Called to Confusion recently did a post on contraception in the church fathers. Perry Robinson then left some comments which draw attention to the perils of facile quote-mining to which many converts (to Catholicism, and I daresay, Orthodoxy) are prone:
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Perry Robinson July 9th, 2010 9:40 am :
Tim,
I beg to differ. They take contraceptive methods to be immoral because they take to them to be necessarily abortificants. And they take them to be so because they took the “seed” to be fully formed human beings in small. Men contained within themselves already human beings that were implanted in women. Women contributed nothing to the human being other than sustenance and a safe place for gestation. Hence women were often compared to the “soil” or “ground” for the “seed.”
Consequently, on a Stoic, Platonic or Aristotelian basis, any contraceptive method would be an abortificant. So the moral principle that murder is wrong would always be applicable. This is why, particularly for the Stoics the unitive function was essentially connected to procreation. Natural Law Theory didn’t just pop out of thin air. It is heavily indebted to Stoicism and the Stoic conception of “spermatikos” or “seeds.”
So, the moral principle was applicable because human beings were involved. But we know that human beings aren’t necessarily involved in all forms of contraception and so this is reason for thinking that the moral principle isn’t necessarily always involved either. If you take a look at the sources cited above, I think it is detectable that this is what they thought a “seed” was and I think any secondary literature on the biological understanding of the time will bear out that they thought the “seed” was an individual human being in small. The issue then seems more complicated.
Perry Robinson July 9th, 2010 11:22 am :
Matt,
I understand that, but the question is to what extent that position turns on a faulty biology and a commitment to Natural Law Theory, which is or seems to be indebted to Stoic metaphysics to some serious degree or another.
The claim that Rome opposes it has to do with preventing the act’s life creating potential seems quite Stoic to me, in fact, one that any theological position could affirm (Christian or non) just so long as they affirmed Natural Law Theory. The claim then seems to turn on the idea that the life creating potential of the act is an intrinsic constituent turns on the notion of what constitutes the seed. But if the seed isn’t that way regarding a telos, but is unformed or partially formed, matters seem to be different.
July 9th, 2010 12:19 pm :
Tim,
You assert that it is not relevant as to how they understood seed, but the argument doesn’t go through on just any understanding of it. In order to make your argument work, you’d need to show that out of a range of understandings, the argument still goes through.
To say that such a thing is a crime against nature depends in part on their ethical theory and what they thought “against nature” meant. I don’t think they uniformly meant “against nature” in the sense that Natural Theory has in mind.
I am quite aware of what Clement of Alexandria says, but that of course can depend on what he takes the seed to be. The question is, why does Clement think it is a sin? Why is the seed not to be vainly ejaculated? What is it about the seed that makes this so?
Someone who thought that the seed was a human being would also think that procreation was thus a divine institution and such to ejaculate vainly was contrary to divine institution. Hence it being of divine institution is not either incompatible with what I wrote nor does it necessarily imply that it is the sole reason for its prohibition. The same is true with respect to what they took “conception” to be.
I can’t see that there is anything in the citations you brought forward that addresses those questions and so I think they leave my points untouched.
I am well aware of the citations at the link you provide, but I think they leave my remarks untouched and amount to little more than spoof texting.
That said, I wasn’t aware that Lactantius was a saint and a “father” in the Catholic Church.
As for pure speculation, I would direct you to Aristotle’s On the Generation of Animals as to the biology of the matter at the time. The same will be true by looking at primary texts of the Stoics as well as the heap of secondary literature on Stoic biology. Also, the claim that my view is grounded in skepticism is not relevant. Sometimes skeptics have good arguments. So the question is, not whether the argument is skeptical or not, but whether it is a good argument or not. Hence to dismiss it because it is “skepticism” is an ad hominem and so can be dismissed out of hand.
Some of the sources you refer to also argue against what we now know to be non-abortificant methods as if they were abortificants. This is especially true with say Tertullian.
To claim that they never argued on the basis that I proffered is a claim that I really don’t see any substantial reason to agree with. An analysis done by Catholics and non-alike, conservative and liberal shows what they thought conception was and what they thought the seed was.
To argue that an act against nature has nothing to do with science is to imply that nature has nothing to do with science, empirical or metaphysical. That seems quite strange, especially if theology is a science so that an act against nature as sin has nothing to do with theology.
Perry Robinson July 9th, 2010 2:57 pm :
Tim,
You misrepresent my view. I didn’t claim that the fathers held “private opinions” about biology. This is a straw man.
I agree that the Fathers argued “X” and “X” was dependent on a specific view of biology. The argument then only seems to go through on that assumption. Putting forth the argument without defining what constitutes “seed” “conception” and “nature” leaves my position untouched and shows that yours hasn’t yet been demonstrated. The fact that the Fathers freely group the condemnations of abortificants with other practices supports my contention.
I already addressed Clement’s statement about divine institution. Do you wish to argue that he thinks it is wrong based on a matter of an external law only or because of an internal principle as well? If the former, then the Catholic position as grounded in an internal principle cannot appeal to Clement for support. If the latter, then the questions I raised are quite relevant. Either way it seems your position seems to be in trouble.
The question is whether the latter entails the former or not. If it does, that is, divine institution entails the faulty biology, then he’s clearly wrong. If it doesn’t entail it, the Catholic position can’t appeal to it for support since that position takes it as immoral because of intrinsic principles of Natural Law.
Since I concede the form of argument, showing that they used such an argument leaves my position untouched, since said argument turns on what they took seed, conception and such to be. So no, it does not prove your point. They incorrectly apply a correct moral principle because of their faulty biology. I accept the principle (murder is immoral) but can’t see how it applies here.
You mention “private belief” but I have never argued from what they supposedly privately believed. I argued from what they publicly took the facts of biology to be. So again, your gloss is a misrepresentation and a straw man.
It is spoof texting when an analysis of the relevant terms, upon debate on this issue for over a hundred years has turned, is left out and such texts are proffered bare naked.
Yes, you lumped him in with the fathers. I took that to be you saying he was a father. If you don’t think he’s a father, why list him with them? If he isn’t, what he thought is of limited value as far as normative teaching goes.
Do Catholics take “Father” in relation to church fathers to be an ambiguous term? Aren’t there conditions for one to be a father in the Catholic Church or has the Magisterium left that undefined? Where would I look for the magisterial definition on what constitutes a Father?
As for Chrysostom, I accept him as a Father. Now if we look at the citation you posted, he is arguing against castration and abortificants and takes castration in terms of preventing “conception” to be tantamount to murder. He does so because he thinks that the seeds are human beings in small. This is why the reference to the Manicheans is relevant. I can’t see any reasoning here that applies if the seed isn’t a human being and so that applies to non-abortificant methods. If so, can you point them out to me?
To say that my argument was that they argued Y instead of X is to misrepresent my position. My position concedes the form of argument “X” but notes that said arguments depends on the assumption of Y, namely the faulty biology.
It struck me that you dismissed it as “skepticism” by writing “The claim that the reason they prohibited contraception was because of limited scientific knowledge is pure speculation and skepticism”
I am not in fact giving the same faulty argument that liberals give for WO. First, that argument is based on false premises. The consensus partum regarding a male only priesthood didn’t turn on Aristotelian biology and plenty of the fathers contradict that biological outlook primarily due to biblical arguments. Second, I take it as uncontroversial that the Fathers and other Christian writers had the same faulty biological view and an analysis, even by Catholics bears this out. Third, tarring me with liberalism is irrelevant to whether the facts are what I say they are. So far, I haven’t seen a reason to think that the facts aren’t that way.
You will need to clarify your remarks regarding Tertullian. Do you mean to say that barrier methods that Tertullian argued against were not mortal sins, but somehow lesser since he was in fact wrong that such methods were abortificants? If so, then the Catholic position is wrong, since it takes barrier methods to be sin. If you are saying something else, please clarify.
I’ve gestured at what I take to be the uncontroversial academic consensus regarding the biology of human reproduction at the time, which you seem to have conceded to me. I’ve also referred to one of the most vociferous opponents of contraception, Tertullian as evidence of the line of reasoning I have offered, which you have left untouched.
If you want names, dates and an extensive discussion, that’ll take me considerably more time. Perhaps I will make a whole blog post about it over at EP and then you can come and discuss it there.
You claim again that the status of the seed is irrelevant to the question of the naturalness of the act. I know you claim this, but I need to see a reason to think these are separable. They argued it was such a corruption because of what they believed about seeds, conception and implantation.
I agree that the Apostolic Church has always condemned “contraception” because that always entailed, given the biology, murder. If I am right, then it would uphold the moral principle, but show that its application was mistaken.
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/07/contraception/
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Split personality
Debating a militant apostate is much like counseling a patient with multiple-personality disorder, where different personalities alternate. Sometimes the apostate personality surfaces while his pre-apostate personality is dormant, and vice versa. From one minute to the next, you never know which personality is going to pop out.
You can witness this pathology in Hector Avalos as he (or “they”) try to rebut TID. His apostate personality is a moral relativist, but his pre-apostate personality is a moral realist. His preapostate personality acts as if truth still matters. He’s trying to talk (or bully) Christians out of their religions convictions. But because he denies moral absolutes, he must logically deny epistemic duties. As a moral relativist, he must admit that we have no obligation to believe something just because it’s true. And this generates a dilemma for his atheism:
Such a worldview summarily forfeits the right to be taken seriously. For a worldview is not entitled to our consideration if it disenfranchises the very notion of epistemic duties. Such a position thereby disenfranchises itself from further consideration.
If a worldview rejects the possibility that true beliefs are praiseworthy, while false beliefs are blameworthy, then we have no responsibility to believe something just because it is the right thing to believe–including the worldview in question. For there’s nothing praiseworthy about believing a worldview which denies the praiseworthy character of true beliefs.
Given the dilemma he’s created for himself, it’s hardly surprising that Avalos has developed a split personality to cope with his conundrum.
If I’m an atheist, why should I give a fig about the truth except when the truth happens to coincide with my self-interest? Life is unfair. Nasty, brutish, and short. So why not be ruthlessly pragmatic? I only serve the truth if and when the truth serves me? But Hector’s residual, preapostate personality continues to value truth (as he sees it) in a godless world devoid of values.
Hector’s entitled his reply “Amateur Hour at Triablogue.”
Of course, “amateur hour” is a derogatory idiom in the pop culture. But since Hector is a moral relativist, his derogatory usage lacks any moral or emotional leverage. Yet his multiple personalities can remember what the other believes.
Apparently, it does not matter that Hays also does not have a doctorate in ethics or in modern European history, and so how is he able to evaluate arguments about these subjects? Nor does Hays seem to mind that Copan, who is the center of my critique of chapter 8 in The Christian Delusion, has no doctorate in Old Testament. Hays does not seem to mind that D’Souza lacks a doctorate in biblical studies, AND in ethics, AND in modern European history.
i) Despite his Ivy League education, Avalos doesn’t know what a tu quoque argument is. I’m not the one who played the credentials card. John Loftus, editor of TCD, played the credentials card when he flagged the contributors with doctorates, as well as puffing the credentials of the blurb writers. Therefore, it was Loftus, not me, who raised the bar. The question, then, is whether he or some of his contributors can jump over the bar he set for them.
ii) Avalos also lacks reading skills. I don’t need a degree (much less a doctorate) in modern European history to evaluate his chapter, for I didn’t even evaluate his historical claims. As I pointed out, his historical case is a red herring.
Loftus has made a noble effort to include writers with graduate degrees or doctorates.
Does the fact that he failed tell you something about the limited talent pool in militant atheism?
My work on biblical law, ethics and the Nazi Holocaust has been reviewed by other scholars, and so Hays & Co. are simply attempting to divert attention from the fact that they present no qualifications or expertise (e.g. peer reviewed writings) in these subjects whatsoever.
At one stroke, Avalos just disqualified several contributors to TCD. What peer-reviewed writings has Babinski published? What peer-reviewed writings has Tobin published?
What about the TCD itself? Was that peer reviewed? No.
We don’t even need to debunk TCD when one of its leading contributors is busy debunking TCD.
But Hays has no expertise to judge what archaeological evidence does or does not ‘corroborate’ biblical accounts of Canaanite behavior.
And the average atheist who reads TCD has no expertise to evaluate Hector’s analysis of ANE law codes. So Hector just disqualified the target audience for TCD.
Once again, we don’t even need to debunk TCD when one of its leading contributors is busy snubbing the target audience.
Hays does not appreciate these comparisons because he does not understand the nature of Copan’s arguments or my rebuttal of them…So my efforts were not so much to say that Hammurabi’s laws are morally superior in some ‘absolute’ manner…So, to refute Copan, I don’t need to prove that Feature X actually makes laws superior by some objective moral standard. I just need to prove that WHAT COPAN CALLS a superior moral feature exists in non-biblical laws. That exposes Copan’s inconsistency and moral relativism concerning the usefulness of Feature X in evaluating ethical superiority.
i) To begin with, Avalos is now introducing ex post facto caveats that he didn’t include in his original essay. For instance, he entitled his essay “Yahweh is a Moral Monster.”
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that while Yahweh is still a moral monster, he isn’t morally monstrous in “some absolute manner.”
ii) Assuming that Paul Copan is inconsistent, why should a moral relativist like Avalos care about consistency? It’s not as if consistency is an epistemic virtue. Not from the standpoint of a moral relativist.
iii) Avalos also made statements like “basing a moral system on unverifiable supernatural beings only creates more violence and endangers our species” (233).
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that such allegedly violent and dangerous consequence isn’t bad in “some absolute manner.”
Likewise, he says “if the word ‘moral‘ describes the set of practices that accord with our values, and if our highest value is life, then it is always immoral to trade real human lives for something that does not exist or cannot be verified to exist” (233).
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that while it is always immoral to trade human lives for something that doesn’t exist or can’t be verified, it isn’t immoral in “some absolute manner.” I’d add that how something can “always” be immoral without being immoral in some “absolute” manner is intriguing.
And again: “Treating workers like the master did [Mt 20:1-16] is an injustice” (217).
But not unjust in “some absolute manner.”
And again: “To excuse the plain horror of infanticide…” (224).
But not horrific in “some absolute manner.”
But this only shows that Hays completely misunderstood my argument, especially since Hays also noted this statement of mine (Infidel Delusion, p. 110): “Avalos says, ‘As an atheist, I don‘t deny that I am a moral relativist. Rather, my aim is to expose the fact that Christians are also moral relativists’”
Perhaps the most repeated claim by Triablogges is that one cannot judge morality unless one uses objective standards. For example, Hays declares (Infidel Delusion, p. 110):Finally, as a necessary precondition to demonstrate that Yahweh is morally monstrous, Avalos must be able to evaluate OT ethics (or NT ethics, for that matter) by reference to some objective moral [standard].
So, if I conclude that Christians are moral relativists, then clearly I am saying that CHRISTIANS ALSO CANNOT EVALUATE ETHICS BY REFERENCE TO SOME OBJECTIVE MORAL STANDARD.
However, Triabloggers cannot seem to recognize that there is a difference between CLAIMING to have objective moral standards and those standards actually existing. Indeed, Triabloggers offer no evidence that there are such things as “objective moral standards” beyond their own say-so or the say-so of biblical authors.
So, my argument is not necessarily: “Yahweh is monstrous according to objective standard X.” Rather, my argument is better represented as: “IF you regard Action X as morally evil, then Yahweh also endorses/accepts Action X.”
Misunderstanding the claims of relativist ethics also makes Triabloggers think they have triumphed by showing some sort of self-referential incoherence within moral relativism.
i) Notice the bait-and-switch. I pointed out that, as a moral relativist, Avalos has no right to render value judgments about OT ethics (or NT ethics).
How does Avalos attempt to rebut that claim? By claiming that Christians are in the same boat. But even if Christians were also moral relativists, that wouldn’t succeed in showing that secular moral relativists are justified in rendering value judgments. At best, that would disqualify both parties. Shifting the issue to Christians does nothing to invalidate the charge against atheism.
ii) Avalos is now admitting that his title was deceptive. What he really meant is that Yahweh is not a moral monster according to objective moral norms. But I somehow think that lacks the punch of the original title.
iii) I didn’t make a case for moral absolutes since the onus was not on me to vindicate that thesis. I simply evaluated Hector’s performance on his own terms. And if we measure his performance by his own yardstick, he comes up short.
I already showed in the same chapter that all supposedly “objective moral standards” are actually tautologies such as: “X is objectively evil because X is objectively evil.” You cannot rationally differentiate this from its opposite: “X is not objectively evil because X is not objectively evil.” I had already explained that adding God does not change that at all. For example:
A. “X is evil because God says X is evil” dissolves into:
B. “Whatever God says is evil should regarded as evil because whatever
God says is evil should be regarded as evil.”
Those circularities do not constitute proof that there are objective morals because I can show how they all dissolve into tautologies.
Thus, all Triabloggers are doing is precisely this: “I value what God says because I value what God says.” But did they prove that this should be an objective moral standard?
i) I can’t help noticing that Avalos doesn’t actually quote any of us to that effect.
ii) The circularity is bogus since that’s a caricature of what I believe. Something is not evil just because God says it’s evil. If God says something is evil, then that ensures the truth of the statement. But that is not what makes it evil.
For instance, sodomy is evil because God designed human nature to function in a certain way. Sodomy represents a violation of the way in which we were made to function. That’s not dissolvable into a mere tautology.
And who made up the rule that the only type morality has to be objective or absolute?
Indeed, it’s quite possible to substitute arbitrary social mores in lieu of moral absolutes. For instance, suppose we pass a law enacting the summary execution of all Hispanic apostates with Harvard degrees? Who made up the rule that we can’t do that?
That is why it is also absurd to say that relative morality = no morality. Relativists simply have a different definition of morality: ‘Moral actions are those that accord with our individual and group interests and values.’
i) Well, that’s certainly a “different” definition of morality. But if that’s the case, then why is Avalos so touchy about the link between Nazis and atheists? Why not admit the link, but say there’s nothing invidious about that comparison, for the Final Solution was in accord with the collective interests and values of the Nazis? The Nazis simply have a different definition of morality. Indeed, their definition dovetails quite nicely with Hector’s definition. So why spend a whole chapter trying to distance atheism from Nazism?
ii) Moreover, ethics must often deal with tensions between self-interest and the common good. The lifeboat scenario is a textbook example. In case of conflict, which takes precedence? Should we share the food and water? Or should I murder the passengers to make the supplies last longer for me?
Given that definition, my argument is that we create needless problems for our own safety and well-being when we base a moral system on unverifiable causes and consequences as opposed to verifiable causes and consequences.
But why should we cherish our own safety and well-being? Notice how Avalos begs the key question.
In Case A, I cannot verify that Allah exists and said anything.
What makes Avalos think the existence of Allah is unverifiable? It doesn’t seem hard to come up with hypothetical conditions in which one could verify his existence, or his speech-acts–if, indeed, he did exist, or spoke to you. Supposed he rearranged the stars to spell out: “Allah exists!”
When it was pointed out that Muslims could also appeal to Allah to kill, Steve Hays tells us (Infidel Delusion, p. 115):”That doesn‘t mean Allah has the prerogative to issue these directives. Whether a deity has the right to tell us what to do depends on the nature of the deity, and our obligations, if any, to the deity.”
And just who is going to decide which deity has the prerogative to issue those directives?
That question is ambiguous. Does he mean, who has the power to decide? Or who has the right to decide?
Are these not human judgments?
I already dealt with that objection. Notice how Avalos doges my counterargument, then repeats himself. This is what I actually said:
“Needless to say, that‘s a terribly shortsighted argument. For it fails to consider the fact that what ultimately lies behind a human judgment is the agency of God. Yes, we make value judgments. But what (or who) makes us make value judgments? All Nielsen and Avalos have done is to kick the can down the street. But from a Biblical standpoint, the God of Christianity is ultimately responsible for Christian judgments about himself. (Indeed, he‘s also responsible for the value judgment of unbelievers, to their deserved detriment.) Therefore, that argument fails to present a genuine alternative to the ultimacy of God in the process of moral valuation.”
And Avalos has no comeback.
All Hays is saying is: ‘I believe Allah does not have Right X because I believe that Allah does not have Right X.
But that’s not what I said. Indeed, it’s clear from what he himself quoted that this is not what I said. I said, “Whether a deity has the right to tell us what to do depends on the nature of the deity, and our obligations, if any, to the deity.”
That’s scarcely reducible to “I believe Allah does not have Right X because I believe that Allah does not have Right X.”
Such reasoning was repeated when I pointed out that any god in the ancient near East could accompany laws with a formula such as: “I am Shamash” (analogous to “I am Yahweh” in biblical law).
That’s a deliberate misstatement of the introductory “formula” in Biblical law. What we have instead are introductory formulae like the following: “"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod 20:2); “"Say this to the people of Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you” (Exod 3:15).
So this isn’t reducible to: “Do what I say because I said it!” Rather, the Israelites are duty-bound to Yahweh out of gratitude for his goodness to them and their forebears. In addition, Exodus is prefaced by Genesis, which identifies Yahweh as the Creator of the world.
Isn’t Avalos supposed to be an OT scholar? Why is it necessary to explain this to him?
Hays, however, seems to just assume his god exists (Infidel Delusion 115): “We could say Shamash is the true god if it‘s true to say that Shamash is the true God. But unless Shamash is truly the true God, so what?”
As usual, Avalos can’t follow the argument. He asked “Why couldn‘t we say that Shamash is the true god, and then judge biblical law with how it accords with Shamash‘s law?’ (222).”
Yet that’s an existential proposition. So the conclusion is only as good as the premise. We could judge biblical law by how it accords with Shamash’s law if and only if Shamash exists, but Yahweh does not. Since Avalos himself denies the existence of Shamash, that appeal can’t very well ground the law of Shamash.
I didn’t assume anything one way or the other. I’m merely dealing with the internal logic of his question. But Avalos is too illogical to grasp his own question.
But we can apply Hays’ argument to Yahweh: “Anyone could say Yahweh is the true god if it’s true to say Yahweh is the true God. But unless Yahweh is truly the true God, so what?” The problem, of course, is that Hays cannot grasp that BOTH the Yahweh and Shamash worshipper can say the same thing, and it does not make it true.
I never said that claiming something makes it true. That is Hector’s oft-repeated caricature of his opponents. He keeps burning a straw man as if he won the argument by the amount of smoke he generated.
It’s strictly Hays’ human judgment no matter which God he thinks is authorized to do anything. Thus, Hays only proves the point that he is a moral relativist insofar as whatever he thinks is right is what he then ascribes to the deity he favors on the basis of moral criteria he preselected. He cannot show that any morality is coming from outside of his own judgments.
i) Notice, once again, that Avalos is simply rehashing the same objection he raised in the original essay, even though I specifically responded to that very objection. Avalos doesn’t have a second act. He shot his wad the first time around.
ii) Avalos also has a completely idiosyncratic definition of moral relativism. Moral relativism doesn’t mean that human beings can’t render value judgments. Rather, we apply a standard which is not a made-made standard.
On a more empirical and historical level, Triablogue’s brand of supposedly objective ethics have been shown to be completely contradictory. After all, the following have been advocated AND opposed by those who say they believe in God or objective ethics:
A. Genocide
B. Rape
C. Homosexuality
D. Adultery
E. Infanticide
F. Biocide (Noah’s Flood)
Two basic problems:
i) Hector’s criticism is fallacious. The existence of objective moral norms doesn’t entail unanimity in practice. A man may think adultery is wrong, but still succumb to temptation in the heat of the moment. And he may even rationalize his sin.
ii) Hector is also equivocating. At a minimum, he would need to distinguish between “believers” who affirm the authority of Scripture, and “believers” who deny the authority of Scripture.
But how does Hays know how many generations God has in mind for human existence? After all, if God decided to end the world tomorrow, would Hays say: “God, you can’t do that because there are still future generations to be saved”?
And the reverse can also be true: Future generations might be damned even more if allowed to be born. After all, does Hays show the same concern for generations that were born before Christ’s salvation arrived? Doesn’t God care about all those generations who perished unsaved before Christ? And how did Hays specifically calculate the proportion of saved to damned in his soteriology?
What Avalos has now done is to modify his original argument by adding some hypothetical caveats. But if he reserves the right to do that, then I’m at liberty to modify my original counterargument with hypothetical caveats which stalemate his hypothetical caveats.
Remember, his original argument was predicated on Copan’s presumption of infant salvation. But if he’s going to introduce various hypotheticals that becloud the outcome, then that undercuts his original argument. For given all these imponderables, abortion would not be justifiable on pragmatic/utilitarian grounds (even if we took that standard for granted).
FINAL QUESTION FOR TRIABLOGUE
1. Do you think killing infants is always wrong? Yes or No?
i) God does no wrong by taking the life of an infant.
ii) There are also situations in which, no matter what you do, some innocent blood will be shed. Should we bomb part of a Syrian city that’s producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London, even though bombing that part of the city will kill some babies belonging to the resident scientists? Short answer: that might be permissible or even obligatory.
But that’s entirely consonant with moral absolutes. Not all obligations are equally obligatory. There are higher and lower obligations. In case of conflict, higher obligations supersede lower obligations.
You can witness this pathology in Hector Avalos as he (or “they”) try to rebut TID. His apostate personality is a moral relativist, but his pre-apostate personality is a moral realist. His preapostate personality acts as if truth still matters. He’s trying to talk (or bully) Christians out of their religions convictions. But because he denies moral absolutes, he must logically deny epistemic duties. As a moral relativist, he must admit that we have no obligation to believe something just because it’s true. And this generates a dilemma for his atheism:
Such a worldview summarily forfeits the right to be taken seriously. For a worldview is not entitled to our consideration if it disenfranchises the very notion of epistemic duties. Such a position thereby disenfranchises itself from further consideration.
If a worldview rejects the possibility that true beliefs are praiseworthy, while false beliefs are blameworthy, then we have no responsibility to believe something just because it is the right thing to believe–including the worldview in question. For there’s nothing praiseworthy about believing a worldview which denies the praiseworthy character of true beliefs.
Given the dilemma he’s created for himself, it’s hardly surprising that Avalos has developed a split personality to cope with his conundrum.
If I’m an atheist, why should I give a fig about the truth except when the truth happens to coincide with my self-interest? Life is unfair. Nasty, brutish, and short. So why not be ruthlessly pragmatic? I only serve the truth if and when the truth serves me? But Hector’s residual, preapostate personality continues to value truth (as he sees it) in a godless world devoid of values.
Hector’s entitled his reply “Amateur Hour at Triablogue.”
Of course, “amateur hour” is a derogatory idiom in the pop culture. But since Hector is a moral relativist, his derogatory usage lacks any moral or emotional leverage. Yet his multiple personalities can remember what the other believes.
Apparently, it does not matter that Hays also does not have a doctorate in ethics or in modern European history, and so how is he able to evaluate arguments about these subjects? Nor does Hays seem to mind that Copan, who is the center of my critique of chapter 8 in The Christian Delusion, has no doctorate in Old Testament. Hays does not seem to mind that D’Souza lacks a doctorate in biblical studies, AND in ethics, AND in modern European history.
i) Despite his Ivy League education, Avalos doesn’t know what a tu quoque argument is. I’m not the one who played the credentials card. John Loftus, editor of TCD, played the credentials card when he flagged the contributors with doctorates, as well as puffing the credentials of the blurb writers. Therefore, it was Loftus, not me, who raised the bar. The question, then, is whether he or some of his contributors can jump over the bar he set for them.
ii) Avalos also lacks reading skills. I don’t need a degree (much less a doctorate) in modern European history to evaluate his chapter, for I didn’t even evaluate his historical claims. As I pointed out, his historical case is a red herring.
Loftus has made a noble effort to include writers with graduate degrees or doctorates.
Does the fact that he failed tell you something about the limited talent pool in militant atheism?
My work on biblical law, ethics and the Nazi Holocaust has been reviewed by other scholars, and so Hays & Co. are simply attempting to divert attention from the fact that they present no qualifications or expertise (e.g. peer reviewed writings) in these subjects whatsoever.
At one stroke, Avalos just disqualified several contributors to TCD. What peer-reviewed writings has Babinski published? What peer-reviewed writings has Tobin published?
What about the TCD itself? Was that peer reviewed? No.
We don’t even need to debunk TCD when one of its leading contributors is busy debunking TCD.
But Hays has no expertise to judge what archaeological evidence does or does not ‘corroborate’ biblical accounts of Canaanite behavior.
And the average atheist who reads TCD has no expertise to evaluate Hector’s analysis of ANE law codes. So Hector just disqualified the target audience for TCD.
Once again, we don’t even need to debunk TCD when one of its leading contributors is busy snubbing the target audience.
Hays does not appreciate these comparisons because he does not understand the nature of Copan’s arguments or my rebuttal of them…So my efforts were not so much to say that Hammurabi’s laws are morally superior in some ‘absolute’ manner…So, to refute Copan, I don’t need to prove that Feature X actually makes laws superior by some objective moral standard. I just need to prove that WHAT COPAN CALLS a superior moral feature exists in non-biblical laws. That exposes Copan’s inconsistency and moral relativism concerning the usefulness of Feature X in evaluating ethical superiority.
i) To begin with, Avalos is now introducing ex post facto caveats that he didn’t include in his original essay. For instance, he entitled his essay “Yahweh is a Moral Monster.”
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that while Yahweh is still a moral monster, he isn’t morally monstrous in “some absolute manner.”
ii) Assuming that Paul Copan is inconsistent, why should a moral relativist like Avalos care about consistency? It’s not as if consistency is an epistemic virtue. Not from the standpoint of a moral relativist.
iii) Avalos also made statements like “basing a moral system on unverifiable supernatural beings only creates more violence and endangers our species” (233).
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that such allegedly violent and dangerous consequence isn’t bad in “some absolute manner.”
Likewise, he says “if the word ‘moral‘ describes the set of practices that accord with our values, and if our highest value is life, then it is always immoral to trade real human lives for something that does not exist or cannot be verified to exist” (233).
But apparently this is now to be read with the implicit disclaimer that while it is always immoral to trade human lives for something that doesn’t exist or can’t be verified, it isn’t immoral in “some absolute manner.” I’d add that how something can “always” be immoral without being immoral in some “absolute” manner is intriguing.
And again: “Treating workers like the master did [Mt 20:1-16] is an injustice” (217).
But not unjust in “some absolute manner.”
And again: “To excuse the plain horror of infanticide…” (224).
But not horrific in “some absolute manner.”
But this only shows that Hays completely misunderstood my argument, especially since Hays also noted this statement of mine (Infidel Delusion, p. 110): “Avalos says, ‘As an atheist, I don‘t deny that I am a moral relativist. Rather, my aim is to expose the fact that Christians are also moral relativists’”
Perhaps the most repeated claim by Triablogges is that one cannot judge morality unless one uses objective standards. For example, Hays declares (Infidel Delusion, p. 110):Finally, as a necessary precondition to demonstrate that Yahweh is morally monstrous, Avalos must be able to evaluate OT ethics (or NT ethics, for that matter) by reference to some objective moral [standard].
So, if I conclude that Christians are moral relativists, then clearly I am saying that CHRISTIANS ALSO CANNOT EVALUATE ETHICS BY REFERENCE TO SOME OBJECTIVE MORAL STANDARD.
However, Triabloggers cannot seem to recognize that there is a difference between CLAIMING to have objective moral standards and those standards actually existing. Indeed, Triabloggers offer no evidence that there are such things as “objective moral standards” beyond their own say-so or the say-so of biblical authors.
So, my argument is not necessarily: “Yahweh is monstrous according to objective standard X.” Rather, my argument is better represented as: “IF you regard Action X as morally evil, then Yahweh also endorses/accepts Action X.”
Misunderstanding the claims of relativist ethics also makes Triabloggers think they have triumphed by showing some sort of self-referential incoherence within moral relativism.
i) Notice the bait-and-switch. I pointed out that, as a moral relativist, Avalos has no right to render value judgments about OT ethics (or NT ethics).
How does Avalos attempt to rebut that claim? By claiming that Christians are in the same boat. But even if Christians were also moral relativists, that wouldn’t succeed in showing that secular moral relativists are justified in rendering value judgments. At best, that would disqualify both parties. Shifting the issue to Christians does nothing to invalidate the charge against atheism.
ii) Avalos is now admitting that his title was deceptive. What he really meant is that Yahweh is not a moral monster according to objective moral norms. But I somehow think that lacks the punch of the original title.
iii) I didn’t make a case for moral absolutes since the onus was not on me to vindicate that thesis. I simply evaluated Hector’s performance on his own terms. And if we measure his performance by his own yardstick, he comes up short.
I already showed in the same chapter that all supposedly “objective moral standards” are actually tautologies such as: “X is objectively evil because X is objectively evil.” You cannot rationally differentiate this from its opposite: “X is not objectively evil because X is not objectively evil.” I had already explained that adding God does not change that at all. For example:
A. “X is evil because God says X is evil” dissolves into:
B. “Whatever God says is evil should regarded as evil because whatever
God says is evil should be regarded as evil.”
Those circularities do not constitute proof that there are objective morals because I can show how they all dissolve into tautologies.
Thus, all Triabloggers are doing is precisely this: “I value what God says because I value what God says.” But did they prove that this should be an objective moral standard?
i) I can’t help noticing that Avalos doesn’t actually quote any of us to that effect.
ii) The circularity is bogus since that’s a caricature of what I believe. Something is not evil just because God says it’s evil. If God says something is evil, then that ensures the truth of the statement. But that is not what makes it evil.
For instance, sodomy is evil because God designed human nature to function in a certain way. Sodomy represents a violation of the way in which we were made to function. That’s not dissolvable into a mere tautology.
And who made up the rule that the only type morality has to be objective or absolute?
Indeed, it’s quite possible to substitute arbitrary social mores in lieu of moral absolutes. For instance, suppose we pass a law enacting the summary execution of all Hispanic apostates with Harvard degrees? Who made up the rule that we can’t do that?
That is why it is also absurd to say that relative morality = no morality. Relativists simply have a different definition of morality: ‘Moral actions are those that accord with our individual and group interests and values.’
i) Well, that’s certainly a “different” definition of morality. But if that’s the case, then why is Avalos so touchy about the link between Nazis and atheists? Why not admit the link, but say there’s nothing invidious about that comparison, for the Final Solution was in accord with the collective interests and values of the Nazis? The Nazis simply have a different definition of morality. Indeed, their definition dovetails quite nicely with Hector’s definition. So why spend a whole chapter trying to distance atheism from Nazism?
ii) Moreover, ethics must often deal with tensions between self-interest and the common good. The lifeboat scenario is a textbook example. In case of conflict, which takes precedence? Should we share the food and water? Or should I murder the passengers to make the supplies last longer for me?
Given that definition, my argument is that we create needless problems for our own safety and well-being when we base a moral system on unverifiable causes and consequences as opposed to verifiable causes and consequences.
But why should we cherish our own safety and well-being? Notice how Avalos begs the key question.
In Case A, I cannot verify that Allah exists and said anything.
What makes Avalos think the existence of Allah is unverifiable? It doesn’t seem hard to come up with hypothetical conditions in which one could verify his existence, or his speech-acts–if, indeed, he did exist, or spoke to you. Supposed he rearranged the stars to spell out: “Allah exists!”
When it was pointed out that Muslims could also appeal to Allah to kill, Steve Hays tells us (Infidel Delusion, p. 115):”That doesn‘t mean Allah has the prerogative to issue these directives. Whether a deity has the right to tell us what to do depends on the nature of the deity, and our obligations, if any, to the deity.”
And just who is going to decide which deity has the prerogative to issue those directives?
That question is ambiguous. Does he mean, who has the power to decide? Or who has the right to decide?
Are these not human judgments?
I already dealt with that objection. Notice how Avalos doges my counterargument, then repeats himself. This is what I actually said:
“Needless to say, that‘s a terribly shortsighted argument. For it fails to consider the fact that what ultimately lies behind a human judgment is the agency of God. Yes, we make value judgments. But what (or who) makes us make value judgments? All Nielsen and Avalos have done is to kick the can down the street. But from a Biblical standpoint, the God of Christianity is ultimately responsible for Christian judgments about himself. (Indeed, he‘s also responsible for the value judgment of unbelievers, to their deserved detriment.) Therefore, that argument fails to present a genuine alternative to the ultimacy of God in the process of moral valuation.”
And Avalos has no comeback.
All Hays is saying is: ‘I believe Allah does not have Right X because I believe that Allah does not have Right X.
But that’s not what I said. Indeed, it’s clear from what he himself quoted that this is not what I said. I said, “Whether a deity has the right to tell us what to do depends on the nature of the deity, and our obligations, if any, to the deity.”
That’s scarcely reducible to “I believe Allah does not have Right X because I believe that Allah does not have Right X.”
Such reasoning was repeated when I pointed out that any god in the ancient near East could accompany laws with a formula such as: “I am Shamash” (analogous to “I am Yahweh” in biblical law).
That’s a deliberate misstatement of the introductory “formula” in Biblical law. What we have instead are introductory formulae like the following: “"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod 20:2); “"Say this to the people of Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you” (Exod 3:15).
So this isn’t reducible to: “Do what I say because I said it!” Rather, the Israelites are duty-bound to Yahweh out of gratitude for his goodness to them and their forebears. In addition, Exodus is prefaced by Genesis, which identifies Yahweh as the Creator of the world.
Isn’t Avalos supposed to be an OT scholar? Why is it necessary to explain this to him?
Hays, however, seems to just assume his god exists (Infidel Delusion 115): “We could say Shamash is the true god if it‘s true to say that Shamash is the true God. But unless Shamash is truly the true God, so what?”
As usual, Avalos can’t follow the argument. He asked “Why couldn‘t we say that Shamash is the true god, and then judge biblical law with how it accords with Shamash‘s law?’ (222).”
Yet that’s an existential proposition. So the conclusion is only as good as the premise. We could judge biblical law by how it accords with Shamash’s law if and only if Shamash exists, but Yahweh does not. Since Avalos himself denies the existence of Shamash, that appeal can’t very well ground the law of Shamash.
I didn’t assume anything one way or the other. I’m merely dealing with the internal logic of his question. But Avalos is too illogical to grasp his own question.
But we can apply Hays’ argument to Yahweh: “Anyone could say Yahweh is the true god if it’s true to say Yahweh is the true God. But unless Yahweh is truly the true God, so what?” The problem, of course, is that Hays cannot grasp that BOTH the Yahweh and Shamash worshipper can say the same thing, and it does not make it true.
I never said that claiming something makes it true. That is Hector’s oft-repeated caricature of his opponents. He keeps burning a straw man as if he won the argument by the amount of smoke he generated.
It’s strictly Hays’ human judgment no matter which God he thinks is authorized to do anything. Thus, Hays only proves the point that he is a moral relativist insofar as whatever he thinks is right is what he then ascribes to the deity he favors on the basis of moral criteria he preselected. He cannot show that any morality is coming from outside of his own judgments.
i) Notice, once again, that Avalos is simply rehashing the same objection he raised in the original essay, even though I specifically responded to that very objection. Avalos doesn’t have a second act. He shot his wad the first time around.
ii) Avalos also has a completely idiosyncratic definition of moral relativism. Moral relativism doesn’t mean that human beings can’t render value judgments. Rather, we apply a standard which is not a made-made standard.
On a more empirical and historical level, Triablogue’s brand of supposedly objective ethics have been shown to be completely contradictory. After all, the following have been advocated AND opposed by those who say they believe in God or objective ethics:
A. Genocide
B. Rape
C. Homosexuality
D. Adultery
E. Infanticide
F. Biocide (Noah’s Flood)
Two basic problems:
i) Hector’s criticism is fallacious. The existence of objective moral norms doesn’t entail unanimity in practice. A man may think adultery is wrong, but still succumb to temptation in the heat of the moment. And he may even rationalize his sin.
ii) Hector is also equivocating. At a minimum, he would need to distinguish between “believers” who affirm the authority of Scripture, and “believers” who deny the authority of Scripture.
But how does Hays know how many generations God has in mind for human existence? After all, if God decided to end the world tomorrow, would Hays say: “God, you can’t do that because there are still future generations to be saved”?
And the reverse can also be true: Future generations might be damned even more if allowed to be born. After all, does Hays show the same concern for generations that were born before Christ’s salvation arrived? Doesn’t God care about all those generations who perished unsaved before Christ? And how did Hays specifically calculate the proportion of saved to damned in his soteriology?
What Avalos has now done is to modify his original argument by adding some hypothetical caveats. But if he reserves the right to do that, then I’m at liberty to modify my original counterargument with hypothetical caveats which stalemate his hypothetical caveats.
Remember, his original argument was predicated on Copan’s presumption of infant salvation. But if he’s going to introduce various hypotheticals that becloud the outcome, then that undercuts his original argument. For given all these imponderables, abortion would not be justifiable on pragmatic/utilitarian grounds (even if we took that standard for granted).
FINAL QUESTION FOR TRIABLOGUE
1. Do you think killing infants is always wrong? Yes or No?
i) God does no wrong by taking the life of an infant.
ii) There are also situations in which, no matter what you do, some innocent blood will be shed. Should we bomb part of a Syrian city that’s producing a biochem weapon which will be used to wipe out London, even though bombing that part of the city will kill some babies belonging to the resident scientists? Short answer: that might be permissible or even obligatory.
But that’s entirely consonant with moral absolutes. Not all obligations are equally obligatory. There are higher and lower obligations. In case of conflict, higher obligations supersede lower obligations.
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Outsider Test For Atheism Visualized
John Loftus is out of arguments, he's taken to using the argumentum ad youtubeum.
Here's my response:
I've argued for the Outsider Test for Atheism (OTA) but most atheists like John Loftus just don't get it. For people like him I've made a playlist of four short videos so he can see what he refuses to see because he's blinded by his anti-faith.
Watch these videos below. Describe what you see. What is the difference between what you see? Describe these people. Do they look passionate in their beliefs? Are they sure of what they believe? Are they sincere believers? Do their blasphemes work? Why do they believe differently than 99% of the world? Why is it that if you got them together to discuss irreligion they would NOT change their minds?
My contention is that most all of these believers already think they have evaluated their own anti-faith objectively and fairly. So what to do? Tell them to examine their own anti-faith from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate the religious faiths they reject. This expresses the OTA. And if they refuse? Have them justify their double standard. All of the logical gerrymandering unbelievers are using to redistrict themselves out of taking this test reveals something significant: they know that they cannot objectively justify their own anti-faith.
(Note, if I sound like a raving madman, that's because I just copied and pasted what Loftus wrote, switching up a few words here and there.)
(WARNING: some of these videos use vulgar language):
Notice that in these videos we see atheists using dramatic elements to express their views (something believers supposedly due, per TCD), we see young, brainwashed atheist children (something unique to religious belief, per TCD), we see atheists "certain" of their faith (something that is supposed to characterize religious belief, per TCD), and we see shady debate tactics and faith-protection maneuvers (something also indexed solely to religious belief in TCD).
I also tried to post the youtube clip of my phone call with John Loftus on Gene Cook's radio show, but is has mysteriously been removed for "violation of terms of use." In those clips, John Loftus admitted he could not answer my arguments and questions but he kept the faith. Rather than dropping his faith and searching anew for the truth, he kept with it. He assumed that I just had to be wrong and went looking for the answers that just had to be there.
Here's my response:
I've argued for the Outsider Test for Atheism (OTA) but most atheists like John Loftus just don't get it. For people like him I've made a playlist of four short videos so he can see what he refuses to see because he's blinded by his anti-faith.
Watch these videos below. Describe what you see. What is the difference between what you see? Describe these people. Do they look passionate in their beliefs? Are they sure of what they believe? Are they sincere believers? Do their blasphemes work? Why do they believe differently than 99% of the world? Why is it that if you got them together to discuss irreligion they would NOT change their minds?
My contention is that most all of these believers already think they have evaluated their own anti-faith objectively and fairly. So what to do? Tell them to examine their own anti-faith from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate the religious faiths they reject. This expresses the OTA. And if they refuse? Have them justify their double standard. All of the logical gerrymandering unbelievers are using to redistrict themselves out of taking this test reveals something significant: they know that they cannot objectively justify their own anti-faith.
(Note, if I sound like a raving madman, that's because I just copied and pasted what Loftus wrote, switching up a few words here and there.)
(WARNING: some of these videos use vulgar language):
Notice that in these videos we see atheists using dramatic elements to express their views (something believers supposedly due, per TCD), we see young, brainwashed atheist children (something unique to religious belief, per TCD), we see atheists "certain" of their faith (something that is supposed to characterize religious belief, per TCD), and we see shady debate tactics and faith-protection maneuvers (something also indexed solely to religious belief in TCD).
I also tried to post the youtube clip of my phone call with John Loftus on Gene Cook's radio show, but is has mysteriously been removed for "violation of terms of use." In those clips, John Loftus admitted he could not answer my arguments and questions but he kept the faith. Rather than dropping his faith and searching anew for the truth, he kept with it. He assumed that I just had to be wrong and went looking for the answers that just had to be there.
Life in the Hamptons
Apostate Ken Pulliam is terribly anxious these days that some of his cohorts have lowered themselves by the company they keep. As he recently put it, “I think somehow we demean ourselves when we respond to such amateurish reviews as those on Tribalogue.”
This inevitably raises the question of what it would take, from naturalistic evolutionary standpointpoint, for an atheist to demean himself. As Richard Dawkins once put it, “For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.”
So Pulliam’s concern resembles the anguished reaction of an ambitious mom whose daughter falls in love with the cowboy. How exactly does a bacterium demean itself? I’m sure you know how that conversation goes:
“Jennifer! How could you! How could you fall for that redneck bacterium? Your father and I didn’t raise you to be po’ white trash. That’s why we moved to the Hampton’s. Where we could work for (or should I say, work inside?) the crème de la phlegm. We have standards, you know. We only infect the haut monde. And we only associate with respectable bacteria–like the Salmonellas and the Gonorrhoeas. That’s why we sent you to Germ Mawr. Why can’t you date a promising law student, like Tony E. Coli?”
This inevitably raises the question of what it would take, from naturalistic evolutionary standpointpoint, for an atheist to demean himself. As Richard Dawkins once put it, “For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.”
So Pulliam’s concern resembles the anguished reaction of an ambitious mom whose daughter falls in love with the cowboy. How exactly does a bacterium demean itself? I’m sure you know how that conversation goes:
“Jennifer! How could you! How could you fall for that redneck bacterium? Your father and I didn’t raise you to be po’ white trash. That’s why we moved to the Hampton’s. Where we could work for (or should I say, work inside?) the crème de la phlegm. We have standards, you know. We only infect the haut monde. And we only associate with respectable bacteria–like the Salmonellas and the Gonorrhoeas. That’s why we sent you to Germ Mawr. Why can’t you date a promising law student, like Tony E. Coli?”
Religious cartoons
Patrick Chan recently posted a religious cartoon which was originally posted at the blog of Pastor Josh Harris. Dan Phillips did the same thing at his blog. Frank Turk has also plugged the cartoon.
One blogger has taken strenuous issue with the cartoon. Among other things, he says:
I’m not trying to be a “Pharisee” here, but at what point does a depiction of Christ and an irreverent imputation of jesting language to Him become an unholy violation of a whole host of Biblical commands?
In this post it looks like the 2nd commandment has been broken [image], as well as the 3rd commandment [most expositors extend this prohibition to include even unworthy thoughts about, or unrighteous expressions of the Lord God], and finally irreverent, flippant words contra Eph. 5:4 have been attributed to the all-glorious King of kings and Lord of lords [adding to, taking away from God's Word Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:19].
*Sigh* As of today Dan Phillips, one of the PyroManiacs, has picked up the same cartoon at his blog. Based on the responses in his combox his denizens think it’s really, really funny! In fact Dan and Frank Turk have “Tweeted” the piece at Pyro. The origin of the cartoon is to be found at Josh Harris’ blog under the heading “Jesus Calls Peter“. This clarifies who the graven image “jesus” is supposed to be speaking to, however as noted in the scripture reference above the scene doesn’t comport with the context of the Gospel narrative account. But then again faithfulness to the text probably isn’t to be expected when someone decides to create a blasphemous little cartoon mocking and trivializing the Risen Savior, the Eternal Son and Second Person of the Triune One True and Living God; the Word made flesh.
Evidently the sin remaining even in the fallen flesh of born-again believers never stops desiring an outlet to blaspheme the Triune One True and Living God, therefore their blasphemies are often couched and camoflauged as “humor” to make it more acceptable and palatable.
But the various responses in the comboxes beneath the filth masquerading as humor at Dan Phillips’ and Josh Harris’ blogs are nearly as troubling as the buffoonish caricature itself. Ostensibly self-professing Christian commenters are laughing it up at the expense of the Risen King of Glory!
“Hilarious!”; they say.
“Brilliant!”; they say.
“Genius!”; they say.
They seem like really “open-minded” and “tolerant” folks don’t they? Probably a really swell bunch to hang out with at a church BBQ. Never a dull moment with them, a laugh a minute, plenty of jokes to keep the brothers and sisters entertained and engaged…ROFL, right? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” (Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32)
But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is decidedly “narrow-minded” and extremely “intolerant” of sinful human beings who mock Him.
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. – Gal. 6:7
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matt. 7:14
How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? – Heb. 10:29
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/07/24/cartoons-caricatures-and-christ/
This raises a number of issues.
1. This debate has been going on for centuries. It recycles a classic bone of contention between the Puritans and the Papists.
However, it’s also an intramural debate within Calvinism. For it’s possible to be a Reformed Anglican. Indeed, that’s well represented in church history. And Anglicanism is another classic foil for the Puritans.
In the past, the Puritan tradition was the majority report in Presbyterian circles, but in the last century or so it’s become the minority report. I don’t say that to prejudge the issue one way or the other. Just to set the issue in its historical context.
2. The offending cartoon raises the question of what it means to depict Jesus–or anyone at all.
i) The cartoon itself doesn’t actually identify the speaker as “Jesus.”
Rather, it has two generic cartoon figures, with a sketchy background, and two sentences, one of which alludes to Jesus calling the disciples (in the Gospels).
ii) So what does it mean to depict Jesus? Well, one candidate would be a lifelike visual representation of what he actually looked like (or looks like). That would literally be a depiction of Jesus. If the disciples remembered what he looked like, their mental representations would be depictions of Jesus. Same thing if they had digital cameras back then, and took a snapshot.
Such depictions reproduce his actual appearance. So in that case, there’s a direct correspondence between the copy and the original.
iii) But what about the cartoon? Well, it’s obviously not a depiction of what Jesus really looked like. Rather, this is an imaginary depiction. So what sense is it still about Jesus?
One possible explanation is that Jesus is the intended referent. The cartoonist meant this figure to stand for Jesus. In that respect, this is a depiction of Jesus to the cartoonist. From his viewpoint, the figure stands for Jesus.
iv) Yet that’s not an adequate explanation. For given the degree of theological illiteracy in the general population, you could show this cartoon to 9 out of 10 people, and they would draw a blank.
To be a depiction of Jesus, an imaginary representation is, to that extent, observer-dependent. To be a depiction of Jesus, not only must the artist mean it to depict Jesus, but it must mean that to the observer as well. If the observer can’t recognize what it stands for, then it’s not a depiction of Jesus for him. Whether or not the figure depicts Jesus is contingent on the significance which both the artist and the observer ascribe to the depiction.
The picture itself does not represent Jesus. Rather, the artist and observer must contribute their understanding to this visual code language.
The physical depiction is insufficient. That must be completed by the subjective viewpoint of both the cartoonist and the observer. To their extrinsic attribution.
This is different from a photograph of Jesus (if such existed), which intrinsically or objectively represents his appearance. Its correspondence is not contingent on the intentions of the photographer or the observer.
3. This also raises the question of what the 2nd commandment is designed to forbid, as well as the underlying rationale for the 2nd commandment. One possible explanation is that if God is essentially invisible (intangible, &c.), then any visible representation of God will misrepresent God.
However, that can’t be the correct explanation since God depicts himself in theophanies.
Another possible explanation is that since God is essentially invisible, any accurate visible depiction will be a symbolic analogue of God, in his actions or attributes. And since an accurate analogy depends on an accurate knowledge of what God is really like (or does), God must control any self-representations.
Put another way, if God is invisible, then knowing what God is like will depend on God’s self-disclosure. God can depict himself, but a human artist cannot.
4. However, even if that’s the correct explanation, it isn’t clearly applicable to imaginary depictions of Jesus. After all, Jesus was not invisible or intangible. He had a human appearance (indeed, more than mere appearance). We know what men look like. So we have a natural basis for visual analogy.
5. Since the cartoon is manifestly fictitious, I don’t see how that is “adding” to God’s word. It’s not like a false prophet–which is the point of the inscriptional curse.
6. The cartoon is not mocking Jesus. Rather, the cartoon is mocking superficial piety. In the cartoon, the object of ridicule isn’t Jesus, but a skin-deep disciple. To say the cartoon is mocking Jesus reflects the outlook of the critic, not the cartoonist. The critic is imputing his characterization to the cartoonist, then attacking the cartoonist for something which the critic projected onto the cartoon, despite the intentions of the cartoonist to the contrary.
Perhaps “CD” has a more developed argument than he’s presented thus far. I can only evaluate his objections in light of his arguments.
One blogger has taken strenuous issue with the cartoon. Among other things, he says:
I’m not trying to be a “Pharisee” here, but at what point does a depiction of Christ and an irreverent imputation of jesting language to Him become an unholy violation of a whole host of Biblical commands?
In this post it looks like the 2nd commandment has been broken [image], as well as the 3rd commandment [most expositors extend this prohibition to include even unworthy thoughts about, or unrighteous expressions of the Lord God], and finally irreverent, flippant words contra Eph. 5:4 have been attributed to the all-glorious King of kings and Lord of lords [adding to, taking away from God's Word Deut. 4:2; Rev. 22:19].
*Sigh* As of today Dan Phillips, one of the PyroManiacs, has picked up the same cartoon at his blog. Based on the responses in his combox his denizens think it’s really, really funny! In fact Dan and Frank Turk have “Tweeted” the piece at Pyro. The origin of the cartoon is to be found at Josh Harris’ blog under the heading “Jesus Calls Peter“. This clarifies who the graven image “jesus” is supposed to be speaking to, however as noted in the scripture reference above the scene doesn’t comport with the context of the Gospel narrative account. But then again faithfulness to the text probably isn’t to be expected when someone decides to create a blasphemous little cartoon mocking and trivializing the Risen Savior, the Eternal Son and Second Person of the Triune One True and Living God; the Word made flesh.
Evidently the sin remaining even in the fallen flesh of born-again believers never stops desiring an outlet to blaspheme the Triune One True and Living God, therefore their blasphemies are often couched and camoflauged as “humor” to make it more acceptable and palatable.
But the various responses in the comboxes beneath the filth masquerading as humor at Dan Phillips’ and Josh Harris’ blogs are nearly as troubling as the buffoonish caricature itself. Ostensibly self-professing Christian commenters are laughing it up at the expense of the Risen King of Glory!
“Hilarious!”; they say.
“Brilliant!”; they say.
“Genius!”; they say.
They seem like really “open-minded” and “tolerant” folks don’t they? Probably a really swell bunch to hang out with at a church BBQ. Never a dull moment with them, a laugh a minute, plenty of jokes to keep the brothers and sisters entertained and engaged…ROFL, right? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!” (Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32)
But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is decidedly “narrow-minded” and extremely “intolerant” of sinful human beings who mock Him.
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. – Gal. 6:7
For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. – Matt. 7:14
How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? – Heb. 10:29
http://defendingcontending.com/2010/07/24/cartoons-caricatures-and-christ/
This raises a number of issues.
1. This debate has been going on for centuries. It recycles a classic bone of contention between the Puritans and the Papists.
However, it’s also an intramural debate within Calvinism. For it’s possible to be a Reformed Anglican. Indeed, that’s well represented in church history. And Anglicanism is another classic foil for the Puritans.
In the past, the Puritan tradition was the majority report in Presbyterian circles, but in the last century or so it’s become the minority report. I don’t say that to prejudge the issue one way or the other. Just to set the issue in its historical context.
2. The offending cartoon raises the question of what it means to depict Jesus–or anyone at all.
i) The cartoon itself doesn’t actually identify the speaker as “Jesus.”
Rather, it has two generic cartoon figures, with a sketchy background, and two sentences, one of which alludes to Jesus calling the disciples (in the Gospels).
ii) So what does it mean to depict Jesus? Well, one candidate would be a lifelike visual representation of what he actually looked like (or looks like). That would literally be a depiction of Jesus. If the disciples remembered what he looked like, their mental representations would be depictions of Jesus. Same thing if they had digital cameras back then, and took a snapshot.
Such depictions reproduce his actual appearance. So in that case, there’s a direct correspondence between the copy and the original.
iii) But what about the cartoon? Well, it’s obviously not a depiction of what Jesus really looked like. Rather, this is an imaginary depiction. So what sense is it still about Jesus?
One possible explanation is that Jesus is the intended referent. The cartoonist meant this figure to stand for Jesus. In that respect, this is a depiction of Jesus to the cartoonist. From his viewpoint, the figure stands for Jesus.
iv) Yet that’s not an adequate explanation. For given the degree of theological illiteracy in the general population, you could show this cartoon to 9 out of 10 people, and they would draw a blank.
To be a depiction of Jesus, an imaginary representation is, to that extent, observer-dependent. To be a depiction of Jesus, not only must the artist mean it to depict Jesus, but it must mean that to the observer as well. If the observer can’t recognize what it stands for, then it’s not a depiction of Jesus for him. Whether or not the figure depicts Jesus is contingent on the significance which both the artist and the observer ascribe to the depiction.
The picture itself does not represent Jesus. Rather, the artist and observer must contribute their understanding to this visual code language.
The physical depiction is insufficient. That must be completed by the subjective viewpoint of both the cartoonist and the observer. To their extrinsic attribution.
This is different from a photograph of Jesus (if such existed), which intrinsically or objectively represents his appearance. Its correspondence is not contingent on the intentions of the photographer or the observer.
3. This also raises the question of what the 2nd commandment is designed to forbid, as well as the underlying rationale for the 2nd commandment. One possible explanation is that if God is essentially invisible (intangible, &c.), then any visible representation of God will misrepresent God.
However, that can’t be the correct explanation since God depicts himself in theophanies.
Another possible explanation is that since God is essentially invisible, any accurate visible depiction will be a symbolic analogue of God, in his actions or attributes. And since an accurate analogy depends on an accurate knowledge of what God is really like (or does), God must control any self-representations.
Put another way, if God is invisible, then knowing what God is like will depend on God’s self-disclosure. God can depict himself, but a human artist cannot.
4. However, even if that’s the correct explanation, it isn’t clearly applicable to imaginary depictions of Jesus. After all, Jesus was not invisible or intangible. He had a human appearance (indeed, more than mere appearance). We know what men look like. So we have a natural basis for visual analogy.
5. Since the cartoon is manifestly fictitious, I don’t see how that is “adding” to God’s word. It’s not like a false prophet–which is the point of the inscriptional curse.
6. The cartoon is not mocking Jesus. Rather, the cartoon is mocking superficial piety. In the cartoon, the object of ridicule isn’t Jesus, but a skin-deep disciple. To say the cartoon is mocking Jesus reflects the outlook of the critic, not the cartoonist. The critic is imputing his characterization to the cartoonist, then attacking the cartoonist for something which the critic projected onto the cartoon, despite the intentions of the cartoonist to the contrary.
Perhaps “CD” has a more developed argument than he’s presented thus far. I can only evaluate his objections in light of his arguments.
Justified rape
Hays begins his criticism of the OTF by claiming it is arbitrarily selective because it targets religious faiths. Why not propose an Outsider Test for Beliefs (OTB), he suggests. Since he read my chapter he already knows I do just that. There is an OTB that is larger and more encompassing than the limited OTF. The OTF is therefore a subset of the OTB. The outsider is a skeptic in varying degrees.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-steve-hays-and-jason-engwer-on.html
Several problems:
1. Loftus only conceded the OTB under pressure from Victor Reppert.
2. His concession is a throwaway argument. For Loftus doesn’t really think the OTB is on a par with the OTF. For instance, Loftus recently said:
Assuming an outsider position in order to defend what we think is true is incumbent on everyone on every issue. It's the attempt to be as objective as humanly possible with regard to our disagreements. It's to have a disinterest in the outcome as best as possible.
But it applies more forcefully to religious faiths, that's why it's called what it is. Why? Because religious believers do not dispassionately evaluate their faith. Why? Because they have such a vested personal interest in defending what they believe. Why? Because they assume what needs to be proved. Why? Because they do not have any good evidence for them. Why? Because they amass many possible arguments together in a pile then conclude they have a probable case, which is a huge non-sequitur.
By contrast atheism is not about faith. I think I explained that in my chapter for The Christian Delusion. Atheism is based on the probabilities. And I explained there is little or nothing we can know about an atheist simply because he is an atheist, except that said person does not believe in supernatural beings and forces, nor does he think supernatural explanations have the weight of evidence for them.
The sciences are the paragon for outsiders. Show me the math and we agree. Show me the experiment and the argument is over. Show me the scientific poll and the case is closed. Show me what we learn from brain science and there can be no dispute.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/06/should-atheists-take-outsider-test-for.html
So his thumb is on the scales from the get-go. To say that it’s incumbent on a believer to take the OTF in a way that’s not incumbent on an atheist to take the OTB because “they have such a vested personal interest in defending what they believe…because they assume what needs to be proved…because they do not have any good evidence for them,” &c., begs the question every step of the way. His invidious comparison could scarcely be more prejudicial or tendentious.
3. And there’s another problem. Before you’re qualified to take the OTF, you’d first need to take the OTB. And that’s because we could only test religious beliefs against another set of beliefs which we treat as unquestionable.
So before Loftus can administer the OTF, he needs to both identify and justify a set of test beliefs or key beliefs which function as an answer key to correct religious beliefs. And in order to do that, he must justify his entire worldview. That’s a tall order!
4. Of course, another problem with this procedure is the tacit assumption that your religious beliefs are detachable from your other beliefs. Religious beliefs are just an add-on.
Let’s take a concrete example of his bias. In TCD, he says:
Beliefs like the acceptability of rape (and honor killings) are based on religious faiths and ancient texts, so they must be scrutinized with the skepticism of the OTB because of the nature and origin of those beliefs are religious in nature (100).
So they should be scrutinized because of their religious origin. For Loftus, if a belief has a religious origin, then that ipso facto renders it suspect. But that hardly represents an “objective” assessment. Rather, that’s a direct reflection of his atheism.
5. He goes on to say:
The same claims thing goes for claims that challenge democracy. Only religious believers in today’s world are defending the notion of a theocracy (100-101).
But, of course, that’s reversible. Only unbelievers in today’s world are challenging the notion of theocracy. So what Loftus has explicitly done here is make secular ideology the standard of comparison. He lays emphasis on how theocracy looks to an outsider, but he lays no emphasis on how democracy looks to an outsider.
My immediate point is not to debate the pros and cons of democracy and theocracy. I’m simply drawing attention to the way in which Loftus is camouflaging his atheism under the “objective” guise of the OTF. He is superimposing his parochial, ethnocentric values on everybody else.
6. He continues
So subjecting such a theocratical political system to the OTB would be to undercut such a belief, especially considering the harm it does to human beings (101).
Assuming, for the same of argument, that a theocratic regime is even harmful (which is something Loftus needs to demonstrate, not assume), that objection would only take hold if it’s wrong to harm human beings. “Harm” is a value-laden category. Since, however, a number of secular thinkers, including some contributors to TCD, reject moral absolutes, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with harming human beings–even wantonly. At best that would be a culturebound social convention.
7. Continuing with Loftus:
People have done fairly well without democracy from the beginning when a dominant male lion or ape had free reign with a harem of females and ruled over the others, although we’ve subsequently learned democracy is much better (101).
Two elementary problems:
i) How does that contention even begin to show that rape is intrinsically evil? In fact, couldn’t an evolutionary ethicist conclude from his premise that rape is justifiable? That’s what alpha males do. Hominid boys will be boys. Playmates for primates.
ii) To say that democracy is “much better” is a value judgment. Yet contributors to TCD (e.g. Avalos, Eller) reject moral realism. Indeed, the OTF is, itself, a recipe for moral relativism via cultural relativism.
8. Loftus then quotes Richard Carrier:
Reppert’s error appears to lie in neglecting the role of information in decision making: any rational 16C man who was given all of the information we now have (of the different outcomes of democratic v. nondemocratic nations over along period of time) would agree with us that democracy is better. Hence, democracy passes the OTB, Similarly any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong. Hence, our ethic against rape will also pass the OTB (101).
Well, Reppert can speak for himself, but Carrier has failed to expose an error in Reppert’s thinking on that score:
i) While empirical data regarding the outcome certain behavior may well be useful in moral valuations, the empirical data is not, itself, morally prescriptive or proscriptive. The empirical data is, at best, a description of the status quo, and not an indicator of the way things are supposed to be.
ii) Likewise, you can only evaluate the morality of certain consequences if you already have a moral norm. But, by definition, moral relativism can’t furnish that criterion. It can’t adjudicate between good and evil consequences.
9. The argument of Carrier and Loftus also carries the revealing implication that rape was justifiable prior to the advent of modern science.
This is also ironic since apostates like Loftus attack OT ethics on the grounds that the OT sanctions rape in certain cases. As I’ve argued elsewhere, that reflects a malicious distortion of what the Mosaic law regulates in the case of war brides.
However, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the OT does, indeed, sanction rape in some situations. Yet, according to Loftus and Carrier, an OT rapist was justified, for he acted in a condition of diminished responsibility, given his lack of modern scientific knowledge regarding the consequences of rape.
And this is not just a question for “primitive” peoples. Given all of the mitigating circumstances which Carrier has built into his explanation, it would be nearly impossible to convict a modern rapist. For a modern rapist, including a serial rapist (or serial killer, for that matter), could always plead innocent on the grounds that he hadn’t “acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society.”
In order to defend the OTF, Carrier and Loftus have given the reader an argument for justified rape. So that presents a choice: we can either accept the OTF thesis, with the corollary “ethic” of justified rape–or else can reject the “ethic” of justified rape, with the corollary thesis of the OTF.
This could be a selling point for a certain demographic group. Perhaps Prometheus Books should market TCD as preemptive, affirmative defense for date rape. It could even hire some incarcerated serial rapists to do TV spots promoting TCD.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-steve-hays-and-jason-engwer-on.html
Several problems:
1. Loftus only conceded the OTB under pressure from Victor Reppert.
2. His concession is a throwaway argument. For Loftus doesn’t really think the OTB is on a par with the OTF. For instance, Loftus recently said:
Assuming an outsider position in order to defend what we think is true is incumbent on everyone on every issue. It's the attempt to be as objective as humanly possible with regard to our disagreements. It's to have a disinterest in the outcome as best as possible.
But it applies more forcefully to religious faiths, that's why it's called what it is. Why? Because religious believers do not dispassionately evaluate their faith. Why? Because they have such a vested personal interest in defending what they believe. Why? Because they assume what needs to be proved. Why? Because they do not have any good evidence for them. Why? Because they amass many possible arguments together in a pile then conclude they have a probable case, which is a huge non-sequitur.
By contrast atheism is not about faith. I think I explained that in my chapter for The Christian Delusion. Atheism is based on the probabilities. And I explained there is little or nothing we can know about an atheist simply because he is an atheist, except that said person does not believe in supernatural beings and forces, nor does he think supernatural explanations have the weight of evidence for them.
The sciences are the paragon for outsiders. Show me the math and we agree. Show me the experiment and the argument is over. Show me the scientific poll and the case is closed. Show me what we learn from brain science and there can be no dispute.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/06/should-atheists-take-outsider-test-for.html
So his thumb is on the scales from the get-go. To say that it’s incumbent on a believer to take the OTF in a way that’s not incumbent on an atheist to take the OTB because “they have such a vested personal interest in defending what they believe…because they assume what needs to be proved…because they do not have any good evidence for them,” &c., begs the question every step of the way. His invidious comparison could scarcely be more prejudicial or tendentious.
3. And there’s another problem. Before you’re qualified to take the OTF, you’d first need to take the OTB. And that’s because we could only test religious beliefs against another set of beliefs which we treat as unquestionable.
So before Loftus can administer the OTF, he needs to both identify and justify a set of test beliefs or key beliefs which function as an answer key to correct religious beliefs. And in order to do that, he must justify his entire worldview. That’s a tall order!
4. Of course, another problem with this procedure is the tacit assumption that your religious beliefs are detachable from your other beliefs. Religious beliefs are just an add-on.
Let’s take a concrete example of his bias. In TCD, he says:
Beliefs like the acceptability of rape (and honor killings) are based on religious faiths and ancient texts, so they must be scrutinized with the skepticism of the OTB because of the nature and origin of those beliefs are religious in nature (100).
So they should be scrutinized because of their religious origin. For Loftus, if a belief has a religious origin, then that ipso facto renders it suspect. But that hardly represents an “objective” assessment. Rather, that’s a direct reflection of his atheism.
5. He goes on to say:
The same claims thing goes for claims that challenge democracy. Only religious believers in today’s world are defending the notion of a theocracy (100-101).
But, of course, that’s reversible. Only unbelievers in today’s world are challenging the notion of theocracy. So what Loftus has explicitly done here is make secular ideology the standard of comparison. He lays emphasis on how theocracy looks to an outsider, but he lays no emphasis on how democracy looks to an outsider.
My immediate point is not to debate the pros and cons of democracy and theocracy. I’m simply drawing attention to the way in which Loftus is camouflaging his atheism under the “objective” guise of the OTF. He is superimposing his parochial, ethnocentric values on everybody else.
6. He continues
So subjecting such a theocratical political system to the OTB would be to undercut such a belief, especially considering the harm it does to human beings (101).
Assuming, for the same of argument, that a theocratic regime is even harmful (which is something Loftus needs to demonstrate, not assume), that objection would only take hold if it’s wrong to harm human beings. “Harm” is a value-laden category. Since, however, a number of secular thinkers, including some contributors to TCD, reject moral absolutes, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with harming human beings–even wantonly. At best that would be a culturebound social convention.
7. Continuing with Loftus:
People have done fairly well without democracy from the beginning when a dominant male lion or ape had free reign with a harem of females and ruled over the others, although we’ve subsequently learned democracy is much better (101).
Two elementary problems:
i) How does that contention even begin to show that rape is intrinsically evil? In fact, couldn’t an evolutionary ethicist conclude from his premise that rape is justifiable? That’s what alpha males do. Hominid boys will be boys. Playmates for primates.
ii) To say that democracy is “much better” is a value judgment. Yet contributors to TCD (e.g. Avalos, Eller) reject moral realism. Indeed, the OTF is, itself, a recipe for moral relativism via cultural relativism.
8. Loftus then quotes Richard Carrier:
Reppert’s error appears to lie in neglecting the role of information in decision making: any rational 16C man who was given all of the information we now have (of the different outcomes of democratic v. nondemocratic nations over along period of time) would agree with us that democracy is better. Hence, democracy passes the OTB, Similarly any rational would-be rapist who acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society, then he would agree that raping such a woman is wrong. Hence, our ethic against rape will also pass the OTB (101).
Well, Reppert can speak for himself, but Carrier has failed to expose an error in Reppert’s thinking on that score:
i) While empirical data regarding the outcome certain behavior may well be useful in moral valuations, the empirical data is not, itself, morally prescriptive or proscriptive. The empirical data is, at best, a description of the status quo, and not an indicator of the way things are supposed to be.
ii) Likewise, you can only evaluate the morality of certain consequences if you already have a moral norm. But, by definition, moral relativism can’t furnish that criterion. It can’t adjudicate between good and evil consequences.
9. The argument of Carrier and Loftus also carries the revealing implication that rape was justifiable prior to the advent of modern science.
This is also ironic since apostates like Loftus attack OT ethics on the grounds that the OT sanctions rape in certain cases. As I’ve argued elsewhere, that reflects a malicious distortion of what the Mosaic law regulates in the case of war brides.
However, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the OT does, indeed, sanction rape in some situations. Yet, according to Loftus and Carrier, an OT rapist was justified, for he acted in a condition of diminished responsibility, given his lack of modern scientific knowledge regarding the consequences of rape.
And this is not just a question for “primitive” peoples. Given all of the mitigating circumstances which Carrier has built into his explanation, it would be nearly impossible to convict a modern rapist. For a modern rapist, including a serial rapist (or serial killer, for that matter), could always plead innocent on the grounds that he hadn’t “acquired full and correct information about how raped women feel, and what sort of person he becomes if he ignores a person’s feelings and welfare, and all of the actual consequences of such behavior to himself and his society.”
In order to defend the OTF, Carrier and Loftus have given the reader an argument for justified rape. So that presents a choice: we can either accept the OTF thesis, with the corollary “ethic” of justified rape–or else can reject the “ethic” of justified rape, with the corollary thesis of the OTF.
This could be a selling point for a certain demographic group. Perhaps Prometheus Books should market TCD as preemptive, affirmative defense for date rape. It could even hire some incarcerated serial rapists to do TV spots promoting TCD.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Arguments from experience
Like many Christian apologists, William Lane Craig deploys a variety of arguments. These include a priori arguments, as well as arguments from evidence in the public domain.
However, Craig also keeps in his back pocket (as it were) the argument from religious experience. Specifically, his appeal to the witness of the Spirit.
Needless to say, this argument doesn’t originate with Craig. Subject to various refinements, that argument has been around for centuries. Indeed, it’s one type of evidence which Bible writers like St. John and St. Paul invoke.
But Craig’s appeal to religious experience really gets under the skin of some atheists. Loftus is one example. He takes a swipe at that argument in TCD. I responded to his objection in TID. Loftus has since replied to me, and I have offered yet another rejoinder.
However, I’d also like to discuss this at a general level. The appeal to religious experience isn’t an esoteric appeal–like a mystical trance. At the risk of stating the obvious, every experience is essential private. Even a collective experience can only be privately accessed by each individual percipient. We don’t have a group consciousness. While it’s possible for two different individuals to share the same object of experience, your first-person perspective is intransitive.
Indeed, this is traditionally been a seedbed for skepticism. And I don’t think there’s a direct counterargument in the offing.
But here is one of the areas in which transcendental theism is helpful. If God made human beings with the same cognitive apparatus and sensory relays, then my private experience can be analogous to your private experience.
Of course, there’s also a vast philosophical literature endeavoring to distinguish between a veridical experience and a delusive veridical experience. Claiming to have a personal experience, religious or otherwise, isn’t necessarily bed-rock. Some experiential claims are defeasible. But, pace Loftus, we can’t very well dismiss the argument from religious experience as if experiential appeals are simply out of bounds. Loftus would have nothing left to work with if he made that move. Indeed, we generally use experience to correct experience.
(Strictly speaking, every experience is veridical. What is not necessarily veridical is our interpretation of the experience.)
However, Craig also keeps in his back pocket (as it were) the argument from religious experience. Specifically, his appeal to the witness of the Spirit.
Needless to say, this argument doesn’t originate with Craig. Subject to various refinements, that argument has been around for centuries. Indeed, it’s one type of evidence which Bible writers like St. John and St. Paul invoke.
But Craig’s appeal to religious experience really gets under the skin of some atheists. Loftus is one example. He takes a swipe at that argument in TCD. I responded to his objection in TID. Loftus has since replied to me, and I have offered yet another rejoinder.
However, I’d also like to discuss this at a general level. The appeal to religious experience isn’t an esoteric appeal–like a mystical trance. At the risk of stating the obvious, every experience is essential private. Even a collective experience can only be privately accessed by each individual percipient. We don’t have a group consciousness. While it’s possible for two different individuals to share the same object of experience, your first-person perspective is intransitive.
Indeed, this is traditionally been a seedbed for skepticism. And I don’t think there’s a direct counterargument in the offing.
But here is one of the areas in which transcendental theism is helpful. If God made human beings with the same cognitive apparatus and sensory relays, then my private experience can be analogous to your private experience.
Of course, there’s also a vast philosophical literature endeavoring to distinguish between a veridical experience and a delusive veridical experience. Claiming to have a personal experience, religious or otherwise, isn’t necessarily bed-rock. Some experiential claims are defeasible. But, pace Loftus, we can’t very well dismiss the argument from religious experience as if experiential appeals are simply out of bounds. Loftus would have nothing left to work with if he made that move. Indeed, we generally use experience to correct experience.
(Strictly speaking, every experience is veridical. What is not necessarily veridical is our interpretation of the experience.)
Scoring the Outsider Test
According to Loftus, “The goal Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is emphatically NOT to knock religious faiths down.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-steve-hays-and-jason-engwer-on.html
Needless to say, the goal of TCD is clearly to knock down the Christian faith. His chapter on the OTF plays a strategic role in his effort to achieve that goal. You can tell how Loftus interprets his own “test” by how he applies it.
“The goal is to come up with a mutually reliable test that could help us know which religious faith is objectively true, if there is one.”
No, the goal is to reduce Christianity to a mere hypothesis.
“The test is a reasonable fair and objective one to judge religious faiths.”
Of course, we’d expect Loftus to say that about his own methods, now wouldn’t we? But he’s not exactly an impartial judge or umpire.
“The whole reason Hays and company object to it is because they know their faith will not pass this test.”
I object to it on two grounds:
i) Loftus applies the Outsider Test selectively and lopsidedly. He only applies it to religion, not irreligion. And even then, his real target is conservative Evangelicalism.
ii) The underlying assumption of the OTF is that no Christian could really know if Christianity is true. Therefore, he should suspend judgment at the outset.
But, of course, that begs the question. Loftus has smuggled his atheism into the OTF. For the unspoken presupposition of the OTF is that no Christian could actually know if Christianity is true. Hence, no Christian can operate from that presumption. No Christian can take that as a given.
But the OTF is not entitled to make that stipulation. That’s something Loftus would have to argue. And if it’s something he has to argue, then the OTF is superfluous.
That’s hardly a standard we apply in all other fields of knowledge. We don’t say that no one can know, going into his examination of rival positions, that his own position is true. We don’t say that a philosopher who examines a brain-in-vat hypothetical must suspend his belief in the external world.
“So cognitive dissonance requires them to argue for their double standard way of judging between religious faiths, one for their faith and a different one for others—-and surprise, with such a double standard their particular brand of Christian faith is judged to be the correct one!”
i) Loftus is simply imputing cognitive dissonance to his Christian opponents. He’s in no position to know that. And he hasn’t shown that we operate with a double standard.
ii) Moreover, to fault us for judging that our “particular brand of Christian faith is the correct one” is absurd on the face of it. Everyone reasons from his own viewpoint. Everyone takes his own viewpoint as the standard of comparison. Loftus is no exception.
“Hays begins his criticism of the OTF by claiming it is arbitrarily selective because it targets religious faiths. Why not propose an Outsider Test for Beliefs (OTB), he suggests. Since he read my chapter he already knows I do just that. There is an OTB that is larger and more encompassing than the limited OTF. The OTF is therefore a subset of the OTB.”
That’s just a throwaway line to create the specious appearance that Loftus is even-handed. But in actual practice he does no such thing. So Loftus is the one who’s guilty of the double standard. And what is worse, he’s guilty of a double standard in selectively applying his own standard, whereas that was never my standard.
“The outsider is a skeptic in varying degrees.”
No, the outsider is only a skeptic in relation to opposing positions, not his own.
“Skepticism is a virtue if the alternative is being gullible, okay?”
i) Notice the hidden assumption. He could only apply the OTF to Christianity if Christian faith is gullible. But the OTF can’t assume that from the outset. For that would be prejudicial. The OTF can’t specify which beliefs are gullible and which are not. For that, Loftus would need a separate argument–in which case the OTF is superfluous.
ii) No one can be skeptical about everything. We can’t reserve judgment about everything. For skepticism must measure some things by other things.
“The amount of skepticism warranted depends not only on the number of rational people who disagree…”
And Loftus predefines “rational people” as atheists.
“But also whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of their beliefs, how their beliefs originated, under what circumstances their beliefs were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between the differing beliefs. My claim is that when it comes to religious faiths, a high degree of skepticism is warranted precisely because of these factors.”
i) Whether or not that’s warranted is irrelevant to the OTF. For his scepticism would only be warranted if he can make a specific, compelling case that geographical distribution, how their beliefs originate, under what circumstances, and the kinds of evidence, undermine religious faith. The OTF can’t predecide that issue. Each of these is a specific objection, calling for a separate argument.
ii) And if, moreover, he were serious about how the OTF is a subset of the OTB, then he’d first need to justify all the non-religious beliefs by which he measures the religious beliefs.
“Hays thinks everyone is an insider to some viewpoint and therefore evaluates his or her own viewpoint as insiders while rejecting all other viewpoints from the outsider’s perspective. I see no reason why he wouldn’t say this is true about Muslims or Orthodox Jews either, or any other viewpoint, like Scientologists or Satanists. We’re all insiders, he would say. And we reject all other viewpoints as outsiders. As such, he claims the OTF is really a test applied to other viewpoints from one’s own insider perspective. Consequently the OTF is really an Insider Test by Infidels. So, does Hays think all of our viewpoints are incommensurable?—that we each live in an intellectual box and there can be no meeting of the minds, or changing of perspectives? Does he think we are locked inside our own boxes?—that we each see things differently and there is nothing that can test between our different perspectives?”
Remember that I don’t accept the OTF. I’m merely judging the OTF on its own terms. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the OTF is sound, then that principle is universalizable. Indeed, Loftus himself says, albeit disingenuously, that the OTF is a subset of the OTB.
So I’m simply taking the OTF and applying it consistently. But that doesn’t generate a dilemma for my own position. If that’s a problem, then that’s a problem for Loftus, not me, since the OTF is his concoction, not mine.
If Loftus is going to deploy the insider/outsider rubric, then no one is exempt. Everybody is an insider in reference to his own position, to his own viewpoint. If that generates a self-defeating conundrum, then Loftus is trapped in a conundrum of his own devising. I’m just taking his principle to its logical extreme. If that has self-stultifying consequences, then so much the worse for his principle.
“He argues daily on his blog as if this is not the case. He argues as if he can convince people otherwise. But this is not the conclusion to what he just wrote if all we have to judge different perspectives is from the inside.”
i) I don’t have any general expectation about who will be convinced. That’s up to God.
ii) And I’m not absolutizing every individual perspective.
“So how does Hays propose we objectively test our own perspectives? What is his alternative to the OTB/OTF? I see no better one suggested by him or anyone.”
i) The OTB/OTF isn’t a real test. It’s an intellectual shortcut.
ii) You need some reliable criteria to evaluate different positions. The OTB/OTF can’t select for the criteria, since the OTB/OTF depends on certain criteria to get off the ground.
iii) And you can’t begin with formal criteria, for that would degenerate into an infinite regress or a vicious regress.
You have to begin with tacit knowledge. Due to natural revelation and common grace, God conserves a certain amount of tacit knowledge, which can function as a pretheoretical criterion. And that, in turn, can function in conjunction with formal criteria.
In the revelation of Scripture, God confirms our tacit knowledge. God grounds our tacit knowledge. And God reveals other criteria.
“Of course, the question is why anyone in our modern society should desire the viewpoint of ancient superstitious barbaric Biblical people anyway, which is extremely strange to me, and says nothing against a Muslim who wishes to adopt the writings of the Koran.”
i) Which perfectly illustrates the fact that Loftus doesn’t take the OTB seriously. To say the viewpoint of Bible writers is “barbaric” and “superstitious” doesn’t reflect an “agnostic” view of Scripture. It’s not as if Loftus is withholding judgment. No, he judges Scripture by his own culturally provincial outlook. Secular parochialism.
ii) I don’t judge the Koran by methodological naturalism. So that counterexample fails to make a dent in my own position.
“Nonetheless, this method has been defended very well and I see no reason to abandon it when no other alternative is suggested by him.”
Note the bait-and-switch. He starts out by claiming that we should be “agnostic.” But, of course, methodological naturalism is not “agnostic.”
If only makes sense to use a naturalistic methodology if you think the world operates naturalistically. And that’s not something you can know in advance of the fact. At best, that’s only something you can discover by observation and experience. Even then, induction is descriptive, not prescriptive.
“Methodological naturalism” is just a euphemism for “methodological atheism.” But that’s hardly impartial or noncommittal. Rather, that’s presumptive. What is more, that begs the question of what the world is really like. After all, this is the very issue in dispute.
“Of course it does, that’s why agnosticism is the default position. Saying ‘I don’t know what to affirm’ is a reasonable thing to do when there seems to be no clear decisive way to decide between all of the various religious and non-religious perspectives. We seem to live in what John Hick describes as a religious ambiguous universe capable of being rationally interpreted by a number of different religious and non-religious perspectives. Why is that? And how cocksure can one be in such a universe about affirming the answers to why we exist?”
i) See how Loftus is tipping his hand. “Agnosticism” is not a neutral position. To say there’s no way of knowing is hardly neutral position. Rather, that’s a specific claim, to the exclusion of contrary claims. That represents a conclusion. So that’s not something we can presuppose at the outset.
ii) And, of course, it goes beyond that. It’s not as if Loftus is reserving judgment.
“Hays (and later Jason Engwer) takes issue with my saying they evaluate other religious faiths using just David Hume‘s evidentiary standards along with a methodological naturalist viewpoint. Any reading of Christian literature on the so-called ‘cults’ will show this statistically. They claim to evaluate these other religious faiths and miracles as if they are demon produced. Really? How is that anything by way of an objective standard? Yep, demons can account for these other faiths and their miracles.”
i) Notice the bait-and-switch. He initially accused Christians of applying methodological naturalism to other religions, while exempting Christianity. But when we point out that this is not the case, he changes the subject.
He now takes exception to the fact that we do allow for the possibility of supernatural factors in other cults or religions, because he takes issue with the type of supernaturalism we invoke. But that’s a different issue entirely.
ii) He then asks how that’s an objective standard? But that’s a question, not an argument. We might as well ask how that’s not an objective standard. How does he define “objective,” anyway? By recourse to methodological naturalism, per chance?
iii) Is it because he denies the existence of demons? But he can’t very well stipulate that recourse to demonic agency is not an objective standard. For that he needs to furnish an argument.
iv) Moreover, other religions and cults frequently acknowledge the existence of demons, so they make that standard available to “outsiders.”
“Demons are everywhere. Hays and Engwer can even demonize their opponents, even most other Christians. Such a view is scary to me for certainly they think I am possessed of demons. Yeah, that solves everything when you cannot answer a man’s arguments. Demonize him. Demonize them all.”
i) Once again, Loftus opens a window into his persecution complex.
ii) There is also the blatant equivocation, as he shifts from literal demonization to figurative demonization. Is Loftus so caught up in his persecution complex that he can’t tell the difference any more?
“This is such a barbaric view to me. Nonetheless, my OTF eliminates this as any kind of objective standard for evaluating other viewpoints.”
The OTF can’t eliminate the demonic explanation, for the demonic explanation is a substantive claim. That’s hardly something which Loftus can simply presume is out of bounds. If he’s going to reject that category, then he needs to present a real argument. His viewpoint is not the baseline for my viewpoint. That’s not something he can impose on me as a given.
“Muslims claim the same exact thing. They say the reason Christians believe is because demons are deceiving them. Where does that get anyone? I’ll tell you where—nowhere as in NO WHERE.”
i) Once again, see how Loftus is changing the subject. His originally accused Christians of applying methodological naturalism to other religions, while exempting their own. The way to refute that allegation is to point out that Christians do not. It’s that simple. At best, he overstated his case. So that’s sufficient to rebut the allegation.
i) Notice how he’s now reversing himself. He initially faulted Christians for applying methodological naturalism on other religions, to the exclusion of their own. When, however, that is challenged, he turns around and faults us for failing to apply methodological naturalism on other religions.
So he’s trying to play both sides of the fence. But that runs the risk of impaling himself on a picket fence. It isn’t pretty.
ii) There is also the elementary difference between making a claim, and making good on a claim.
iii) He also acts as if Islam and Christianity are symmetrical. Yet that’s obviously not the case. For instance, Muhammad treated the Bible as the standard of comparison. He invited doubters to ask Christians and Jews to vouch for his prophetic credentials. But that’s hardly reversible. It’s not as if Bible writers ever invited Mohammedans to judge the Bible by the Koran.
“Hays also claims Christians don‘t necessarily assume human rather than divine authors. A Christian apologist, he claims ‘will demonstrate that fact.’ Right. First he assumes something and then thinks he has demonstrated his assumption as a fact. He does not approach the texts in the Bible in the same way.”
i) Notice the implicit bias in the OTF. Logically, you’d only treat all religious texts equally if, in fact, all religious texts are coequal. For instance, it would make sense to treat all religious texts equally if all religious texts are equally false.
Yet that’s hardly an equitable operating assumption. Rather, that’s a very biased assumption. Yes, it treats them all the same, but under the assumption that all of them are wrong. And that bias is clearly unilateral. It’s not as if an atheist assumes the falsity of his own views.
It would only make sense to treat the Bible the same way if the Bible is the same. And how could Loftus know that? That’s not something he could know at the outset of his investigations. So he can’t very well lay down a ground rule which anticipates his conclusion.
ii) The unspoken assumption governing Loftus’ objection is that a Christian can’t know the Bible is true. Hence, a Christian can’t use the Bible as a yardstick to measure other religious texts. He can’t take the Bible as a given, going into his evaluation of other religious texts.
Yet that assumption can’t function as a methodological assumption, for that prejudges the status of the Bible. It’s illicit for mere methodology to make these substantive judgments.
“Others who do so conclude it’s a fact that the Bible was written by human rather than divine authors, like I do.”
That’s obviously false. You have people who come to the Bible without any prior investment in the Bible. Indeed, some of them were hostile to the Bible. Yet as they study the Bible they come to faith.
“The reason you have it is because you were brought up in a Christian culture and adopted what your culture led you to believe, probably starting with your parents.”
This illustrates another weakness of the OTF. It postulates a one-size-fits-all biography for religious adherents, as if we all have the same background. Needless to say, that has no basis in fact. It’s something that Loftus posits, not because it is true, but because he needs it to be true.
“Hays also opines: ‘Moreover, if you have good reason to believe that your own position is correct, then, by definition, a contrary position is wrong. Everybody does that.’ Yep. They do. But this is typical of what believers do. They assume they are correct; then they find arguments that lead them to think they are correct; then they beg the question by claiming all others are wrong.”
i) Compare his paraphrase of what I said with what he quoting me as saying.
I said: “if you have good reason to believe that your own position is correct, then, by definition, a contrary position is wrong.”
He said: “But this is typical of what believers do. They assume they are correct; then they find arguments that lead them to think they are correct. That’s a great method for knowing the truth about religious faith, isn’t it?”
But that’s clearly not equivalent to what I said. Did I say we begin by assuming that we’re correct, then find supporting arguments?
No. I said, “If you have a good reason to believe that your own position is correct…”
But since he brings up the issue, what is typical of unbelievers?
Take the average apostate. They publish deconversion testimonies in which they tell us how they lost their faith. They state the initial factors which caused them to lose their faith.
Having decided that Christianity was false, they then bone up on all of the stock arguments against the faith. But, of course, most of the reasons they now give to justify their apostasy were not the precipitating factors. Rather, this is an ex post facto attempt to vindicate their apostasy.
We see this pattern in Loftus himself. His lost his faith, mainly because he felt betrayed by God and mistreated by his church after his fling with the stripper. And ever since then he’s been ransacking the literature for additional reasons to justify his defection from the faith.
ii) Moreover, there’s nothing inherently suspect about looking for other, supporting arguments for something we initial believe apart from the supplementary reasons. For instance, I may have an experience which gives me good reason to believe something. Over and above my personal experience, there may be other lines of evidence which corroborate my experience.
Suppose I remember seeing a lunar eclipse. Suppose I confirm my experience by reading a newspaper account of that event. Is there something wrong with my methodology? No.
“Such a method leads people of different faiths to conclude what they do. They are doing the exact same thing Hays does but it leads them to reject his faith.”
Except that he’s not describing my methodology. He swapped in a deliberate caricature of what I said.
“Every believer claims to have some kind of self-authenticating religious experience. How does the Scientologist know his faith is true? Because he’s experienced its truth. The question is how can we test whether or not our religious experiences are true? I've written about this before.”
i) To begin with, that’s clearly false. To take just one example, Al Ghazali suffered a crisis of faith because he didn’t have a religious experience, much less a self-authenticating religious experience. That’s why he turned to mysticism.
ii) Loftus doesn’t believe the Scientologist has experienced its truth. For he doesn’t believe that Scientology is true. And if it isn’t true, you can’t experience the truth of Scientology.
iii) We all have private experiences which may be sufficient to justify our belief in something. I remember a dream I had last night. Am I not justified in believing that I had a dream?
Now, what’s adequate for my justification may be inadequate for your justification. My firsthand experience isn’t your firsthand experience. If you didn’t have the same experience, then you might not be justified in believing it. The argument from experience isn’t meant to be convincing to a second party. It doesn’t have to be. That’s irrelevant. What I’m justified in believing, and what you’re justified in believing, are separate issues.
That’s why, in Christian apologetics, we also turn to public lines of evidence. But the fact that an argument from religious experience may have no traction if you lack the requisite experience hardly means it can be discounted for those who do have that experience.
iv) At the same time, it also depends on the credibility of the witness. All of us rely on secondhand information.
v) If somebody falsely claims to have a self-authenticating experience, then that somebody knows he didn’t have the experience in question. He may not admit it, but so what? Short of torture, you can’t force anyone to admit they were wrong. That limitation isn’t distinctive to the argument from experience.
vi) Not all veridical experiences are testable. Is my recollection of a dream testable? No. So what?
“Manata (along with James Anderson) makes a very strange delusional move at this point. They ask why it must be the case that just because the odds are highly likely that any particular religion is false this means that their particular religion is false.”
That’s a silly way of casting the issue. Let’s take a comparison. For every correct answer to a math question, there exist an infinite number of wrong answers. Should we therefore be agnostic about the right answer? No. The raw odds are irrelevant to whether or not we can know the answer.
There’s an obvious difference between saying there’s a one in a thousand chance that something is right, and saying there’s a one in a thousand chance of knowing which one is right. Loftus confuses the two. If there’s a one in a thousand chance that Gustav has a rare blood disease, this doesn’t mean there is only a one in a thousand chance that his doctor can correctly diagnose the disease. There could be a test that’s 99% accurate.
“So, the OTF is NOT about worldviews. It's not asking that a person gives up everything he or she believes. It only concerns religious faiths. Worldviews are larger than religious faiths. Believer can abandon their religious faith like I have without it affecting that much of anything else they accept from their culture for the most part, although it can affect quite a bit. So I'm not asking believers to questing everything they believe about everything, you see. That is impossible. So the major obstacle to the OTF is that believers think I'm asking them to question everything they think about everything at the same time.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-paul-manata-on-otf-part-2.
i) But, of course, this reinforces the implicit bias in the OTF. For we evaluate religious claimants in light of our worldview. You have to plug concrete criteria into the OTF, which derive from your worldview.
So, before you take the OTF, you have to take the OTB. And that's a tall order. He has to settle on the right worldview before he can take the OTF.
Yet the insider/outsider rubric applies with equal force to worldviews. So what's the frame of reference?
ii) Loftus is also assuming that one's religious views are detachable from one's worldview. But what if one's religious views undergird one's worldview?
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-steve-hays-and-jason-engwer-on.html
Needless to say, the goal of TCD is clearly to knock down the Christian faith. His chapter on the OTF plays a strategic role in his effort to achieve that goal. You can tell how Loftus interprets his own “test” by how he applies it.
“The goal is to come up with a mutually reliable test that could help us know which religious faith is objectively true, if there is one.”
No, the goal is to reduce Christianity to a mere hypothesis.
“The test is a reasonable fair and objective one to judge religious faiths.”
Of course, we’d expect Loftus to say that about his own methods, now wouldn’t we? But he’s not exactly an impartial judge or umpire.
“The whole reason Hays and company object to it is because they know their faith will not pass this test.”
I object to it on two grounds:
i) Loftus applies the Outsider Test selectively and lopsidedly. He only applies it to religion, not irreligion. And even then, his real target is conservative Evangelicalism.
ii) The underlying assumption of the OTF is that no Christian could really know if Christianity is true. Therefore, he should suspend judgment at the outset.
But, of course, that begs the question. Loftus has smuggled his atheism into the OTF. For the unspoken presupposition of the OTF is that no Christian could actually know if Christianity is true. Hence, no Christian can operate from that presumption. No Christian can take that as a given.
But the OTF is not entitled to make that stipulation. That’s something Loftus would have to argue. And if it’s something he has to argue, then the OTF is superfluous.
That’s hardly a standard we apply in all other fields of knowledge. We don’t say that no one can know, going into his examination of rival positions, that his own position is true. We don’t say that a philosopher who examines a brain-in-vat hypothetical must suspend his belief in the external world.
“So cognitive dissonance requires them to argue for their double standard way of judging between religious faiths, one for their faith and a different one for others—-and surprise, with such a double standard their particular brand of Christian faith is judged to be the correct one!”
i) Loftus is simply imputing cognitive dissonance to his Christian opponents. He’s in no position to know that. And he hasn’t shown that we operate with a double standard.
ii) Moreover, to fault us for judging that our “particular brand of Christian faith is the correct one” is absurd on the face of it. Everyone reasons from his own viewpoint. Everyone takes his own viewpoint as the standard of comparison. Loftus is no exception.
“Hays begins his criticism of the OTF by claiming it is arbitrarily selective because it targets religious faiths. Why not propose an Outsider Test for Beliefs (OTB), he suggests. Since he read my chapter he already knows I do just that. There is an OTB that is larger and more encompassing than the limited OTF. The OTF is therefore a subset of the OTB.”
That’s just a throwaway line to create the specious appearance that Loftus is even-handed. But in actual practice he does no such thing. So Loftus is the one who’s guilty of the double standard. And what is worse, he’s guilty of a double standard in selectively applying his own standard, whereas that was never my standard.
“The outsider is a skeptic in varying degrees.”
No, the outsider is only a skeptic in relation to opposing positions, not his own.
“Skepticism is a virtue if the alternative is being gullible, okay?”
i) Notice the hidden assumption. He could only apply the OTF to Christianity if Christian faith is gullible. But the OTF can’t assume that from the outset. For that would be prejudicial. The OTF can’t specify which beliefs are gullible and which are not. For that, Loftus would need a separate argument–in which case the OTF is superfluous.
ii) No one can be skeptical about everything. We can’t reserve judgment about everything. For skepticism must measure some things by other things.
“The amount of skepticism warranted depends not only on the number of rational people who disagree…”
And Loftus predefines “rational people” as atheists.
“But also whether the people who disagree are separated into distinct geographical locations, the nature of their beliefs, how their beliefs originated, under what circumstances their beliefs were personally adopted in the first place, and the kinds of evidence that can possibly be used to decide between the differing beliefs. My claim is that when it comes to religious faiths, a high degree of skepticism is warranted precisely because of these factors.”
i) Whether or not that’s warranted is irrelevant to the OTF. For his scepticism would only be warranted if he can make a specific, compelling case that geographical distribution, how their beliefs originate, under what circumstances, and the kinds of evidence, undermine religious faith. The OTF can’t predecide that issue. Each of these is a specific objection, calling for a separate argument.
ii) And if, moreover, he were serious about how the OTF is a subset of the OTB, then he’d first need to justify all the non-religious beliefs by which he measures the religious beliefs.
“Hays thinks everyone is an insider to some viewpoint and therefore evaluates his or her own viewpoint as insiders while rejecting all other viewpoints from the outsider’s perspective. I see no reason why he wouldn’t say this is true about Muslims or Orthodox Jews either, or any other viewpoint, like Scientologists or Satanists. We’re all insiders, he would say. And we reject all other viewpoints as outsiders. As such, he claims the OTF is really a test applied to other viewpoints from one’s own insider perspective. Consequently the OTF is really an Insider Test by Infidels. So, does Hays think all of our viewpoints are incommensurable?—that we each live in an intellectual box and there can be no meeting of the minds, or changing of perspectives? Does he think we are locked inside our own boxes?—that we each see things differently and there is nothing that can test between our different perspectives?”
Remember that I don’t accept the OTF. I’m merely judging the OTF on its own terms. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the OTF is sound, then that principle is universalizable. Indeed, Loftus himself says, albeit disingenuously, that the OTF is a subset of the OTB.
So I’m simply taking the OTF and applying it consistently. But that doesn’t generate a dilemma for my own position. If that’s a problem, then that’s a problem for Loftus, not me, since the OTF is his concoction, not mine.
If Loftus is going to deploy the insider/outsider rubric, then no one is exempt. Everybody is an insider in reference to his own position, to his own viewpoint. If that generates a self-defeating conundrum, then Loftus is trapped in a conundrum of his own devising. I’m just taking his principle to its logical extreme. If that has self-stultifying consequences, then so much the worse for his principle.
“He argues daily on his blog as if this is not the case. He argues as if he can convince people otherwise. But this is not the conclusion to what he just wrote if all we have to judge different perspectives is from the inside.”
i) I don’t have any general expectation about who will be convinced. That’s up to God.
ii) And I’m not absolutizing every individual perspective.
“So how does Hays propose we objectively test our own perspectives? What is his alternative to the OTB/OTF? I see no better one suggested by him or anyone.”
i) The OTB/OTF isn’t a real test. It’s an intellectual shortcut.
ii) You need some reliable criteria to evaluate different positions. The OTB/OTF can’t select for the criteria, since the OTB/OTF depends on certain criteria to get off the ground.
iii) And you can’t begin with formal criteria, for that would degenerate into an infinite regress or a vicious regress.
You have to begin with tacit knowledge. Due to natural revelation and common grace, God conserves a certain amount of tacit knowledge, which can function as a pretheoretical criterion. And that, in turn, can function in conjunction with formal criteria.
In the revelation of Scripture, God confirms our tacit knowledge. God grounds our tacit knowledge. And God reveals other criteria.
“Of course, the question is why anyone in our modern society should desire the viewpoint of ancient superstitious barbaric Biblical people anyway, which is extremely strange to me, and says nothing against a Muslim who wishes to adopt the writings of the Koran.”
i) Which perfectly illustrates the fact that Loftus doesn’t take the OTB seriously. To say the viewpoint of Bible writers is “barbaric” and “superstitious” doesn’t reflect an “agnostic” view of Scripture. It’s not as if Loftus is withholding judgment. No, he judges Scripture by his own culturally provincial outlook. Secular parochialism.
ii) I don’t judge the Koran by methodological naturalism. So that counterexample fails to make a dent in my own position.
“Nonetheless, this method has been defended very well and I see no reason to abandon it when no other alternative is suggested by him.”
Note the bait-and-switch. He starts out by claiming that we should be “agnostic.” But, of course, methodological naturalism is not “agnostic.”
If only makes sense to use a naturalistic methodology if you think the world operates naturalistically. And that’s not something you can know in advance of the fact. At best, that’s only something you can discover by observation and experience. Even then, induction is descriptive, not prescriptive.
“Methodological naturalism” is just a euphemism for “methodological atheism.” But that’s hardly impartial or noncommittal. Rather, that’s presumptive. What is more, that begs the question of what the world is really like. After all, this is the very issue in dispute.
“Of course it does, that’s why agnosticism is the default position. Saying ‘I don’t know what to affirm’ is a reasonable thing to do when there seems to be no clear decisive way to decide between all of the various religious and non-religious perspectives. We seem to live in what John Hick describes as a religious ambiguous universe capable of being rationally interpreted by a number of different religious and non-religious perspectives. Why is that? And how cocksure can one be in such a universe about affirming the answers to why we exist?”
i) See how Loftus is tipping his hand. “Agnosticism” is not a neutral position. To say there’s no way of knowing is hardly neutral position. Rather, that’s a specific claim, to the exclusion of contrary claims. That represents a conclusion. So that’s not something we can presuppose at the outset.
ii) And, of course, it goes beyond that. It’s not as if Loftus is reserving judgment.
“Hays (and later Jason Engwer) takes issue with my saying they evaluate other religious faiths using just David Hume‘s evidentiary standards along with a methodological naturalist viewpoint. Any reading of Christian literature on the so-called ‘cults’ will show this statistically. They claim to evaluate these other religious faiths and miracles as if they are demon produced. Really? How is that anything by way of an objective standard? Yep, demons can account for these other faiths and their miracles.”
i) Notice the bait-and-switch. He initially accused Christians of applying methodological naturalism to other religions, while exempting Christianity. But when we point out that this is not the case, he changes the subject.
He now takes exception to the fact that we do allow for the possibility of supernatural factors in other cults or religions, because he takes issue with the type of supernaturalism we invoke. But that’s a different issue entirely.
ii) He then asks how that’s an objective standard? But that’s a question, not an argument. We might as well ask how that’s not an objective standard. How does he define “objective,” anyway? By recourse to methodological naturalism, per chance?
iii) Is it because he denies the existence of demons? But he can’t very well stipulate that recourse to demonic agency is not an objective standard. For that he needs to furnish an argument.
iv) Moreover, other religions and cults frequently acknowledge the existence of demons, so they make that standard available to “outsiders.”
“Demons are everywhere. Hays and Engwer can even demonize their opponents, even most other Christians. Such a view is scary to me for certainly they think I am possessed of demons. Yeah, that solves everything when you cannot answer a man’s arguments. Demonize him. Demonize them all.”
i) Once again, Loftus opens a window into his persecution complex.
ii) There is also the blatant equivocation, as he shifts from literal demonization to figurative demonization. Is Loftus so caught up in his persecution complex that he can’t tell the difference any more?
“This is such a barbaric view to me. Nonetheless, my OTF eliminates this as any kind of objective standard for evaluating other viewpoints.”
The OTF can’t eliminate the demonic explanation, for the demonic explanation is a substantive claim. That’s hardly something which Loftus can simply presume is out of bounds. If he’s going to reject that category, then he needs to present a real argument. His viewpoint is not the baseline for my viewpoint. That’s not something he can impose on me as a given.
“Muslims claim the same exact thing. They say the reason Christians believe is because demons are deceiving them. Where does that get anyone? I’ll tell you where—nowhere as in NO WHERE.”
i) Once again, see how Loftus is changing the subject. His originally accused Christians of applying methodological naturalism to other religions, while exempting their own. The way to refute that allegation is to point out that Christians do not. It’s that simple. At best, he overstated his case. So that’s sufficient to rebut the allegation.
i) Notice how he’s now reversing himself. He initially faulted Christians for applying methodological naturalism on other religions, to the exclusion of their own. When, however, that is challenged, he turns around and faults us for failing to apply methodological naturalism on other religions.
So he’s trying to play both sides of the fence. But that runs the risk of impaling himself on a picket fence. It isn’t pretty.
ii) There is also the elementary difference between making a claim, and making good on a claim.
iii) He also acts as if Islam and Christianity are symmetrical. Yet that’s obviously not the case. For instance, Muhammad treated the Bible as the standard of comparison. He invited doubters to ask Christians and Jews to vouch for his prophetic credentials. But that’s hardly reversible. It’s not as if Bible writers ever invited Mohammedans to judge the Bible by the Koran.
“Hays also claims Christians don‘t necessarily assume human rather than divine authors. A Christian apologist, he claims ‘will demonstrate that fact.’ Right. First he assumes something and then thinks he has demonstrated his assumption as a fact. He does not approach the texts in the Bible in the same way.”
i) Notice the implicit bias in the OTF. Logically, you’d only treat all religious texts equally if, in fact, all religious texts are coequal. For instance, it would make sense to treat all religious texts equally if all religious texts are equally false.
Yet that’s hardly an equitable operating assumption. Rather, that’s a very biased assumption. Yes, it treats them all the same, but under the assumption that all of them are wrong. And that bias is clearly unilateral. It’s not as if an atheist assumes the falsity of his own views.
It would only make sense to treat the Bible the same way if the Bible is the same. And how could Loftus know that? That’s not something he could know at the outset of his investigations. So he can’t very well lay down a ground rule which anticipates his conclusion.
ii) The unspoken assumption governing Loftus’ objection is that a Christian can’t know the Bible is true. Hence, a Christian can’t use the Bible as a yardstick to measure other religious texts. He can’t take the Bible as a given, going into his evaluation of other religious texts.
Yet that assumption can’t function as a methodological assumption, for that prejudges the status of the Bible. It’s illicit for mere methodology to make these substantive judgments.
“Others who do so conclude it’s a fact that the Bible was written by human rather than divine authors, like I do.”
That’s obviously false. You have people who come to the Bible without any prior investment in the Bible. Indeed, some of them were hostile to the Bible. Yet as they study the Bible they come to faith.
“The reason you have it is because you were brought up in a Christian culture and adopted what your culture led you to believe, probably starting with your parents.”
This illustrates another weakness of the OTF. It postulates a one-size-fits-all biography for religious adherents, as if we all have the same background. Needless to say, that has no basis in fact. It’s something that Loftus posits, not because it is true, but because he needs it to be true.
“Hays also opines: ‘Moreover, if you have good reason to believe that your own position is correct, then, by definition, a contrary position is wrong. Everybody does that.’ Yep. They do. But this is typical of what believers do. They assume they are correct; then they find arguments that lead them to think they are correct; then they beg the question by claiming all others are wrong.”
i) Compare his paraphrase of what I said with what he quoting me as saying.
I said: “if you have good reason to believe that your own position is correct, then, by definition, a contrary position is wrong.”
He said: “But this is typical of what believers do. They assume they are correct; then they find arguments that lead them to think they are correct. That’s a great method for knowing the truth about religious faith, isn’t it?”
But that’s clearly not equivalent to what I said. Did I say we begin by assuming that we’re correct, then find supporting arguments?
No. I said, “If you have a good reason to believe that your own position is correct…”
But since he brings up the issue, what is typical of unbelievers?
Take the average apostate. They publish deconversion testimonies in which they tell us how they lost their faith. They state the initial factors which caused them to lose their faith.
Having decided that Christianity was false, they then bone up on all of the stock arguments against the faith. But, of course, most of the reasons they now give to justify their apostasy were not the precipitating factors. Rather, this is an ex post facto attempt to vindicate their apostasy.
We see this pattern in Loftus himself. His lost his faith, mainly because he felt betrayed by God and mistreated by his church after his fling with the stripper. And ever since then he’s been ransacking the literature for additional reasons to justify his defection from the faith.
ii) Moreover, there’s nothing inherently suspect about looking for other, supporting arguments for something we initial believe apart from the supplementary reasons. For instance, I may have an experience which gives me good reason to believe something. Over and above my personal experience, there may be other lines of evidence which corroborate my experience.
Suppose I remember seeing a lunar eclipse. Suppose I confirm my experience by reading a newspaper account of that event. Is there something wrong with my methodology? No.
“Such a method leads people of different faiths to conclude what they do. They are doing the exact same thing Hays does but it leads them to reject his faith.”
Except that he’s not describing my methodology. He swapped in a deliberate caricature of what I said.
“Every believer claims to have some kind of self-authenticating religious experience. How does the Scientologist know his faith is true? Because he’s experienced its truth. The question is how can we test whether or not our religious experiences are true? I've written about this before.”
i) To begin with, that’s clearly false. To take just one example, Al Ghazali suffered a crisis of faith because he didn’t have a religious experience, much less a self-authenticating religious experience. That’s why he turned to mysticism.
ii) Loftus doesn’t believe the Scientologist has experienced its truth. For he doesn’t believe that Scientology is true. And if it isn’t true, you can’t experience the truth of Scientology.
iii) We all have private experiences which may be sufficient to justify our belief in something. I remember a dream I had last night. Am I not justified in believing that I had a dream?
Now, what’s adequate for my justification may be inadequate for your justification. My firsthand experience isn’t your firsthand experience. If you didn’t have the same experience, then you might not be justified in believing it. The argument from experience isn’t meant to be convincing to a second party. It doesn’t have to be. That’s irrelevant. What I’m justified in believing, and what you’re justified in believing, are separate issues.
That’s why, in Christian apologetics, we also turn to public lines of evidence. But the fact that an argument from religious experience may have no traction if you lack the requisite experience hardly means it can be discounted for those who do have that experience.
iv) At the same time, it also depends on the credibility of the witness. All of us rely on secondhand information.
v) If somebody falsely claims to have a self-authenticating experience, then that somebody knows he didn’t have the experience in question. He may not admit it, but so what? Short of torture, you can’t force anyone to admit they were wrong. That limitation isn’t distinctive to the argument from experience.
vi) Not all veridical experiences are testable. Is my recollection of a dream testable? No. So what?
“Manata (along with James Anderson) makes a very strange delusional move at this point. They ask why it must be the case that just because the odds are highly likely that any particular religion is false this means that their particular religion is false.”
That’s a silly way of casting the issue. Let’s take a comparison. For every correct answer to a math question, there exist an infinite number of wrong answers. Should we therefore be agnostic about the right answer? No. The raw odds are irrelevant to whether or not we can know the answer.
There’s an obvious difference between saying there’s a one in a thousand chance that something is right, and saying there’s a one in a thousand chance of knowing which one is right. Loftus confuses the two. If there’s a one in a thousand chance that Gustav has a rare blood disease, this doesn’t mean there is only a one in a thousand chance that his doctor can correctly diagnose the disease. There could be a test that’s 99% accurate.
“So, the OTF is NOT about worldviews. It's not asking that a person gives up everything he or she believes. It only concerns religious faiths. Worldviews are larger than religious faiths. Believer can abandon their religious faith like I have without it affecting that much of anything else they accept from their culture for the most part, although it can affect quite a bit. So I'm not asking believers to questing everything they believe about everything, you see. That is impossible. So the major obstacle to the OTF is that believers think I'm asking them to question everything they think about everything at the same time.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/07/contra-paul-manata-on-otf-part-2.
i) But, of course, this reinforces the implicit bias in the OTF. For we evaluate religious claimants in light of our worldview. You have to plug concrete criteria into the OTF, which derive from your worldview.
So, before you take the OTF, you have to take the OTB. And that's a tall order. He has to settle on the right worldview before he can take the OTF.
Yet the insider/outsider rubric applies with equal force to worldviews. So what's the frame of reference?
ii) Loftus is also assuming that one's religious views are detachable from one's worldview. But what if one's religious views undergird one's worldview?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Allah knows best
Catholic apologists regard evangelical ethics as hopelessly defective because it fails to give the kind of detailed guidance that Catholic casuistry and Catholic moral theology allegedly offers. Sola Scriptura leaves too many questions unanswered.
There are different ways of assessing this objection. One way of judging whether or not evangelical ethics is deficient in that respect is to compare it with another religious tradition which is nothing if not generous in dishing out “authoritative” advice on just about every conceivable contingency, then contrast that with the providential freedom we enjoy in matters where Scripture is silent.
It is permissible to sleep on one’s left side
The Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to sleep on his right side, putting his right hand on his right cheek, and this is what the Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) recommended others to do.
This indicates that sleeping on one’s right side is Sunnah, and if a person does that to follow the example of the Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), he will be rewarded for that. Sleeping on one’s left side is permitted, but one misses out on the reward for following the Sunnah. And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/14033
The reason why it is forbidden to sleep on one’s belly
The reason for this is that it was forbidden by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), who left no good thing but he told us about it and left no evil thing but he warned us against it. Ya’eesh ibn Tihfah al-Ghifaari reported that his father said: “I stayed as a guest with the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) with those of the poor whom he hosted. The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came out in the night to check up on his guests, and saw me lying on my stomach. He prodded me with his foot and said, ‘Do not lie in this manner, for it is a way of lying that Allaah hates.’” According to another report, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) prodded him with his foot and woke him up, and said, “Do not lie like this, for this is how the people of Hell lie.” (Reported by Ahmad, al-Fath al-Rabbaani, 14/244-245; by al-Tirmidhi, no. 2798, Shaakir edn.; and by Abu Dawood, al-Sunan, Kitaab al-Adab, no. 5040, al-Da’aas edn. Also reported in Saheeh al-Jaami’, 2270-2271)
This is a general prohibition that applies to both males and females, because the basic principle is that rulings apply to both sexes, except in cases where it is indicated that there is a differentiation between the two. And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/827
Is there any prohibition on sleeping without clothes on, even if one is with one’s wife?
The ‘awrah must be covered in all circumstances except when necessary, such as when bathing, having intercourse, relieving oneself, etc. But when there is no reason, the ‘awrah must be covered, because of the report narrated by Bahz ibn Hakeem from his father, from his grandfather, who said: “O Messenger of Allaah, what should we do about our ‘awrahs?” He said, “Guard you ‘awrah except from your wives and those whom your right hand possesses (concubines).”
