condemning Jansenism, they anathematized the Augustinian tradition. What held an honorable place in Catholicism prior to Calvinism became intolerable after Calvinism. Catholic theology is reactionary. 

One could give many other examples. There really is no such thing as "the Roman Catholic Church" because it keeps reinventing itself. Just as the Protestant movement emerged in the 16C, Catholicism reemerges in different mutations throughout the course of church history. 

4. Catholic apologists save face by distinguishing between two different kinds of change: 

i) In the case of inconsistent changes, those are extraneous to what's essential to Catholicism. Those were never dogmatic, infallible, irreformable, de fide teachings. 

ii) Other changes represent the development of doctrine. They are said to be consistent with dogma.   

But while that may be persuasive to conservative Catholics, it cuts no ice when debating with Protestants, since we don't grant their distinctions. These are ad hoc distinctions superimposed on Catholicism despite the evidence. While Catholics naturally assume a Catholic viewpoint, they can't reasonably expect or demand that Protestants share their viewpoint. So comparing their "2000-year-old" church to the Protestant faith begs the question. When we look at the history of Catholicism, we don't see a 2000-year-old church. Rather, we witness a dialectical succession of ideas. 

Like any historical process, you can retrace current developments to antecedent conditions and causes. That holds true for Catholicism and evangelicalism alike. But that doesn't mean the house standing on the same property as the Fixer Upper is the same house. 

Jesus as Satirist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbbByfpRgWI

https://www.scottmasson.ca/info

"God made the integers; all else is the work of man"

A short exchange I had with a philosophical theologian:

Josh 

Maybe "The Advancement Theory". That captures this idea of the mathematical landscape advancing in God's mind, and then also the advancement of the world, along lines without end.

Hays  

I don't see how that's supposed to work. Don't mathematical truths involve interlocking systems of entailment relations? If so, all the elements must be in place for the mathematical truth, object, or structure (however we wish to put it) to obtain. Mathematical truths can't be waiting for the coin to drop. Rather, they must exist as a unit or not at all.

Josh 

Some perhaps. But there may be basic structures that provide a foundation for iterations.

Hays

Let's put it another way, do you agree that mathematical truths are paradigm-cases of necessary truths? If so, mathematical truths can't become true. Mathematical truths can't evolve. Of course, if one's a naturalist, then one may try to reduce math to human psychology, in which case it does evolve. But that's bad theology.

Josh

A very good question. I'm toying with the idea that only basic mathematical truths are necessary (in the strongest sense).

Hays 

So you agree with Leopold Kronecker that "God made the integers; all else is the work of man".

Open theism and prayer

Here is God just about to make it rain for the sake of the farmers and their crops in the fields around Clyst Honiton when he overhears the urgent prayer of the vicar who is running his garden party that afternoon and changes his mind. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 24.

When did marriage become a sacrament?

Divorce, Annulment & Communion
An Orthodox Theologian Weighs In
By David Bentley Hart

Neither, for several centuries after the Apostolic Age, did any Christian theological authority think of marriage as a sacrament in our sense. Augustine (354–430) thought it might be described as a sacramentum in the proper acceptation of the Latin word: a solemn and binding oath before God. But even then, although he took the term chiefly from Jerome’s rendering of Ephesians 5:32, he certainly did not number matrimony among the saving “mysteries” of the church, alongside baptism and the Eucharist. Neither did anyone else, for many, many years. Even the great Church Fathers tended to treat marriage as little more than a civil institution, no different in kind for Christians than for non-Christians. One need only look, for example, at John Chrysostom’s fifty-sixth homily (on the second chapter of Genesis) to see how unacquainted even a late-fourth-century theologian of the highest eminence was with any concept of “holy” matrimony. And, inasmuch as they thought of marriage chiefly as a natural fact rather than as a sacred vocation, the Christians of late antiquity did not treat it as a theological topic.

In his Commentary on Matthew, for example, Origen (ca. 184–253) notes that many of the bishops of his time permitted both divorce and remarriage among the faithful. Canon 11 of the Council of Arles (314) recommends that a divorced man not remarry so long as his former wife still lives, but also grants that, for healthy young men incapable of the continence this would require of them, remarriage may prove necessary. Basil the Great (ca. 330–379) instructed Amphilochius of Iconium to allow men abandoned by their wives to remarry without penalty...Even Augustine, while firmly convinced that marriage should as a rule be indissoluble, nonetheless confessed in his Retractiones that he had no final answer on the issue.

