Dr. Coyne,
I listened attentively to your hour interview with Sam Harris on his podcast and have cursorily scanned your new book, “Faith versus Fact.” While I found myself agreeing with much of your perspective, I found your understanding of the epistemic nature of faith to be quite misguided. I have found virtually all of the “new atheists” making the same mistake; attacking a “straw man” instead of the understanding of faith articulated in the mainstream Christian tradition.
In the interview, you rightly defined science as a means of discovering “reality.” But you seem to mean by “reality” only that which is verifiable by scientific investigation, and “evidence” only that which is reducible to scientific experiment. But this account seems to hardly correspond to human experience. In human relationships, we have “faith” in another person or “believe” in them if a past track record gives us the probable indication that they will produce the expected result in the future. Faith, in this human sense, is evidentiary and has an epistemic value. It is not scientific reasoning, but it is still a form of reasoning based on character observation and probable cause. It would be foolish to say on a human level that to trust another person if they have given evidence of trustworthiness is irrational. In fact, it is highly rational, but simply a different kind of rationality than scientific rationality.
In the mainstream Christian tradition, this human epistemology of faith is simply raised to the supernatural level. As articulated well by Thomas Aquinas and John Locke, faith is the indirect verification of a divine message based on the direct verification of a divine messenger. This allows Locke to call faith a “species of reason.” Faith reasoning goes like this: if someone makes a claim to some reality that goes beyond my natural investigative abilities, the only reasonable question is: why should I believe you? If there is no answer to that question other than further truth claims, then the claims would be irrational and foolish to believe. However, if the messenger can prove his credentials, then there might be reason to have “faith” in that person. In fact, I would argue that it would be God’s duty to vouch for any messenger He sends.
A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence. This is why the evidence of a “cluster of miracles” is significant. This theory says that one supernatural miracle can easily be naturally explained away (e.g. calming the storm as superb meteorological awareness). But a “cluster of miracles” increases the credibility of the messenger. Arguably, the two greatest cluster of attestation miracles in the history of the world are Moses and Jesus. The resurrection, of course, being the pinnacle of this evidence.
Notice that God concedes this viewpoint when Moses says that the Israelites will not believe that he is called to free them from slavery. God grants this point, and thus gives him the ability to perform three miracles to vouch for his message. And also notice that the New Testament defines faith as “evidence of things unseen.”
This evidentiary and rational approach to faith is the mainstream of the Christian tradition. Of course, it has sadly been hijacked by “fideism” in many circles, but this is not the Biblical or historical understanding of the epistemology of faith.
It would be helpful if you would attack this version of faith, not the fideistic “straw man” that the new atheists are always opposing. Obviously, with this understanding of faith, I believe that only Christianity can make a claim to revealed supernatural truth because of the credentials of Jesus. I find that Buddha, Mohammed, and all other religious founders to be lacking in producing the evidence necessary to substantiate their message.
In conclusion, with this account of faith, I would like to be enlightened about how this is “believing something with no evidence.” I am a Christian precisely because I believe the testimony of Jesus is the most evident and the most compelling. Just like I would have faith in a person that has shown himself to be trustworthy. This is the height of rationality, not the absence of it.
I would very much appreciate a response.
*********
A quick response by PCC(E):
- The writer should have read my book rather than skimming it, as I explicitly discuss the notion of “faith” in science versus religion, including the evidential basis of statements like, “I have faith in my doctor,” or “I have faith that my wife loves me.” I won’t reiterate it here, but I use the notion of “science broadly construed,” to show that that form of “faith” is really “confidence based on experience or evidence.”
- The notion that New Atheists attack religion as a “straw man”—that believers are all quite liberal, don’t take anything in the Bible literally, and that religion has nothing to do with truth claims about reality—is totally misguided. Has this person seen the statistics about what believers in the US and UK believe? Hint: it’s not about an apophatic God. Even 23% of Catholics in America are young-earth creationists, despite their own Vatican asserting that it has no problems with evolution. (It really does though, as it claims the existence of a soul and that Adam and Eve are the literal historical ancestors of all living humans.)
