Tag Archives: apologetics

The Way

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in atheism, christianity, history

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Some might wonder why I keep talking about morality in relation to apologetics. For many Christianity is a set of beliefs. For me Christianity is a way of life. Yes our beliefs are important and even necessary in this way of life but that is not all there is to it – not by a long shot. According to the bible, the earliest followers of Christ were known as followers of “the way.” Acts 18:26; 19:9, 19:23; 22:4; 24:14, 24:22.

This description fits quite naturally with my understanding of what it means to be Christian. Accordingly when someone says they are no longer going to follow “the way” (i.e., they are not going to be Christian) it seems a natural question to then ask – well then what way will you live? Indeed when I strongly questioned whether I would remain Christian this was the question that seemed to come to the fore. How then should I live and on what basis will I choose that life?

When I looked at how I formed my moral beliefs in as dispassionate way as possible, I understood that ultimately it was my emotions that were primarily involved, not the reasoning process, or our empirical senses. Science combines reason and our empirical senses and effectively finds truth about reality. But that is not how our moral beliefs are primarily formed. In the next blog I will give further reasons and evidence for this view. For now suffice it to say that I realized that if our moral beliefs were to be reliable, in any real sense, then something beyond natural processes must have a hand in forming them.

But here I want to stress that Christianity had much more to do with being a basis for my moral beliefs, rather than any belief about science. After all, where do we get the idea that Jesus was so concerned with scientific teaching? If the Son of God was so concerned with science and came down to make sure we understood it, wouldn’t we expect to have iphones at least by the 1980s? If the Holy Spirit was inspiring people to write books with the aim of teaching science wouldn’t we expect far fewer computer crashes then we have?

Yet when I read so many blogs of people who left Christianity I see allot of talk about science. It struck me as quite bizarre. Moreover, when I bring up morality they seem to think that has no bearing on their decision. They seemed to think I was just as bizarre for raising, that issue and not talking about science. Finally in reading many of the books, comments, and blogs from those who deconverted I also see a presumption that they thought they were really “hard core Christians.” And what that meant is that they studied the bible – every bit – and they took every bit of it literally.

So for example Bart Ehrman talks about how he had studied at the Moody Bible Institute, but then started to lose his faith after agonizing over whether the mustard seed was truly the smallest seed. At first I had real difficulty understanding how anyone could think that is such a fundamental part of Christianity that they would lose their faith over it.

But I have spent time studying Christian history and these sorts of views make more sense. Let me piece together the logic as I see it. We have Martin Luther who eventually found that his views could not even be supported by prior church councils. So he retreated to the bible alone. Now from the Catholic view he actually even had to trim some of the Old Testament, but there are various arguments on both side of that debate. He *may* even have wanted to trim even some of the new testament books, or at least he de-emphasized some of them. See for example his prefaces to James, Jude, and revelation in his 1522 translation of the New Testament.

But in any case he started the belief that Scripture alone was the sole authority in matters of Christianity. This belief took hold with Protestant Christians. For many Protestant Christians they insert this view into their very basic creeds and understandings what Christianity is. Rejecting this view, like the non protestant churches do, is often viewed as making them non-Christian.

The results of scripture alone should not be surprising. Even before Luther died not only was the Pope the anti-christ for disagreeing with him but even other protestants like Zwingli were accused of being guided by the devil in their faulty interpretation of scripture. See eg., http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=30081

The differing interpretations continued to happen. And over time we see the Protestant Christians who adhere to Scripture alone being divided and re-divided, how many times? With the rise of non-denominational churches it is difficult to even know. After all they hold certain beliefs but how they might differ from other “non-denominational” churches is difficult to calculate. Now one might not see this as a problem. But scripture itself seems to suggest this division is indeed a problem.

