Undeniably Atheist

John Loftus' Challenge to William Lane Craig

2012-02-10T15:16:00.000+13:00

John Loftus has recently posted a challenge to Dr. Craig regarding his claims of the evidential status of the 'inner witness of the holy spirit'. In the past John has defended the integrity of Dr. Craig in the face of many accusations from within the skeptical movement that Craig is dishonest. I personally don't think Craig is intentionally dishonest, but his portrayals of modern physics are possibly bordering on dishonesty.

Loftus' challenge to Craig involves three specific questions, they are as follows.

One:

Do you agree that objective evidence is external to the knower and can be verified by a third party at least in principle? Yes or no? How then can any third party verify a claim such as someone else's inner witness of the Spirit? At least someone's claim to be abducted by aliens is able to be verified in principle by a third party. Anyone in any religion or sect within one can claim to have had a veridical religious experience. These claims are a dime a dozen when they cannot be verified even in principle by a third party. What then do you say to the argument that these claims are subject to the charge of delusion, and as such, no evidence at all even to someone who claims to have had one?

Two:

Dr. Craig, here is a follow-up question given the inherent subjectivity of the inner witness of the Spirit. How is possible for a reasonable faith to be based upon a subjective experience? Furthermore and more importantly, how is it possible for a reasonable man like yourself to claim such a subjective experience defeats all objective evidence? Now it's one thing to say a subjective experience is to be considered objective evidence. It's another thing entirely to say a subjective experience carries more weight than all objective evidence.

Three:

One last question my friend. Put all three of them together and answer them all at one time if you wish.

Would you please specify the propositional content of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit? Plantinga calls the content "the great things of the gospel", and includes the idea that "God exists", "God has forgiven and accepted me", or "God is the author of the Bible." You claim this content assures Christians that they are children of God. But such a notion echoes the poet whom Paul quoted who said, "we are his offspring." (Acts 17:28) You are surely arguing that the inner witness of the third person of the trinity contains more propositional content than that. Shouldn't this witness be more specific about what is meant to be a "child" of the kind of "God" one believes in, how one becomes a child of this God, where one can learn additional information about this God, what he must think of the authority of that source of information, and how he can best interpret it? For instance, to say "God exists" does not say anything about the attributes of this God, and might even be consistent with panentheism. To say "God is the author of the Bible" doesn't say what a believer should think about the specific nature of the Bible, or how to best interpret it.

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I have repeatedly asked you this last question and have posted it on my blog several times. Again, these types of arguments are swaying the faithful. You need to answer them if you want to be perceived as being honest with the facts. Many skeptics are saying you are not honest and I have been defending you.

If you refuse to answer these questions about the inner witness of the Spirit then I can no longer defend you from the charge of being dishonest with the facts. I hope you do respond, I really do.

Sorry, but it's your choice now.

It will be interested to see if Craig responds, and if he does, in what manner will he do so.

The Absurdity of Christ

2012-02-09T16:05:00.000+13:00

Today I want to explore the supposed purpose behind the message of Christ. The main message, blood sacrifice, not any of the other things like moral teaching or anything like that. We are told that Christ came to earth to die for our sins, so we can be reconciled to God. One could dispute the concept of sin and would be justified in doing so, I think the concept is meaningless but it distracts us from the more important issue of the actual atonement. I wish to argue that the concept of blood sacrifice and substitutional punishment is outdated, barbaric and illogical.

Firstly, the idea bloodshed will pay for wrongdoings assumes that the god in question desires blood. Believing in the god of the philosophers does not get you to this position. Admittedly, the god of the old testament is such a god, in fact there are passages such as Exodus 29:18 which explicitly state that the smell of burnt flesh is a pleasing odour to God. However this is not the god that modern Christians actually believe in. If it were, then Christians would still be engaging in the practice of burnt sacrifices, not to atone for the sins, because God killed himself in human form for that, but because they would believe it to be pleasing to god. After all, isn't that the reason Christians sing songs of praise to God? To please him?

The idea is outdated because it has no relevance to the modern conceptions of justice. Evangelists like Ray Comfort like to use the following analogy:
You commit a crime, the punishment for which is monetary compensation. Someone else pays your fine for you and you are let off the hook. They claim that the execution of Jesus does the same thing, you committed the crime of existing, and for it you deserve to die, Jesus was executed instead of you, so you are let off the hook. Is justice done in either of these cases? I contend that it is not, in fact that to allow such an event to take place would rather be a perversion of justice, yet Christians want you to believe that this is perfect justice.

Let me also try a logical reconstruction of the Christian theory of atonement as I see it. This is possibly an over-simplification, but it should suffice for my purposes here.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

It should be quite plain that such an argument is logically invalid as it is currently written above. In order to make the conclusion follow from the premises, a fourth suppressed premise would need to be added.

1. You trespassed God
2. Trespassing God deserves death
3. Jesus was killed instead of you
[4. Any person who has not trespassed God and is killed in the place of another removes the accountability of the guilty person to their actions]
Therefore
C. You are no longer culpable for your actions.

When it is expressed in this way it becomes quite apparent that such a principle is a blatant perversion of justice. If the same principle was applied in society toward its legal system, the entire social structure would likely collapse, as many innocent, honest persons would be imprisoned or killed, while many manipulative and sociopathic individuals would roam free.

Aside from that extremely contentious suppressed premise I think that premises 1 through 3 are not legitimate either. More than that, I think they cannot be established to be legitimate, they are things which we can only ever be in the dark about (assuming that it's impossible to prove God does not exist).