- “A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence.” What the writer means is that we should weaken our standards of evidence for those “supernatural messages.” In fact, supernatural messages can be addressed with natural evidence, as Sanal Edamaruku showed when revealing that “miracle water” emanating from a statue of Jesus in Mumbai was really leached water from a clogged toilet nearby. For his pains, Sanal was excoriated by believers and charged with blasphemy by the government; he’s now a refugee. I guess the “natural” evidence wasn’t convincing!
- The Bible is hardly a “rational messenger” that has “proven its credentials.” After all, think of all the stuff in there that we know is historically wrong, like the Exodus, the census of Caesar Augustus, and so on.
- The stuff about the testimony of Jesus being compelling will convince only those who have already drunk the Kool-Aid. And what the Bible says is not the testimony of Jesus, but of people who wrote, at the least, decades after he died.
Now, you can respond as you’d like; I’ll point the letter writer to my own response and to your comments.
What Jerry said. 🙂
👍🏼
Exactly!
Authors of serious works like Dr. Coyne have to be discouraged when they produce a work that is well reasoned and researched only to find that large portions of the populace lack the mentation to understand it.
… or even read it before writing long emails to him …
There is a certain advantage in discussing an issue prior to having any real information. It allows one to simply reiterate their biases and personal ideology without the pesky need to justify it. (See “preacher”)
I applaud your patience in responding. If the person read your book they were unable to absorb about 60% of it – for good or ill.
Big 10-4 on the first sentence, good buddy. But are you suggesting that about 40% was probably “absorbed?” Really? That much?
I call it the “benefit of a doubt” approach.
Agreed. But you gotta’ admit, that’s probably more than three overfilled truckloads of benefit.
You are a very generous person.
I want a pink unicorn!
There is no outside evidence that really supports the bible, many of the finds in Israel and it’s surrounds where interpreted using the bible rather than assessed on their own merits. There are plenty of Irish myths that are clearly confirmed by the presence of Dolmens. Except we know those legends originated with people who arrived long after the Dolmen people had left or were subsumed by the next wave of migration.
Won’t repeat the difference between trusting my mechanic to fix my car and that being called faith, it’s not the same as believing in something as Faith is often described as belief without evidence. While trust or faith is accumulated experience in dealing with my mechanic.
I would appreciate a pink unicorn 😉
Ah, yes, more convoluted “sophisticated” theology.
Here’s all anyone really needs to know to realize that Christianity is total BS: The first, underlying, most basic premise of Christianity, without which the entire rest of it is irrelevant, is that their god, who
“loves” them SO MUCH, requires them to accept the blame for something they didn’t do.
Has that ever happened to you in real life? Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do, bu someone who knew you didn’t do it? And if it has, did you feel LOVED???
Yeesh. L
Dear e mailer,
How do you like that for a reply to your message? You asked for it!
Thank you Mr. Coyne, that was beautiful!
What’s really interesting is that this letter could have been written by a believer in ANY faith. There’s nothing discriminatory in any of them that can actually be measured to determine the “trueness” of the different faiths. Which just increases the likelihood that these religions are purposefully designed to not have testable components to be able to differentiate between them.
The thing about science only sticking to the material world is that’s all we can measure. But, what’s really interesting, despite thousands of years of effort, no evidence of anything not a part of the material universe has been found. Yes, they would leave traces. Anything that can affect the material universe would leave traces, just as you can see electrons, but can still see their effects on the world.
The Bible, like all books, is not self-authenticating. It contains so much incorrect information about biology, geology, astronomy, known historical events, and even claims about what happened at a particular point in time, that its authority is highly questionable on even the most basic topics. Of course, this should be expected from a text that paints a glorified picture of a rather pathetic middle eastern tribe (nationalism) and cribs from multiple prior works on deities.