So something should be done. But what? Fast forward centuries and we get a potential solution. Some claim it is sensible to say every part of the bible should be viewed as equally important for our salvation as any other part. After all there is no authority outside the bible that can tell us this or that part is more important or deserving of focus. But that is only part of the problem. The other problem is not so much a question of emphasis but one of interpretation. Zwingli thought the same words meant something different with respect to the Eucharist. He read them symbolically not literally.

How should that be addressed? Well the most common way to understand something is usually in a literal sense. Therefore to avoid these divisions we should read all of the bible in this sense. Hence we have the literalists who can claim a certain high ground among denominations. Everyone else is deemed to be less “hard core” Christian because they are shying away from accepting the bible. They are reading this or that passage symbolically because they lack faith and refuse to accept what the Holy Spirit is really saying in the most common sense way i.e., literal way.

Now the point is *not* to say that Catholics are right and people should reject “scripture alone” just like I do. Rather the point is to draw out the logic of this position precisely so that it can be analyzed and hopefully shown to be lacking. Does unity mean complete unity on all questions or just relevant ones? Does not the bible itself suggest that emphasis is on certain of its passages as opposed to others? My point to Christians is that you should reject the line of thinking I set out and find the holes yourself.

Have faith in your own church that meets in Christ’s name and is therefore guided by the Holy Spirit. I place faith in the Lutheran Church by sending my children to a Lutheran School. I believe very much that the Holy Spirit guides the Lutheran Church in teaching my children Christianity. I think the Lutheran church does have a tradition and an important one.

At base I want to point out this line of thinking so you can pinpoint for yourself where the reasoning breaks down. By clearly identifying the problem you will be spared the road that leads to your faith hinging on your beliefs about the relative size of seeds.

As for some atheists who might think they were “hard core” Christians because they accepted this literalist view, and therefore ultimately rejected your faith due to science, my point is different. Maybe consider it’s at least possible, you never really understood the “core” of Christianity. Perhaps, you missed the forest for the trees.

Is God Immoral?

07 Monday Apr 2014

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Like all law students I took a course on “property.”  Throughout my life, I was lucky enough to take courses from some very interesting people.  My property professor, Douglas Kmiec,[1] was no exception.

The idea that we gain rights over what we create was to some extent developed by John Locke.  He described how people will mix their labor with items from the common property and make it theirs.

 “The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to….”

John Locke Second Treatise of Civil Government Chapter 5.

I read this in my property class taught by Kmiec.  He explained that I might pick up a branch in the forest.   Now if I put it down again, then anyone else can pick it up and do what they want with it.  But if I pick it up and carve it into a wooden statue, well then it’s mine.  At that point I would have the right to do with it what I wanted even destroy it, but no one else would have that right.   I thought it was an interesting insight.

 

 

Ok so now many atheists want to say God is a “murderer!”  He asked/commanded people to kill others.  We have such stories in the Old Testament.  How can we worship such a God?

 

Well first of all I tend not to believe the Old Testament is literal.  I think the Old Testament is by and large a collection of stories.   Yes the Holy Spirit inspired them but how exactly that works, I do not pretend to speak for that Holy Spirit.  But even an atheist should consider that Jewish scripture consists of what possibly the very best and brightest cultures thought was some of their best literature.  I agree some books do nothing for me but other books I find delightful and wonderful.    I am somewhat saddened when I see people reading it only for the purpose they want to get out of it instead of thinking about what the author was up to.

 

Now although I do not take the Old Testament literally I do think it teaches true messages.    But what message can Abraham being commanded to kill his son possibly be teaching?   What can stories about God wiping out whole cities be teaching? One answer is that it teaches God is our creator and as such he is not like us.  We are not the same.  Regardless of what we or even God might want the truth is we are not the same.   Reality doesn’t cater to our wants.

 

Let’s think about this.   If a lion intentionally kills a human without justification we don’t say that it is a “murderer.”  If a human intentionally kills a human without justification he/she is a murderer.  What if God intentionally kills humans?  Should God be treated like other humans?  This is the hidden assumption of every anti-theist blog crying out that God is a murderer.  I just read a paper which seems to imply God committed a holocaust against children who died from natural causes.   I am not suggesting that God is not a murderer for the same reasons a lion is not a murder.  But I am saying we should not automatically assume God is just like us, in this analysis.

 

Here is something to consider.  If I create a sand castle, I can destroy it and it is not immoral.  If someone else destroys my sand castle it is wrong, unless I as the creator give them permission.  God created us and he can destroy us and it is not immoral.  Others however cannot destroy us and remain blameless, unless they are given permission by our creator.

 

I realize that this is not an appealing view.   But if God is bound by the rules of Logic not even he can change that fact can he?  If we are in fact, created by God we cannot truthfully claim otherwise.  Even God cannot make this truth, false.  This wounds our pride and tradition teaches it wounded Satan’s pride as well.  He was unhappy with the truth that he was not like God, and rebelled against it.

 

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!   For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” Isaiah 14:12-14[2]

 

Now my point is not to say the people who claim God is a murderer are “Satans.”  Not at all.  But it is to say that they are not accounting for the fact that Christians believe God is our creator and generally we think a creator has a right to destroy his creations.  They engage in special pleading when they refuse to acknowledge this principle when discussing God’s relationship to us.  This is a double standard.  They recognize a painter has a right to destroy his painting if he is unhappy with it, but they want to deny this right to a creator God.

 

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[1] Before I did my blog arguing that marriage should no longer be governed by the state I googled to see if anyone else came to the same conclusion.  I was somewhat surprised to see my old Property and Constitutional Law Professor arguing the same thing.  Doug Kmiec is an inspirational professor who brought energy and excitement to everything he taught.   I am not surprised by this quote from Wikipedia:

“On July 2, 2009, President Obama nominated Kmiec as Ambassador to Malta.[24] He was confirmed by the Senate. In April 2011, he was criticized by the Inspector General of the State Department for spending too much time on what the OIG reported as unofficial (religious) duties, which Kmiec saw as integral to his ambassadorial role.”

And I likewise am not at all surprised by this quote from Tiffany Stanley of The New Republic:

“in the annals of diplomatic misbehavior, Kmiec’s is rather an unusual case. Even the critical OIG report notes that embassy morale was good, he was respected by the Maltese and his staff, and had ‘achieved some policy successes’. The problem, it seems, was that Kmiec may have taken the job a little too seriously.”[27] Columnist Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times writes: “Over the last few years, Kmiec has emerged as one of this country’s most important witnesses to the proposition that religious conviction and political civility need not be at odds; that reasonable people of determined good conscience, whatever their faith or lack thereof, can find ways to cooperate in the common good. Though Kmiec has not sought their intervention, the president and the secretary of State ought to deal with the bureaucrats seeking to silence a voice whose only offense is to speak in the vocabulary of our own better angels.”

I read some other things that make me believe he likely had some hard times.  I wish Doug Kmiec the best, and will keep him in my prayers.

[2] But see:  https://bible.org/article/lucifer-devil-isaiah-1412-kjv-argument-against-modern-translations and http://pastordougroman.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/do-isaiah-14-and-ezekiel-28-refer-to-satan/

 

Pascal’s wager without God and without Hell

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

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This blog is a response to some questions posed by David W in my earlier blog. I drafted this response and decided I should put it up as a separate blog, because it covers an important point of how I am coming at these questions.

I think you will understand where I am coming from if we first drop the idea of God all together.   My strongest reasons for believing in God come out of my understanding of morality.  So you can’t really gloss over my views on morality and start asking about my reason to believe in God.  So let’s just think about morality and specifically whether the moral realist’s position is true.  For example is it a moral fact that what Hitler did to millions of Jews was evil regardless of what anyone thinks?

It seems the holocaust either was really wrong or it wasn’t.  Now in general I think the actual “evidence” of moral realism is pretty weak.   For example I think there is *no* empirical evidence that the moral realist view is correct.  Sure we all might see the photos of corpses or even have seen the corpses or the families of those Hitler killed directly.   Looking at this might cause us to be repulsed.  That emotional response might somehow yield a strong belief that what Hitler did was morally wrong.     I do not think strongly believing something (especially when it’s due to an emotional response) is itself evidence for what we believe.    There is no empirical indicia of wrongness that the moral realist can see, and point out to a Nihilist.

A nihilist will look at the same pictures and there is no reason to think he does not experience the same emotional response of repugnance.    His emotional response would lead to him to try to prevent that sort of thing from happening.  In fact a moral nihilist might take more actions to prevent it from happening.   But if the nihilist is consistent, he would not claim he is trying to prevent the holocaust because it is morally wrong.   Why he would try to prevent it is an interesting question that might have a variety of answers.  Richard Joyce is as philosophical nihilist (although he doesn’t like the term “nihilist”) who I agree with on many issues and have allot of respect for.  He has given glimpses into his views on this but never really fully explored this.

But I would say though that if I were to accept the view that no one should ever believe anything unless they have empirical evidence to support it, then there is no way I could be a moral realist.  But I think rational people consider more than empirical evidence and indeed more than the probability of a belief being true when deciding whether or not to accept it.  They also consider the consequences.

Let’s think this through with respect to moral realism.  I have no empirical evidence that moral realism is true.  But I also understand that it might still be true because it is really not the type of thing I would expect to have empirical evidence for.  So what to do?  Well I think there are people who would tend to say I must reject moral realism until I have evidence of it being true.  Others would say they don’t know what to make of it.  But some people would say they are going to believe it anyway.   For me I will consider the consequences of believing or not believing.

Now moral realist’s view either corresponds with reality or it does not.   I.e., it is either a true view or a false view.  And let’s just say we either accept moral realism or we reject it.  I.e., we either believe it or we do not believe it.

So ok that leaves 4 possibilities:

Possibility 1) We believe in moral realism but in fact it is not true.  Well then I hold a false belief.  But holding that false belief is not really morally wrong.  Why?  Because if this situation holds true then there is no real moral right or wrong.    Now it might be wrong in some peoples morality that they create in their head – ie. a relativist view.  But you know what?   I don’t really care.  That consequence has no weight for me.  Not any more than whether my actions correspond with any other sort of make believe.  So the consequences of my holding the false view that morality is objectively real is basically zero.

Possibility 2) What if I hold the view that moral realism is false when it really is true?   Things get a bit more sticky here.  Now my holding that false belief might have some real moral implications.  Moreover I might be inclined to not be very concerned with what might or might not be really moral.  (After all, I don’t believe in it)  This might lead me to not carefully consider the different views of what is morally right and wrong or carefully consider what basis people have for giving me their moral views.  In the end I might lead a life doing things I truly should not have done and not doing things I really should have done.   I would have lived my life wrong in a real sense.  This is basically what I am trying to avoid.  And so to the extent I am trying to avoid that then rejecting a belief in moral realism seems to be a bad way to go.

Possibility 3) Now what if I correctly reject moral realism.  Well then yes I would have got that one right, but it doesn’t “really” matter.  Why doesn’t it really matter?  Because if moral realism is false then nothing really matters.   So again there is no good reason to reject moral realism despite the lack of evidence.

Possibility 4) So the final option is that I believe in moral realism and moral realism is true.    I think this is really the possibility that we need to focus on.    Let’s accept that moral realism is true.

So a pascal wager like analysis leads to the conclusion that we should believe in moral realism.  But now how do we know what is really moral or not?    That is our next step as a rational person right?  If what I said earlier is true then we should believe in/accept moral realism.  But what is really moral or not moral?

It is only at this point that God comes in.  After careful consideration it seems to me that it is impossible that we can with any reliability believe what is moral or not, if we evolved without any supernatural guidance.   I argue why this is here.

From that conclusion I do a similar analysis and conclude a rational person should believe in God here.

What Goal are We Rationally Pursuing?

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

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It seems to me that we act rationally toward a goal.  If the goal changes then it’s likely that the rational way to act will change.   I decided that my goal would be to try my best to act morally to the extent there really is a moral way to act.  That is, do real good and avoid real evil.   God, or no God, what if there is something I should be doing to make the world really better.

Now I don’t mean good as made up by someone or group, as a constructivist might think of it.  That sort of made up morality in some ways sounds good but I decided not to live my life based on make believe.  I am pursuing the real morality, if such a thing exists.   It is with that goal that I decide to consider what beliefs I should hold, to the extent I have control over my beliefs.

I decided that if I live my life trying to live as I really should, and because of that do not live by some rules a person or group of people made up, well I am fine with that.   Sure it’s possible there is no real morality, in that case, there was nothing I really should have done anyway.   But if it does really exist then I think trying to discover what it is, and trying to live by it, should be my focus.    I think everyone should give their best efforts in this regard.

Fairly early on I realized that if naturalism and evolution are true our moral beliefs are completely unreliable.    If you don’t think I am right on that point (or perhaps just don’t understand what in the world I am talking about) please share your thoughts in the comment section to my last blog.   But for this blog I want to rest on that conclusion.   I argued for it in the last blog, and now I want to draw some other conclusions.  So for this blog Ill assume my conclusion in the last blog is correct.   This also happens to be the conclusion reached by a few other philosophers including Richard Joyce, Sharon Street, and Mark Linville.

What that means is if evolution and naturalism are true our moral beliefs are completely unreliable.  From that I concluded that pursuing one set of moral beliefs is no better or worse than any other set of moral beliefs if N and E are true.  Accordingly pursuing the morality of Christianity would be no less likely to be true than any other, even if N and E are true.   Accordingly even if evolution and naturalism is true, following Christ would not be a worse moral option than any other in the rational pursuit of my goal.

It’s at this point that I think it is established that the nonbeliever has lost his case that the believer is acting less rationally – at least toward the goal of living a life that is really morally correct.   From this point forward I will try to push things a bit further and argue that the nonbeliever is less rational than the believer in pursuit of the goal to lead a really moral life.

Ok so we see that if N and E are true our moral beliefs are completely unreliable, so then it doesn’t matter what moral beliefs we choose.  But what if N and E are not true?  Since any moral beliefs, are a wash if N and E are true, I think it’s rational to focus our attention on the possibility that N and E are not true.

Specifically what if naturalism is not true.  Then it seems we might actually have reliable moral beliefs.  But how could we know what they are?  From what I (and the other 3 philosophers) have argued I am convinced that natural processes alone could not produce beings with this knowledge.  So we would need to look for something from a supernatural/non-natural confirming source that could teach us these morals.   From this it seems we should weigh the evidence of what sources of morality seem to have a supernatural/non-natural confirming source.  There are many religions that fit this bill and I would suggest the reader consider these religions and which has the best evidence.  I won’t go into that weighing here.  But I would like to point out that when it comes to weighing the religious moral schemes we are looking for evidence that the moral teachings were affirmed by a supernatural/non-natural source.

Now I anticipate a few objections to what I said.

First is to say what if there is a God who gave us our moral beliefs but he wants us to believe there is no God?

I think we weigh the evidence of this God the same way we would of any other God.  What is the evidence that this God exists?  But I think there is a second problem with continuing to not believe in this God.   It seems like a contradiction to believe in this god and follow this God’s rules.  If we believe and follow this God then we don’t believe this God.