Based on the above, it is not permissible for you to sleep with no clothes on that would cover your ‘awrah, whether you are sleeping with or without your wife. Rather it is permissible for you to uncover your ‘awrah only at times of necessity. And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/21388
KEEPING DOGS WITHOUT NECESSITY
Keeping dogs inside the house without any necessity merely as pets was forbidden by the Prophet (saws)... It is nothing other than a revelation sent down. (53:3-4).
http://www.worldofislam.netfirms.com/dogs.html
Etiquette of sneezing
If a person sneezes whilst he is praying, it is prescribed for him to say al-hamdu Lillaah, may He be glorified, whether the prayer is obligatory or naafil. This is the view of the majority of scholars among the Sahaabah and Taabi’een, and it was also the view of Imam Maalik, al-Shaafa’i and Ahmad, but they differed as to whether he should say it silently or out loud. The correct view and the view of Imam Ahmad is that he should say it out loud, but only loud enough that he can hear himself, lest he distract other worshippers. That is indicated by the general meaning of the report narrated by Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him), that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “If one of you sneezes, let him say ‘Al-hamdu Lillaah’…” The hadeeth was narrated by al-Bukhaari. That is also supported by the report narrated by Rifaa’ah ibn Raafi’ (may Allaah be pleased with him) who said: I prayed behind the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and I sneezed and said: Praise be to Allaah, much good and blessed praise, as our Lord loves and is pleased with. When the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) had finished praying he said: “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and no one said anything. Then he said it a second time, “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and no one said anything. Then he said it a third time, “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and Rifaa’ah ibn Raafi’ said: It was me, O Messenger of Allaah. He said: “What did you say?” He said: I said: Praise be to Allaah, much good and blessed praise, as our Lord loves and is pleased with. The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “By the One in Whose hand is my soul, thirty-odd angels competed to see which of them would take it up.” Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawood and al-Nasaa’i. Al-Tirmidhi said: a hasan hadeeth. Al-Haafiz narrated in al-Tahdheeb from al-Tirmidhi that it is saheeh. It was also narrated by al-Bukhaari in his Saheeh but he did not mention that he said that after sneezing, rather he said it after rising from bowing. It may be that he sneezed whilst rising from bowing and he said that because he sneezed, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) approved of that and did not rebuke him for it.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/106435
Is it Sunnah to shake hands with only the right hands?
Most of the scholars are of the view that shaking hands with one hand is the Sunnah, and this is the usual custom among the Muslims and the Sahaabah (may Allaah be pleased with them)...As for the view of some Hanafi and Maaliki fuqaha’, that it is mustahabb to shake hands using both hands, putting the palm of the left hand over the back of one’s brother’s hand, this is not proven to be Sunnah from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) or from his companions. Rather the most that can be said concerning some ahaadeeth that refer to it is that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) took the hand of one of his companions in both of his hands as a sign of extra care in teaching, guiding and so on, as it says in Saheeh al-Bukhaari (6265) and Saheeh Muslim (402) that Ibn Mas’ood (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) taught me the tashahhud, holding my hand between both of his.
And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/92806
If a child is the illegitimate offspring of two kaafirs, can he be named after the zaani?
In Islam the scholars are unanimously agreed that the illegitimate child should not be named after the zaani if the zaani does not ask for him to be named after him. Rather the majority of scholars said that he should not be named after him even if the zaani wants that...Islam forbids attributing the child to anyone other than his father...The illegitimate child – whether he is born to Muslim or non-Muslim parents – cannot be attributed to the zaani, rather he must be named after his mother.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/101112
Is it permissible for a woman to travel in an elevator alone with a non-mahram man?
It is not permissible for a woman to travel in an elevator on her own with a non-mahram man. If there is one or more other women with her, then there is nothing wrong with her travelling on the elevator in that case, because then she is not alone with the man.
If there are both men and women with her, there is nothing wrong with her travelling on it if the elevator is spacious, and she will not be forced to touch or rub against the men. But in this case it is safer for the Muslim woman to walk up the stairs, and seek reward with Allaah for the difficulty that she encounters by doing that, because she is only doing that so as to avoid that which Allaah has forbidden and to avoid fitnah and its causes.
And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/71237
Sitting beside women on public transport because one is forced to
If a person has no choice but to use public transit and he cannot change his place or change vehicles, and he cannot stand because that is even more crowded and brings even more contact with women, then there is no sin on him in that case if he sits next to a woman, so long as he keeps away from her as much as possible.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/70427
Prohibition on shaking hands with paternal uncle’s wife even if she is old
It is not permissible to shake hands with non-mahram women at all, whether they are young or old, and whether the man who is shaking hands is a young man or an old man, because of the danger of fitnah (temptation) that it poses to both parties. It was narrated in a saheeh hadeeth that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “I do not shake hands with women.” And ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) said: “The hand of the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) never touched the hand of any woman, and he used to accept their oath of allegiance by words only.”
It makes no difference whether one shakes hands with a barrier in between or with no barrier, because of the general meaning of the evidence, and so as to block the ways that may lead to fitnah.
And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/30791
Should one return salaams to a parrot?
Some of the scholars have stated that it is not prescribed to prostrate if one hears a verse from a parrot or from a recorded tape.
And Allah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/140497/parrot
There are different ways of assessing this objection. One way of judging whether or not evangelical ethics is deficient in that respect is to compare it with another religious tradition which is nothing if not generous in dishing out “authoritative” advice on just about every conceivable contingency, then contrast that with the providential freedom we enjoy in matters where Scripture is silent.
It is permissible to sleep on one’s left side
The Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to sleep on his right side, putting his right hand on his right cheek, and this is what the Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) recommended others to do.
This indicates that sleeping on one’s right side is Sunnah, and if a person does that to follow the example of the Prophet SAWS (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), he will be rewarded for that. Sleeping on one’s left side is permitted, but one misses out on the reward for following the Sunnah. And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/14033
The reason why it is forbidden to sleep on one’s belly
The reason for this is that it was forbidden by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), who left no good thing but he told us about it and left no evil thing but he warned us against it. Ya’eesh ibn Tihfah al-Ghifaari reported that his father said: “I stayed as a guest with the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) with those of the poor whom he hosted. The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came out in the night to check up on his guests, and saw me lying on my stomach. He prodded me with his foot and said, ‘Do not lie in this manner, for it is a way of lying that Allaah hates.’” According to another report, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) prodded him with his foot and woke him up, and said, “Do not lie like this, for this is how the people of Hell lie.” (Reported by Ahmad, al-Fath al-Rabbaani, 14/244-245; by al-Tirmidhi, no. 2798, Shaakir edn.; and by Abu Dawood, al-Sunan, Kitaab al-Adab, no. 5040, al-Da’aas edn. Also reported in Saheeh al-Jaami’, 2270-2271)
This is a general prohibition that applies to both males and females, because the basic principle is that rulings apply to both sexes, except in cases where it is indicated that there is a differentiation between the two. And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/827
Is there any prohibition on sleeping without clothes on, even if one is with one’s wife?
The ‘awrah must be covered in all circumstances except when necessary, such as when bathing, having intercourse, relieving oneself, etc. But when there is no reason, the ‘awrah must be covered, because of the report narrated by Bahz ibn Hakeem from his father, from his grandfather, who said: “O Messenger of Allaah, what should we do about our ‘awrahs?” He said, “Guard you ‘awrah except from your wives and those whom your right hand possesses (concubines).”
Based on the above, it is not permissible for you to sleep with no clothes on that would cover your ‘awrah, whether you are sleeping with or without your wife. Rather it is permissible for you to uncover your ‘awrah only at times of necessity. And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/21388
KEEPING DOGS WITHOUT NECESSITY
Keeping dogs inside the house without any necessity merely as pets was forbidden by the Prophet (saws)... It is nothing other than a revelation sent down. (53:3-4).
http://www.worldofislam.netfirms.com/dogs.html
Etiquette of sneezing
If a person sneezes whilst he is praying, it is prescribed for him to say al-hamdu Lillaah, may He be glorified, whether the prayer is obligatory or naafil. This is the view of the majority of scholars among the Sahaabah and Taabi’een, and it was also the view of Imam Maalik, al-Shaafa’i and Ahmad, but they differed as to whether he should say it silently or out loud. The correct view and the view of Imam Ahmad is that he should say it out loud, but only loud enough that he can hear himself, lest he distract other worshippers. That is indicated by the general meaning of the report narrated by Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him), that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “If one of you sneezes, let him say ‘Al-hamdu Lillaah’…” The hadeeth was narrated by al-Bukhaari. That is also supported by the report narrated by Rifaa’ah ibn Raafi’ (may Allaah be pleased with him) who said: I prayed behind the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and I sneezed and said: Praise be to Allaah, much good and blessed praise, as our Lord loves and is pleased with. When the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) had finished praying he said: “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and no one said anything. Then he said it a second time, “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and no one said anything. Then he said it a third time, “Who is the one who spoke during the prayer?” and Rifaa’ah ibn Raafi’ said: It was me, O Messenger of Allaah. He said: “What did you say?” He said: I said: Praise be to Allaah, much good and blessed praise, as our Lord loves and is pleased with. The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “By the One in Whose hand is my soul, thirty-odd angels competed to see which of them would take it up.” Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, Abu Dawood and al-Nasaa’i. Al-Tirmidhi said: a hasan hadeeth. Al-Haafiz narrated in al-Tahdheeb from al-Tirmidhi that it is saheeh. It was also narrated by al-Bukhaari in his Saheeh but he did not mention that he said that after sneezing, rather he said it after rising from bowing. It may be that he sneezed whilst rising from bowing and he said that because he sneezed, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) approved of that and did not rebuke him for it.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/106435
Is it Sunnah to shake hands with only the right hands?
Most of the scholars are of the view that shaking hands with one hand is the Sunnah, and this is the usual custom among the Muslims and the Sahaabah (may Allaah be pleased with them)...As for the view of some Hanafi and Maaliki fuqaha’, that it is mustahabb to shake hands using both hands, putting the palm of the left hand over the back of one’s brother’s hand, this is not proven to be Sunnah from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) or from his companions. Rather the most that can be said concerning some ahaadeeth that refer to it is that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) took the hand of one of his companions in both of his hands as a sign of extra care in teaching, guiding and so on, as it says in Saheeh al-Bukhaari (6265) and Saheeh Muslim (402) that Ibn Mas’ood (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) taught me the tashahhud, holding my hand between both of his.
And Allaah knows best.
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/92806
If a child is the illegitimate offspring of two kaafirs, can he be named after the zaani?
In Islam the scholars are unanimously agreed that the illegitimate child should not be named after the zaani if the zaani does not ask for him to be named after him. Rather the majority of scholars said that he should not be named after him even if the zaani wants that...Islam forbids attributing the child to anyone other than his father...The illegitimate child – whether he is born to Muslim or non-Muslim parents – cannot be attributed to the zaani, rather he must be named after his mother.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/101112
Is it permissible for a woman to travel in an elevator alone with a non-mahram man?
It is not permissible for a woman to travel in an elevator on her own with a non-mahram man. If there is one or more other women with her, then there is nothing wrong with her travelling on the elevator in that case, because then she is not alone with the man.
If there are both men and women with her, there is nothing wrong with her travelling on it if the elevator is spacious, and she will not be forced to touch or rub against the men. But in this case it is safer for the Muslim woman to walk up the stairs, and seek reward with Allaah for the difficulty that she encounters by doing that, because she is only doing that so as to avoid that which Allaah has forbidden and to avoid fitnah and its causes.
And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/71237
Sitting beside women on public transport because one is forced to
If a person has no choice but to use public transit and he cannot change his place or change vehicles, and he cannot stand because that is even more crowded and brings even more contact with women, then there is no sin on him in that case if he sits next to a woman, so long as he keeps away from her as much as possible.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/70427
Prohibition on shaking hands with paternal uncle’s wife even if she is old
It is not permissible to shake hands with non-mahram women at all, whether they are young or old, and whether the man who is shaking hands is a young man or an old man, because of the danger of fitnah (temptation) that it poses to both parties. It was narrated in a saheeh hadeeth that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “I do not shake hands with women.” And ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) said: “The hand of the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) never touched the hand of any woman, and he used to accept their oath of allegiance by words only.”
It makes no difference whether one shakes hands with a barrier in between or with no barrier, because of the general meaning of the evidence, and so as to block the ways that may lead to fitnah.
And Allaah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/30791
Should one return salaams to a parrot?
Some of the scholars have stated that it is not prescribed to prostrate if one hears a verse from a parrot or from a recorded tape.
And Allah knows best.
http://islamqa.com/en/ref/140497/parrot
Does the Bible predict Muhammad?
One of the oddities of Mohammedan apologetics is the popular claim that the Bible predicts the rise of Muhammad. Here I’ll make two brief observations:
1. Even if we grant, for discussion purposes only, that the Bible predicts the rise of Muhammad, that, of itself, wouldn’t begin to validate the prophetic pretensions of Muhammad. After all, the Bible undoubtedly predicts the rise of the Antichrist. Yet that’s hardly an endorsement of the Antichrist!
2. However, a deeper problem with this appeal is that it generates a dilemma for Mohammedan apologetics. On the one hand, there are passages in the Koran where Muhammad evidently commended the Bible as the standard by which his own prophetic claims should be judged. And this, of course, has proven to be an acute embarrassment to Mohammedan apologists. For if we measure Muhammed by that yardstick, he comes up short.
As a result, Mohammedan apologists devote much time and effort laboring to explain away the positive references to the Bible in the Koran. They assure us that Muhammad wasn’t referring to the Bible as we have it today.
In the same vein, you have books by Mohammedans like Maurice Bucaille which “discover” uncanny anticipations of modern science in the Koran while they “uncover” obsolete science in the Bible.
On the other hand, if Mohammedans are suddenly going to invoke Bible prophecies to corroborate Muhammad, then their appeal is only legitimate (assuming we grant their hermeneutical legerdemain) if the Bible as we have it today is authentic and reliable. You can’t spend half your time attacking the inerrancy of the Bible, then spend the other half of your time citing Bible prophecies which allegedly anticipate the rise of Muhammed.
1. Even if we grant, for discussion purposes only, that the Bible predicts the rise of Muhammad, that, of itself, wouldn’t begin to validate the prophetic pretensions of Muhammad. After all, the Bible undoubtedly predicts the rise of the Antichrist. Yet that’s hardly an endorsement of the Antichrist!
2. However, a deeper problem with this appeal is that it generates a dilemma for Mohammedan apologetics. On the one hand, there are passages in the Koran where Muhammad evidently commended the Bible as the standard by which his own prophetic claims should be judged. And this, of course, has proven to be an acute embarrassment to Mohammedan apologists. For if we measure Muhammed by that yardstick, he comes up short.
As a result, Mohammedan apologists devote much time and effort laboring to explain away the positive references to the Bible in the Koran. They assure us that Muhammad wasn’t referring to the Bible as we have it today.
In the same vein, you have books by Mohammedans like Maurice Bucaille which “discover” uncanny anticipations of modern science in the Koran while they “uncover” obsolete science in the Bible.
On the other hand, if Mohammedans are suddenly going to invoke Bible prophecies to corroborate Muhammad, then their appeal is only legitimate (assuming we grant their hermeneutical legerdemain) if the Bible as we have it today is authentic and reliable. You can’t spend half your time attacking the inerrancy of the Bible, then spend the other half of your time citing Bible prophecies which allegedly anticipate the rise of Muhammed.
Preaching Repentance at the Gates of Hell
The following open air preaching clip was video taped outside A Woman's Choice Abortion Clinic at 201 Pomona Drive in Greensboro, NC @ 8:30 a.m. on 7-24-10.
Interestingly, the following negative reports are consistent with the hateful behavior we have witnessed from the clinic workers we have preached to for years. The second one even reports that the woman had an incomplete abortion yet was blown off by the clinic workers.
Interestingly, the following negative reports are consistent with the hateful behavior we have witnessed from the clinic workers we have preached to for years. The second one even reports that the woman had an incomplete abortion yet was blown off by the clinic workers.
Sep 14, 2009
Terrible, terrible experience. Unprofessional, not confidential, women took personal phone calls THREE times in the middle of helping me. Left disgusted ... www.insiderpages.com/b/3717205379
I had a really bad experience here
The above motivates me even more to see these people converted and see this place shut down.Dec 18, 2008I came with my boyfriend to this clinic to get a check-up after a procedure. The nurses were rude to me. They all told me how my boyfriend was "hot" and one of the bigger nurses even had the nerve to say, "that can't be your man". Then when i was leaving, they told me it was OK to have sex already after 3 weeks, even though i was having pain, because my boyfriend was so "hot". I have NEVER felt so disrespected. I would have NEVER expected that of an Abortion Clinic. I was so upset that i called to complain after i left. They said that i was lying, none of their nurses had said anything about me not being good enough for my boyfriend. The woman was talking saracastically to me on top of all that saying, "ok honey". Yeah, this actually happened. This is the most unprofessional place i have ever visited. I was very uncomfortable and left crying. I would NEVER recommend this place to any friend of mine. So please think twice before you choose this clinic. Sincerly, Kelly Not to mention, it turns out that the pain i was experiencing was due to a incomplete abortion. They told me the pain was from the birth control. I ended up in the emergency room passing huge blood clots. Dont make the same mistake i did. Dont go here. There are much better clinics. Trust me.
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