By the writer’s reckoning, Harry Potter is more real than the Bible. It, at least, doesn’t have the same level of internal contradictions. I wonder if the writer thinks that the movie Titanic is a documentary?
Finally, I know some people that this letter writer should be introduced to. If the writer believes as they say they do, then many groups will consider them heretical and, in at least one case, suggest that the letter writer be killed for apostasy. Yes, this was spoken by a Christian. And don’t bring up the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. He’s of the writer’s faith just as much as the writer is.
Exactly.
I believe that only X can make a claim to revealed supernatural truth because of the credentials of invisible-friend-X. I find that invisible-friend-Y, invisible-friend-Z, and all other religious founders to be lacking in producing the evidence necessary to substantiate their message.
You know what would impress me? If when Columbus had blundered onto the shores of North America in 1492, he had discovered the natives worshiping Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Mary, Joseph, saints, Satan, and all the rest of the Catholic pantheon, with churches, monasteries, bishops, cardinals, a pope, indulgences, Gregorian chant, the whole works. There could still be a naturalistic explanation, but that would have been strong evidence that there there was an overarching reality behind the Christian religion. But that’s not what happened. What Columbus did find is strong evidence that, when it comes to religion, ignorant people make stuff up.
And as for “arguably, the two greatest cluster[s] of attestation miracles in the history of the world are Moses and Jesus. The resurrection, of course, being the pinnacle of this evidence”, don’t make me laugh! I prefer to get my laughs from Jesus and Mo.
Sounds a lot like what motivated J. Smith and all that 😉
I’ve always loved the geographical evidence against religion. It seems that our modern global culture has caused people to forget that each religion started as a LOCAL phenomenon–focused on specific local places, gods, peoples, books, etc. Like any other specific instance of human culture, each religion could only spread through direct contact of human beings.
As you say, separate emergence of the same religion in various unconnected places WOULD be truly remarkable evidence (and it would be absurd–imagine reading the Bible without knowing for certain that any of the places mentioned even existed).
Yes, Shea B, I’m fond of making that same point.
IF religion, Christianity in this case, is man-made then there is only one way it can
have spread: Via humans convincing other humans to believe it – via inculcation (of family), proselytizing, by decree, by the sword etc. It will have to have started in a small area, and radiated from there strictly based on human contact.
For an All Powerful God, there would be essentially an infinite number of ways He could have made his message known to mankind, and certainly almost infinitely more efficacious as well. From all the possibilities open to a God, we are to believe that He chose the ONE method of revelation that a man-made religion would require. And that all other false religions use.
It bottles the mind.
And it can be right difficult, sometime, to get out of that bottle.
” Like any other specific instance of human culture, each religion could only spread through direct contact of human beings.”
Gee, you make it sound like a disease… Oops. My bad. Religion IS a disease… 🙂
Ah, yes, more “sophisticated” theology.
Here’s all anyone needs to know to realize that
Christianity is total BS: The first, underlying, most basic premise of Christianity, without which the rest of it is completely irrelevant, is that their god, who LOVES them so much, requires them to accept the blame for something they didn’t do.
Have you ever had that happen to you in real life? Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do, by someone who knew you didn’t do it? And if so, did you feel LOVED??
Yeesh. L
Sorry for the double post. First one appeared to have been deleted. L
I look at it like this.
An adult leaves a loaded gun on the table and gently tells a 4-year-old not to play with it. But he can play with all the toys guns in the house.
The child picks up the gun and kills his sister with it.
A Christian MUST say that the child is to blame and that the parent is blameless. Further, the child must be punished for the rest of his life and all of his children must also be punished forever.
Ah, but you’re forgetting one important component that is required to make your analogy complete. Don’t forget that the father is omniscient, and that he knows beyond all doubt that the 4-year old will shoot and kill his sister. Clearly, this makes an even stronger case for punishing the child and his descendants, right? 🙂
But don’t you know that my god’s ways are far too mysterious for mere mortals to understand except when said god’s ways happen to align with my own, typically when said ways concern themselves with identifying some sub-group of humanity and deeming them less than human for their gender, race, sexual identity, belief in a different invisible friend than my own or unwillingness to believe in any invisible friends.
+ 1
Two word retort: Wishful thinking.
I too have my fantasies… They involve winning the lottery and sailing around the world.
But at least mine have a non-zero chance of becoming real.
You don’t need to win the lotto. Sell up and set sail. Sell your house, buy a boat. Sail. Three easy steps. You’re welcome.
Jesus’ credentials.
Bahahahahahahahaha!
This is the point that I always stick on. After reading much of Dr. Carrier’s “The Historicity of Jesus” (I’m still working my way through it) I’ve come to learn, and to realize, that Jesus not only had no credentials, he quite likely never existed in any way shape or form. He never was. Not even as some platonic shepherd. You can’t really go anywhere from there other than all claims by and about Christianity are as inane and invalid as those of the Mormon Church and its Moroni angel and golden whatevers, or Scientology and its ridiculous and obvious claims, and the granddaddy of them all, Islam, and it’s ludicrous Sharia bullsh*t.
This person must be unaware of the *at least* equivalent “clusters of miracles” attributed to other deities or divine messengers by adherents of other religions.
BUT!
We can help! If we would all just invent one or two more Jesus miracles and type it here, Jesus’ cluster can grow! I’ll start: did you all know Jesus can cure erectile dysfunction with the laying on of hands?
” did you all know Jesus can cure erectile dysfunction with the laying on of hands?”
I’m pretty sure that was Melinda down at the Muddy Pig. I could be wrong. But we can start sub-cluster of miracles….
I’m sure Jesus was frequently called on down at the Muddy Pig.
I think that alleged ‘miracle’ needs experimental verification. I hereby volunteer (not that I have ED, he adds hastily, but I’ll take the cure anyway).
After all, if Jesus died for our sins, the least we can do is try to make it worth his while…
cr
Oh, there are so many more:
He can cure drought with prayers by a governor,
He can elect Republicans like Sarah Palin, no matter how idiotic,
He can override law by county clerks who preferred to discriminate,
He can make women obey their husbands when they demand it,
…
Oh, I thought that was one of the Marys (Maries?) miracles.
Yeah, I hear she was no slouch.
Exactly. Mr. Letter-writer appears to have confused “reports of miracles” with “miracles.” Apparently he is not familiar with the term “fiction.”
Or, as John Updike put it, “Miracles are bunk.”
I would expect any flim-flam man worth his salt to “have credentials.”
Oh, precisely.
Has this guy never read the bible?
Since he brings it up, I’d say Buddhism is about an order of magnitude more credible (or should that be, ‘less ridiculous’) than Xtianity.
(I may be doing Buddhism an unjustified favour there, since I don’t know a lot about it other than it’s as much a philosophy as a religion, which probably helps its credibility.)
cr
Hilarious.
“…this human epistemology of faith is simply raised to the supernatural level.”
Yeah, that’s all. No big deal. Faith in an unknowable being and faith that the bus will be on time are exactly the same thing. So, yeah…nothing to see here, move it along…
I’m not even going to start on the “credentials” thing. Jeesh…
That phrase ‘epistemology of faith raised to a supernatural level’ got to me too. I haven’t a clue what that means.Sounds slippery to me.Fancy language for something he lacks the language or insight to describe more carefully/honestly and so falls back on habitual language.Maybe he can describe what he means by ‘supernatural’. It certainly is true that science has a very low definition description of the origin/nature of matter,energy or life. And we define energy as the capacity to do work(?). Which to me has always seemed a cop out, a circular argument.naming something into existence. Like the federal reserve.And no I am not religious. Faith described in this way comes across to me as a shield against despair. Confidence, altho’ coming from the same root, comes across more as enriching one’s relationship with experience.the whole thing becomes an increasingly complex argument. And other cultures, non-monotheistic,around the world manage the whole thing much more elegantly.
Your remark about energy & circular arguments doesn’t seem correct to me:
[1] In Newtonian mechanics it is the forces that are primary & everything else is defined based on forces. Under that scheme “energy” is defined non-circularly [the capacity to do work].
[2] Under the various thermodynamics schemes we have “work is a transfer of energy other than through heat”. It is my [poor] understanding that it’s the Lagrangian that’s the primary thing in those cases. Then energy is non-circularly defined as the “conserved quantity associated with time invariance of the Lagrangian” [yes I had to look that last bit up :)].
[3] Quantum mechanics seems to define energy like [2] & talks of the eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian. I don’t understand this at all, but I’m assured it’s non-circular…
I’m happy to be corrected on any parts of the above I got wrong – I love to learn new stuff
There *is* no origin to energy, the basic property common to all real things.
Yes, and we measure it. We don’t define it.
“And we define energy as the capacity to do work(?). Which to me has always seemed a cop out, a circular argument.naming something into existence.”
This is very muddled.
Something as simple a linear measurement is made up for our convenience as well. There exists no centimeter in nature. However, we can use the tool, centimeter, to measure real objects.
And the tool is a good one, because it works. (Now don’t go all solipsism on me.)
Energy is defined as a measurement, just like a centimeter (as a combination of simpler units: Mass, distance, and time). And it works.
The basic units from which the other familiar units are derived are: Mass, distance, time.
Force is units of: mass * distance / time^2
Acceleration is in units of: distance / time^2
Energy is in units of: mass * distance^2 / time^2
Power is in units of: mass * distance^2 / time^3
Apply appropriate scaling constants, depending on your units chosen (but any units of mass, distance, and time will work with the right scaling constants (sometimes with the appropriate exponents on them)! — some are much more convenient than others: In particular the metric system, which had the advantage of centuries of discovery and use of other systems before it was defined.
Certainly I have no difficulty understanding concepts and measurements as tools. And, given the definition and the tools there is the possibility of measurement, understanding relationships and building up a picture. And refining the measurements and concepts to become more accurate. So science is always a provisional description. And maybe that is the fundamental nature. But is energy or force fundamental or where do they come from. Are you satisfied with saying they just are? Or do you, as a scientist, demand further ramifications of cause and effect
The reader, as most people, has no clue what evidence means. As for the historical nature of the bible, there is none. Any reference to historical events in the bible is sheer coincidence.
There’s an old saying about painting the bullseye around the arrows. In this case one suspects painting the bullseye around the Jesus.
I have a friend who plots data that way. He sketches in data points roughly over and over until he likes what he sees, then draws a line through them. He always gets what he wants. I’ll let him know there’s a name for what he’s doing – the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
First Rule of Sampling: If you want a linear fit, make only two measurements.
+3 Oops, that violates the rule! 🙂
In my days at Engineering School, where we occasionally did elementary physics experiments presumably to impress on us the veracity of the equations, we found it was much simpler and more reliable and – the critical point – quicker, to calculate the data points than it was to try and measure them. (Adding in a little random error so they didn’t look too good.) Cynical bastards that we were.
cr
Notice that Jerry’s correspondent has made a mistake, even taking the Christian documents at fundy-level face value. The testimony (such as it is) therein is (purportedly) by the *followers* of the Jesus guy. After all even [most] Christians will admit Jesus himself wrote nothing.
…And the fact that Christianity is the default religion in my geographic locale is pure coincidence.
Well, this posting certainly lit up the comments section. I was wondering what were these credentials that Jesus offered to provide this confidence for faith? Also, probability and statistics are not the same thing as evidence. It seems the bible is his only evidence and that is why religion has none.
First off, this your note is a word salad that attempts to obscure and confuse. This is not a good starting point.
Re: the charge that atheists attack a straw-man faith. (In addition to Jerry’s evidence noted in his reply):
I quote from the Catholic Dictionary (online – Google it):
This is the official doctrine of one of the largest Christian denominations.
It’s a nasty word salad (typical of theologians’ writing) but in the end just says, the Bible (and we) says so, and that’s the best sort of evidence. Well, not to someone who is skeptical.
And: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed,” John 20:29 (not seen: no evidence.) To believe without corroborating evidence is seen as a good thing, an honorable thing, and credit-gaining thing.
You say:
Nope, there’s rational and irrational. No flavors or colors of rational. There are degrees of rationality. So I suppose you are just saying religious faith is simply less rational than science. We would all agree with that.
As Jerry noted, we don’t trust people on faith. We trust them because they’ve shown themselves to be trustworthy towards us over time (evidence). We have a word for people who violate this practice: They are called fools.
You really need to define this word salad much more clearly. It would be very helpful to provide a specific example. Please do, then we can come to grips with it.
What is “indirect verification”? Seems to me it’s hearsay, which is rightly rejected by courts as reliable evidence. Again, if you can provide a specific example, we’ll have something to work on.
This is a plea for the Argument from Authority. It seems very hard for religious people to understand this, since they are accustomed to believing the statements of authorities based only on their authority; but science does not accepts statements from authorities because they are authorities (the slightest familiarity with the discussions in scientific circles would dispel this false notion). In fact, the greatest acclaims in science go to those scientists that overturn the existing consensus (such as Einstein). You are saying that if someone is eminent enough, then we should just believe what they say. Nonsense.
Please provide evidence for god “vouching for [a] messenger”.
Please define “supernatural evicence”. I’ve never seen nor heard of any. Your use of the word theory is misplaced here. Assertion would be much more accurate.
What exactly is an “attestation miracle”? [It’s really not helpful to attempt to slip in weird meanings of English words. That is just attempting to confuse things rather than clarify them. Please stop doing it.] Seems to me that it’s just something someone said
In all normal situations, you would rate the veracity of a statement by the corroborating evidence. Would you credit someone telling you that 30 years ago they saw a UFO and real aliens came out of it, took some soil samples, got back in and flew up and out of sight? Or are you saying that if they told you that they saw that; and that they also saw a bigfoot in their back yard 27 years ago, that the two statement together are more believable than either in isolation? I hope you can see how this is unconvincing to a skeptic.
A supernatural message (whatever that may be), requires evidence. Evidence that any skeptic would accept. Remember that we feel the same way about the supposed evidence for the Christian stories as you do about the Hindu stories.
This is getting much too long. I’ll stop there, unless we get some reply from the writer.
Don’t you mean the “Catholic Encyclopedia,” not the “Catholic Dictionary”?
Yes, probably the Catholic Encyclopedia. I’ll check.
Yes, you are correct, thanks for pointing this out.
I said “Catholic Dictionary” in my comment. This was an error. I should have said “Catholic Encyclopedia”.
I should also note that I downloaded that quote a few years ago and the entry may have changed since then. [I just checked and this passage is unchanged, AFAI can tell.]
I hope the original writer has read this, and has noted it as an example of how an assertion was made, then checked (rather than simply being accepted on faith), found to be in error, acknowledged as an error by its author, and corrected; and that this then caused its author to check further.
More likely it will simply zoom over his head.
Perhaps it was long, but it’s a lot of what I wanted to say to the commenter, and I could not have said it so well. So, thank you.
One more point on the strawman faith assertion.
Here’s the Nicene Creed, an attestation of faith that is recited by the clergyman and congregants in many Christian churches every (or on frequent) Sundays:
That attestation takes in a lot of things for which there is no (or exceptionally poor) evidence.
Yet it is recited millions of times per week by Christian believers (maybe billions of times per week).
Is the writer saying that Christians don;t believe these things? Are all these Christians just mouthing words that mean nothing to them? Again, consult the evidence that Jerry cites. They believe it. They have plenty of faith without (proper) evidence.
Among other things, it was deep study of the Presbyterian Westminster Confession and other church documents, doctrines, and history (being a preacher’s kid) that sent me on my way to atheism many years ago.
We didn’t have “Teh New Atheists” back then, just plain Old Atheists. Don’t know what your correspondent/critic has to say against the analysis of the Old Atheists. I’d be happy to rely on their ancient and honorable history without even having to pull out the New Atheist card. No miracles, clustered or not, required here.
“New Atheist” is just as much a “straw man” as the one the writer objects to.
Hank help me, I kept on with this nonsense. Ceiling Cat preserve me from further wasting of time!
I don’t notice god doing anything, full stop.
This is more obfuscation. You are again claiming miracles as evidence. Stories told in a book of highly dubious origin. The faithful have looked high and low in Sinai as elsewhere for proper evidence of the Exodus stories; and they haven’t found any, of course.
You “evidence” amounts to nothing more than taking the stories in the Bible as facts. I must ask, why do you accept them as facts; but not the stories in, for instance, The Qu’ran, The Vedas, The Book of the Dead, or the Guru Granth Sahib? This is not rational. You are not applying the same degree of scrutiny or skepticism or logic to the Bible as you surely would to an investment scheme proposed to you by a friend of a friend.
I’ve dealt with the strawman claim above. Your slippery non-definition of faith would not be recognizable to the vast majority of believers – in Christianity and other faiths as well.
The fact is, and you admit it here: “ the New Testament defines faith as “evidence of things unseen.” That is: Belief without corroborating evidence.
Well, the New Testament doesn’t get to define a new meaning of the word “evidence”. We freely grant that there is good evidence for Christian (and other) believers attesting that they have faith. They have a certain set of thoughts in their heads. Very well; what else does that show? Nothing.
Contrary to your claim (“faith is evidence of things unseen”) Because people believe something doesn’t make it true; and you agree – with regard to all other religious beliefs except your own. Surely you can see how devastatingly provincial this seems to a skeptic? Argumentum ad Populum is a logical fallacy, as I’m sure you know: To repeat, the fact that people believe something does not show that is true. Evidence for the truth of that statement abound.
Please explain in detail the “credentials of Jesus”. Explain in detail why they are more believable, more rational. more based on logic and evidence than the claims of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Sikhism, etc.
First point, you said it yourself: “ the New Testament defines faith as “evidence of things unseen.” That is: Belief without corroborating evidence. Because people believe it, therefore it is true. Fallacy: Argumentum ad Populum.
You take stories in a book, written down (best we can tell) decades after the supposed events depicted, as the best sort of evidence that could be available. I hope this is not the type of scrutiny and demand for evidence that you apply to decisions such as changing jobs or investing. Surely you can see this is not in least convincing to a skeptic?
Based on experience with him, “Just like I would have faith in a person that has shown himself to be trustworthy” you say his testimony is strong evidence. Non sequitur. You do not have experience of Jesus having proved himself to be trustworthy to you. You are just believing the stories in the Bible (probably because to do so is comforting). This is just as unconvincing to me as the professions of faith of Muslims, Hindus, etc. are to you.
Really, you are just saying a couple of things, repeatedly:
1. Christian faith isn’t believing in spite of lack of evidence. You claim strong evidence, as strong evidence as one could wish. Which is:
2. People believe in Christianity, therefore that’s evidence that its claims are true
3. The Bible is solid, trustworthy evidence for its stories
Applying these same criteria and degree of skepticism, you should also accept Hinduism (millions/billions have believed this far longer than Christianity!), Islam, etc. as true.
jblilie asked:
“Please explain in detail the “credentials of Jesus”. Explain in detail why they are more believable, more rational. more based on logic and evidence than the claims of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Sikhism”
That’s easy…. He’s the son of God and God. That’s pretty good cred.