Finally I think there is a third problem with not believing in God.  If we do not believe in God and we understand that what I and the other philosophers said is true, then the belief that there is no God would also imply our beliefs concerning morals are unreliable.  This would undermine our determination to act morally when acting morally is hard.  When it’s hard, it would be easy to rationalize and say “well the reliability of my moral beliefs are suspect anyway.”  Now I admit that reaction wouldn’t be rational based on my goal.  But I think that would happen.   When you know you are subject to irrationally immoral behavior by taking certain course of action (and here I include an action such as adopting a belief or taking actions which would lead to adopting the belief) then rational people will not take that course of action.

Here is a second objection:

So let’s say we agree to follow some God that we think has the best evidence.  But the “best evidence” is really pretty weak.  Let’s say for example we think the Christian God is more likely than Zeus but maybe just barely.   Let’s say we don’t think the evidence for the Christian God makes it more probably true than not true.  But nevertheless that God has better evidence than any other Gods.    What then?

I think we need to consider this carefully.  It seems to me that if we knew full well this God existed because we could see this God continually and literally standing over us watching our every move few of us would sin.   But that is not the case.   And so we all sin or act in ways we might agree is not how we should.  It seems to me that the firmness of our belief in God is important to how well we follow his moral laws.    And again that is our goal.  We want to find and  follow the real moral way of life.

How we should look at this depends how committed we are to our original goal of trying our best to act morally to begin with.

Let me offer an analogy involving a game.  For this scenario let’s say you are not in need of any set sum.   You want to maximize your potential return.   In fact maximizing your potential return in this game trumps all other concerns you have.    Maximizing your return in this game is in effect all that matters to you.

Let’s say there is a roulette wheel with 1,000,002 numbers.  You get $3,333.34 every month over the course 25 years.  You will receive $1,000,002.00.   You must immediately place the money on a number once you receive it.  At the end of the 25 years there will be one throw that will decide the winning number.  You can only keep the money that is on the number that the ball lands on.   You can put the money on more than one number.  So you could have one dollar put on each number.  You would be sure to get one dollar back but you also know you would only get one dollar.

Now everyone knows the number 7 is slightly rigged such that there is 3xs the possibility of the roulette ball landing there than for any other particular number.  I am not saying it is 3xs as likely to land on 7 as it is to land on any of all the other numbers combined.   I am just saying it is 3xs more likely that it will land on 7 compared to it landing on, say, 474,923 or any other particular number you pick.

How do you bet over the 25 years?

Now let’s say you went all in on 7 but the number comes up 775,957.  How do you feel?  Do you feel bad that perhaps you were irrational?

On the other hand let’s say you figured you did not have “enough evidence” to believe in the number 7.  After all, you lacked evidence sufficient to show that 7 was “more likely than not” going to be the winner so you just picked a random number like 42 and went all in on that.     And the number 7 came up.   And then you saw the other people who picked 7.   Would you disagree with them if they told you it was irrational for you to not go all in on 7?

Here is a more interesting question.  Let’s say some people actually claimed to firmly believe that it would be 7 and went all in on 7?  Let’s say they looked at the situation and they just wanted to make sure that they acted rationally in this game.  So they reinforced the idea that it would be 7 so they would be sure not place any money outside of 7.    So for example they convinced themselves that the odds of it being 7 was much higher than it really was.   Was that irrational to the extent of pursuing their goal?

I don’t think it was irrational.  I think so long as your actions concerning an uncertain belief would not change by adding certainty to your belief it is not irrational to reinforce that belief.   That is whether a person believes that the chance of 7 winning is .0003% .3% 33% or 100% when all the other numbers are about .0001% it won’t make any difference, you should still bet it all on 7.  So none of the actions that this belief is relevant to are negatively affected by puffing up the belief.   And in fact puffing up this belief might be beneficial.

Let’s say the evidence suggested that people who did not puff up the belief that it would be a 7 often would put some money on other numbers.    Assuming your goal was to maximize your possible gains then would it be irrational not to puff up the belief that the number 7 would win?  I think it might be irrational not to puff up that belief.

How should those who reinforced their belief feel if it happened to come up 42?  Would you be able to say that their foolishness mattered?