Battling the Consensus

In my ongoing discussions with Tim O'Neill, I have observed that he adheres to historical consensus as if it were religious dogma, not to be questioned - ever.  Historical consensus is the bastion of Christians who insist that Jesus was a real person, and who want to tamp down any discussion that might suggest the possibility that they could be wrong.  Take, for example, this article by apologist Steven Bancarz: Did Jesus Exist? All Scholars Agree He “Certainly” Existed, which makes claims that are patently false.  In particular, the title of the article says that "all scholars agree", which is a lie.  (The article then goes on to denigrate and dismiss those scholars who don't agree.)  O'Neill isn't so brazen as to make this same claim, but he uses the same tactic in arguments supporting the consensus.  If you don't have a solid argument, you can always rely on ad  hominem as a tactic to win the battle, and this appears to be one of O'Neill's favorite tactics.

On Mythicism

Nothing raises the hackles of Christians more than the suggestion the Jesus might not have actually existed.  It is likely to provoke an emotional response containing elements of dismissiveness, categorical rejection, derisiveness, or mocking and ridicule.  (What's that, you say?  Christians use mockery and ridicule?  Perish the thought.)  That's what we see in an article called Does Richard Carrier Exist? by apologist Glenn Peoples, for example.  OK, I know that it is intended to be humorous (and I agree his use of Bayesian inference is funny), but still it openly mocks the scholarly work of Richard Carrier, and includes ad hominem attacks that don't seem humorous at all, rather than presenting any reasoned argument against what Carrier says.  And this is coming from a guy who has this to say about his own approach to argumentation:

Although I am a Christian (something that will become obvious to regular readers and listeners), when it comes to the sorts of debates that Christians and non-Christians get into, while I am a participant and a commentator, I do not want to be a cheerleader. Fairness is one of the most important measures of integrity, and I certainly do not wish to give religion a “free pass.” I criticise the arguments of Christians as directly as I do the arguments of non-believers when I think that they go wrong, as I think that by doing so I am actually doing the Christian community a service. Christians – like atheists – are not helped by having their intellectual standards lowered by poor argumentation that is accepted because of a partisan spirit. The pursuit of excellence involves the willingness to reject bad arguments even when they are given in defence of “your side.” Peoples

Not Skeptical of Alexander the Great

Some time ago, I pointed out the Christian Blind Spot, which is an inability of many Christians to see glaring flaws in their own logical arguments for God, despite the fact that they would have no trouble at all identifying the very same flaws in another argument that applies to something other than God.  This is not an issue of Christians lacking intelligence or acumen in logical argumentation.  It's simply a lack of objectivity when it comes to matters that concern their religious beliefs.  They tend to have a huge blind spot when it comes to seeing the problems with their own arguments.  And this blind spot exists for more than just logical argumentation.  It is equally debilitating in their examination of evidence (or lack thereof) for their religious beliefs.  I have yet to encounter any Christian who is willing to admit that evidence to support his beliefs about the life of Jesus is anything less than rock solid.  Yet they can be oh so skeptical of other things in the historical record that enjoy far more substantial evidential support.

Ten Tips For Atheists

Christian apologist John Dickson wrote an article some time ago with the purported object of promoting productive dialog between Christians and atheists.  It contains ten pieces of advice for the atheist to follow that he feels will advance this objective.  I applaud him for his effort, but I have to take issue with him on a number of points.  I'll address them one by one.  At the same time, I think there are a number of things that he (as well as other Christians who want to engage in robust debate with atheists or skeptics) might want to think about.

Extraordinary Claims - Who Needs Evidence?

Most reasonable people understand what Carl Sagan meant by his expression: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”  If someone tells me that an everyday event occurred, I have little or no reason to doubt the truth of that claim.  But if they tell me something occurred that rarely or never happens, it would be reasonable to doubt that claim unless they provide sufficient reason for me to believe it.  What is sufficient reason?  Obviously, it depends to some degree on the person who is being convinced.  Is that person credulous or skeptical?  Is there motivation to believe?  Sagan's expression assumes a person who isn't credulous or motivated by other factors to believe the claim.  Some people will believe anything.  Some are motivated to believe for reasons other than sufficient evidence.  In that case, they may try to deny the value of evidence in an effort to discredit skeptics.  Such is the case with Dean Meadows, Christian apologist at Apologia Institute.  Meadows presents three arguments against Sagan's epistemological rule of thumb.

What Is a Hyper-Skeptic?

The Christian blog run by apologist Bill Pratt is called Tough Questions Answered.  This blog appears to consist mainly of discussion and commentary about biblical matters - how to understand or interpret various biblical stories and passages, reconciliation of apparent discrepancies, etc.  While it's not unusual for sites like this to contain all manner of hare-brained religious apologia, I don't usually get too excited about such things.  But it also includes some articles that relate to science and skepticism.  And that tends to get my attention.  I like to see if the apologist takes an even-handed view of things that are based on facts and evidence.  One of his articles that might help me to answer that question is called You Might Be a Hyper-Skeptic of Christianity If ...  Pratt introduces it by noting that not all skeptics are alike.  A skeptic can be fair-minded, or he can be what Pratt calls a hyper-skeptic, "someone who will not ever consider any evidences, arguments, or reasoning given for Christianity". 

Ray Comfort's Religious Babbling

I came across an article by Ray Comfort that purports to explain why the killing of Jesus as payment for the sins of man makes sense.  The question that had been posed to him is this:

I would like to ask you a couple of relevant questions pertaining to the ‘sacrifice’ of Jesus and its purpose. Please logically explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent God would need to sacrifice Himself (as Jesus) to Himself (God) in order to forgive man of sins against Him (God)? The entire premise seems totally absurd. - Chuck

This is a question that has been asked many times by people who are trying to make sense of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity, when ordinary logic doesn't seem to suffice.  If you can step back from any ideological attachment to those religious tenets, and take an objective look at them, it really is a bizarre thing to say that God demands this sacrifice.  Perhaps Comfort can shed some light on it where others have failed.  Let's hear what he has to say.

Jesus: Just a Regular Guy

I've always heard that Jesus died as redemption for our sins.  We grew up being told that we were born sinners, and Jesus took our sins upon himself.  In so doing, he bore the punishment for those sins so that we could be saved and find our way to heaven.  Indeed this has been one of the central tenets of Christianity from the earliest days of the faith.  Unlike the concept of the Trinity, which wasn't established until centuries after the life of Jesus, the notion of redemption has direct support in the bible.

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit - 1 Peter 3:18 

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

Of course, this whole idea violates my own innate sense of fairness.  If Adam and Eve were sinners, why should that guilt be passed on to me?  And the idea that my own sins could be redeemed by someone else paying for them has never seemed right to me.  From the time I was a young child listening to these stories in Catechism class, it bothered me.  It didn't make sense.  This was the very first inkling of doubt that eventually led to my rejection of Christianity.

Apologetic Vs. Actual Christian Faith

In his latest post at Debunking Christianity, John Loftus has pointed out the deluded nature of Christian apologists' definitions of religious faith, such as this one given by David Marshall:

holding firmly to and acting on what you have good reason to believe is true, in the face of difficulties - David Marshall and Tim McGrew, in True Reason

Or as apologist J. Warner Wallace says:

Conviction is the result of certainty, and certainty is the result of evidential confidence. We are called to be convinced by mastering the evidence that supports what we believe. The Christians life is not one of "wishful thinking" or "hope in the unreasonable". It is a life of certainty, grounded in the evidence. - Wallace

Loftus rightly notes that these definitions are disingenuous, because they try to make their faith sound reasonable, when in fact the objective evidence that would justify their belief is severely lacking.  It is only due to religious delusion that they could possibly think the evidence merits their beliefs.  But apologists must defend belief in the face of all critiques, and don't necessarily use honest tactics in pursuit of that goal.  You often hear them claiming that atheists just don't understand what faith means from the Christian perspective.  But if that's true, they might as well admit that most Christians don't understand faith, either.  It seems to me that apologists have their own special definitions, involving evidence, reason, and justified belief, that aren't shared by ordinary Christians.

The Brain-As-Receiver Concept

Christians can come up with some really wacky ideas in defense of their religious dogmas that fly in the face of logic and science.  When defending literal the truth of biblical stories that directly contradict each other, for example, they might make the claim that "three days and three nights" really means a period of as little as 38 hours.  If one book says Jesus was buried on a Friday afternoon, and rose from the dead on Sunday morning, and another book claims it was three days and three nights later, what should Christians think?  Surely not that either of those stories could be wrong.  They need to find some way to make those two things seem to be in agreement.  If Friday is the first day, Sunday is the third day, so you might be able to get away with saying three days had passed, but three nights?  I don't think so.  This is just a case of Christians groping for any excuse at all to justify their belief that the bible tells the truth, and the fact that their hand-waving explanations don't make logical sense is simply ignored in favor of the dogma.  Their dogma says those two accounts are telling the same story, and the good Christian is obliged to believe it.

Lee Strobel: Skeptic Believer

I read an old interview of Lee Strobel, in which he lays out his evidence-based case for belief in the Christian narrative.  Strobel says that he was an investigative journalist with a background in law, who was also an atheist and a skeptic.  And it was his regular practice to check out everything he was told - to seek out the evidence.  And that's what made him such a jerk, he says. 

we used to pride ourselves on being skeptical and actually had a sign in our newsroom that said, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!” In other words, where are the facts? Where is the proof? Where is the evidence? - Strobel

It's a little unclear what message we should take from a statement like that.  Is he saying that being skeptical is what made him a jerk in the past, but he no longer has that problem?  Or is he saying that his skepticism is what gave solid justification for the belief that he adopted?  If his Christian faith is based on solid evidence, and skepticism is what brought him to that evidence, as well as his success as an investigative journalist, then why does he equate skepticism with being a jerk?  It's puzzling.  At any rate, Strobel uses his credentials as a skeptic to bolster his case that his conversion to Christianity is based on solid evidence. 

How a Scientist Can Believe in God, Part 2

Continuing from my previous post, I address more of Albrecht Moritz' 15 objections from atheists against the compatibility between science and religious belief.  These objections are discussed in his paper How can a scientist believe in God?  Moritz is a scientist who believes in God, and defends that belief with sometimes unscientific explanations.  It seems clear that when he is outside his field of expertise, he often falls back on traditional theistic notions.  Without further ado, here is the next set of atheists' objections.

I Am a Fundamentalist

We often hear religionists accusing atheists of having religious fervor for their naturalist metaphysical views and the attendant empiricist epistemology.  Of course, religionists don't ever criticize these philosophical views directly.  You don't ever hear them say "You are militant naturalist", or "You adhere religiously to your empiricism, despite all the evidence."  But they do say those things about atheism, which seems a little silly to me, because atheism is a direct consequence of those philosophical views.  But religionists are apparently less inclined to criticize legitimate philosophical views, perhaps because they understand that their own philosophical underpinnings are on no more solid footing than those of the atheists.  But atheism, in its own right, is not a philosophy, although it is, in some sense, on a par with religion.  You believe in God or you don't.  If atheists can mock religious beliefs, then why shouldn't religionists mock atheism?

"God Did It" Explains the Ethical Treatment of Slaves

Victor Reppert has pointed out a piece of apologetic fluffery that he sees as evidence that the biblical Yahweh raised the ethical level of the Hebrews above that of the rest of the world.  The article, found in the blog Cold-Case Christianity , discusses slavery in the biblical Hebrew culture, and makes the claim that under Mosaic law, the practice was humane and ethical, especially as compared to the form of slavery practiced in the New World in more recent times.  More on these claims later.  With this "evidence" in hand, Victor believes that the behavior of the Hebrews, as influenced by Yahweh's law, rose to an elevated standard of morality that couldn't be explained under naturalism, which he supposes would entail that people act only in their own self-interest.