To be honest, many modern believers would be shocked to learn how late in Christian history a clear concept of marriage as a religious institution evolved, and how long it took for it to be absolutely distinguished from what would come to be thought of as common-law unions, or for the church to insist on its solemnization in all cases. They would be even more disturbed, I imagine (as much on democratic principles as religious), to discover that throughout much of the Middle Ages the whole issue of wedlock certified by the church concerned mostly the aristocracy, inasmuch as marriage was chiefly a matter of property, inheritance, and politics. As far as we can tell, among the peasantry of many lands, and for many centuries, marital union was a remarkably mercurial sort of arrangement, one that coalesced and dissolved with considerable informality, as circumstances dictated. And the clergy did not, for the most part, give a damn.

Really, when one looks at it closely, in light of both the empirical facts and the abstract principles of the matter, the distinction between divorce and annulment is specious all the way down. For one thing, as regards actual cases on the ground, anyone who has seen a sufficient number of annulments at close quarters (and I have witnessed quite a few) knows that they are not only fairly easy to obtain for those willing to make the effort, but that the terms governing them are applied with such plasticity that it is difficult to see how any marriage could fail to meet the standards. True, abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not do away with proper use); but, in fact, there really is no abuse involved. The very concept of annulment, as something ontologically distinct from divorce, is logically incoherent, and really can be taken seriously only by a mind so absolutely indoctrinated to believe that the Roman Catholic Church does not tolerate divorce and remarriage that no evidence to the contrary can alter that conviction.

The very premise that a marriage can be pronounced null and void, in effect retroactively (since that same marriage would be regarded as real and legitimate if suit for annulment had never been brought forward), on the grounds of some original defect of intention that means it was never a real marriage to begin with (though again, it would be considered a real marriage if that defect were never exposed), basically provides a license to regard every marriage as provisional only. After all, in what union of a man and a woman could one not detect some crucial defect of original intention if one were to seek it? Moreover, if one looks at the criteria customarily used to prove that a marriage was never really a marriage, they scarcely differ at all from the criteria that the Orthodox Church—in principle, at least—is supposed to accept as legitimate grounds for divorce. And what is a divorce, after all, other than a recognition that the original marriage was contracted in ignorance and without full mutual commitment to everything a true marriage is?

It might make Catholics feel better about their Eastern brethren if the Orthodox Church called these separations “annulments,” and issued formal absolutions from wedding vows under such terms. I have to say, however, that I am glad it does neither. To my mind, the concept of annulment is not only specious and logically contradictory, but also somewhat insidious—in fact, often rather cynical and cruel. It is terrible enough when a marriage—something on which a man and a woman, at what is usually a fairly innocent moment in their lives, have staked their futures and their hopes for happiness—falls apart. It is somehow all the more terrible when, solely for the sake of avoiding institutional embarrassment, we are asked to indulge in the fiction that it was never a real marriage to begin with.

I know of a woman whose well-connected husband managed to obtain an annulment without her consent, and on grounds that would have scarcely qualified him as a plaintiff before a secular divorce court. And I happen to know that, of the two, he was the far more culpable in the matter. What she found bitterest of all in the final settlement was that, according to her church, no one was obliged to admit that her life as a wife and mother of twenty-six years—in a union freely contracted, sacramentally solemnized, physically and fruitfully consummated—had broken apart. 

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/divorce-annulment-communion

Singing atheists

A grandson of the first Bishop of Liverpool [J. C. Ryle], [Gilbert] Ryle was himself an atheist–but he was what he called "a singing atheist". He used to distinguish between those atheists who would join in the hymns in church, and those who, if forced to attend a service, would keep their mouths tightly shut throughout. A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 82.

We are most hopeless who once had hope

At the luncheon the day before Encaenia, [Graham] Greene make a remark which had a lasting effect on my life. Greene and myself, and another guest, the Oxford publisher Dan Davin, were all, to varying edges, lapsed Catholics. The conversation turned to the following question. Since, to the unbeliever, faith is only a delusion, why do those who have given up their faith feel a sense of loss? Greene quoted the words:

Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope

We are most hopeless who had once most hope,

We are most wretched that had most believed.