So in conclusion to all of that, I maintain that the message of Christ is absurd. It is outdated, barbaric and without reasonable support. The conclusions of the atonement will only be seen as viable by those who have already committed belief in Christianity. Perhaps it is possible to formulate a more cogent explanation of the atonement, but I suspect that it too will suffer from many of the same failings as my example.

God is Not a 'Necessary Being'

2012-02-08T15:41:00.000+13:00

It is my contention that a Creator God is not a necessary being; in fact a Creator God would in some sense (or at least some attributes of God) be contingent. I’ll try to explain. Note, I am not addressing the ontological argument here, as I think that would be a facile victory. As far as I'm aware Anselm's ontological argument and its variants are generally ignored these days.

In the general logical form:
1.If P then Q
2.P
Therefore,
C.Q

the argument has it that P is sufficient for Q to be true, and Q is necessary for P to be true. I’ll give an example argument

Example 1:
1.If Bob drinks Beer, then he becomes drunk.
2. Bob drank Beer,
Therefore,
C. Bob became drunk

In the first premise, becoming drunk is the necessary effect of Bob drinking beer. This is a valid logical structure, and given that the premises are true, the conclusion is entailed. However it is not the case that if Bob is drunk, then he must have consumed some beer, he could have consumed rum. In this case, we can say that drinking beer is a sufficient cause for Bob being drunk, but it not a necessary cause.

If we inverted the argument's structure so as to try and work backwards from the drunken state to draw the conclusion that Bob drank beer, it would be an invalid argument. It would fail logically.

Example 2:
1. If Bob drinks Beer, then he becomes drunk.
2. Bob is drunk
Therefore,
C. Bob drank beer

This is a bad argument, so let's apply this to gods.

Example 3:
1. If a creator god exists, then a universe exists.
2. A creator god exists
Therefore,
C. A universe exists

In the first premise, the creation is the necessary effect of a creator god existing. The creator god is merely a sufficient cause of the universe existing, but not a necessary one. This means that at least in some sense, that the creator god is contingent on the existence of the universe. In order for it to be a creator god, it must have engaged in an act of creation, which means that before this 'time' it was not a creator god. A possible contradiction between theistic belief and the bible amigo? That can be a discussion for another time though.

Like in the first example, it is a valid logical structure, and given the truth of the premises, the conclusion must be true. Similarly, if we try to invert the argument to work backwards from the existence of the creation/universe to prove the existence of the creator god, we encounter logical failure.

Example 4:
1. If a creator god exists, then a universe exists.
2. The universe exists
Therefore,
C. A creator god exists.

This is a bad argument, and it is very similar to arguments that try to establish a god as a 'necessary being'. These arguments are deceptive and should be exposed whenever used.

People like William Lane Craig know this, which is why he opts to use the Kalam Cosmological argument, which does have a valid logical structure, but rests on deceptive or demonstrably false premises. It is my contention that what theists actually engage in is closer to Example 4. They work from the existence of the universe, and under their belief system, their god would have created this universe, and arrive at their predetermined conclusion.

The Case Against Christianity

2012-02-05T00:00:00.001+13:00

I just finished reading 'The Case Against Christianity' by Michael Martin. The book is around 250 pages long and covers topics such as the historicity of Jesus, the resurrection, the virgin birth, the second coming, the incarnation, Christian ethics, salvation by faith, divine command theory, the atonement and the philosophical basis of Christian belief. The two chapters I thought were the best were Chapter 3: 'The Resurrection' and Chapter 4: 'The Virgin Birth and the Second Coming', though the rest of the book was very good also.

Some of the chapters are quite jargon-laden, but if one is familiar with the technical terms used in logic then understanding the book won't be an issue. I think perhaps the best feature of this book is the philosophical and logical nature of many of the arguments against Christianity, as opposed to the scientific approach of Dawkins, or the 'bad for society' approach of Harris and Hitchens (I'm not saying this is the only trick up their sleeves, but it forms a large portion!). Having a different approach to the discussion I feel brings a breath of fresh air to a debate that all too often revolves around the same stale talking points.

I highly recommend that everyone reads this book, it's well worth your time.

Excellent Underrated Books

2012-02-03T22:10:00.002+13:00

Since I've been in a bit of a book-reading-mood this year (8 books read so far since Christmas, onto number 9) I have decided to read some books which are on lukeprog's 'Ultimate Truth-Seeker Challenge' page. I've already read a number of books from his list, but they are all from the beginner/intermediate rankings that he's given them.

Currently I have withdrawn 'The Case Against Christianity' by Michael Martin, 'Theism and Explanation' by Gregory Dawes and 'The Miracle of Theism' by J.L. Mackie from my University's library. I have high respect for lukeprog (which makes me sad that he's no longer posting on Common Sense Atheism) and if he recommends a book it's probably well worth reading. The Martin and Mackie books were probably more well known back when they were first published (1993 and 1983) but don't seem to be as widely read today, which is unfortunate. Gregory Dawes book came out in 2009, but it only has 2 reviews on Amazon. Meanwhile many vastly inferior books in a similar vein (four horsemen I'm looking at you!) have many hundreds if not thousands of reviews, and countless more copies are available.

Unfortunately these books are much more expensive than the popular atheist books, which is probably a huge disincentive for people (who like to buy books) to read them. This is why I'm having to get them out of my university library, because I simply cannot afford them. I think that people should read the best books available, rather than the most popular.

