Tuesday, October 15, 2019
The astrodome
To revisit a pet issue of mine, there are scholars who insist that Bible writers operate with a flat-earth/three-story cosmography. They say we should interpret the Bible in the same way an ancient Near Eastern audience would understand it. And there's nothing wrong with that general principle. Ironically, I think the scholars in question lack the imagination to do justice to their own principle.
According to flat-earth cosmography, mountain ranges prop up the solid dome of the sky. So the mountain range marks the outer limits of the world. It's like the mountain ranges are flat in back. Half-mountains. Now consider some phenomena that prescientific observers see:
1. Clouds coming over the horizon or receding over the horizon. The most natural way to explain the appearance is that clouds are coming over the hills and mountains from behind the hills and mountains. So the world continues on the other side of the mountain range. That's not where the world ends.
But if flat-earth cosmography were true, there'd be no space between the sky and the back of the mountains. In the case of receding clouds, if flat-earth cosmography were true, drifting clouds would strike the side of the sky, spreading up and down the solid dome.
Visualize putting red or blue dye in an aquarium. It will spread out laterally until it reaches the sides of the aquarium. Then it will spread out veridically (up and down the sides of the aquarium) because it can't go any further in a straight line.
2. Likewise, in flat-earth cosmology, either sun, moon, and stars rise from behind the hills and mountains or in front of them. But they can't rise from behind the hills and mountains because the solid dome of the sky comes down at the highest point of the mountain range. If the sky is solid and the mountains are solid, the sky will rest on the mountain peaks. It can't go any lower. But in that case, the sky forms a vertical barrier or wall on the ridge of the mountain range. So there's nothing behind the mountain range.
And even if sun, moon, and stars were positioned behind the sky rather than up and down the face of the sky, the solid dome would have to be transparent to see them, like clear glass. But it's blue, like colored glass. Yet the sun isn't blue.
The alternative is for sun, moon, and stars to rise out of the earth at the foot of the mountains. If, however, they're in front of the mountains, observers would seem them block the view of the mountains as they ascend to the sky.
So when we assume the viewpoint of an ancient Near Eastern audience, how is the flat-earth construct that some scholars posit consistent with what ground-based, naked-eye observers see? Even from a prescientific perspective, three-story cosmography doesn't make sense. And these are just two examples. I've discussed several others.
Christianity and the paranormal
I'd like to piggyback on a post by Jason Engwer:
Many Christians are very skittish about the paranormal. But it's important for Christian philosophers, apologists, theologians, and pastors to be informed about the paranormal:
1. If Christianity is true, and paranormal phenomena exist, then the existence of the paranormal is consistent with the truth of Christianity. In that event, we should be able to integrate the paranormal into a Christian worldview. That doesn't necessary mean we condone the paranormal. Depends on the example. To take a comparison, the occult is consistent with the truth of Christianity. And we need to be able to explain how the occult fits into a Christian worldview.
2. If people, whether Christians or unbelievers, experience the paranormal, but pastors, apologists, and theologians have no answers, then that drives Christians and unbelievers into the arms of New Age quack and swindlers in search of explanations. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when the paranormal is co-opted by charlatans and unbelievers because Christians vacated that field of investigation.
3. According to the standard paradigm of naturalism, the universe is a closed system and everything is composed of matter and energy. But many kinds of paranormal phenomena are incompatible with naturalism. So paranormal phenomena render a service to Christian apologetics and evangelism by eliminating naturalism from consideration.
4. Now it's possible for an atheist to believe in the paranormal. He can redefine naturalism. Stephen Braude, who's a leading paranormal philosopher and researcher, is irreligious.
If, however, you concede that minds can act apart from brains and bodies, then that removes a barrier to Christian theism. That opens the door to God, souls, angels, demons, and miracles.
5. The "paranormal" is an umbrella for a miscellany of phenomena. It's useful to do some sifting and sorting so that we can distinguish the hooey from verifiable phenomena.
6. Many people are atheists because they never experience anything that's out of keeping with naturalism. Never experience anything that can't be explained in mundane terms. At least from their philosophically untutored perspective.
Yet there are many people who have uncanny experiences that suddenly open a window to whole different realm of reality they never suspected. Something they scoffed at until it happened to them. They were atheists because the Bible describes a world which has no analogy to their humdrum existence. Until, that is, something happens which peels away the wallpaper of naturalism and exposes another dimension of reality that dovetails with the biblical worldview. At once, what was so incredible in Scripture becomes realistic.
So paranormal experience can be a bridge to the Christian faith. Pastors need to be able to walk them the rest of the way across the bridge.
I'm not suggesting that people should cultivate paranormal experience. In many cases it befell them unbidden. In other cases they were experimenting with the occult, and tapped into something real. That's dangerous and terrifying, but God can redirect it. If Satan exists, God exists. If witchcraft is real, miracles are real. These are two sides of good and evil.
Conflicted about God
Some Christians develop conflicted feelings about God, and some atheists taunt Christians who suffer from conflicted feelings about God. After all, if everything happens according to supreme wisdom, then it's irrational to resent God for what happens. They use that as wedge tactic.
But is it quite that simple? Suppose I have a special needs brother. Let's say he's autistic. As a result, he gets the lion's share of the attention. My parents have to devote an inordinate amount of time to tending to his incessant needs. So I feel neglected. And sometimes I'm required to take up the slack when they're exhausted or have to concentrate on other things.
So I'm missing out on many opportunities I'd enjoy if I didn't have an autistic brother. I can't go hiking or rafting with my dad because he can't be away from my autistic brother for extended periods of time. My dad can't attend playoffs when I play football because he's needed at home to deal with the perennial crisis of my autistic brother.
It's possible for me to resent my parents, even though I know it's not their fault. It's possible for my to resent my brother, even though I know it's not his fault. There are moments when I might wish my brother was dead, but I know that's horribly wrong. He can't help himself.
But what I really resent is the situation. Not my parents or my brother but the situation. I resent being thrust into that situation. Everyone is doing the best they can. My parents are doing the best they can. Often at their wits' ends. My autistic brother is doing the best he can. If it's frustrating for me, imagine how frustrating it is for him!
By the same token, although there's a sense in which it's illogical to resent God, it can be natural to have conflicted feelings. That's not necessarily a sign of incipient or impending apostasy. The situation really is aggravating to be in. So it's not unnatural or even illogical to find it frustrating or aggravating. That's the reality. Like spiritual hives.
If anything, apostasy can sneak in from the opposite direction. There's a well-meaning but perilous and precarious piety that clamps the lid on while internal pressure builds. Because some Christians think it's irreverent to harbor conflicted feelings about God, they suppress them and pretend they don't have them–until it finally explodes, blowing their faith apart in jagged pieces flying everywhere.
This is one of the values in reading the Prophets and Psalmists. They are honest about their frustrations. Sometimes they have intensely conflicted feelings about God, and they aren't afraid to express themselves. That's safety value releases the internal pressure before it becomes unbearable. Healthy piety requires honesty. We can't fool God by feigning what we think we're supposed to feel when that's at odds with what, deep down, we're really feeling.
Monday, October 14, 2019
The Universe: How did it get here & why are we part of it
Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig discuss:
The Kurds
Trump has come under intense criticism for withdrawing military support for the Kurds. Perhaps that's well-deserved. I haven't studied the issue, so I have no firm opinion one way or the other. But I'll venture a few generic observations:
1. The talk about "abandoning" a military ally is intellectually devious. It's not like the Kurds came to our rescue. The alliance was always enormously lopsided. They need us far more than we need them. They weren't doing us a favor. We were doing them a favor. They were doing themselves a favor by forming an alliance with us. But what do we actually owe them?
2. Does the US military have a duty to maintain a military presence in the Mideast to prevent some Middle Easterners from slaughtering other Middle Easterners? No.
The job of the US military is to protect the lives of Americans. American soldiers have no duty to be killed or maimed to protect foreigners. Their lives aren't forfeit to save the lives of foreigners. Their lives aren't less valuable than the lives of foreigners. And their own families have a prior claim on them.
3. I share the concern for the fate of Syrian Christians. But Christians throughout the Muslim world are at risk. Does that mean we should start a war with every Muslim country that persecutes Christians?
Is it reasonable to believe Christianity is false?
People can reasonably believe Christianity is true. People can reasonably believe Christianity is false. If that doesn't seem reasonable to you, it may be because you have an unreasonable view of reason.— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) October 14, 2019
At the risk of triggering Rauser's fragile persecution complex:
1. If Christianity is true, why is it the case that people can reasonably believe it's false?
In general, it's possible to believe something is false even if it's actually true. We might believe something is false when it's actually true in case we lack access to the relevant evidence for its veracity.
2. However, Christianity, if true, isn't like just any truth. If Christianity is true, then God wants some or all people to know it's true. Now in Calvinism, God doesn't intend that everyone become a Christian. Indeed, in Calvinism, God intends that everyone not become a Christian. In that sense it would be consistent with Reformed exclusivism that some people reasonably believe Christianity is false because God hasn't put them in contact with the relevant evidence.
But I presume that Rauser is an inclusivist. If so, why would God leave them in an impoverished epistemic condition where it's reasonable believe Christianity is false even though Christianity is true, and he wants everyone to know it's true? If, despite that, people can reasonably believe that Christianity is false, is that because God failed to provide them with compelling evidence for the veracity of the Christian faith? But what hinders God from doing that?
Perhaps Rauser will fall back on postmortem salvation. But if God can and does provide compelling evidence in the afterlife, what prevents him from presenting compelling evidence in this life?
3. Moreover, I assume Rauser's position is not that it's reasonable for people to believe Christianity is false because they don't have the same evidence Christians have. Isn't Rauser's position that reasonable people can look at the same evidence but draw opposing conclusions? Atheists like Lowder, McTaggart, Oppy, Quine, Rowe, Sobel, Schellenberg, Tooley, and Wielenberg.
4. So doesn't his position imply that Christianity is probably false? If Christianity is true, and inclusivism is true, we wouldn't expect the evidence to be so ambivalent that people can reasonably believe Christianity is false.
St. John Cardinal Newman
Cardinal Newman has been canonized. He may well be the most theologically influential convert to Catholicism.
Newman was a man of many parts. He has interesting things to say about the nature of miracles. And his illative sense made an important contribution to religious epistemology. He stressed the value of tacit knowledge. He objected to armchair epistemologies. He was interested in how people actually come to believe what they do, and the kinds of evidence that contribute to belief formation. An often unconscious process with a cumulative effect.
Newman was an original and independent thinker. Because he converted to Catholicism, he had a different approach than if he'd been a trained Catholic theologian. His center of gravity was patristic theology rather than Scholastic theology. And he represents an offshoot of British Empiricism.
There's nothing distinctive Catholic about the illative sense. That can be incorporated into a Protestant epistemology or secular epistemology.
As Benjamin King has documented in Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers, Newman is apt to use the church fathers as a mirror, where he's gazing at his own reflection. Newman resembles Luther inasmuch as both developed one-man belief-systems to resolve their personal religious quest. These are answers to their questions, which arise from their individual struggles.
Newman's primary impact on Catholic theology lies in his theory of development. Historically, Catholicism takes the position that the era of public revelation terminated with the death of the Apostles. They left behind the deposit of faith. That's static. You can appeal to ancient tradition as a witness to the deposit of faith. But you can't add to the deposit of faith and you can't change dogma.
The theory of development was necessitated by the increasing strain between the appeal to tradition and innovations in Catholic theology. Innovations that lacked a documentable pedigree in primitive tradition.
Newman replaced the static concept of tradition with a fluid concept. No longer grounded in primitive tradition but "living" tradition. This would have remained an idiosyncratic curiosity except that it was adopted by Vatican II.
The increasing strain between tradition and innovation was like metastatic cancer. The theory of development was like cancer therapy. But there's a catch. Sometimes cancer therapy prevents a patient from dying of cancer: instead, the patient dies from complications due to cancer therapy. The therapy does so much damage that the cure kills the patient.
The theory of development solved one problem by creating another problem. It severed Catholic theology from any traditional moorings. Catholic theology is now adrift. It has no fixed center or boundaries. Catholic theology is now the theology of whoever the current pope happens to be. Like a chameleon, Catholic theology changes colors to match the shade of the current pope.
John Henry Cardinal Alfred E Newman
First published September 4, 2011; republished in honor of Newman’s canonization as a Roman Catholic saint.
Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ©2005), doesn’t end at the Reformation. He continues to review developments in the various doctrines of justification as they proceeded through the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican schools of thought.
McGrath writes about the “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” historical and theological analyses that John Henry Cardinal Newman did of Luther’s doctrine of Justification. That assessment — “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” — is based on his review of Newman’s 1837 Lectures on Justification.
Newman, now a Roman Catholic saint, is a hero to many of today’s generation of militant Roman Catholics. Newman’s theory of “the development of doctrine” provides the underpinning for the modern (Vatican II) version of Roman Catholic doctrine. Of course, Roman Catholics expect that Newman was right, or substantially right, about most of the things he said.
But on the contrary, Newman’s Lectures were “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” in many respects, and McGrath documents this thoroughly.
McGrath says of Newman:
McGrath writes about the “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” historical and theological analyses that John Henry Cardinal Newman did of Luther’s doctrine of Justification. That assessment — “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” — is based on his review of Newman’s 1837 Lectures on Justification.
Newman, now a Roman Catholic saint, is a hero to many of today’s generation of militant Roman Catholics. Newman’s theory of “the development of doctrine” provides the underpinning for the modern (Vatican II) version of Roman Catholic doctrine. Of course, Roman Catholics expect that Newman was right, or substantially right, about most of the things he said.
But on the contrary, Newman’s Lectures were “seriously and irredeemably inaccurate” in many respects, and McGrath documents this thoroughly.
McGrath says of Newman:
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Icarus
Icarus was an exceptionally hospitable planet for humanoid habitation. According to pious legend, the original inhabitants were colonists transported to Icarus inside giant birds flying through space, by the Creator of Icarus. The same legend prophesied that one day the Creator of Icarus would come back for the colonists.
But with the development of planetology, scientists scoffed at the legend. Planetology was the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. Scientists dismissed the legend as a superstitious, prescientific etiological fable.
That divided Icarians into two factions: scientists and fundamentalists. But as planetologists continued to excavate Icarus, they uncovered evidence that Icarus was an artificial planet, only a few thousand years old, composed of metallic alloys.
Fundamentalists took their discovery as scientific confirmation that the legend was true. But scientists retorted that positing a Creator was a cop-out and science stopper. Appealing to external agency explains something mysterious by something even more mysterious–which explains nothing at all. We cannot allow an Alien Foot in the door. Anyone who could believe in terraformers could believe in anything. To appeal to a terraformer is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen, through outside interference.
Scientists accused fundamentalists of committing the little-green-men-of-the-gaps fallacy. They pointed out that planetology had an impressive track record of explaining things without recourse to invisible, extraicarian meddling.
So there was yet another impasse between the scientists and fundamentalists. Then one day a giant bird from outer space landed on Icarus, and out stepped the Creator. Fundamentalists immediately took this as vindication of the ancient oracle.
Scientists couldn't believe their eyes. Some of them said it must be staged. Others said a hallucination was more plausible than accepting the existence of a Creator. The Creator ushered the fundamentalists into the giant bird and flew away, leaving the scientists behind. A month later the climate-control machine in the planetary core wore out, and life on Icarus perished in a mass extinction event.
Evangelical Neglect Of The Paranormal
Steve linked to a video by Jon Topping about paranormal issues. I've addressed these subjects many times before. You can find an overview here. That overview discusses some Biblical evidence for ghosts that Topping doesn't interact with, among other subjects.
What I want to focus on here is some comments Topping made about paranormal research. Start watching (here) at the point where there's about 6:30 left in the video. He makes the broad comment that "anything to do with the occult" is prohibited. He goes on to say that "we should have nothing to do with that" in reference to practices like speaking to a ghost or using a Ouija board. He then cites academics who have come out of the occult, people who do a lot of research in other contexts, saying that we shouldn't even do research on matters pertaining to the occult. We shouldn't even "touch" them. We shouldn't allow them to have "a place" in our lives.
I've already addressed why we should study the paranormal, including what's often labeled as "the occult". (The ambiguity of so much of the terminology involved in these contexts is problematic.) I think the article I just linked is largely sufficient to answer Topping's comments, but I want to supplement it.
What I want to focus on here is some comments Topping made about paranormal research. Start watching (here) at the point where there's about 6:30 left in the video. He makes the broad comment that "anything to do with the occult" is prohibited. He goes on to say that "we should have nothing to do with that" in reference to practices like speaking to a ghost or using a Ouija board. He then cites academics who have come out of the occult, people who do a lot of research in other contexts, saying that we shouldn't even do research on matters pertaining to the occult. We shouldn't even "touch" them. We shouldn't allow them to have "a place" in our lives.
I've already addressed why we should study the paranormal, including what's often labeled as "the occult". (The ambiguity of so much of the terminology involved in these contexts is problematic.) I think the article I just linked is largely sufficient to answer Topping's comments, but I want to supplement it.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
The spirit realm
I have a few quibbles with some of what Jon Topping says, but this is a generally helpful presentation:
https://www.facebook.com/p2c.students/videos/2404980893052016/
https://www.facebook.com/p2c.students/videos/2404980893052016/
"I married my best friend"
I cringe whenever I hear well-meaning Christians say something like that.
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/11/my-spouse-is-my-best-friend.php
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2015/11/my-spouse-is-my-best-friend.php
Facial recognition systems
Public service announcement:
Facial recognition systems, combined with omnipresent security cameras, are a tool of the surveillance state. The solution is to become a vampire, since vampires don't cast reflections.
Facial recognition systems, combined with omnipresent security cameras, are a tool of the surveillance state. The solution is to become a vampire, since vampires don't cast reflections.
The ethics of spanking
This is the final installment. The first two were:
I'm going to quote and comment on some representative arguments against spanking in this article: A Grogan-Kaylor, J Ma, & SA Graham-Bermann, "The Case Against Physical Punishment," Current Opinion in Psychology 19 (2018).
In general, it suffers from the same methodological flaws and oversights I noted in another study (second link). Moving along:
Attachment theory highlights the beneficial role of a secure attachment in the parent-child relationship [12]. A plethora of research has found that parental empathy and sensitivity towards children’s needs foster trust, safety, and emotional security in children [13]. However, when parents respond to their child’s need for attention, comfort, and care with physical punishment, the child easily feels rejected and degraded and the much-needed secure attachment in the parent-child relationship is likely to be eroded [14]. Thus, children who were physically punished are at risk of developing a sense of unworthiness and maladaptive developmental pathways such as anxiety and depression.
i) Parents have more than one role to play in child-rearing. It's true that there's an element of emotional/psychological tension between their role as disciplinarians and other roles. Spanking provokes temporary alienation. But a child's mood can change within a few minutes.
ii) Children need boundaries. That's essential to their sense of security. They need to know there are consequences for crossing boundaries. It's because the prospect of spanking is unpleasant that it has deterrent value. The parent/child bond is part of what makes that effective.
Social learning theory underlines observation and reinforcement as mechanisms through which physical punishment affects externalizing problems such as aggression [16]. When parents physically punish their children for unacceptable behaviors, children observe their parents endorsing the use of violence, and unintentionally, are modeled and taught the legitimacy of violent behaviors to correct the misconduct of others. In addition, by observing that parental physical punishment resulted in successfully stopping their own misbehaviors in the short term, children are reinforced in the idea of the effectiveness of violence in controlling and resolving social and interpersonal conflicts.
That's not a scientific claim. It reflects the utopian outlook of the writers. They act like any kind of "violence" is intrinsically wrong. Do they think a propensity for violence or aggression is conditioned rather than hardwired?
But there are situations where violence is required to combat violence. It takes a gun to stop a sniper or house-burglar. Violence has a legitimate and indispensable role in social dynamics. That's a necessity evil in a fallen world.
A recent longitudinal study examined the relationships of parental spanking of 1-year-old children, and subsequent involvement of that family with Child Protective Services between child’s age 1 and age 5 [37]. This study found that reports of spanking of a child when child was one year old were associated with a 33% increase in the chances that a family would become involved with Child Protective Services.
i) That's just circular. If you outlaw spanking, that puts neighbors in a position to rat out parents who spank their misbehaving kids. But that's hardly a justification for outlawing the practice. You can't appeal to a law to justify the law.
ii) Because the writers oppose spanking in principle, they don't bother to explore the appropriate age-range for spanking. How old should the child be before spanking is constructive? What's the cutoff when the child is too old for that to be constructive?
Through two doors at once
Life is a series of invisible doors. Sets of two doors. Most folks go through one door at a time, whether the right-hand door or the left-hand door. But for some unexplained reason, Jasper went through both doors at once. He came out the other side as two copies of Jasper. But for some unexplained reason, he kept returning to the same spot. Each time, passing through both doors at once, his life split into forking paths.
He went thorough the door where his parents divorced, and the other door where they stayed together. He went through another set of doors where his mother had custody and his father has custody. He turned out fairly well living with his dad. He turned out better living with both parents. He became a delinquent living with his mother.
There was the door where his brother committed suicide and the door where his brother didn't commit suicide. Going through the door where his brother committed suicide, Jasper's life went into a tailspin. He became junkie. He eventually killed himself because he was unable to cope with the inconsolable loss. Grief enveloped him in a dark cloud from which he never emerged.
There was the door where he where he accidentally ran over a cyclist at night and the door where he avoided the cyclist. After accidentally killing the cyclist, he was afraid to turn himself into the police. The fatality remained an unsolved crime, but he haunted by guilt for the rest of his life.
There was the door where he was blinded in a baseball accident. Knocked unconscious when a teammate accidentally hit him in the head with a baseball bat. When he woke up in a hospital bed, he was blind. That one blow to the head not only shattered his skull, but shattered his plans. At first he was despondent and bitter. After months of brooding, he began to rebuild his life, step-by-step. Not the life he asked for. Not the life he hoped for. But after that he no longer took life for granted. The ambit of his life got smaller but deeper. And he hoped to see again in the world to come.
There was the door where he won a football scholarship and the door where he was edged out. Losing the scholarship scuttled his dreams. All his hopes were pinned on getting the scholarship. After that he had to dream new dreams.
There was the door where a rival married his high school crush. So h married another girl. He secretly felt she was second-best. But his rival told him that his crush was a nagging wife. So he no longer regretted losing her to another man. He warmed to his wife and had a happy marriage. His bad luck was good luck in retrospect.
The was the door where he was drafted and the door where he was not. Before he was drafted, evil was an abstraction for him. Watching his comrades maimed or blown up right before his eyes gave him nightmares. But it also made him hope for a better world to come.
Finally, there was the door where he became an atheist and the door where he became a Christian. For some unexplained reason, after he went through one door and came out the other side a Christian, that broke the cycle. Never again did he go through two doors at once. He just continued along that branch until he died and went to heaven.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)