[Easter Day, Arthur Hugh Clough]

A. Kenny, Brief Encounters (SPCK 2018), 174.

Imagine a war orphan. He's been stuck in the orphanage for 3 years. He was told his parents died in a bombing. Then one day, out of the blue, the superintendent tells him it was a case of mistaken identity. His parent are still alive. The fog of war separated them from their young son, but they are coming back for him. He's deliriously happy. 

Then the next day the superintended tells him, sorry, it was a mixup. Indeed, the parents of an orphan survived, but it was the parents of a different orphan. 

Now he's worse off that before he got his hopes up. He'd be better off if he never had his hopes dashed. The disappointment is inconsolable. 

Loss of faith means there's aways the invidious comparison in the back of one's mind between something indescribably better and what you're left with. If you never had the hope of heaven, that would be bad enough, but to have it and lose it is so much worse. It spoils you for anything less. It was just within reach, then snatched away. Like torturing an inmate with false hopes of early release. Dangle it before his eyes, then whisk it away. 

Amazon fire hype

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/

Who's harming homosexuals?

It's hard to think of anything which has done as much harm to homosexuals as religion. #LGBT #atheism #religion

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) August 26, 2019

Actually, that's easy. By far the greatest harm to homosexuals is the harm they inflict on themselves and each other by a medically and psychologically self-destructive lifestyle. The homosexual lifestyle is suicidal to the homosexual and homicidal to his boyfriends. 

Freedom of choice

Freewill theists typically claim that genuine freedom requires freedom to choose between two (or more) alternatives. Suppose a mandatory evacuation has been ordered for my area due to a storm system that's forecast to produce catastrophic flooding. Before the road is submerged, I drive to friend's house to evacuate him. But he's extremely reluctant to leave. Yet it's highly likely that if he refuses to leave, he will drown.  I'm very athletic. I can easily overpower him if he forces the issue. Suppose we have the following exchange:

Me: Would you like to come with me?

Friend: What if I wouldn't like to come with you?

Me: I believe in freedom of choice. So you can either come willingly or else you can come against your will!

Gun rights don't depend on statistics

https://fee.org/articles/gun-rights-don-t-depend-on-statistics/

Veiling women

I'm going to comment on this post:

https://bnonn.com/head-coverings-1/

The danger of my commenting on Bnonn's post is that it's the first installment of a series with however many parts, which may work itself into a book, so Bnonn might steal my blindingly brilliant observations, claiming that he already addressed those concerns in a later installment. I won't get any credit! Humor aside:

Repent and submit to the pope!

Recently a Roman Catholic told me to "Repent and submit to the Pope".

But therein lies a dilemma. I couldn't submit to the pope even if I wanted to. Since popes contradict each other, which pope am I supposed to submit to? Should I just flip a coin?

We're told that we need a pope to play tiebreaker in case of disagreement. But when popes disagree with each other, one can't appeal to "the pope" to break the tie!

Given the development of doctrine, Catholics should only submit to the last future pope. Since they know that Catholic teaching will continue to change, but they don't know ahead of time how it will change, they ought to suspend judgment until the last future pope has the final word. The pope just before Jesus returns! That way, Catholic dogma can't change any more! 

The Bible in translation

There's an ongoing debate on the right philosophy of Bible translation. In principle, this is a big deal. Here's one side of the debate from Leland Ryken:

The goal of Bible translation is to take readers as close as possible to the actual words that the biblical authors wrote.  The translation process that this viewpoint produces is called verbal equivalence, which means that every word in the original Hebrew or Greek text is rendered by an equivalent or corresponding English word or phrase.  The goal of Bible translation is: be transparent to the original text—to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote.

Dynamic equivalent translators feel no obligation to find an English equivalent for every word in the original Hebrew and Greek texts; if the text says “he anoints my head with oil,” a dynamic equivalent translation might read “he treats me as an honored guest.”  Paraphrases often bear little resemblance to what the biblical authors wrote (for example, the statement in Psalm 19 that God’s law is “sweeter than honey” becomes “you’ll like it better than strawberries in spring” (The Message).