When I have read them I will post a short review of them, and let you know whether I think you should read them too (chances are that I will recommend them).

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses - My Thoughts

2012-02-02T19:57:00.002+13:00

I recently finished reading Richard Bauckham's book 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony' and thought I would share my thoughts with you. I'm not going to do a lengthy-ish review of it like I did with Timothy Keller's 'The Reason For God' last month, as there are really only a handful of things I wanted to say in response to this book.

For starters the book is quite a hefty tome, but it has long footnotes at the bottom of most pages which significantly reduces the average page length of actual content, so it's not as long of a read as it first gives the impression of. The book is fairly easy to understand although Bauckham tends to be quite tangential, and by that I mean he has asides which last up to 10 pages before continuing his argument, this detracts somewhat from his arguments, but I managed to follow them well enough.

The content and arguments however I found extremely underwhelming and often particularly specious. He often relies on many assumptions which I am not willing to accept and I do not think he provided sufficient reason for them. The first of these is his reliance on Papias of Hierapolis. The problem I see with Bauckham's reliance on Papias is that we do not have Papias' writings. What we have are a few quotations of his works by Eusebius and a mention by Iranaeus. Despite this, Bauckham takes the liberty to espouse the mind of Papias well beyond what the dubious quotes can possibly tell us. Bauckham does not address many of the problems associated with Papias such as the fact that his descriptions (via quotation) of the Gospel of Matthew and Mark do not match up with the gospels that we have today, so to rely so uncritically on the word of Papias as attesting to the eyewitness tradition within these gospels I find is very credulous and disappointing.

The other frustrating assumption I encountered while reading the book was the trustworthiness of the canonical gospels. Bauckham uses internal evidence within the gospel narratives to point to eyewitness testimony. One of the examples he uses is the preface of Luke, which alludes to the testimony upon which the author says he based his writing on. Bauckham pokes around the words used in this passage and finds a definition that supports his case, which has connotations of eye-witness testimony to the actual events. He seems to accept this rather uncritically, how we know the author was telling the truth Bauckham never reveals. His other main piece of internal evidence really requires a stretch of the imagination, it is what he called the 'Inclusio'. This is a literary device used in ancient literature by which the author conveys the source of information via using their perspective in the text, without outright claiming it came from them. Bauckham primarily claims Inclusio in the gospel of Mark as Peter's witness and in the gospel of Luke as the women disciples' witness. Bauckham seemed pretty convinced of his arguments strength here but I simply failed to see how he actually demonstrated that this was in fact the case. Like I said, it's a stretch of the imagination.

Overall I think Bauckham overstates the force of his arguments, but I commend him for putting forth new arguments and as he admits in the text, he is effectively going against the grain of nearly all modern New Testament scholarship. Credit is due to him for bringing a new spark to the debate, but I think the book was overwhelmingly unsuccessful in giving a solid case for eyewitness testimony.

For a far more in-depth critical analysis of the book and its specific arguments I suggest having a read of Neil Godfrey's blog Vridar, where he did a thorough review of the book in 2007. If you're more audio-inclined you may want to have a listen to a few of Robert M. Price's Bible Geek podcast, relevant episodes linked below.
January 19th 2012, Dr. Price reads Theodore J. Weeden's review of 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses'
February 14th 2011, Dr. Price answers a listener's questions about the validity of Bauckham's arguments.

Why I Rarely Post About Creationism

2012-01-21T02:11:00.001+13:00

For the few regular readers that I have, you may or may not have noticed that lately I very rarely post about creationism. The main reason for this is because the debate is well and truly over and it has been for a long, long time. Creationists (I include ID as a sub-category of creationism) should know this, and I'd wager that most professional creationists do realise it. People like Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International, Creation Science Evangelism, The Discovery Institute, Institute for Creation Research and any others you can think of are actively putting out information that they must know is false. They are after all the deceitful demagogues that I mentioned in my 'Two Types of Creationist' post back in 2010.

If on the odd chance they are really just willfully ignorant and delusional, what can we do about that? We can't go around locking them up or sending them into looney bins can we? The scientific battle is over, but the social war will never end. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I fear that as long as humanity is rife with shit-heads like the aforementioned creationist groups whose main goal is to undermine science with a religious agenda we will never stamp out the pestilence that is creationism.

We will never get rid of magical thinking, faulty reasoning and conspiratorial tendencies. These mis-firings of our thinking faculties are hard wired into humanity.

This is not to say that we do nothing, I still make efforts in my personal life to combat creationism. A few of the Christians that I know (that number dwindles by the year too) are still creationists. I don't try and force them to accept evolution, but I do try and convey to them how serious the evidence for evolution really is, within the context of an amicable conversation. I have a few books and online resources that I try to pass along to them, but they're rarely, if ever interested. There seems to be comfort in delusion. They're more content thinking wrong-headed beliefs are true than actually learning something new.

If there is some 'miracle' cure for the plague of creationism, I'd love to know about it but until then, I think I'll just carry on as I have been, pessimistic about the intellectual honesty of humankind, and continuing to learn new things myself every day.

Sucker For Punishment - Christian Books

2012-01-19T15:40:00.001+13:00

It hasn't been that long since I endured 'The Reason for God', and I have somehow managed to agree to read 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses' by Richard Bauckham. It's like 550 pages long and I heard it was a difficult read so I guess that makes me a sucker for punishment. My university library has a copy, so I'll probably read it slowly between now and the end of the first semester. I guess the good thing about me doing this kind of thing is that no one can accuse me of only reading one side of the debate.

How about I make it official. I'm going to try and make an effort to read at least two scholarly Christian books a year. I actually finished reading Timothy Keller in December, so my tally this year is 0.

In other book news, I'm currently reading 'The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity' by the late Hyam Maccoby. I don't agree with everything in the book but he brings up some analyses of the New Testament texts that I haven't seen before and draws some novel and thought provoking conclusions. Since Maccoby is a Jewish Talmudic scholar the book is quite notably pro-Judaism but it makes for fresh reading.

Religious Apathy

2012-01-15T16:59:00.002+13:00

Here in New Zealand it seems to me that there is a substantial portion of the population that just doesn't really care about religious issues at all. Perhaps it's just the people who I associate with, but I suspect it is somewhat representative of the population at large.

Out of the approximately 100-300 people I interact with socially on a regular-infrequent basis the topic of religion only comes up in conversations with an extreme minority of them (less than 10%). Out of those few, less than half of them are religious (and half of those that are religious are my own family members). A large number of my friends that I grew up going to church with have either stopped going altogether, or still go, but no longer believe. Approximately (very rough guess) 10-30% of those from the aforementioned social group nominally belong to some religion. For example it might list 'Christian' on their facebook info, but that's about the extent of their outwards religiosity. As far as I can tell, the remainder of the group either is nominally irreligious, believes in a 'higher power' or just don't seem to give a damn.

Just to clarify, if any of you are reading this post, I'm not trying to criticise your beliefs or lack thereof, just pointing out what I think is an interesting piece of sociological data.

The reason I'm so fascinated in these issues is because I used to be so religious, and I find the phenomena of religious belief intriguing. For those on whom religion has had a negligible effect it may all seem like hocus pocus and make-believe, or just something that's a part of life that doesn't need to be questioned. No real over-arching point to this, but hopefully it has given you something to think about.

First Causality

2012-01-15T03:00:00.000+13:00

The notion of having a cause for the universe that is outside of the universe is nonsensical. Causality is dependent on the existence of time and space, which don’t exist outside of the universe. So the best way to describe this hypothetical first cause would be ‘non-existent’.

That's it. A short and sweet argument against the existence of gods, or at least the idea of a transcendent creator god that is a first cause outside the universe.

Critical Thinking and Statistics

2012-01-12T17:45:00.000+13:00

I discovered as I was enrolling for my university courses for 2012 in December last year that I was missing a prerequisite course (statistics) for one of my first semester classes (ecology). I decided to enroll in summer school (I live in the southern hemisphere remember), and to make the most of it I took a philosophy course in critical thinking as well. I wasn't really thinking of the applications of these two disciplines when I enrolled in them, but once I started attending lectures I realised that these two areas of study are perhaps two of the most important things anyone can have a solid grounding in.

I'm not sure about highschools everywhere, but when I was in highschool, there was no philosophy (let alone logic or critical thinking) taught at all and statistics was an elective class one could opt to take in 6th form (age 16-17). I am almost certain that if everybody had at least some grounding in critical thinking and statistics as teenagers, society as a whole would be a more intelligent place. People would be better equipped to deflect bad arguments and to not be duped by deceptive statistics used frequently in marketing.

Why the Christian God would be Stupid if He Existed - Part 2: Special Revelation

2012-01-11T16:09:00.002+13:00

I’ve brought this issue up in several venues before but I thought it really deserved its own post. Special revelation, i.e. a god giving its message to specific individuals to relay on to others is an imbecilic system and I’ll try to explain why I think so.

The Weakest Link

The weakest link of a chain is where it is going to break first, so let’s imagine the conveying of God’s message as a chain. At the very least, a special revelation chain has to have 3 links, God, the receiver of the message, and then the rest of the population. In that circumstance the populace first has to have faith in the conveyor before they can have faith in the message being conveyed. This is not an ideal situation, as obviously the messenger is the weakest link of the chain, whether interpreting the message from the deity incorrectly, relaying it incorrectly, or something not being believed by others. This is a faulty chain and a god that would use such a chain should be considered stupid in my books. However, this is not the chain that we supposedly have (given the assumption that the Bible is actually God’s message).

The special revelation chain that we would actually have would be something like this (for the New Testament Gospels).
God/Jesus->First Century Followers->Converts->[insert several decades and who knows how many other transmissions]->Anonymous Gospel Authors->Scribes (who altered the texts)->Translators (for those of us who don’t read Greek)->Us

The number of weak links in this chain is stunning, and many of them have already been broken in the texts, as we have numerous contradictions between gospels and sometimes within the same gospel, perhaps due to interpolations. Any god who would use such a system, where one must place faith in the transmission process before one can have faith in the message and then believe the true religion must be a moron. This is one reason why I think the better explanation is that no such God exists.

Faith in Humans

As I mentioned, in order to have faith in the religion, you must first have faith in the people who transmitted it to you. In some circumstances I am willing to put faith (trust) in other human beings, if they have been shown to have a track record of trustworthiness. For example, a Scientist who has a history of being innovative and ahead of his time, who has later been confirmed to be correct many times over would deserve considerably more faith in their judgment than a John Doe off the street with no credentials.

Surely if a God was dead-set on transmitting his one true religion via special revelation through many people he would at least make sure that the people had an air of trustworthiness around them? Unfortunately for the Christian, that isn’t the case with the Bible. The overwhelming majority of which is anonymously authored. The only books from the Old Testament of moderately ‘certain’ authorship are a few of the prophets (the first part of Isaiah for example). All of the ‘history’ and myth, and law found in the Old Testament is completely anonymous (No, Moses did not write any of it). The New Testament is arguably worse off than the Old, as a substantial portion of that which isn’t anonymous is forged. Half of the letters claimed in Paul’s name are forgeries (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians) and some of the ones we’re pretty sure were written by him have anonymous interpolations added into them by scribes. 1 & 2 Peter are forgeries; Jude is a forgery and so on. I am not about to go placing my faith in anonymous writers 1900-1800 years ago nor am I going to place my faith in writers who lied about they were. Hell, I’m not even going to place faith in the single identified author of the New Testament (Paul) because I have absolutely no reason to trust him on anything. An Intelligent god surely would have accounted for this, which is why I cannot avoid the conclusion that if the Christian God existed, he would be an idiot.

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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 5

2012-01-09T16:51:00.002+13:00

Chapter 13: “The Reality of the Resurrection”

At the start of the chapter Keller mentions that he studied religion and philosophy in college, which means he can’t have been ignorant of moral philosophy. That leads me to conclude he either ignores it, or is intentionally presenting an uncharitable interpretation of opposing views. I am no doubt guilty of the same thing (though not intentionally), perhaps even in this strange review of his book. The best explanation of his seeming ignorant of moral philosophy is probably due to the Christian-tinted glasses that he undoubtedly wears.

Much of the chapter is fairly conventional Christian apologetics, and as he is arguing straight out of the work of N.T. Wright it is unsurprising. I find the work of people like Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman and Robert M. Price far more interesting and compelling, but perhaps I am biased too. Regardless, Keller does not address works like these, and at times presents the skeptic position as saying “It (the resurrection) just couldn’t have happened.” Point me to a single serious skeptical source that says anything remotely along those lines. You can’t? That’s because that’s not what skeptics are saying. Keller is out of touch with his opponents, or perhaps he just isn’t interested in going after the best arguments and only interested in the low-hanging fruit and in burning straw men.

Chapter 14: “The Dance of God”

This chapter reads like one should expect of a book that finds itself successful in arguing its points in previous chapters. For someone like me who went into it trying to be as open-minded as possible, only to be insulted in the introduction and bored for much of the rest of it this chapter was dull. It does things like trying to explain the trinity and ties off some threads on other Christian doctrines. This chapter along with the epilogue which I won’t do an entry on really sum up the book for me. This is not a book for skeptics to convert them to Christianity even though it claims to be. This is probably a really great book for a doubting Christian who doesn’t know much about their own religion but wants to reassure themselves that they’ve picked the right belief. The arguments are incredibly superficial and the refutations are weak. He provides no evidence or reason to believe, and the only chapter that comes close to this is the one where he talks about ‘clues’ of god.

Conclusion

I give the book overall a 2/5. One star for effort and one star for what seems to me to be an honest attempt to reach skeptics. Keller’s biggest downfall in this book is that he doesn’t really address much in the way of real skepticism, doesn’t take on the best arguments, proclaims victory prematurely and obviously hasn’t put any effort into actually understanding the position of the people he is attempting to write for. What I’m trying to say is, the book is crap.

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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 4

2012-01-09T15:52:00.000+13:00

Chapter 9: “The Knowledge of God”

Okay this chapter seals the deal; Keller must be ignorant of moral philosophy. He shows no working knowledge of ethical models like utilitarianism or desirism. He just goes on the incredibly weak assumption that because some people can’t explain why they hold certain values (such as human rights) that they’re objective values imprinted upon our subconscious. He also jumps from saying that there are debates about evolutionary mechanisms for morality to 'evolution can’t explain moral intuition'. I don’t want to say I’m done with the book just yet, but my patience is diminishing rapidly.

Chapter 10: “The Problem of Sin”

What a boring chapter. I really have nothing else to say about it. It reads like a chapter written for Christians who don’t understand the doctrine of sin. I feel I somewhat understand it (a few interpretations of it at least) and I’m not really interested in it and reject the concept. Yawn.

Chapter 11: “Religion and the Gospel”

This chapter immediately builds on the previous one, and delves straight into an allusion to the pop-Christianity idea that Christianity is not a religion. Get real. This chapter is effectively a sermon. If one doesn’t accept the conclusion of the previous chapter, one will likely finish the chapter as I did: uninterested. Even if Christianity was true, I don’t feel like I need saving, so it doesn’t appeal to me. There is no argumentation in here, just sermonising.

Chapter 12: “The (True) Story of the Cross"

I feel like I’m letting down anyone reading this, as with the last two chapters I found it simply boring. I don’t really have much to say about it either. The chapter title got me interested, but it didn’t pan out the way I thought it was going to. It ended up being another sermon.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 3

2012-01-08T10:48:00.001+13:00

Chapter 6: “Science has disproved Christianity”

Most of this chapter is non-contentious and doesn’t really need much said about it. It’s basically just a discussion of the conflict model of science vs. Religion, which I agree is not an accurate description of reality. This is not because I think religion and science coalesce, but because like many popular level criticisms of religion, it is too simplistic, and too black and white. The reality of the situation is much more complicated than some atheist writers would lead you to believe.

Despite the fact that the chapter doesn’t say anything starkly wrong in my opinion, I think Keller still fails to address the best skeptical arguments against religion from the scientific perspective so I walk away unsatisfied once again.

Chapter 7: “You Can’t Take The Bible Literally”

My mouth was hanging open for approximately two thirds of this chapter out of sheer surprise of what he was saying (in a bad way). I don’t really feel like trying to refute any of his points here, as this is supposed to be a book review not a refutation. Keller refers to the Da Vinci Code many times as examples of “biblical skepticism” and “historical revisionism”. I understand he is trying to write for the popular level, but seriously, no one interested in this subject takes the Da Vinci Code seriously anyway, stop wasting my time Keller!

I was especially gobsmacked at Keller’s attempt to gloss over cultural anachronisms in the Bible and moral horrors (such as slavery) by trying to say that they aren’t the key message, so you should first accept Christianity as true, and then try and figure those out later. It’s a package deal, If I disagree with biblical teachings, I’m not going to follow the Bible. Honestly, I almost feel like saying that even if Jesus were God, I wouldn’t be a Christian because of the content of the Bible.

He attempts the argument that Biblical slavery wasn’t as bad as the slavery of the middle ages. He tries to say that slaves weren’t actually owned by slave-masters back then, only their labour was, but ignores the passage in Exodus where it explicitly states that the slave is the property of his master. I find this is typical of Christian apologetics, it’s disingenuous. At least he makes some reference to views that skeptics actually hold, but his refutations of them are extremely vapid and effectively amount to “the evidence for this older, skeptical view of the Bible has been crumbling steadily for the past thirty years, even as it has been promoted by the popular media...” Weak man, weak.

Chapter 8: “The Clues of God”

This chapter was bad. His first argument relies on outdated science, he quotes Stephen Hawking from the 90’s saying that “almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.” This is problematic because the most up-to-date understanding of the Big Bang Theory is that it only shows us an inflationary event from a dense state, it does not reveal a singularity or a creation moment. Keller’s use of this argument shows that he has either not kept up to date, or is intentionally staying out-of-date because he can use it to support his case.

His second argument is the fine-tuning argument. This is dealt (in my opinion) a death-blow in Victor Stenger’s latest book ‘The Fallacy of Fine Tuning’. The fine tuning argument is built on many false premises two of which I’ll list here.
1) That the ‘constants’ are variable
2) That the constants are independent

Once those assumptions are removed, fine tuning falls flat.

His next argument is that because nature is regular, god must exist, because we can’t create a rational explanation for why nature should be regular. This weak argument encounters a fatal flaw when one points out that one cannot make a rational argument for why nature shouldn’t be regular either.
Then he goes to beauty, and says that’s a clue for god. I’m not convinced, beauty is subjective, it doesn’t actually exist and is entirely explicable under naturalism.
He finishes the chapter with what is essentially Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism, which is built upon an argument of C.S. Lewis’ from Miracles. The argument basically says that if our brains are the result of natural evolution, we cannot trust them. I find that every person I’ve seen making this argument doesn’t really understand evolution or the scientific method.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 2

2012-01-07T11:08:00.003+13:00

Chapter 4: “The Church is responsible for so much injustice”

This chapter boils down to one giant ‘no-true Scotsman’ fallacy in the end. Slave owners, crusaders and anyone motivated by Christianity to do wrong is not a real Christian, while true Christianity motivates abolitionists, the civil rights movement and peace according to Keller. Even if I was to grant Keller everything in the chapter, it would still have no bearing on the truth of Christianity. However I think Keller would do well to note that his scriptures contain morally questionable (read: horrific) content, like the blatant endorsement of slavery. I have no doubt that many, many people are inspired by Christianity to do good, but people are also inspired by poetry, music, film, art and literature, and this inspiration has no bearing on the truth or falsity of any subject in question.

Keller also tries to slander moral relativism by offering a very crude description of it he says “If everything is relative, there would have been no inventive for white people in the South to give up their power.” (referring to the end of the slave trade in the United States). Earlier in the chapter he effectively claims that Christianity invented the golden rule saying “to give up Christian standards would be to leave us with no basis for the criticism.” Either Tim Keller is ignorant of moral philosophy, or he is ignorant of moral philosophy, there is no way around it. To claim that without Christianity you cannot morally criticise the Crusades (as he was referring to in that quote) is incredibly pathetic.

Chapter 5: “How can a loving God send people to Hell?”

Firstly, this chapter is barely about Hell at all and the picture that Keller attempts to paint of Hell is one that people choose to go to and do not want to leave. I find this extremely puzzling, as one can find biblical support for annihilationism and for agonising eternal torture depending on how one interprets various passages, but Keller’s view seems incredibly weak. He bases this doctrine of his own invention (correct me if I’m wrong) on the fact that in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, “[the rich man] does not ask to get out of hell”.

Near the end of the chapter it becomes incredibly clear why this book is failing so miserably to actually address anything atheists and skeptics actually say. Keller says “Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can’t believe in the God of the Bible, who punishes and judges people, because they “believe in a God of Love.”” There you have it, the elusive skeptics that Keller refers to in the book are at the very least Theists, or at the most, Christians who have doubts. If the rest of the book continues down this path, I envisage face-palms of epic proportions.
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Review of 'The Reason for God' - Part 1

2012-01-04T14:04:00.000+13:00

I've decided to split this into several parts, as I ended up writing quite a bit.

Also, the way I wrote the review changed considerably over the course of reading it.

The Introduction

I started reading this book with the intention of being as open to the possibility of being wrong as possible, but the introduction really irritated me. It didn't feel to me like it was really introducing the book and there were a few things he says that got on my nerves which I have written here. Perhaps I'm being pedantic though, and if so I apologize.

Keller conflates relative morality with arbitrary morality and says this "If morality is relative, why isn't social justice as well?"

He tries to insult moral relativists by comparing them to "the morally upright".

"The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn't seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world."

Shows more bias here: "Liberals' individualism comes out in their views of abortion, sex, and marriage. Conservatives' individualism comes out in their deep distrust of the public sector and in their understanding of poverty as simply a failure of personal responsibility."
It seems like he is trying to paint liberals as shallow and superficial, while portraying conservatives as "deep" and showing "understanding". I hope this isn't indicative of the rest of the book.

Chapter 1: "There Can't Just Be One True Religion"

"Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true." Wrong. That's not what skepticism is at all, either Timothy Keller is an idiot, or he's never picked up a dictionary in his life (He'd still be an idiot in that case).

Furthermore, the crux of this chapter is arguing against something that skeptics DO NOT CLAIM. The fact that all religions cannot be true is something that skeptics acknowledge and use as ammunition against specific religious claims. The people who claim that all religions are true are spiritualists or new-agers or members of inclusive religious sects. Keller fails miserably in actually arguing against skepticism in this chapter.

Chapter 2: "How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?"

Keller simply parrots C.S. Lewis here and pays no attention to the actual arguments made by skeptics that he claims to be rebutting.
"C.S. Lewis described how he had originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was more problematic for his new atheism. In the end, he realized that suffering provided a better argument for God's existence than one against it."

Keller just accepts this and moves on. I'm not impressed. He spends most of the rest of the chapter talking about how Christianity can comfort those that suffer. I do not dispute that this may be the case, but it has absolutely no bearing on the truth of the religion, which is the reason I do not believe. Keller seems to assume people all disbelieve for emotional reasons.

Chapter 3: "Christianity is a Straitjacket"

Keller attempts to rebut multiple arguments in this chapter. The first is the idea of relative truth. I do not disagree with him that many contradictory statements can't all be true. He falls flat on his face once again though, because he isn't actually addressing the arguments of skeptics, but rather of post-modernist hipsters. He also goes after the idea of freedom saying "Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us." His justification for this is a quote from C.S. Lewis, so once again he is just parroting another apologist while not actually addressing skeptics. Unimpressive.
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Why the Christian God Would be Stupid if He Existed - Part 1

2011-12-14T22:40:00.003+13:00

I decided to start a new post series. I hope you enjoy it.

Creation

There are many aspects of 'creation' that make me think if the Christian God did exist, he would have to be classified as an idiot. The first of these being evidence. If he had created everything, he left no evidence of his activity. Painters generally sign their paintings and manufacturers generally put their logo on their products but for some reason Yahweh felt no need to leave behind any trace. This puts us homo sapiens in a strange predicament, we live in a universe that appears to us as if there is no god, everything we observe happens as a result of unguided natural processes so if the Christian God existed and created everything he would be an idiot based on this alone.

The second aspect of 'creation' that would qualify any prospective creator as incompetent are the many examples of un-intelligent design, I'll list just a few here to demonstrate my point. We breathe through the same orifice we eat with. Our lower backs are poorly constructed for walking upright resulting in widespread back problems. The birth canal is not large enough for fully developed human babies to be born prematurely compared to other mammals, leaving the mother and the baby vulnerable. Many more examples can be found but 3 should suffice for my purposes.

Related to the other two facets is evolution. Evolution is quite possibly the most inefficient way in which a god could create life. Inefficiency isn't one of the attributes you hear Christians worshiping Yahweh for so I assume that was a mistake, which would make him stupid.

If the Christian God did in fact create everything as creationism describes he shot himself in the foot by making all the evidence point towards evolution, which would make him stupid, unless he really wanted to deceive humanity, which would make him malicious. So there you have it, by looking at 'creation' I conclude that if the Christian god existed, he would be stupid or malicious.

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Upcoming Apologetics Book Review

2011-11-21T12:15:00.001+13:00

I have agreed to trade books with a Christian family member, I will be giving them 'Why I Became an Atheist' by John W. Loftus, and in return I will be getting 'The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism' by Timothy Keller. Don't expect anything great, I'll probably write a chapter-by-chapter summary of my thoughts and then write some final words. It will probably be up at the end of November or the beginning of December.

Chris Hedges on the New Atheists

2011-11-07T12:34:00.001+13:00

I have been reading quite a bit of stuff by Chris Hedges lately, he's a (very) liberal Christian author and what he says about politics I find very lucid and insightful. He has some pretty harsh things to say about the New Atheists, and in the name of honest inquiry I thought I'd have a listen to what he says. In this video, he is mainly targeting Hitchens and Harris and I have to say I tend to agree with him. Hitchens and Harris do not do their homework, their arguments for atheism are criticised strongly by more intellectually vigorous atheists.

Watch the video for yourself, try to watch it with no predispositions.

The Death of Religion

2011-10-20T20:58:00.000+13:00

Before someone jumps on this post thinking "Religion is not dead!", I realise this. I'm not saying religion has died, or that it will ever cease to exist. What I think is happening to religion, is that it is fading out of relevance. The social relevance of all religions is dying, and in many places around the world it is already dead. People do not need to turn to religion to answer the 'big questions'. People do not need to turn to religion as a basis for morality.

Many religions constantly have to evolve to keep up with societal trends or else they face an extinction of irrelevance. Some try to stick to their old ways, like the subservience of women to men and homophobia, but these groups are more often than not shunned from modern society for being bigoted. The last nail in the coffin in my opinion is the idea that one must be a member of a particular religion to attain salvation (whatever that might mean in a particular religious tradition). Once this idea is abandoned by more and more members of religions, and all that is required is to live a good life, religion will die a slow death into irrelevance. If one can attain Nirvana, or get to heaven without following a religion, why follow it? If people can free up more time in the day to go about my business and to improve the world they live in rather than practice religion, they are likely to do so.

Christianity and Revolution

2011-10-19T10:06:00.000+13:00

There is something that I would be interested to see happen around the world and here in New Zealand. I would like to see Christians mobilise and support the 99% movement. Most Christians I know are strongly supportive of helping the poor voluntarily, but most are also political conservatives and support parties that reinforce and grow the wealth inequality around the world (I'm looking at you National party voters, Republican voters, Tory voters etc.). If you are really supportive of making our planet a fairer, better place for all of its citizens, I implore you to join the revolution, and at the next election vote for a party that is serious about change. No more voting to make your comfortable life more comfortable, vote on behalf of the poor, needy and exploited.

There will be a revolution regardless, but we would like you there alongside us as we strive for a better world.

Update on the Occupation

2011-10-18T12:49:00.000+13:00

As threats of being arrested kept coming in our numbers slowly diminished and eventually the police outnumbered those inside the clocktower, so we marched with our friends that were supplying us with food and blocking the doors from the outside down to the permanent occupation site in Auckland central.

You can see me in the video during the protest.

University of Auckland Occupation Demands

2011-10-17T17:14:00.003+13:00

Right now I am currently with a group of students staff and taxpayers occupying the Clocktower administration building at the university I attend (The university of Auckland).

We are in the process of finishing a meeting to formulate a list of demands from the university administration and government.

These are our current demands:

1. Unconditional Free Education
2. Sack McCutcheon and Walsh (Vice Chancellors of Auckland and Victoria Universities respectively) and restructure the university administration to be based around a public forum.
3. Remove trespass orders on Marcus and Wikitane.
4. Ask (not demand) for approval from the land owners, Ngati Whatua
5. Decisions on courses based on scholarly and social benefits, not on profitability.
6. Security guards employed for the safety of students, not for surveillance of students.
7.. That the university administration will by bound by the government to the facilitation with the TEU in November
8. That the university will work to revoke the Voluntary student membership bill.
9. That the government will fund student unions unconditionally.

Note: This is not the exact wording of the proposals, but just a summary of them.

You heard it here first!

Faith and Intuition

2011-10-14T11:09:00.000+13:00

Many Christians laud faith as a virtue, and value intuition and gut feelings as confirmation of their beliefs. I reject all of this as unreliable, and it is my goal to elucidate why.

I will start by defining what I mean by faith, and then respond to some theistic uses of it. I accept the definition of faith in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1. So the atheistic definition that 'faith is belief without evidence' is accurate to the definition found in Hebrews. If Christians wish to dispute this they should take it up with the New Testament canon and the anonymous author of the epistle, not with us.

When dialoguing with Christians, I am often scolded for not giving faith a chance and that I'm dogmatically accepting scientific naturalism. I would like to point out that I did give faith a chance, I was raised on faith. I consciously followed the Christian faith and bought into its conclusions for years. I read apologetics and debated online with atheists for about 4 years before jumping ship. I also do not dogmatically accept anything. If it became apparent that scientific naturalism was not producing intellectual progress or contributing to the wealth of knowledge that furthers the advancement of our species, I would abandon it just as I abandoned by former religion. The thing is though, that scientific naturalism is making progress, and we are constantly finding out more and more about the world we live in by scientific methods.

The other common thing that I hear from the Christians that I discuss/debate with is that they think faith is a path to knowledge. This is usually coupled with the two statements in the previous paragraph. When I have asked how faith is a path to knowledge, I am only ever met with distractions and diversions. I don't see the connection between faith as defined in Hebrews and knowledge. How can you learn something from having confidence in what you hope for, or from having assurance about what you don't see? In every aspect of my life I learn things by examining the world around me, or by listening, reading or doing things. I have never learned anything by believing something a priori, without evidence. In fact I contend that doing so is the antithesis of learning, and only takes away from potential knowledge, rather than contributing to it as my theist friends insist. On top of the dodging of this question, I have never received an acceptable answer when I ask what knowledge faith has given them. If as they say faith is an alternative path to knowledge than the rational methods I apply, then surely they could point to an example of knowledge that has been revealed by faith? It seems like a reasonable question to me.

When the issue of morality arises I am met constantly with the view that God instils moral values into our intuitions, or something akin to it. No amount of sociological, evolutionary or neuro-scientific reasoning seems to be able to convince them that intuitions are not reliable ways to know anything. Moral ideas are largely the product of cultural conditioning, and many intuitions come from our evolutionary heritage and are explicable by natural, hormonal or neural means. We have learned so much about how our brain works and the natural world we live in, and as a result we can correct for errors in our cognition and intuition. Similarly, we can correct moral beliefs that are conditioned into us from cultural or evolutionary heritage. Pointing to moral intuition is not a cogent argument for the existence of God, as our moral intuitions are constantly changing as a result of cultural change. Our intuitions and gut feelings are useful tools in every day life, as we often can not afford the time to sit and think rationally about every decision we make, but we must also realise that they are often error-prone and sometimes flat out wrong. If you think God exists because you have a gut feeling that something exists out there it is my opinion that this is but another example of cognitive failure.