You can call Yahweh a moral monster, but somehow, he managed a quantum leap forward in the moral consciousness of the Western world. Quite an accomplishment for the most unpleasant character in all fiction. ... I think these leaps are hard to explain naturalistically. - Reppert

The Limits of Credulity

I read an article called The Gospel Truth of Jesus by Christian apologist Tom Gilson, that attempts to debunk the idea that Jesus could have been a legendary figure.  This is in response to a common objection to the so-called "Trilemma" of CS Lewis, which says that Jesus must have been either lunatic, liar, or Lord.  The objection that readily comes to mind for anyone who isn't steeped in religious fervor is that Lewis left out another possibility: the idea that the biblical stories of Jesus could be based on legend rater than historical reality.  But Lewis didn't consider that possibility, and Gilson defends Lewis, on the basis that it is not even worthy of consideration.

Science, Miracles, and Skepticism

There is an ill-tempered commenter at Dangerous Idea who thinks everyone except himself is intellectually dishonest.  He spares nobody from criticism, theist and atheist alike, unless they are in full agreement with his own brand of Protestant (or at least, anti-Catholic) theism and far-right-wing politics.  But he is particularly scornful of atheists and skeptics.  And in  his estimation, his command of logic and science vastly exceeds that of any ordinary mortal (after all, he's a programmer).  His name is Ilíon, and he has a blog called Iliocentrism, which is very much an echo chamber where dissenting voices are not allowed.  He was the subject of one of my earlier posts.

A few years ago, Ilíon made a post that mocks the skepticism of those who doubt claims of miraculous events reported in the bible.  This seems to be one of his favorite posts, because he drags it out from time to time at Dangerous idea, in response to anyone who attempts to look at claims of miracles from a scientific perspective, as was the case here, in answer to John Moore, who had given the only reasonable response among the comments to Reppert's post asking whether science unfairly assumes philosophical naturalism.  Moore rightly points out that science necessarily concerns itself with the regularity and predictability of nature (and this is what methodological naturalism, not philosophical naturalism is all about).  And Ilíon, in his usual manner, takes issue with that by linking to his old canard.

The Mystery of the Trinity

Old Testament contains many remnants of polytheism, including a council of gods and gods of other nations, and even mentions dozens of them by name, including Baal, Ashtoreth and Molech.  The fact of early biblical polytheism is admitted and explained away in some Christian apologetic texts such as this one, but there is no question that Hebrews were polytheistic, and eventually settled on monotheism, at which time they attempted to clean up some of their scriptures to make clear the dogma of one god, as seen in Isaiah 45:5–6.  It is believed by most scholars that the Hebrew god Jehovah (or Yahweh) was the chief god of the Hebrew people (as one of numerous peoples of the time, who each had their own state religions and their own gods), and over time came to be viewed by the Hebrews as the chief of all gods, and eventually as the one and only God.  Nova discusses the polytheistic roots of Judaism.

Reason to Believe

Christians usually claim that the evidence for the gospel stories is very good, and that's why they are justified in believing them.  If a skeptic tries to tell them that the evidence really isn't that good, they never, ever listen to the reasons offered by the skeptic.  Instead, they tend to double down with one excuse after another to convince themselves that their belief is based on rock-solid evidence.  At the same time, they often try to minimize the value of historical evidence for other events that are generally accepted as having occurred in the course of history.  So on the one hand, they insist that their evidence is solid as any evidence can be.  On the other hand, if they are forced to admit that it's not so solid after all, they have the backup position that accepted history is based on equally bad evidence, and therefore, we should accept the gospel stories lest we be seen as using a double standard.

The Christian Persecution Complex

American Christians have never had it so good.  Living in a country where the government neither prevents them from practicing the religion of their choice nor dictates what or how to believe is a blessing that results from having a secular government.  How unappreciative they are of that blessing when they seek to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us by force of government.

Biblical Modifications Series: The Reversal of Paul

Paul established much of the teachings and dogma of the early church.  His epistles are the oldest texts that form part of the New Testament.  One of those early teachings, found in Galatians 3:23-28, is that Christianity establishes of a new order, where many of the ways of the past are set aside.

Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed.  The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.  But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,  for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.  There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.