Essentially literal translators assume that a biblical author meant what he said, so if they give an English equivalent of the words of the original author, they have also stated the author’s meaning.  Dynamic equivalent translators operate on the premise that meaning exists independent of the words of the original author. 

They are well documented in both the practice of dynamic equivalent translators and in their statements of philosophy.  Here are the liberties that dynamic equivalent translators regularly take:

(1) replace what the original authors wrote with something else (e.g., where the text says “establish the work of our hands,” dynamic equivalent translations substitute “let all go well for us”);

(2) change figurative statements into direct statements (again a substitution);

(3) add interpretive commentary to what the biblical authors wrote, so readers do not know what was in the original and what was added;

(4) make the style of the English Bible contemporary and colloquial;

(5) reduce the vocabulary level of the original text;

(6) bring masculine gender references into line with modern feminist preferences.  In all these ways, dynamic equivalent translations give the public a substitute Bible.  I would also assert that the original authors of the Bible had the resources to state their content the way dynamic equivalent translators state it, but instead, they stated it as we find in the original texts of the Bible.  Dynamic equivalent translators take a condescending view of the authors of the Bible, treating them like inept writers who couldn’t state things accurately and therefore need correction.

Dynamic equivalent translations regularly make preemptive interpretive strikes, thereby removing the reader’s ability to know what the original authors wrote and what the interpretive options are.  Additionally, the more literary a text is, the more likely it is to embody multiple meanings in a given detail in the text.  Dynamic equivalent translators regularly reduce the multiple meanings to one by the way they translate a passage.  Dynamic equivalent translations are one-dimensional in places where the original is multi-dimensional. 

Sometimes this commentary takes the form of a substitution (for example, “my feet had nearly slipped” is translated as “my faith was almost gone”).

I will just add in passing that dynamic equivalent translators have a uniformly low view of poetry and figurative language.

https://christianpublishinghouse.co/2016/10/10/leland-ryken-interview-with-cph-differences-in-bible-translations/

The Bible for modern readers

An atheist objection to Christianity is that if the Bible is divinely inspired, it should contain some prophecies about advanced technology. I've discussed that before. I'll make two points.

ii) To recap my first response, suppose you're a moviemaker with a penchant for science fiction. You want to set your story in the future, several centuries from now. And suppose you have actual knowledge of the future. So your depictions of the future are fantastically prescient and realistic. 

That, however, generates a conundrum. It will give your nerdy, geeky movie viewers some clues about the future. Although they think the movie is just science fiction, the depiction of advanced technology gives them ideas. They think about designing gizmos that could really do that. So the effect of your movie is to kickstart the future it depicts. By giving a preview of the future you change the future because your preview influences how people behave, as an intellectual stimulus. 

But because it's premature, because it doesn't represent an incremental development of technology, because it utilizes the resources at hand, at an earlier stage of history, the inventions and discoveries will be different than in the film. By interfering with the natural progression of science, the future it causes isn't the same future, because the modifications begin at an earlier point in the timeline. 

The paradoxical consequence of your movie is that before anyone saw your movie, it accurately predicts how the future will turn out, but once enough people see your movie, it no longer predicts how the future will turn out. Rather, it's an accurate prediction of the future without a past containing your movie. 

iii) But here's another point. It's easier for a modern reader to understand an ancient text than for an ancient reader to understand a modern text. References to modern technology would be unintelligible to an ancient reader. By contrast, references to ancient technology are intelligible to modern readers. We know the past. We have the benefit of hindsight. 

In addition, future technology is constantly changing at a rate that didn't occur in the ancient world. Take the comical spectacle of teenagers who don't know how to use a rotary phone. For today's teenagers, rotary phones might as well be advanced alien technology. 

Running in place

Before Called to Confusion become such a dead zone, the two contributors with the most philosophical heft were Bryan Cross and Michael Liccione. Liccione was never formally a member of Called to Confusion, because–I guess–he's a revert rather than a convert. He has one argument which he recycles ad nauseam. I've been critiquing it for years. But recently on Facebook we got into a head-to-head debate. It was a useful opportunity to finally engage him directly. It looks like he dropped out of the debate. So here's an edited version of our exchange: