Sleeping With Your GirlFriend
This column by Frank Turek appeared on www.Townhall.com Today:
My friend David has a knack for cutting through the smokescreens people throw up when they’re trying to avoid making commitments, be they commitments to God or to other people. Last week, with one comment, he blew away all the smoke that a young agnostic was hiding behind. It was a demonstration of tremendous insight, and it required some courage to say.
For several weeks David was teaching through a series on Christian apologetics, which involves providing evidence for the truth of Christianity. In addition to the biblical mandate to provide such evidence, David thought it would be wise to do so because 75 percent of Christian youth stop attending church after age 18. Many of them abandon the church because they’re bombarded by secularism in college and they’ve never been taught any of the sound evidence that supports Christianity.
Last week, after David finished a presentation refuting the “new atheists”—Dawkins, Hitchens and the like—a young man approached him and said, “I once was a Christian, but now I’m an agnostic, and I don’t think you should be doing what you’re doing.”
“What do you mean?” David asked.
“I don’t think you should be giving arguments against atheists,” the young man said. “Jesus told us to love, and it’s not loving what you’re doing.”
David said, “No, that’s not right. Jesus came with both love and tuth. Love without truth is a swampy, borderless mess. Truth is necessary. In fact, it’s unloving to keep truth from people, especially if that truth has eternal consequences.”
David was absolutely right. In fact, if you look at Matthew chapter 23, Jesus was more like a drill sergeant than he was like Mister Rogers.
But the young man would have none of it. Without acknowledging David’s point, he immediately brought up another objection to Christianity. David succinctly answered that one too, but again the kid seemed uninterested. He fired a couple of more objections at David, who began to suspect something else was up—something I’ve noticed as well.
I’ve found that the machine-gun-objection approach is common among many skeptics and liberals. They throw objection after objection at believers and conservatives but never pause long enough to listen to the answers. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just answered their question with an undeniable fact—they’ve already left that topic and are rattling off another objection on another topic as if you hadn’t said a word. They don’t really seem interested in finding answers but in finding reasons to make themselves feel better about what they want to believe. After all, a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.
David recognized that’s exactly what was happening in his conversation. So after the kid fired off another objection, David decided to end the charade and cut right to the heart. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”
All the blood drained from the kid’s face. He was caught. He just stood there speechless. He was rejecting God because he didn’t like God’s morality, and he was disguising it with alleged intellectual objections.
This young man wasn’t the first atheist or agnostic to admit that his desire to follow his own agenda was keeping him out of the Kingdom. In the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul revealed this tendency we humans have to “suppress the truth” about God in order to follow our own desires. In other words, unbelief is more motivated by the heart than the head. Some prominent atheists have admitted this.
Atheist Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley, famously said many years ago that the reason he and many of his contemporaries “accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn‘t want God to interfere with our sexual mores.”
Professor Thomas Nagel of NYU more recently wrote, “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.”
Certainly the new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have problems with cosmic authority. Hitchens refuses to live under the “tyranny of a divine dictatorship.” Dawkins calls the God of the Bible a “malevolent bully” (among other things) and admits that he is “hostile to religion.”
It’s not that Hitchens and Dawkins offer any serious examination and rebuttal of the evidence for God. They misunderstand and dismiss hundreds of pages of metaphysical argumentation from Aristotle, Aquinas and others and fail to answer the modern arguments from the beginning and design of the universe. (Dawkins explanation for the extreme design of the universe is “luck.”)
Instead, as any honest reader of their books will see, Hitchens and Dawkins are outraged at the very thought of God. Even their titles scream out contempt (god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and The God Delusion). They don’t seem to realize that their moral outrage presupposes an objective moral standard that exists only if God exists. Objective morality—as well as the immaterial laws of reason and science—cannot exist in the materialist universe they attempt to defend. In effect, they have to borrow from a theistic worldview in order to argue against it. They have to sit in God’s lap to slap his face.
While both men are very good writers, Hitchens and Dawkins are short on evidence and long on attitude. As I mentioned in our debate, you can sum up Christopher’s attitude in one sentence: “There is no God, and I hate him.”
Despite this, God’s attitude as evidenced by the sacrifice of Christ is: There are atheists, and I love them.
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:53 am
“They throw objection after objection … but never pause long enough to listen to the answers. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just answered their question with an undeniable fact—they’ve already left that topic and are rattling off another objection on another topic as if you hadn’t said a word.”
Actually this is exactly my problem with conservatives, creationists and theists. You’ve described exactly what THEY do in arguments, so closely that it’s almost spooky.
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
Quick question for any Christian reading. What would your reaction be if a Muslim said this to you:
“You raise objections to Islam because you eat bacon, and don’t want Allah to interfere with your eating habits?”
Would the blood drain from your face? Would you feel ‘caught’ and ’speechless’?
Or would it be nearer the truth to say that you see nothing wrong with eating bacon BECAUSE you reject Islam, rather than the other way round?
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 am
I’ve found that the machine-gun-objection approach is common among many skeptics and liberals. They throw objection after objection at believers and conservatives but never pause long enough to listen to the answers. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just answered their question with an undeniable fact—they’ve already left that topic and are rattling off another objection on another topic as if you hadn’t said a word. They don’t really seem interested in finding answers but in finding reasons to make themselves feel better about what they want to believe. After all, a skeptic of one set of beliefs is actually a true believer in another set of beliefs.
I see what you’re trying to do here, but I have to say, this describes your approach to arguing with me (and a few other posters here, actually) better than it describes any “liberals” or “secularists” that I’ve encountered in my life.
Also:
“I don’t think you should be giving arguments against atheists,” the young man said. “Jesus told us to love, and it’s not loving what you’re doing.”
Obviously I disagree with this. If someone thinks they’re right about something, it only follows that they will try to establish that with evidence. I’ve nothing against this.
“You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”
First off, I would avoid using this approach as a cookie-cutter response to any and all takers. Perhaps it was true for that one person — I do not know, as I wasn’t there to witness the exchange — but as for myself, I don’t even have a girlfriend at the moment, so it’s not even possible to sleep with my girlfriend~
Also, it’s naive and childish to assume that anyone and everyone who doesn’t believe in God does so solely to avoid the weight of moral decisions. In fact, it’s kind of odd to avoid religion solely for that reason — religion gives the illusion of “easy answers” to any and all moral questions, so that you don’t have to think about morality. The less one depends on religion, the more careful thought and consideration one must pore into in order to have any sort of consistent moral perspective.
So when I see an atheist or agnostic, I usually assume they are that way because of either moral or scientific reasons….but not in the way you seem to think.
Atheist Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley, famously said many years ago that the reason he and many of his contemporaries “accepted Darwinism even without proof, is because we didn‘t want God to interfere with our sexual mores.”
Even if this was true (again, no idea)….would you suddenly admit that Christianity is “wrong” if I could find a guy who admitted that he’s only Christian so that he can have religious authority over his wife — Love, honor and obey — or just so that he can abuse certain people and defend himself with the Bible?
See, I expect one of three responses to the above question:
1) Christianity has such a broad definition of “loving” that there is no such thing as “abusing” people, as long as it serves God’s purpose (i.e. calling gay people “faggots” and running them out of town is “loving” because it’s trying to push them from that lifestyle, which is “unloving”). Also, women are supposed to submit to men in marriage because it says so in the Bible, so that’s okay, too.
2) Some kind of claim that there are no reasons to be Christian for reasons that give you power of some kind; in this case, I direct you to my earlier claim about why I often assume people are agnostic/atheist.
3) Nobody will respond to my comment, and they will continue to rephrase and re-ask it again and again without answering it each time it surfaces.
Or would it be nearer the truth to say that you see nothing wrong with eating bacon BECAUSE you reject Islam, rather than the other way round?
That’s actually a very good point; it only seems to be a “caught red-handed” scenario to someone who considers it a crime or scandalous act; to anyone else, it’s more like, “Yeah, so I ate bacon this week. What’s it to ya?”
The person would have to “secretly feel guilt” about whatever it is in order for this claim Turek makes to have any weight. But I’m sure he’s on his way here right now to assert just that: that all humans “secretly feel guilt” any time we do anything that doesn’t jive with his worldview.
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Tim, they’d say ‘well of course I eat bacon, there’s nothing WRONG with eating bacon’, which proves the Muslim’s point - “Aha, so you admit that you defy Islam so that you can eat bacon without feeling guilty”.
However, if Frank was consistent in his argument he’d follow this stream of logic:
Religion A prohibits action B. Anyone who rejects A whilst carrying out action B is doing so in order to give themselves permission to carry out B.
This means that any religion that Frank rejects that prohibits an activity he enjoys could use the same argument against him that he uses here. eg The only reason he’s not a Jainist is because he doesn’t want to avoid stepping on insects.
This is obviously absurd.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 am
This is obviously absurd.
But of course….although if I stop there, this conversation is over, is it not? XD
I think the best axiom for this situation is, Correlation doesn’t indicate causation.
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
“Correlation doesn’t indicate causation”
Right, or Christians would have to explain why Atheists are less likely to commit crimes and get divorced than Christians. And also explain why countries with the most extensive sex education tend to have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy.
What was that quote again?
“They don’t really seem interested in finding answers but in finding reasons to make themselves feel better about what they want to believe.”
So who cares about statistics showing that a set of policies such as condom distribution and sex-ed work in reducing rates of abortion. Despite that being the stated aim of the pro-life crowd, they’ll oppose these policies anyway.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
They throw objection after objection … but never pause long enough to listen to the answers. It doesn’t matter that you’ve just answered their question with an undeniable fact—they’ve already left that topic and are rattling off another objection on another topic as if you hadn’t said a word.
Andrew comments on this above, pointing out that it sounds to him more like the behavior of “conservatives, creationists and theists” rather than of “skeptics and liberals.” As a liberal and a skeptic myself, I’m inclined to agree with Andrew, but I do acknowledge that this is a subjective observation. Both “sides” clearly feel this way about the other.
Maybe that’s because it’s not about the objections themselves, but about what the theist or the atheist sees as the overarching theme. I’m sure the young man in the story above thought all his objections were extremely related, and believed himself to be refuting each of David’s points in turn. I bet he thought that David’s responses were dodging the issues he was desperately trying to get at. Both sides are (generally) trying to engage in substantive debate with the other, but since we come from completely different sets of premises about the world around us, it’s like we’re speaking different languages. On different planets. What sounds like a refutation to one is a complete non sequitur to the other.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Hi everyone!
I am a 44 year old, loving husband, father of three wonderful children, 18 year veteran police officer and community service volunteer.
My wife, Terresa, has always worked professionally in education and is currently a teacher’s assistant at a local public elementary school.
We both have worked hard our whole lives building what we have together and we will be married 20 years this December.
Our children, Ryan (14), Erin (12) and Connor (7) are all honor roll students at their schools who fully participate in extra-curricular competitions for academic and artistic excellence. They also participate in community service projects with us and have won their school awards for citizenship every year.
We don’t believe in God(s)ess(es) because there simply is no empirical evidence for the existence of any of them.
Our home library contains every modern religious text right next to books on science fiction, fantasy, history, philosophy, drama, psychology, atheism, humanism, politics, etc.
We are informed and strive for new information every chance we get while teaching our children moral and ethical standards including the value of compassion and reciprocity.
This isn’t about sex or being angry at Thor for bringing rain on our family picnic last year.
Atheism is a position based on a critical examination of religious claims and finding that there is no evidence to support them.
We still remain ready for any of the God(s)ess(es) who want to come forward and show themselves like they used to do according to the various tales.
We’ll even settle for any religious adherent who can be the first to finally present proof and not more of the same unverifiable hearsay stories of private revelations to mythic heroes or threats about what will happen to us after we die.
Steve Schlicht
Biloxi MS
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
FYI (Not that it is very important) The Huxley “quote” is taken from Turek/Geisler’s book “I don’t have enough Faith to be an atheist” (according to Google Books, page 163) with a footnote liking to Dr. James Kennedy’s “Skeptic’s Answered, pg 154. I don’t have a copy of Kennedy’s book, but no one, to my knowledge, has ever been able to get a citation for (let alone verify) this quote from Kennedy.
I can’t find it anywhere.
One person indicated Kennedy first used it in “Why I Believe,” citing Henry Morris—but no such quotation was ever found.
A little google-searching would make it appear this quote is completely made up. NO ONE can find its original citation.
Sadly, it seems to be making Christian circles (Dr. Lutzer utilized it as well, but indicated it was said by Aldous Huxley, not Julian) with no verification.
If a person has to make-up a story to support their position, it tends to weaken their position.
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:15 pm
@ Andrew - you posted,
“Quick question for any Christian reading. What would your reaction be if a Muslim said this to you:
‘You raise objections to Islam because you eat bacon, and don’t want Allah to interfere with your eating habits?’”
What is the Muslim’s reason for thinking that eating bacon is wrong?
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Hi Frank,
I just wanted to say that I was very offended and amused when you said that atheists should be pitied because we’re angry and had bad childhoods. I’m not kidding. You said it at UNCW when you were there the 2nd time discussing why the bible is true. I respect your right to your beliefs, but I find it offensive/comical that you would generalize the emotions and childhoods of atheists.
And one more thing - I found your reasoning for the bible being true to be very weak. One of them was that the authors of the bible portrayed themselves as idiots from time to time. You said, “If they showed themselves in an embarrassing light, the bible must be true, because if it was false they would have made themselves out to be perfect.” I disagree. I think they’re smart enough to realize that people might have some doubt about them if they claimed to be perfect.
Well, that’s all I have to say for now …
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Both sides are (generally) trying to engage in substantive debate with the other, but since we come from completely different sets of premises about the world around us, it’s like we’re speaking different languages. On different planets. What sounds like a refutation to one is a complete non sequitur to the other.
Well said
March 4th, 2009 at 1:01 am
@ Dagwood: “A little google-searching would make it appear this quote is completely made up. NO ONE can find its original citation.”
Hmmm - it appears to be from an interview that Merv Griffin conducted with Julian Huxley.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Me: “What would your reaction be if a Muslim said this to you:
‘You raise objections to Islam because you eat bacon, and don’t want Allah to interfere with your eating habits?’”
Shawn: “What is the Muslim’s reason for thinking that eating bacon is wrong?”
Is that what your response would be to the Muslim, or is that a side question to me before you can respond?
Either way, you’ve answered the question - you’re not rejecting Islam because you want to eat bacon, just as the atheist doesn’t reject Christianity just because he wants to sleep with his girlfriend.
Give me a good reason not to eat bacon or sleep with my girlfriend and I’ll consider it. But ‘because my God says so’, is not a sufficient answer.
March 4th, 2009 at 8:57 am
thoughtcountsZ,
Good insight on the set of premises. That’s why a study of philosophy, including first principles, is so important. Just like in aviation (my military background), a small error in the beginning of your flight will result in a large error at the end of your flight (i.e. a pilot that is only one degree off on his heading will drop a weapon an entire mile off target after just 7 minutes).
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Andrew and Tim,
Yes, I’m sure Christians and Conservatives sometimes shift to new topics. People don’t tend to argue with those that agree with themselves.
I’m not following your Islam comment. Are there some people who are not Muslims because they want to eat bacon? Even if that were so, I don’t know what it has to do with the admission of some atheists who don’t want to be Christians because they want to follow their own moral agenda.
If you look back a post by Neil Mammen almost a year ago (What if The God of the Christians was Real http://www.crossexamined.org/blog/?p=54), you’ll find some interesting responses. Some atheists said, like you have said Andrew, that even if God existed they (you) would not worship Him. That is a startling admission and proves the main point of the article– that atheism is often a matter of the heart not the head. Rebellion or rejection is an issue of the heart, not the head.
For the record, I think the same can be true of Christianity– some people simply want Christianity to be true but don’t know much evidence. But just because Christians may do this, it doesn’t mean atheists don’t as the article (and your admission) points out.
Thanks for your posts.
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Hi Steve,
Welcome to the site. Thanks for your service to the community.
You mentioned this: “We don’t believe in God(s)ess(es) because there simply is no empirical evidence for the existence of any of them.”
What do you mean by empirical?
What have you read from Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, William Lane Craig, John Lennox or Gary Habermas?
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 10:22 am
Frank: “Are there some people who are not Muslims because they want to eat bacon?”
Are you saying that this doesn’t apply to you? I didn’t think so. And yet it’s the same logical argument that you are using here. You’re saying people are ‘not Christians because they want to have pre-marital sex’. I don’t really see how the two arguments differ. If it doesn’t apply to you, how can you say it applies to anyone else?
Do you reject the Muslim religion because you don’t want to be subject to the moral laws of Islam? I doubt it. You don’t see rejecting Islam as a handy way to be able to eat pork, right? And yet you make the same assumptions about atheists’ motivations.
“Some atheists said, like you have said Andrew, that even if God existed they (you) would not worship Him. That is a startling admission and proves the main point of the article– that atheism is often a matter of the heart not the head.”
Frank, I’m more startled that you would presumably accept as moral a God who appeared to you and said that paedophilia or baby torture was moral. If he said it, you would automatically accept it. That suggests your religion is a matter of neither the heart NOR the head.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Thanks for listening, Frank. I think the conversations going on in this comment thread offer a couple good examples for different premises. Here are two, there might be more but I don’t have much time to write this.
One - We disagree on the meaning of empirical evidence and its worth.
Atheists: I need proof, or at least reasonable evidence, before I believe something to be true.
Christians: [Often: Faith goes above and beyond proof! but in this comment thread…] My internal sense, and the senses of others, that God exists is sufficient empirical evidence.
Seeing wondrous things and feeling the hand of God at work is not empirical evidence for the existence of God, by the usual scientific definition. The fact that other people also felt the hand of God at work, and that some of them wrote books about it, is also not empirical evidence. It may still be enough for you personally — it’s fine to make some personal decisions based on hunches and instinct when that’s the best information available — but realize that that is a subjective conclusion. Other people may see the same wondrous things and not feel any sense that a deity was responsible. Those people have no inclination to posit the existence of God. We can spend all day telling each other “I feel it!” and “I don’t feel it!” and neither of us is going to convince the other to change their mind.
Two - We disagree on what makes someone/something deserving of praise (or worship).
Christians: Assuming the God of the Bible exists, He ought to be obeyed and worshipped.
Atheists: [some, not all] Even if that God existed, based on what the Bible says about him I’m not sure he’s worthy of worship.
The Bible says that God wants us to worship Him, and that He is omnipotent and omniscient. Omnipotence is a pretty intimidating concept, and I can see why someone would agree to submit to that unquestioningly. However, some of us find some Biblical teachings to be morally repugnant. I’m not inclined to worship anyone more powerful than I am just because of their power; instead I look at what they do with their power and how good I think it is. (There are obvious historical examples here, but I’ll spare you.) It’s interesting that you see atheism as merely a rebellion from God, rather than a consideration of complex moral issues. It sounds to me, an atheist, like your submission to God is merely a concession to supreme power, rather than any thoughtful agreement with the moral statements you’re agreeing to follow.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:51 am
@ Andrew -
No, I want to know the reasons why the Muslim thinks it is wrong for people to eat bacon and are those reasons justified. That is why I would ask that question. Because if the reasons are not justified, then there is no good reason for me to abstain from bacon.
March 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
@ thoughcounts Z -
You wrote:
“One - We disagree on the meaning of empirical evidence and its worth.
Atheists: I need proof, or at least reasonable evidence, before I believe something to be true.
Christians: [Often: Faith goes above and beyond proof! but in this comment thread…] My internal sense, and the senses of others, that God exists is sufficient empirical evidence.”
That seems to be a mischaracterization of Christian Faith which is a moving in trust in a particular direction based upon the evidence and not a step of trust in absence of, or contrary to, the evidence.
In your second point, you said:
“Two - We disagree on what makes someone/something deserving of praise (or worship).
Christians: Assuming the God of the Bible exists, He ought to be obeyed and worshipped.
Atheists: [some, not all] Even if that God existed, based on what the Bible says about him I’m not sure he’s worthy of worship.”
What would constitute worthiness for you?
March 4th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Shawn, quite - so it has nothing to do with rejecting Islam, or rejecting Allah. So in the same way, if a Christian tells me I shouldn’t sleep with my girlfriend, I want to know a good reason for it.
Because if the reasons are not justified, then there is no good reason for me to abstain from bacon, or relations with my partner.
March 4th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Ah well, In for a Penny…
Shawn White,
I was aware the Julian Huxley quote allegedly came from an interview with Merv Griffin. Which interview? Did Merv Griffen even interview Julian Huxley? And why, if Dr. Kennedy said it came from an interview, did he cite Morris’ book? And why did Dr. Lutzer indicate it wasn’t Julian, but Aldous Huxley, with no citation at all for us to look up?
More out of curiosity than anything else.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Sean: I’m sorry. It was absolutely not my intention to mischaracterize anything. Most of the evidence I’ve heard cited for God’s existence (or for other aspects of the Bible being true) has been what sounds to me like an appeal to personal intuition. Along the lines of: Look at [something amazing in the world], isn’t it obvious that a creator had to be behind it / that a benevolent deity must be watching out for us? I have no problem with this as a religious statement; I think religion is basically a manifestation of intuition. However, some people have intuition that tells them one thing, while others have intuition that tells them another. There’s no way to determine the right answer. But you say there is evidence. What do you have in mind?
(There is also the category of supposed evidence for things like ID or creationism, statements couched in scientific terminology but ignoring vast bodies of actual scientific work providing mountains of evidence to the contrary. I doubt that you mean to reference arguments about how a great flood could have all in one go caused the sedimentary layers we observe today, but perhaps you do.)
On the worthiness issue: I have to say I’m not quite sure where I stand. If it turned out to be the case that there was an omniscient, omnipotent being whose every statement was objectively correct, I suppose I could do little else but worship that being. On the other hand, I have a lot of trouble imagining a being like that that could exist. (Could God make a boulder so heavy He cannot lift it? and all that. It’s a confusing situation.)
So basically, if it were to somehow be suddenly obvious that there was one objective morality and God was the sole arbiter of it, I imagine I would worship Him. But I don’t imagine the morality of the Bible being that one, perfect morality. I wouldn’t call a deity “benevolent” if they would think it’s good to kill everyone and start fresh every time a few people started misbehaving. I don’t approve of stoning to death as a punishment for anything. I don’t see any moral problem with homosexuality. I doubt that a benevolent God would set up a society with women inferior to men rather than equals, or that He would proclaim everyone to be tainted with original sin. I could go on, but this comment is getting long already.
Here, this may illustrate the problem better. Let’s think of both God and Satan. Both are assumed to have powers to do and know far, far more than any human, so we couldn’t distinguish them from beings of infinite capability. However, one encourages humans to do good, and the other tries to get humans to do evil. How do we tell the difference? Both will tell us that they are the good one, and that they have our best interests in mind. The only way we know who’s good and who’s evil is to match up their recommendations with our personal moral beliefs (derived from whatever philosophical assumptions you wish — categorical imperatives, social expedience, axiomatic principles, whatever). The way you know that God is the good one is because His commandments sound like stuff which you believe for independent reasons to be good.
March 4th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Whoops, that was even longer than I expected. Maybe this is too detailed for discussion here. I’ll continue to check back for replies, but if anyone wants to continue the conversation via email, you can also reach me at: z [at] thoughtcounts [dot] net.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Andrew,
You said: “Frank, I’m more startled that you would presumably accept as moral a God who appeared to you and said that paedophilia or baby torture was moral. If he said it, you would automatically accept it. That suggests your religion is a matter of neither the heart NOR the head.”
Nice turn of phrase, Andrew. Problem is, I never said that or implied it. I didn’t say God could do evil, but that he could shift us from one life to another because he is the author of life and knows the end from the beginning. It is YOUR position that says that there is nothing objectively wrong with baby torture or pedophilla, not mine. And I’m not concerned with the sociological aspects of morality on this thread. I’m trying to discuss the ontological aspects of it, but you keep shifting to “there are fewer atheist criminals than Christians.” Even if that were true (and I don’t know if it is), what does it have to do with the ontological grounding of morality?
You said that your little girl is made of atoms– we all agree– but is that all? She has a mind which is not solely material (there would be no placebo effect if the mind was purely material, nor any way to trust reason itself). In fact, the thoughts we have been exchanging on this blog are not purely material. The laws of logic we are utilizing are not material. How can this be explained by atheism which is necessarily materialism? (Perhaps this question requires another thread).
But the main point is that since you accept the immaterial laws of logic by the fact that you are arguing with people on this blog, what is so hard about accepting the immaterial laws of morality. Is it that you don’t like where it leads?
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
“I didn’t say God could do evil, but that he could shift us from one life to another”
But you said anything he commands is by definition not evil. This includes ANY act, including commanding people to kill other people. So, I’m afraid this is the implication of what you believe, which I have to say saddens me.
“Is it that you don’t like where it leads?”
If it leads to you being able to kill my daughter, just because your God commanded you to, then I have to say I don’t like that conclusion.
“You said that your little girl is made of atoms– we all agree– but is that all? ”
There are people who know more about the workings of the mind than either of us, Frank. There is no conclusion that anything supernatural is going on there. If you think you’ve found evidence that there is, feel free to submit a paper on the subject for peer review. Until then, yes, I will proceed on the basis that we are non-supernatural beings, including our brains. Thoughts are a product of our brains. Yes, we are conscious, we have the ability to feel pain etc. The fact that we are atoms does not take away from this.
March 4th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Andrew,
Are your statements true or just chemical reactions?
March 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Hi Toby,
You seem to be judging primitive cultures, saying that, for example, stoning people, is absolutely wrong. Doesn’t your judgment imply an objective morality, or are you saying that in those cultures stoning would be fine? If so, why complain about those practices?
Have you read “Mere Christianity” or “Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis? Great works defending universal morality.
Thanks for your posts. Welcome to the site.
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Frank, you’re going off in bizarre directions here. It reminds me of the lawyer in The Simpsons who when caught out says ‘Yes, but what IS truth anyway’.
A minute ago you were trying to make a case for sex being immoral unless a certain religious ceremony is performed beforehand. Now you’re going down the ‘but what is truth?’ route.
I made a simple point: if your argument is valid as stated in this article, then to be consistent it would imply that you reject Islam so that you can eat bacon. That’s either a motivation for you rejecting Islam or it isn’t. I’m guessing it isn’t, and it would be presumptious and absurd to suggest it was. In the same way, it is an act of hubris on your part to assume to know the motivations of people who don’t accept the same God as you.
In case you think I’m dodging your question, a statement isn’t a ‘chemical reaction’. My thought processes may be possible through chemical reactions. You are alleging the supernatural is involved; this is no different to people saying that because they didn’t understand lightning, therefore it must be Thor flinging lightning bolts from the heavens.
March 4th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Andrew,
Yes, agreed, philosophy can get bizarre.
Let me get back to the article. Whether someone is not a Muslim because they want to eat bacon is another question entirely. The point of my article was to say that the kid was rejecting God for moral reasons, and other atheists have admitted that’s part of their motivation as well. Does that mean you have that motivation? Only you know that, but you wouldn’t deny that people believe things sometimes for other than purely logical reasons now, would you? If you agree they do, we agree.
Back to philosophy. I’m not saying God is supervising our thoughts, but I am saying there is an immaterial realm of ideas (as recognized by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.) that needs an explanation. My question is how do you account for that immaterial realm if atheism is true? In other words, it’s not that my worldview is necessarily true because the laws of logic exist (after all, theists debate the particulars of that realm), but that materialism seems necessarily false. How do the laws of logic exist if everything is material? And why trust reason if everything is material?
Blessings,
Frank
March 4th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
But the main point is that since you accept the immaterial laws of logic by the fact that you are arguing with people on this blog, what is so hard about accepting the immaterial laws of morality. Is it that you don’t like where it leads?
(1) Again, do you reference the set of guidelines which dictate the flow of conscious thought and consistent rationality, or a supernatural avatar thereof? If you mean the latter, then no, I do not accept that, and it has nothing to do with whether or not I’m capable of arguing logically. If you mean the former, then yes, I do accept that certain things are consistent and certain things are not.
(2) You seem to think that accepting that “some things are” and “some things are not” is adhering to some kind of law. It’s possible to think up any conceivable concept and label it as a “law” and apply a supernatural avatar to it, then accuse someone of accepting this law as a supernatural truth….but it’s not the same thing as accepting something as true or not true. So I’m back to my earlier question: Do you believe that, if something is “untrue,” that there must be a supernatural avatar that represents this “untruthfulness?” And if so, do you understand what the implications of that are?
(3) As for “accepting the immaterial laws of morality,” all you’ve said to “prove” that it exists is to compare it to logic (to show that “things can consistently exist, and so there is objective morality,” a non-sequitur if you ask me), and that “a lot of people feel the same way.” This does not mean anything to me. If everyone in the world except for me felt that God had told them to kill their firstborn children, I would still not kill my firstborn child. Consensus is not a fact-based exercise, you see, and so claiming that you’re in the majority (whether or not you are) is not an argument, case closed. And I will re-state this as many times as is necessary (in case you haven’t gathered as much from the fact that I have been doing so each time you say this or something like it)~
You said that your little girl is made of atoms– we all agree– but is that all?
You seem to think that something cannot be held as valuable if it is not spiritual. So tell me; do you think your body is valuable? Not the spirit you believe is contained within, but the matter itself. Do you think it’s valuable at all? Or, since the body itself is not a supernatural entity, does that mean you should just not take care of it and let it fall apart, or even destroy it yourself?
If not, I’m curious as to why. According to your own position, it follows that something cannot be valuable to anyone if it does not have a supernatural origin.
She has a mind which is not solely material (there would be no placebo effect if the mind was purely material,
How so? The mind thinks what it thinks; the brain tricks itself into thinking it is doing what it is not doing. A firewall-bypass program on the internet is similar, and yet it is not supernatural — it uses a different code than normal, to trick other computers into thinking it is a different computer.
Think of it like this; if the brain recognizes certain variables as being in a certain condition, it will carry out certain actions. If the brain, for whatever reason — perhaps due to chemical manipulation resulting from emotional output — recognizes these variables as being in a state that they do not actually reflect themselves as being in, then it will react as though they are in that state, even if they actually aren’t.
I don’t see how any part of that “must” be supernatural, or “couldn’t” exist without being supernatural.
In fact, the thoughts we have been exchanging on this blog are not purely material.
I do believe it was your claim that these thoughts take some supernatural shape and are represented physically, somehow. You still have yet to answer how this is possible….
In any case, I don’t think the thoughts “exist” physically; rather, I think our brains recognize a collection of smaller empirical values that combine to form an exceedingly complex value, all of which can only be expressed chemically in the form of an emotion or reaction — for example, different base conceptions of “what is real to me = Y” and “environmental factor X is in Y state,” combine to become “environmental factor X is therefore perceived as real because it exists in Y state, which I perceive to be real.” These are not “magical,” or “ethereal,” or “supernatural;” they are simple arrays of simple empirical recognitions that build onto each other, accepting each previous one as a computer accepts commands and variables, and draw conclusions based on the information (thus forming more complex variables that function as “independent” variables themselves, but are not actually so). We could not function in any physical way without these simple physical variables.
The laws of logic we are utilizing are not material. How can this be explained by atheism which is necessarily materialism? (Perhaps this question requires another thread).
Dr. Turek….do you think there is such thing as “objective truth?” I think you’ve said yes on many occasions, have you not? If so, that objective truth must have a supernatural avatar to represent its “truthfulness” (which, you posit, is probably God). Am I correct?
If so….do you believe that it’s an objective truth that there is objective truth? If so, then that objective truth (that there is an objective truth) must, by those same standards, have a supernatural avatar to represent it, should it not?
And then….do you think it is true that “it’s objectively true” that this supernatural avatar exists? If so, then that truth must also have a supernatural avatar to represent it. And then….do you think that it’s objectively true that that supernatural avatar exists? If so, then it, too must be represented by a supernatural avatar….
Your wordplay runs itself in circles until it means nothing; while it is possible to posit that something has a supernatural counterpart, it is not implicit or obvious that this is true based solely on the fact that it does exist in some way, assuming it does. If that were true, then it would create an infinite loop of avatar-representation which ultimately makes the whole concept inconsequential. Anything and everything ever thought of by anyone — and every contemplation of any of that “anything” ever contemplated by anyone — would have to be represented by a supernatural avatar in some way; so in that sense, everything exists infintely upon itself.
You tell me; how does that make sense to you?
Doesn’t your judgment imply an objective morality
No, it implies adherence to a standard; in my case, I am (quite obviously, at least to me) adhering to my own standard. As I adhere to the standards set by my chemical emotions (i.e. if the conditions in my brain are met so that I am caused to feel “happy,” then I will feel happy according to the standard set by my brain; likewise, if something makes sense to me and does not make me recoil with disgust or horror, then I accept it as “mostly okay;” and if if does make me recoil with disgust or horror, then I do not, and I file it under “will not tolerate”).
March 4th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
but I am saying there is an immaterial realm of ideas (as recognized by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.) that needs an explanation.
I’m glad you finally decided on a simple phrasing that can be dealt with, instead of dancing in metaphorical circles. Thanks for that
Been waiting some time.
In any case….first off, we must define “existence.” What do believe must happen in order for something to “exist?” If it has a physical counterpart — i.e. its “existence” is grounded in physical reality — do you believe it is “real?” For example; if you can detect the monitor before you with more than one sense (i.e. you can see and feel it), does that mean it is (for all intents and purposes) there? Or is there some further proof you need to convince your mind that it “exists?”
If so, what is that extra proof?
Building upon that, whatever your answer may be (assuming you provide one)….
….if something has a physical avatar — i.e. it’s constructed of physical matter that you can detect and meaningfully/physically interact with — but no supernatural avatar that you are aware of (i.e. the objective truth of its existence is not reflected by a supernatural avatar), then does it exist? Or do you require the existence of a supernatural avatar to acknowledge that it exists? If so….how do you detect the supernatural avatar that represents the “objective reality” of the monitor in front of you? In what sense can you convey its existence beyond physicality? Or do you perhaps believe it does not exist beyond physicality?
In any case, this narrows down the criteria for reality in a physical/metaphysical sense: if you believe that it is real because it has a consistent physical avatar, then you believe that something is “objectively real” strictly on physical terms. If you accept that it is “objectively real” only when a supernatural avatar is presented, then you are forced to posit the existence of such an avatar — a “spirit” that represents your computer, so to speak. Something that exists beyond the physical avatar, “proving” its existence. Otherwise, you are saying that, even though the computer exists physically, you deny that this existence is objective or final — you posit that, in the final true reality whose existence you posit by defining something as “objectively real,” this thing does not truly exist. It’s just a physical avatar.
In which case, we must retroactively apply this to all physical things; they are not truly, objectively real. They’re just physical playthings, neither meaningful nor real.
You see where I’m going with this, hopefully. I can’t go much further (without wasting ten or twelve pages of hypothesis based on your answer to my first question here) until you answer the question I asked at the beginning of this post. So I’ll wait and see if you do~
March 4th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
How do the laws of logic exist if everything is material? And why trust reason if everything is material?
Questions that have no meaning if everything is material. It’s implicit that reason is to be trusted; its existence is undeniable. Only when we approach supernatural avatar-representation systems of thought are we forced to question the essential “existence” of reason.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:26 am
“Whether someone is not a Muslim because they want to eat bacon is another question entirely.”
No, I’m afraid it’s exactly the same question. I don’t see how you can’t see this. I think it’s just because the Muslim question seems so absurd to you, and you can’t face that your own point was the same one. Have a think about it.
I reject the Muslim religion, but you don’t think it’s because I want to eat bacon. I reject Jainism, but you don’t think it’s because I want to be able to swat mosquitos. But when I reject YOUR religion, suddenly it’s because I want to sleep with my girlfriend.
Now, YOU also reject the Muslim religion, and Jainism, and many others. But you don’t hold yourself to the same standard you hold me.
I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this!
You’re now moving into other avenues in this thread: the nature of reality, duality, the transcendent argument for God (TAG). These are separate points that you acknowledge have taxed philosophers for thousands of years. We’re not going to come to a swift conclusion here, and you seem to have gone down this avenue as a distraction from an argument you’ve made that doesn’t work.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:26 am
“Whether someone is not a Muslim because they want to eat bacon is another question entirely.”
No, I’m afraid it’s exactly the same question. I don’t see how you can’t see this. I think it’s just because the Muslim question seems so absurd to you, and you can’t face that your own point was the same one. Have a think about it.
I reject the Muslim religion, but you don’t think it’s because I want to eat bacon. I reject Jainism, but you don’t think it’s because I want to be able to swat mosquitos. But when I reject YOUR religion, suddenly it’s because I want to sleep with my girlfriend.
Now, YOU also reject the Muslim religion, and Jainism, and many others. But you don’t hold yourself to the same standard you hold me.
I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this!
You’re now moving into other avenues in this thread: the nature of reality, duality, the transcendent argument for God (TAG). These are separate points that you acknowledge have taxed philosophers for thousands of years. We’re not going to come to a swift conclusion here, and you seem to have gone down this avenue as a distraction from an argument you’ve made that doesn’t work.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Andrew,
The article is not about you. The article is about what the kid said and what some atheists have admitted, which is not a matter of debate.
Now you have admitted that you don’t like aspects of the biblical morality (homosexuality) and that you wouldn’t worship Jesus even if he is God. But only you know what your motivation is to reject Christianity. Your continued protests over an event and admissions that actually took place make one think this article hits too close to home. But again, only you know the truth, so I’ll take your word for it.
We can pick up the source of reason another time. Hope you are well in the UK. Saw an article about impending summer protests that I pray do no materialize.
Blessings,
Frank
March 5th, 2009 at 9:31 am
“Now you have admitted that you don’t like aspects of the biblical morality ”
…As you admit you don’t like aspects of Islamic morality. But you still won’t say whether that plays a part in why you reject it. A telling ommission, I think. Only You can know it’s true significance…
“But only you know what your motivation is to reject Christianity.”
Know, you can also know my motivation, because I am happy to explain it to you: I reject a philosophy that discriminates like yours does. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a problem with my mother’s faith, which seems much less hate-filled than yours.
“…what some atheists have admitted, which is not a matter of debate”.
1) So your article is aimed at that one kid and the very few atheists you quote? Not aimed at anyone else?
2. Anecdote doesn’t = data. If I found you a couple of Christians who said they embrace atheism because it allows them to hate gays, would it change your mind about anything?
3) As for ‘not a matter of debate’, did you read Dagwood’s post?
“…to my knowledge, has ever been able to get a citation for (let alone verify) this quote from Kennedy.”
“and that you wouldn’t worship Jesus even if he is God.”
Conversely, you haven’t denied that you would worship Jesus even if told he was a child torturing psychopath, whose father was actually Allah. I don’t see why your position is more sensible or defensible.
Frank, you must have some opening axiom that LEADS you to accept your God’s morality, or worship Him without question. What is it?
For example, are you taking as a first principle something like this: “I will proceed on the basis that any powerful supernatural being must, by definition, be worthy of worship?”. Or is it something like “Faced with Satan and God, I will opt to obey the latter because he is more powerful”. Or perhaps “I have decided that following the ideas of Jesus will lead to more happiness in the world”.
Whatever axiom you are starting with, if you present it to me then I will have a chance to consider it.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:03 am
If you have NO starting axiom - you worship God because you worship him - then aren’t you presenting a circular argument? If so, it has no power to convince.
In other words, if you have to already believe and accept God BEFORE you can adopt the axioms, then they’re not much use to convince someone who doesn’t already share your faith.
I have my own starting axioms - eg, it’s better for people to be happy than miserable, not in pain than in pain. You could say that my ideas of morality are routed in these ideas. If you wish to convince me that my starting axioms should be replaced by others, then please go ahead and give it a go.
BTW, correction: “If I found you a couple of Christians who said they embrace atheism because it allows them to hate gays, would it change your mind about anything?”
Sorry, I meant ‘embrace Christianity’.
March 5th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Andrew,
Excellent questions on worship. I know the biblical, theological answers, but, for the sake of discussion, perhaps we should take it from a philosophical/natural law perspective. The topic deserves another thread, so I’ll put up a post and we’ll open it up to anyone that wants to comment. Same for the question of the source of reason. It may take me a little while because I’m going on the road again and Hitchens and I are discussing another debate.
Thanks for your posts!
Blessings,
Frank
March 5th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
“Atheist Julian Huxley, grandson of “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley, famously said many years ago …”
Frank, you should withdraw this statement unless you can find a reliable source to back it up. For a ‘famous’ quote, as Dagwood points out above, it seems remarkable impervious to verification. Google it and you just find myriad creationist websites quoting each other.
Google “THE JULIAN HUXLEY LIE” and click on the first result. It details a man’s attempts to find out where it came from. He draws a blank. The implication is that the quote is a fabrication. I’m sure you have quoted it in good faith, but given that it is impossible to verify, it seems the honest thing for you to do would be to withdraw it, or at least add a caveat. Surely you don’t want to base your arguments on made up quotes?
March 7th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Mr. T:
”
You seem to be judging primitive cultures, saying that, for example, stoning people, is absolutely wrong. Doesn’t your judgment imply an objective morality, or are you saying that in those cultures stoning would be fine? If so, why complain about those practices?”
To those primitive cultures stoning people was fine, in fact mandated by their god. To us today it’s not. But it’s so strange to think that these cultures that according to the bible were closest to god (he seemed to talk to a few of them very often and was just generally around more) didn’t think that it was wrong. If there was some universal morality in place from a god then it would have been seen in the bible. We dismiss it as wrong because today in our culture we think it’s barbaric (though I’m sure a minority would like to see it return). Is our morality better than those in the bible because they stoned over what we consider trifling offenses? In the certain conditions any culture would consider it moral to murder. In wars each side believe they are right and justified in slaughter, in many cases each side believes that the same god is on their side.
Morality is cultural and relative to the situation.. There is no absolute black and white reasoning. All situations depend on more variables than we consider sitting here from the safety of our homes and in front of our computers.
No, I’ve not read any C.S. Lewis. No, I take that back. I’ve read The Wastelands.
March 8th, 2009 at 5:26 am
“In fact, the thoughts we have been exchanging on this blog are not purely material.”
Can you explain what you mean by this? I am reasonably familiar with computers, if that helps.
March 11th, 2009 at 11:40 am
When the young man started spitting out all these objections, David eventually saw through the smokescreen and called the young man out on his fornication.
The blog isn’t saying that all Atheist/Agnostics/non-believers reject Christianity because they want to have pre-marital sex or engage in other sins.
The young man claimed to be a Christian before, that’s why it was so transparent that the only reason why he was an agnostic and firing all these objections at David was because he wanted to bone his girlfriend.
He was a Christian, then met a girl and was horny, but Christianity prohibits him from plowing her, so what did he do? He forsook Christianity, read some objections and used them as a catalyst to not follow Christ and bang his girl.
Some people do that and some people don’t but the blog speaks about the people who do.
Turek wrote, “I’ve found that the machine-gun-objection approach is COMMON among MANY skeptics and liberals” (emphasize mine).
March 11th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
“When the young man started spitting out all these objections, David eventually saw through the smokescreen and called the young man out on his fornication.”
Alternatively, he was just surprised that David started talking about the young man’s sex life, which isn’t generally considered that polite. To be honest, when I was a teenager I’d have been quite embarrassed if a near-stranger started asking me about my sex life, even when I was still a virgin.
“That’s why it was so transparent that the only reason why he was an agnostic and firing all these objections at David was because he wanted to bone his girlfriend.”
Either you believe in God or you don’t. You can’t CHOOSE to be an agnostic. Either he still really believed, in which case he was a Christian, not an agnostic - or he was genuinely an agnostic and would therefore have seen premarital sex as being no more sinful than, say eating shellfish or pork.
The story carries as much weight with me as it presumably would do for you if a Christian told you the only reason he chose to believe in God is because he was afraid of death.
March 11th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
because he wanted to bone his girlfriend….
….prohibits him from plowing her….
….and bang his girl….
Shock jock much?
Anyway, I have very little reason to believe there is such a person as the “young man” mentioned in this blog posting. Why, you ask? The whole premise of this particular blog post is to make some kind of point, I presume; if Turek has backed so far down the road of argument that he’s going to start making ad-hominem attacks on the character of atheists/agnostics by using a single anecdote to try and prove some universal truth about us heretics, then that says a lot to me. It says that he’s given up on the other arguments for the time being; it says he’s either running out of material or otherwise desperate; it says he is grasping at straws. And that is very, very disappointing to me; he’s been very careful about choosing his words for so long, and yet he trips up here and resorts to meager anecdotalism.
It’s like a slap in the face to anyone who’s been at the very least trying to take this blog seriously for the past six or seven months >:(
[/bitter tirade]
Turek wrote, “I’ve found that the machine-gun-objection approach is COMMON among MANY skeptics and liberals” (emphasize mine).
Another fine example of pathetic anecdotalism; “I’ve found (”in my experience“) that the machine-gun approach is common among many skeptics and liberals.”
Just broad enough to generalize, and yet not specific enough to have to justify. It’s the perfect non-sequitur offense.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Awesome, we can use HTML codes!
“Shock jock much?”
Too much Family Guy and South Park lol
“if Turek has backed so far down the road of argument that he’s going to start making ad-hominem attacks on the character of atheists/agnostics by using a single anecdote to try and prove some universal truth about us heretics, then that says a lot to me”
Yeah, I agree, people shouldn’t try to make a universal truth based on a single anecdote. But I keep reading the blog and I haven’t detected any boundless statements suggesting that David’s episode goes for every non-believer. He said, “Some prominent atheists have admitted this.” Was it implied then?
Andrew Ryan
“Either you believe in God or you don’t. You can’t CHOOSE to be an agnostic. Either he still really believed, in which case he was a Christian, not an agnostic - or he was genuinely an agnostic and would therefore have seen premarital sex as being no more sinful than, say eating shellfish or pork.”
Yeah the young man was just in rebellion, but if you took a few schmucks off the street who didn’t believe in any deity or any theism, I believe their reasons would alternate. Some refuse to believe because they had a disappointing experience in the past that turned them off to religion, others because they grew up in a non-theistic environment, others because they feel there is more evidence to believe in science then in God, and the list goes on.
I don’t believe every non-believer refuses to believe because they don’t want to follow Gods law. I believe that is the case for some, but not all. Especially for people who have never heard of God’s law. You can’t reject something if your unaware of it’s existence.
“Alternatively, he was just surprised that David started talking about the young man’s sex life, which isn’t generally considered that polite.”
Yeah that was impolite. I can see if David knew the young man on a personal level. He probably did if he zeroed in on his sin or it could have been a lucky guess! Who knows!
I think if you genuinely didn’t believe in God, then you wouldn’t be ashamed about some sin that you are being accused of from a religious advocate.
I’m a Christian and I know if a Muslim, came up to me and told me, “your only a Christian because you don’t want to eat pork and give alms” I wouldn’t care about his accusation because I don’t give a flying flip about the laws of Islam, thats why I won’t feel convicted when he accuses me of not adhering to his laws because I’m “too Christian” to care about his laws & regulations that I don’t have to yield to.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Careless mistake:
“your only a Christian because you don’t want to eat pork and give alms”
I meant to write:
“your only a Christian because you don’t want to give up eating pork…”
March 11th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Too much Family Guy and South Park lol
Actually, no. I’m just straining against all of these liberal stereotypes….
Yeah, I agree, people shouldn’t try to make a universal truth based on a single anecdote. But I keep reading the blog and I haven’t detected any boundless statements suggesting that David’s episode goes for every non-believer. He said, “Some prominent atheists have admitted this.” Was it implied then?
Fair enough….but I’m still not convinced this actually happened — and even if it did, what’s the point that’s being made? It’s basically something for people who agree with Turek to come along and gawk at (”Yeah, you tell ‘im!” etc. etc.), and for people who disagree with Turek to say, “Um, well, since it wasn’t directed at me, then I guess I don’t have a problem with it.”
I also have a problem with Turek drawing the conclusion he does based only on the information given. Assuming the kid in question (1) is real, and (2) comes from a fairly conservative community, then I don’t think it’s too far-out to imagine him “going white as a sheet” when some old man asks him about his sexual conduct. It’s an odd subject for someone you’ve never met to ask you about without some kind of lead-in. It’s also a brazen and groundless accusation to be making on such short notice.
I mean….let’s say that Turek is telling the truth, that this actually happened the way he says it did….and let’s say the kid really did do what Turek says he did for the reasons he says he did….if that’s the case, the fact of the matter is that this David fellow was lucky. If that had been me, or someone else who wasn’t “getting laid,” then the outcome would have been quite different. If in fact that is what happened with this David fellow, then it happened by pure chance. I see a grave mistake in assuming that this is a way to go around analyzing the behaviors of people you barely know.
I mean, do you think I should go around asking random Christians, “Say, are you a Christian just because you want a reason to judge people who don’t agree with you on every political issue?” Disregarding whether the premise itself is true or false (i.e. assuming it’s true)….is that a very effective way of going about it? Even if they are Christian for that very reason, it seems that they’d probably be less likely to admit it given the confrontational tone with which I approach them.
Some refuse to believe
Tell me, do you “choose to believe” that 2 + 2 = 4? I mean, can you honestly look at yourself and convince yourself otherwise? Or is it something you decide based on a rational conclusion?
March 11th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I think if you genuinely didn’t believe in God, then you wouldn’t be ashamed about some sin that you are being accused of from a religious advocate.
If it was some silly rule like eating bacon, I’d agree. But this is sex we’re talking about here; not many people are comfortable telling much older folks (that they’ve just met) about even the simplest details of their sex lives. Would you feel comfortable telling someone you’ve just met (someone who is accusing you of being knowingly false in your beliefs at the same time) that you’re having sex, if you knew the guy was going to make a huge deal about it? I mean, I’m pretty comfortable talking about sex with people I know (and sometimes people I don’t know well, depending on the circumstances), but I can’t say I’d be entirely comfortable bringing that up in front of, say, an Evangelical figure.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Alexis, thanks for your reasoned replies.
Would you agree that a good maxim to go by is that if someone tells you something is immoral, you should expect them to be able to back up the assertion - it’s not something you should take at face value?
For me, morality has to be routed in consequences - if you can show that an action negatively impacts on others, then you can argue that it is immoral. So if someone tells you that eating bacon is wrong ‘just because’ you feel justified in ignoring them. Same with the sex thing. I’ve been with my girlfriend for six years, both in our mid-thirties, we have a daughter. From what perspective is our sex life ’sinful’? Who is it hurting? If you tell me that it’s wrong simply because there’s a God who is offended by it, then that doesn’t really carry any weight with me. No more than telling me there’s a God who’s offended by eating pork.
Here’s another question for you. Imagine a friend tells you he’s been keeping a woman as a slave, and recently he beat her and she died three days later. What do you do?
1. Call the police, or
2. Say ‘don’t worry, the bible says that you can beat your slaves, and as long as they don’t die in ONE or TWO days, then you haven’t committed a sin?
March 13th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
“If that had been me, or someone else who wasn’t “getting laid,” then the outcome would have been quite different.”
ahaha Hell yeah, that would have been crazy awkward! It would have been awesome if the young man said, “No, actually it’s my boyfriend” lol Throw a unexpected twist at then end lol
I understand what you are saying though, I feel the same way. I think David did get lucky because I known some Christian leaders to put other Christian’s life on blast like that and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s why when I read the blog, to read what David did wasn’t new to me.
“Tell me, do you “choose to believe” that 2 + 2 = 4? I mean, can you honestly look at yourself and convince yourself otherwise? Or is it something you decide based on a rational conclusion?”
I don’t think mathematics cant be compared to religion because they don’t have many similarities. History will be better suited for your analogy. With History, we weren’t there when certain events happened but we have credible sources (primary or secondary), artifacts, manuscripts, to help us piece together the truth. But it’s up to us if we choose to believe the evidence in front of us. There are some people who don’t believe the Holocaust ever existed regardless of how much evidence there is. Some people just are that adamant. I don’t want to start a whole new debate about evidence for God/Science. I’m just trying to make a point.
Oh and your song, Long Way Down is kinda cool.
Andrew Ryan
“Would you agree that a good maxim to go by is that if someone tells you something is immoral, you should expect them to be able to back up the assertion - it’s not something you should take at face value?”
Yes I agree. Some of my Christian brothers piss me off because when they ungracefully call out people of their sins, the rationale they use is: its wrong because it’s a sin. Please elaborate why it’s wrong you douche! lol
“or me, morality has to be routed in consequences - if you can show that an action negatively impacts on others, then you can argue that it is immoral.”
I understand your reasoning but in the Christian world, with God knowing all and seeing all, His laws aren’t just horizontal (Man’s relationship with Man). They also go vertical (Mans relationship with God).
To exemplify, the Ten Commandments. The first four have to do with man’s relationship with God, the other six deal with man’s relationship with man. Furthermore, I can’t explain to you how the sin of idolatry affects anyone within your view because it has nothing to do with man. However, if you stole from someone, then I can explain because theft deals with your relationship with man.
“If you tell me that it’s wrong simply because there’s a God who is offended by it, then that doesn’t really carry any weight with me.”
Totally agree, I’m the same way. That’s why I’m against Christians who try to legislate certain laws to promote Christianity. I’m a advocate of Prop 8, just like many Christians but I want it banned because of reasons in the Bible and reasons outside the Bible. Most Christians want it banned solely on the precepts of the Bible.
If I debate with a non-believer, I use my external reasons, if I’m debating with a Christian, who for some reason is anti-Prop 8, then I’ll reason with them using the Bible.
I’ve caught some flak from some Christians for believing this way but I believe that is the most fair way to handle things. I am not going to force Christian laws on people who aren’t Christian! There will be friction, that’s why I have my reasons outside the Bible to defend my position and support things like Prop 8.
I don’t think its fair to ban something because of what someones god thinks. If Muslims wanted to ban the selling and consumption of pork, they better have damn good reason why other than because Allah doesn’t like pork. If pork made people spontaneously combust, then yeah I’m sold, lets ban it!
March 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Thanks Alexis, all good points.
The Christians I know who are anti-prop 8 tend to point out that if they were going to take an anti-gay/anti-gay marriage stance purely on the basis of bible text, they would be inconsistent if they didn’t accept other passages as justifications for slavery. Which obviously no-one does nowadays.
So that’s the ‘bible justification’ sorted. I’ve yet to hear a secular argument against gay marriage that couldn’t also be used against either older people marrying, or inter-racial marriage, or the whole institute of marriage itself. Since no-one DOES use the same argument against those things, again it seems they apply to argument inconsistently.
eg Gays can’t have kids, therefore they shouldn’t marry. But no-one uses that argument to say that post-menopausal women shouldn’t marry, or that sterile/baron people shouldn’t marry.
It seems like a knee-jerk response against gays is being dressed up with post-hoc rationalisation - as if I tried to think up reasons to ban eating snails, just cos the idea makes ME feel sick.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Here’s another question for you. Imagine a friend tells you he’s been keeping a woman as a slave, and recently he beat her and she died three days later. What do you do?
1. Call the police, or
2. Say ‘don’t worry, the bible says that you can beat your slaves, and as long as they don’t die in ONE or TWO days, then you haven’t committed a sin?
Aww crap, sorry Andrew, I forgot about the last portion of your comment.
I would do 1. call the police.
Choice two, hell nah lol Just briefly, because I don’t want to branch out and start debating scriptures, slavery is mentioned in the Bible and it is never defended nor condemned. God worked with the slavery system that was already established, and gave rules/regulations and punishments for both masters and slaves.
I do want to mention though, when quoting the Bible, especially the Old Testament, Christians and non-believers need to consider the historical and culture context. The Apostle Paul forbid women to braid their hair and wear jewelry in the NT. Why? Because during those times, women who did braided their hair and wore jewelry were commonly prostitutes. In present times, that scripture means, women shouldn’t dress like whores and society will dictate what “whorish” looks like.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I’ve yet to hear a secular argument against gay marriage that couldn’t also be used against either older people marrying, or inter-racial marriage, or the whole institute of marriage itself.
I’ve heard secular arguments (which I use also) against SSM & couldn’t be used for geriatrics, biracial marriages or barren women. I have arguments against gays using the natural argument (its in nature, animals do it!), adoption, etc. but I won’t mention any of them because it would spark another subject and I don’t want to debate SSM anymore, well at least not for a while.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
“I do want to mention though, when quoting the Bible, especially the Old Testament, Christians and non-believers need to consider the historical and culture context”
Precisely! As long as someone applies this maxim EQUALLY, and isn’t cherry picking which practices they wish to condemn, and which they wish to condone, then I don’t have a problem.
But I understand that you don’t want to enter into a long debate about SSM.
“God worked with the slavery system that was already established”
Shame he didn’t just say ‘it’s wrong’, if you truly believe that’s what he did for homosexuality.
March 15th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I don’t think mathematics cant be compared to religion because they don’t have many similarities. History will be better suited for your analogy. With History, we weren’t there when certain events happened but we have credible sources (primary or secondary), artifacts, manuscripts, to help us piece together the truth. But it’s up to us if we choose to believe the evidence in front of us. There are some people who don’t believe the Holocaust ever existed regardless of how much evidence there is. Some people just are that adamant. I don’t want to start a whole new debate about evidence for God/Science. I’m just trying to make a point.
Well, the point I was getting at was that I took issue with your phrasing, “refuse to believe.” But I suppose in retrospect it wasn’t that important. Call me paranoid; I guess it sounded snippy.
Oh and your song, Long Way Down is kinda cool.
Thanks~
I’ve heard secular arguments (which I use also) against SSM & couldn’t be used for geriatrics, biracial marriages or barren women. I have arguments against gays using the natural argument (its in nature, animals do it!), adoption, etc. but I won’t mention any of them because it would spark another subject and I don’t want to debate SSM anymore, well at least not for a while.
On that subject….I just want to say that the natural argument in either direction is a fallacy; nobody worth listening to (IMO) can use that argument to any effect. If one claims that “it’s okay because animals do it,” then that can be disproven by showing other things that the ambiguous party known as “animals” does, that humans generally do not approve of. Likewise, if one uses this argument from the start — that we deliberately shouldn’t do it because animals do it, and animals also do things that we don’t approve of — then one can respond by saying that there are also things that animals do that humans do as well, that humans find acceptable.
The point being, it is mostly irrelevant as to whether or not it’s “okay.” As to whether it’s “natural,” I would say that is determined by whether or not it occurs naturally in a species. Dolphins, for example, exhibit homosexual behavior. Granted that, it’s not “unnatural” for dolphins to engage in homosexual activity. And for humans, the behavior is most definitely present; one can argue whether or not it is “natural,” but obviously people want to do it (and in a fairly large scale; it’s not like this is some community mass-delusion thing). So either every single gay person is part of some conspiracy to just “be gay” for the sake of being gay, and they really aren’t gay — a conclusion that makes little sense — or it could be said to be somewhat of a natural occurence among humans, even if it is debatably “abnormal.”
i.e. “Abnormal” =/= “immoral” =/= “unnatural.”
March 20th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Andrew says:
If you have NO starting axiom - you worship God because you worship him - then aren’t you presenting a circular argument? If so, it has no power to convince.
In other words, if you have to already believe and accept God BEFORE you can adopt the axioms, then they’re not much use to convince someone who doesn’t already share your faith.
Andrew, just a quick question for clarification. Are you saying that if I have enough faith, I can make God exist? And when I do that, I can them worship him? I am just asking for clarification.
Eric
March 20th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
“Are you saying that if I have enough faith, I can make God exist? ”
Just to clarify Eric - no that’s not what I’m saying. Or even anything close to that.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Dagood,
The Julian Huxley quote you asked about was indeed from a Merv Griffin interview many years ago.
I myself asked Dr. Kennedy for the source one evening a few years ago. It was a TV interview, therefore there was no written source to refer to. He gave me an approximate date, sometime during the sixties, which I’ve forgotten. Dr. Kennedy referred to Huxley’s comments as something he had personally witnessed on TV, and I knew Jim Kennedy well enough to know he didn’t make things up. For one thing, he was well read enough that he would have a multitude of other sources he could use, and besides that, he was a man of impeccable integrity, so I trusted him at his word. If he said he saw it, then he saw it.
March 20th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
What are your starting axioms? Are you basically saying you are starting with the tenants of a naturalistic worldview? Are you saying a theist has no axioms? Are saying First Principles are an example of axioms? Because I know plenty of theists that employ the use of First Principles. What is your epistemology ? Is it somewhat similar to the “hard rationalism” that atheists like Dawkins seem to be espousing? I am just asking for clarification. Keep in mind that I probably don’t have as much time as you do to blog. So a reponse may take a little time.
Eric
March 20th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Tom, that may be so, but we have no way of checking the context, or the exact wording. All we have is Dr. Kennedy’s possibly paraphrased remembering of the quote, out of context. Not good enough.
Eric: “What are your starting axioms?”
Tell you what, Eric, you go first. I’ve explained a lot already, and you’ve just barged in with a bunch of questions. You tell me your starting axioms, in your own precious time.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I myself asked Dr. Kennedy for the source one evening a few years ago. It was a TV interview, therefore there was no written source to refer to. He gave me an approximate date, sometime during the sixties, which I’ve forgotten. Dr. Kennedy referred to Huxley’s comments as something he had personally witnessed on TV, and I knew Jim Kennedy well enough to know he didn’t make things up. For one thing, he was well read enough that he would have a multitude of other sources he could use, and besides that, he was a man of impeccable integrity, so I trusted him at his word. If he said he saw it, then he saw it.
That this is your only available “evidence” is evidence in itself, to me — evidence that the claim is false. Transcripts of television exchanges have been around since shortly after the dawn of television; if the quote was given at any point between the mid-50’s and now, then there would be a transcript reference somewhere.
What are your starting axioms?
I would (and have, in another topic) argue(d) that one’s true First Principle is not entirely of his/her own selection. It’s not usually something conscious, like, “God is good,” or “murder is bad.” It’s usually much more primal and more instinctual, and quite simple to boot. It’s more of an instinctual, perhaps even “automatic” distinction between perceptions of what is “real” and therefore credible and what is not.
I can attest to the fact that it’s not easy to just “choose to believe” something; if there is the question in my mind that something is not true (even if there isn’t any evidence to really prove it, so long as the question itself is there), then I cannot truly say I believe it to be true. And so on that note, my criteria for what I believe and what I don’t believe is not entirely of my own choosing.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Actually, I take something back in what I said about the Kennedy quote. There was another guy with a sybdicated talk show in the same era, whose name is on the tip of my tongue but I can’t remember, and it may have been his show. All I know for sure is that it was late sixties (early seventies at the lastest), that Kennedy personally witnessed it, and that the quote was something like “The reason we lept at the Origin [of the Species] is that the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.”
I’m sure of the quote, I’m sure Dr. Kennedy witnessed it personally, and I knew Dr. Kennedy well enough to trust his recollection.
It’s a free country, you can believe what you choose to believe. I choose to trust an eyewitness whom I knew and trusted.
Tom
March 21st, 2009 at 3:07 am
Tom, so it’s even worse than I thought - I’m not just relying on this Dr Kennedy’s imperfect memory, I’m relying on yours too!
So it’s a guy I’ve never met, testifying for the integrity of someone I’ve never heard of, and the imperfect memory of the first guy’s recollection of what the other guy thinks he remembers seeing on a TV show - you’re not sure which one - 35-45 years or so ago, rendered out of context to the conversation it originally appeared in!
Tom, forgive me for not finding this compelling evidence!
March 21st, 2009 at 11:16 am
It’s a free country, you can believe what you choose to believe.
It’s good that you acknowledge this much. However, your phrasing “choose to believe” is inaccurate here; there is no way that I could choose to believe such fallacious “evidence.” It’s clear you have an agenda and that the evidence conflicts with your agenda. I cannot unsee this.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Andrew,
I am not going back my original issue about axioms etc… I just want to ask something in regards to eyewitness memory. Should we trust the eyewitnesses of the Holocaust 60 yrs after the event? Can I trust their memory? And for that matter, what can we know in history without trusting in the testimony of others? Should a historian just scrap it and not waste his time? After all, testimony is one of the primary ways an historian gathers his information. Any thoughts?
Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel. Weisel says:
” If the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle, and the Renaissance the sonnet, our generation [i.e., Jews who Witnessed the Holocaust] invented a new literature, that of testimony. We have all been witnesses and we feel we have to bear testimony for our future. And that became a single obsession, the single most powerful obsession that permeated all the lives, dreams, all the work of those people. One minute before they died they thought that was what they had to do The sense (not a properly one generic one) in which the witnesses of the Holocaust created a new literature of testimony. Is much the same sense that in which the witnesses of the history created the Gospels. Those witnesses understood the imperative to witness to a command of the risen Christ, but the parallel is sufficient to be suggestive. In both cases, the uniqueness required precisely witness as the only means by which the events could be adequately known. In both cases, the exceptionality of the event means that only the testimony of participant witness can give us anything approaching access to the truth of the event. Very few modern historians would discredit all such Holocaust testimonies even though we are now some 60 years beyond the end of the Second World War” - See Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham. This book does osme great work on the usage of eyewitness memory and whether we can trust it or not.
Take Care!
Eric
March 21st, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Eric –
With all due respect that sounds like an incredibly irresponsible quote. You make it seem as if Elie Weisel is endorsing the testimony of the resurrection witnesses, so unless he had a conversion I am unaware of . . . I suspect that there is some part of that which is a valid of Weisel quote but then picks up Bauckham’s attempt to hijack it as an analogy to witnesses of the NT.
To be clear I do not discredit the holocaust witnesses - but also recognize that there is a place for non-emotional historical scholarship that stands apart for the direct participants of the event.
You quote (I suspect quoting Bauckham) that ‘uniqueness required precisely witness as the only means by which the events could be adequately known’. Yet in the NT that is exactly what we are asked to do believe in the resurrection without that precise witness of personal experience.
March 21st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Andrew,
My fault. I forgot to break that up. This part was Bauckhman’s part.
The sense (not a properly one generic one) in which the witnesses of the Holocaust created a new literature of testimony is much the same sense that in which the witnesses of the history created the Gospels. Those witnesses understood the imperative to witness to a command of the risen Christ, but the parallel is sufficient to be suggestive. In both cases, the uniqueness required precisely witness as the only means by which the events could be adequately known. In both cases, the exceptionality of the event means that only the testimony of participant witness can give us anything approaching access to the truth of the event. Very few modern historians would discredit all such Holocaust testimonies even though we are now some 60 years beyond the end of the Second World War”
I don’t think emotional element of a witness negates all objectivity. Maybe you don’t as well. Have you read the Bauckham book?
Take Care!
March 21st, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I don’t think emotional element of a witness negates all objectivity. Maybe you don’t as well. Have you read the Bauckham book?
I think it’s horribly tasteless to try and imply that if one does not believe the Christian Gospels because of issues of credibility, then one cannot believe in the Holocaust.
For one, there are thousands of people — some still alive today—that either experienced it themselves or had parents or close relatives who did. One generation removed isn’t even in the same scope as a word-of-mouth account that wasn’t even written down for the first time until quite some time after the fact (and even that was some 2000 years ago).
Do you not understand the difference?
March 21st, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Tim,
For starters, if you have not read the Bauckham book, I hope you do. He deals with the relationship between Holocaust testimony and the Gospels quite extensively. How long do you think there is between the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection and what we have in the NT? Why can’t I trust a letter such as 1 Cor 15 which is dated at 53-55 A.D? Everything we have in the NT was written before the end of the 1st century. So lets say the witnesses are still alive- 60 yrs after the events. As Bauckham says, the Greek word for “eyewitness” (autoptai), does not have forensic meaning, and in that sense the English word “eyewitnesses” with its suggestion of a metaphor from the law courts, is a little misleading. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. Bauckham goes on to say that Loveday Alexander, in his book The Preface to Luke’s Gospel offers the translations: “those with personal/firsthand experience; those who know the facts at hand.” Bauckham notes that ancient biographers limited themselves to subjects that could be addressed while the eyewitness were still alive. Do you think any of the witnesses were still alive during the period when the Gospels or even Paul’s letters were written? And if not, is all a legend or myth? Do you hold as much skepticism towards everything else in antiquity?
I hope you don’t mind if I tie this in with another topic for a moment. In his book, historian and sociologist Rodney Stark says in his book The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World-pgs 49-72, Sociologist Rodney Stark notes that by the end of the 1st century there were at least 100,000 Jewish believers in Jesus. The same thing is discussed in Oskar Skarsaune and Raider Hvlavik- Jewish Believers In Jesus: The Early Centuries. Is Acts reliable? Colin J. Hemer lists seventeen reasons to accept the traditional early date that would place the research and writing of Acts during the lifetime of many participants. A few are in order- There is no mention in Acts of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, an unlikely omission, given the content, if it had already occurred. 2. There is no hint of the outbreak of the Jewish War in A.D. 66, or of any drastic or specific deterioration of relations between Romans and Jews, which implies it was written before that time. 3. There is no hint of the deterioration of Christian relations with Rome involved in the Neronian persecution of the late 60s. 4. The author betrays no knowledge of Paul’s letters.
If Acts were written later, why would Luke, who shows himself so careful of incidental detail, not attempt to inform his narrative by relevant sections of the Epistles. The Epistles evidently circulated and must have become available sources. This question is beset with uncertainties, but an early date is suggested by the silence. 5. There is no hint of the death of James at the hands of the Sanhedrin in ca. 62 recorded by Josephus (Antiquities 20.9.1.200). Even if Acts was written by 75 A.D- it still would not disqualify it. What has the best explanatory power for the birth of the Messianic movement in the book of Acts? A lie, a hallucination, a legend? Also, we may want to note that Richard Bauckham says, “In exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, as distinct from some other kind of monotheism, it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice.”- see Hurtado, L.W. One Lord, One God: Early Christian Devotion And Ancient Jewish Montheism. Philadeplphia, PA. Fortress Press. 1988, 38. Could a dying Messiah cause a major shift in the devotional practice of first-century Jews? Therefore, what has the best explanatory power for a more explicit Christology in a very short time interval after the death of Jesus? In light of this issue, how is it that a community of monotheistic Jewish people ended up giving Jesus the same honors and spiritual devotion that we reserved for the God of Israel alone? As Hurtado notes, Jews were forbidden to commit what was called “apotheosis,”- which can be defined as accepting a human figure as divine.
March 21st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Tim,
Tim,
Sorry- I had a problem with that last post. Here is the 1st paragraph.
For starters, if you have not read the Bauckham book, I hope you do. He deals with the relationship between Holocaust testimony and the Gospels quite extensively. How long do you think there is between the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection and what we have in the NT? Why can’t I trust a letter such as 1 Cor 15 which is dated at 53-55 A.D? Everything we have in the NT was written before the end of the 1st century. So lets say the witnesses are still alive- 60 yrs after the events. As Bauckham says, the Greek word for “eyewitness” (autoptai), does not have forensic meaning, and in that sense the English word “eyewitnesses” with its suggestion of a metaphor from the law courts, is a little misleading. The autoptai are simply firsthand observers of those events. Bauckham goes on to say that Loveday Alexander, in his book The Preface to Luke’s Gospel offers the translations: “those with personal/firsthand experience; those who know the facts at hand.” Bauckham notes that ancient biographers limited themselves to subjects that could be addressed while the eyewitness were still alive. Do you think any of the witnesses were still alive during the period when the Gospels or even Paul’s letters were written? And if not, is all a legend or myth? Do you hold as much skepticism towards everything else in antiquity?
Eric
March 21st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Tim,
I apologize that I am having some problems with the blog. Here is the last paragraph.
Eric
If Acts were written later, why would Luke, who shows himself so careful of incidental detail, not attempt to inform his narrative by relevant sections of the Epistles. The Epistles evidently circulated and must have become available sources. This question is beset with uncertainties, but an early date is suggested by the silence. 5. There is no hint of the death of James at the hands of the Sanhedrin in ca. 62 recorded by Josephus (Antiquities 20.9.1.200). Even if Acts was written by 75 A.D- it still would not disqualify it. What has the best explanatory power for the birth of the Messianic movement in the book of Acts? A lie, a hallucination, a legend? Also, we may want to note that Richard Bauckham says, “In exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, as distinct from some other kind of monotheism, it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice.”- see Hurtado, L.W. One Lord, One God: Early Christian Devotion And Ancient Jewish Montheism. Philadeplphia, PA. Fortress Press. 1988, 38. Could a dying Messiah cause a major shift in the devotional practice of first-century Jews? Therefore, what has the best explanatory power for a more explicit Christology in a very short time interval after the death of Jesus? In light of this issue, how is it that a community of monotheistic Jewish people ended up giving Jesus the same honors and spiritual devotion that we reserved for the God of Israel alone? As Hurtado notes, Jews were forbidden to commit what was called “Apotheosis,”- which can be defined as accepting a human figure as divine.
March 21st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Do you think any of the witnesses were still alive during the period when the Gospels or even Paul’s letters were written? And if not, is all a legend or myth? Do you hold as much skepticism towards everything else in antiquity?
If Holocaust survivors demanded the same ritualistic behavior of me that Christian Gospel believers do, then no, I probably would not. Fortunately, that’s not the case.
You see, there is such a thing as “vested interest.”
Also….it’s not *just* a matter of what’s written in the Bible. It’s also a matter of what people such as you, Turek, John Hagee, Rod Parsely, and Pat Robertson, among many, many others, have to say about what the things in the Bible mean, interjected scientific projections based on singular/personal understandings of those writings, self-defined moral proclamations, outright inconsistencies (such as slavery vs. homosexuality, whereas one is “just what they did back then, so it was okay” while the other is “completely unforgiveable no matter when it happens or why”), among many other things.
And another one, the whole thing about humans having a “soul”….I hate to get off on a tangent, but for example….anytime something that doesn’t fit the Biblical canon of what “good” people are like happens, we say Satan influenced people, and humans are put to blame because “they allowed Satan to influence them.” Whereas anytime something that does fit the Biblical canon of what people are supposed to be like happens, it’s attributed to God and humans aren’t allowed to take credit. So if we do something wrong, that’s all our fault and we’re supposed to self-loathe and beg for forgivenes….but if we do something right, then we didn’t really do it, and it was God acting through us. It’s just one of many cornerstones of an ideology bent on oppressing humans for their very nature, to teach us to hate ourselves and ignore everything that doesn’t fit the Biblical view of “good” — even that which is dangerous if ommitted, such as evolutionary biology, a founding tenet of modern medicine. Creationists and Christians all like to go on about the evils of Evolution, but they tend to be among the first in line in the Emergency Room when their asthma acts up, or they need a cure for a strain of the flu virus.
Long story short….there are a heaping slew of problems that stem from believing the Christian Gospels. If we accept one thing as true (that we can’t prove one way or the other), then that leads to accepting as true certain things that we know, to the best of our ability to know things in any sense of the word, aren’t true. I’d like to go into further detail, but I fear it would take too long, so I’ll leave you with this final example, taken from a blog I posted recently:
“Belief in God is often defended as “good” on the basis that belief in God will bring humanity closer to a state of “perfection” (even though Christians admit that humans can never actually *attain* perfection, there is seen a sort of nobility in simply trying; it’s seen as a faith statement towards God, which is deemed “virtuous” in this system of thought). When asked what exactly is meant by “perfection,” Christians tend to divert towards other issues, so usually it’s impossible to form a coherent response….but there is a way to understand what they mean. When Christians complain about contemporary society, they generally refer to things that they see as a “plague” of some kind — usually moral — that faces humanity. They cite issues facing the world today, issues that have supposedly come about as a result of our “lack of Godliness,” things that are supposed to symbolize the absence of God in our daily lives. Things such as:
–War
–Poverty
–Slavery
–Murder
–Theft
–Adultery
–Homosexuality
–Atheism
And so on and so forth.
So if we look at these things as examples of what Godliness does *not* represent, we can deduce somewhat of a clear picture of what is expected of people who pine for this “Godliness:” Peace. Freedom. Financial security. Honesty. Faithfulness. Heterosexuality. Belief in God. And so on.
Now….I’ve been told quite often (quite recently) that, if we all just try to get closer to God, that these things will be bestowed upon us in some sense. We may not become perfect overnight, but the effort will show — that’s the slogan. So it then becomes somewhat of a statement to the following end:
“The more people believe in God, the more peace and freedom and honesty there will be in the world.”
Implicit in this statement is the assumption that these things are “Good,” and that a lack of these things is “not good,” or “ungodly.” Implicit in this statement is the assumption that God stands for these things, and that faith in Him will bring us towards these things unwaveringly. That’s the argument being made; otherwise, there is no point in citing this as an argument in response to the complaint of the state of our world’s affairs; if poverty is not an end addressed by Christianity, then how can you blame a *lack* of Christianity for the worldwide poverty of today? If we’re not worshipping God so that we can reflect honesty and faithfulness, then how can you cite a lack of Godliness as a reason why people are dishonest, violent and hateful? So it simply *must* be inherent, in making this statement, that freedom and honesty are “good” things, that they are reasons we have to believe in God — beacons, if you will, like those of an airport terminal. Things we’re supposed to see from a long way away that guide us towards the safe landing.
However….also very recently, it was stated to me as follows (approximation):
“Even if God decided to send us all to Hell, He would still be worthy of worship because He is Holy and He is Perfect.”
We’re told by Christians our entire lives that we must “do good, or be damned to Hell.” Believe in God, or go to Hell. When all else fails, we’re warned about Hell. Again and again and again and again. That’s the single most-cited argument in favor of Christianity, more than any other point. Fear of punishment. Some might even go as far as to say it’s the *reason* a lot of people are Christian, because they fear Hell. But even assuming that’s not true, they sure do seem to bring it up a lot….odd, considering that most Christians assert that punishment has nothing to do with their faith.
In any case….it’s said that, if everyone just places their trust in God, then we’ll all live happily (because our standards for happiness will be rooted in supernatural morality and faith, not in worldly pleasures….so that even if we suffer greatly on earth, we will still be “happy” in the spiritual sense). So it’s not even really about changing the world; it’s about changing your standards for personal happiness. It’s about redefining what fulfills your heart. These sorts of things are listed as reasons why we should all believe in God….and yet, when you boil down to it, none of that even seems relevant. The promises of the Glory of God, of honesty and virtue and truth and justice and Godliness, they’re all just a smokescreen. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you go, before or after you die — even if a man or woman was theoretically “perfect” in every sense of the world, 100% accurately faithful, abiding by all rules of the Bible, believing sincerely in God and Jesus and the Christian faith….it means nothing, if God decides it to be so. And the believer is damned to honor this judgment.
Sounds a lot like signing a contract…except it reads like this:
“He who signs this contract promises Me one soul, in return for my Goodness. Whereas My Goodness is defined as My decision and judgment of he who signs this contract.”
Basically, you’re signing a blank check. You’re saying, “I am deserving of hatred, abuse and punishment no matter what I do or how honest or sincere I am. I’m giving you the OK to rend my very essence apart and cast me into eternal torment, and I’m okay with that, because you’re God, and what you say goes because….well, you’re all powerful, so that makes it okay.”
Now tell me….if someone asked you to sign a contract to that end in real life, can you truly, honestly say that you would sign it?
March 21st, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Summary in point:
All of the reasons that are used to lure people into Christianity are actually completely false. Any argument you use to lure someone into Christianity can be revoked on a whim, because when we get down to the bare bones of the whole concept, you’re supposed to be a Christian just for the sake of being a Christian — not to be moral, because that’s impossible in the true sense (because we’re all sinful humans who will continue to sin against our will, redeemable only through belief in a man who claimed to be the son of God). Not to be rewarded, because acting on condition of reward denies true sincerity and defeats the purpose of claiming moral superiority.
The bottom line being simply that the only reason to be a Christian….is for the sake of being Christian. Nothing follows from this, and nothing leads to this. It’s just something that Christians accept as self-evidently “good” that means nothing else in itself.
March 21st, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Tim,
Wow, now I really see how you feel. Thanks for your honesty. Guess what? I am not a big fan of Rod P and John H as well. I don’t read or follow any of their stuff… and I know alot of other people who don’t as well. That may make no difference to you. I understand. I think a good class in hermeneutics will deal with all the misunderstanding about what Christians think about the slavery, etc.. in the Bible. Sounds like you are pretty mad at the poor communication of some Christians. I have tried to work on that with Christians for a long time. I have done extensive campus ministry- so I hear the same things you mentioned with alot of students. Christians sometimes come across as self-righteous.. we have our own sin to deal with. I hope and pray that you will see the love of Christ at some point and internalize it. Take care,
Eric
March 21st, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I can’t really say I’m “mad”….really, I’m just exhasperated. Every time I make a point to someone who’s trying to preach/convert/testify/whatever the current buzz word is, they respond similarly to what you say here — that it’s not what people really think, or it’s not what the Bible really says. The first few times I heard that, I listened….and then I heard an explanation that was just as outlandish and barbaric (often moreso) than the one being rebutted as a “misunderstanding.” Read some of the posts by Matt Garwood in some of the other topics here, and you’ll see what I mean.
Also, though….retrospectively claiming that “that’s not what True Christianity(TM) is about” is getting to be less and less convincing, and more and more of a cliche, as time goes by. It’s actually got a name, that type of argument; it’s called the “No True Scotsman” argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman
From the above link:
Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”
I figure, if it were important enough to be defined so clearly, then people would be making more of an effort to make it so. A significant majority of people who view your religion are only going to see the popular face; most people aren’t going to have the patience to look in some obscure book or sermon or reference text (especially after hundreds of prior disappointing dead-end efforts to that effect). I find it surprising that none of the popular Christian figures seem to have “gotten it right” with regard to “True Christianity” according to most of the less popular figures….and yet, according to the popular figures, folks like you don’t have it right. And you both quote from passages of the Bible that justify what you say from a Biblical standpoint, and you both claim that the others quote out of context.
[/tirade]
March 22nd, 2009 at 4:40 am
Eric: “Could a dying Messiah cause a major shift in the devotional practice of first-century Jews?”
Eric, if you take that as proof of Jesus’ divinity, you’d also have to give similar credence to the other charasmatic men who managed to start world religions. Mohammed started Islam, but you don’t accept his religion, no?
And drawing a line between the VAST evidence we have for the holocaust and for the divinity of Jesus is a nonsense. Thanks to the Shoah project we have filmed interviews with thousands of survivors. We prosecuted those responsible, we filmed the camps.
In comparison, we have nothing in Jesus’ handwriting, no direct quotes. We can’t see to an accuracy of 5 years when he was born.
March 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
We need to live a life worthy of the Lord, so only what honors Him goes. We know what honors Him through His Word.
I don’t know what I would do without the Lord Jesus, He’s the very reason we all exist. We exist to know God and to make Him known.
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Andrew,
Sorry, but you are way off about the divinity of Jesus issue- etc.. and how we ned to accept the other ones… I will be posting more about that. As far as the Holocaust issue- how far back do you go to not start accepting eyewitness testimony? 80-100 yrs? Do you accept anything from the 1800’s? Do you stop with the Holocaust on this issue? And it is important to understand the context and hermenutical usage of testimony in the NT- read what I said to Tim in an earlier post. And once again, I ask, do you reject everything else in antiquity? Or just the NT? And if so, why? Do you accept the evidence for the life of Alexander the Great as factual?
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 am
Eric, back on March 21st you cited Sociologist Rodney Stark as stating there were 100,000 Jewish converts at the end of the first century. It is my understanding that this figure is widely disputed by historians, but that is not why I find it curious that you interject Professor Stark into the discussion.
Professor Stark’s conclusions are 1) that people convert for personal reasons rather than the weight of evidence and 2) that the early growth of Christianity was not the miracle apologists would like us to believe.
So rather than it being as Paul suggested that people searched out those with ‘eyewitness’ evidence, people switched to Christianity because they found the current members nice people. (In interest of the fully story, Stark also believes better treatment of woman accounted for some of the Church’s success too).
Maybe a little more caution where you pick your cherries in the future?
Barry
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 am
“As far as the Holocaust issue- how far back do you go to not start accepting eyewitness testimony?”
I’m not sure I understand your question. We have film of the death camps, film of mounds of executed, emaciated bodies. The perpetrators were put on trial for the crimes of the holocaust. I could go on and on and on and on… the evidence is huge and overwhelming. Go to the holocaust museum in Washington, go visit the camps in Europe.
I’m at a loss for how you can draw a comparison to the bible’s accounts of Jesus. We have 4 appostles giving conflicting accounts of his life, written up years after the events. One of them mentions at one point that after Jesus died, the dead in the area got up and walked the streets. You’d think a ‘fact’ as momentous as this would be mentioned in many other reports outside of the bible - but it doesn’t even merit a mention by the other 3 apostles!
How far would I go? It depends what’s at stake. Do I accept that Julius Ceasar existed? It seems likely that he did - but my everyday life isn’t affected by the question. If you’re asking everyone to form a religion around the fact of his existence, then the standard of proof required might be a little higher.
As for the ‘miracle of the succes of Christianity’ - for hundreds of years it was spread at the point of the sword. Either believe or be burned at the stake, or be tortured, or have your throat slit. Great!
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Brian and everyone- thanks for your input. I will be posting a new topic/link within the next day or so that cover these issues we have been discussing. Take care.
Eric
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Eric, I’m pretty sure you just lost the argument. Have the decency to admit it.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
One of my spiritual leaders in a recent sermon spoke of selfishness. He said “I can think of nothing more selfish than to deny God. If there is no God there is no sin. How convenient!”.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
“If there is no God there is no sin. How convenient!”
Reed, did you explain to this guy that atheists statistically commit far fewer crimes than Christians? They’re less likely to divorce too. Their homicide rates are smaller. Perhaps it’s because the Christians think they can commit whatever crimes they want and then just get absolved by their God. How convenient for them!
March 24th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
One of my spiritual leaders in a recent sermon spoke of selfishness. He said “I can think of nothing more selfish than to deny God. If there is no God there is no sin. How convenient!”.
Wow….do you guys just sit at home and think of stuff like this all day? Do you spend your free time just trying to think of some tiny little obscure reason that overshadows the entire atheistic paradigm, that magically explains away all the doubts that atheists have?
Seriously, we’re trying to explain this to you, and people like you keep diverting the argument in nonsensical directions like this….how do you expect there to be any coherent exchange whatsoever in that sort of environment?
March 24th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
P.S.
Translation: It would be more productive if you could answer the questions that have been raised, thus at least attempting to remove all trace of genuine doubt, as opposed to ignoring them altogether and simply raising accusations about the sincerity of another’s worldview. At the end of the day, there is nothing I can do to absolutely prove the genuinity of my worldview to you, and we both know this; so the accusation you raise here is quite pointless, unless you mean to suggest it as a circular, self-defining platform on which to systematically ignore all genuine atheistic concerns. Which I highly suspect you do, hence this response.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Tim, I’m going to take a leaf out of their book here. I’m going to take a guess that they’re desperately trying to convince themselves.
Ted Haggard is telling his millions of followers how important fidelity is, and how evil homosexuality is. And at the same time he’s paying for male prostitutes. A most convenient set-up. The Catholics tell us how important it is to protect vulnerable children, while the Catholic Church spends decades protecting the priests who are abusing the kids. Christians say that marriage is about love. But their argument against gays marrying is that they can’t have kids - so suddenly marriage isn’t about love at all, it’s reduced to breeding, as if humans are cows on a production line.
March 25th, 2009 at 6:59 am
There’s actually a brilliant little strategy worked into the pecking order of Christianity as a whole…..they normally operate like a hive, in that they don’t care who you are as long as you’re “one of them;” it’s this very discriminating “us against them” mentality in every walk of life. But when one of them does something that goes against the reputation of the hive (i.e. a famous Christian does something very hypocritical or “wrong”), they turn on that person and drop him/her in order to quarantine the effect and keep it from effecting the rest of the hive. “Cut off the finger to save the hand,” so to speak; it explains why they are so willing — eager, even — to just up and condemn someone the first time they do something wrong, even though they claim that they are merciful and forgiving.
My theory? It’s like a political group; it’s all a matter of Public Relations. If an employee does something that skews the public image, the company has to fire that employee in order to distance themselves from him/her. Yeah, that one guy, he’s great, and we all like him….but then he did that one thing, and now he’s a dirty lowlife who was “never a real Christian to begin with.”
March 26th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Andrew,
I was not sure if I was debating whether Jesus existed or not. I don’t debate that issue with atheists. It is stupid. I asked if you thought Alexander the Great existed or anyone else after the Holocaust-we only have only fragments of his life much later… you did not respond- So you think Caesar existed. So what! From your comments I gathered you don’t have a grasp of the genre of the Gospels at all- or really know much how historians work with antiquity. So if you think you won the argument and that makes you feel better- so be it. I could care less!
March 26th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Andrew ,
One correction- I meant I asked if you Alexander the Great or anyone else existed.. after the Holocaust… etc.. I obviously meant before the Holocaust since you kept saying the Holocaust witnesses were still alive..etc..
Eric
March 27th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I haven’t spend much time investigating the evidence for the existence of Alexander the Great. I suspect there’s a fair bit of evidence for his existence. But like whether Robin Hood or King Arthur were real people or mostly legend, it doesn’t make any real difference to my life either way if they were real or not. No-one is trying to base a religion on their existence though. If they were, perhaps I’d be compelled to investigate more deeply.
Often with these things there’ll be stories around a person that are legend, but the person might have actually existed. The story of George Washington chopping down his father’s tree was false, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t actually exist.
And it’s a bit rich that you accuse me of not knowing how historians work when you’ve undermined the vast evidence for the holocaust.
March 27th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Andrew,
I did not undermine anything about the evidence for the Holocaust. You were the one who said the witnesses are still alive- at least some of them, therefore, we can talk to them. At the start of this dicussion, I talked about The Gospels of Eyewitness Testimony- in which Bauckham uses Holocaust testimony in relation to the eyewitness testimony in the Gospels. He does nothing but enhances the evidence for the Holocaust. But since you have not read it, we can’t go much further on that. Since I have several Jewish friends and am part of a congregation that educates the community around us about the Holocaust, please don’t assert I undermined anything about it. I wonder if you even read what I said. Once again, your comments about the Gosples being legendary shows you don’t know much about genre issues with the Gospels. But since you admitted that you don’t care whether Jesus existed..etc.. this conversation is fairly fruitless.
Later,
Eric
March 27th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I don’t think I ever said that I don’t care whether Jesus existed. Perhaps it is you who isn’t reading MY posts. If so, then yes the conversation is fruitless.
By the way, if virtually the only contemporaneous accounts of Alexander the Great only came from a single book, then I might well say that we couldn’t say for certain whether or not he existed. And the number of accounts we have of a king or emporer are always going to outnumber the accounts we have of someone of Jesus status, such as it was while he was alive. I’m not saying we would EXPECT any more accounts of Jesus, just stating the fact that we don’t have much about him outside of the bible. And the accounts within the bible don’t always agree, and have certain historical problems when matched up to dates outside the bible - eg Herod dying a few years before the birth of Jesus.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
[…] addition to the desperate desire to keep God from having authority over our moral decision-making (i.e. - sin, rebellion, etc.), there are 3 reasons why people try to treat religious claims as […]
June 6th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Good ol’ arguements. Depends on your form of Christianity, I guess. Just like one atheist is going to be incredibly different than another. If all religions were the same, that would be a positive thing, actually, some kind of unity for mankind, a point towards truth. But religions aren’t all the same, neither is all forms of atheism or agnosticism.
“And the accounts within the bible don’t always agree, and have certain historical problems when matched up to dates outside the bible - eg Herod dying a few years before the birth of Jesus.”
I’m a History major with a specific focus on this time period, and actually, Herod would have died a good few years after the birth of Christ. Not only that, it’s hard to pinpoint when either of them were around but the historical consensus is that Jesus did in fact exist at the time of Herod. Yes, history has a consensus and standards like science does. Please actually go and study this time period instead of just spewing things you find on the internet.
June 7th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
“Herod would have died a good few years after the birth of Christ. Please actually go and study this time period instead of just spewing things you find on the internet.”
No need to be rude Jimmy. What’s your source for Herod the Great’s date of death? Most places I look tell me somewhere between 4BC and 1BC, but I’m happy to be corrected by a History major!
September 5th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
So after the kid fired off another objection, David decided to end the charade and cut right to the heart. He said, “You’re raising all of these objections because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend. Am I right?”
———————————————————————————————–
Wow! This is so very familar! I am an exmormon having been in that religion over 20 years. When I began to question Joseph Smith,the Book of Mormon and polygamy the bishop and other members would ask “what is your REAL problem?”.
In Mormonism, the church is perfect and it’s leaders “will never lead you astray”. So if you begin to ask questions that you should not it must mean that you are not living the commandments. Maybe you are having sex or masturbating….maybe you are not paying a full tithing…maybe you are drinking beer or tea or coffee?
If you want to leave the Mormon Church…it’s because you can’y live the commandments…..heard that 1000 of times.
I found out that Mormonism uses cult control. I see nothing on this site to make me think that Frank Turek isn’t a cult leader himself.