Okay, here’s what struck me:
“A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence. This is why the evidence of a “cluster of miracles” is significant. This theory says that one supernatural miracle can easily be naturally explained away (e.g. calming the storm as superb meteorological awareness). But a “cluster of miracles” increases the credibility of the messenger. Arguably, the two greatest cluster of attestation miracles in the history of the world are Moses and Jesus. The resurrection, of course, being the pinnacle of this evidence.”
In order to accept those cluster miracles you have to accept the Biblical account as true, specifically the stories of Moses and Jesus.
Except we have very good reason to question the truth of those two characters’ stories, and even to some extent whether the characters even existed in the first place.
We have no evidence outside of the Biblical account to attest to those miracles. Further still a lot of those miracles are relatively easy to fake, as anybody who is familiar with modern faith healing churches is well aware.
Hell there is a church in South Africa that claimed it could make snakes taste like chocolate bars, and got into trouble with the SPCA for making its congregation eat them alive.
So here is the upshot of all of this, someone telling me a cluster of bullshit doesn’t get more reliable the more bullshit they tell me. Lies don’t become true as they multiply.
And similarly a charlatan can make it seem like they’re doing a lot of miraculous stuff – but that doesn’t make fakery real magic.
When you tell me that this guy did a whole load of miracles your job has just begun – you now have to, at the very least, verify the events.
Exactly! The e-mailer’s argument goes like this:
1: Why should I believe in miracles?
2: Because a trustworthy guy named Jesus said so.
1: What makes Jesus trustworthy?
2: He performed miracles.
I think this is “begging the question.” The e-mailer asserts what he needs to prove.
It depends if your anchor is in reality or fantasy.
How could you tell if the gospel stories were just made up, fictions or were rooted in things which really happened ?
Randel Helms was professor of English at Arizona State University and wrote a book called, “Gospel Fictions” which I highly recommend.
Matthew chapter 4 ,”Temptation of Jesus” rewritten,
And the devil said to Jesus, “If you really were the Son of God you would turn these sandstone rocks into clear glass the shape of lentils only as big as olives”
Jesus answered, “Do not put me to the test ! Oh, I give in. Why would I want to do a thing like that ?”
The devil answered, “Well then you would see the true cause of illnesses such as stomach upsets like cholera and typhoid & other diabolical diarrhea events. Then you would have to admit that I was not guilty of causing it and you would have to repent & apologize for falsely accusing me.”
Jesus said, “I don’t see what you mean”
Then the devil said, ” You are like the blind leading the blind. You see human eyesight is not powerful enough to see the tiny things. It needs lenses to magnify the image in order to see the germs, bacteria, tiny animals which are the real cause of illness. Here I will conjure up a microscope & telescope so that you might see things as they really are”
And Jesus had a look.
My God, exclaimed Jesus, ” That is astounding; tiny animalicules moving around. Forgive me for I knew not what I was saying”
And from that day Jesus left the silly superstitious ideas of his forefathers and embarked on the voyage of scientific observation & discovery.
There is no reality difference in the supernatural cause claims of the faithful than there is in the utterings of someone who is psychotically delusional. Both of their truth claims are based on very strong and very sincere feelings that emerge from their heads. Unfortunately, neither can tell the difference between what is really real, and what seems real.
This individual seems far more nuanced and careful in their considerations than most who have been posted here, but in the end this person is assuming that their thoughts about reality is reality.
There are several ‘not even wrongs’ in this Christian’s ‘Epistle to PCC(E),’ but let me call him out only on the grounds of his deep equivocation:
‘In human relationships, we have “faith” in another person or “believe” in them if a past track record gives us the probable indication that they will produce the expected result in the future.’
The scare quotes give the game away. This sort of ‘faith’ is really trust, and ‘belief’ [‘believe’] here is confidence. Both are based on perception and experience out of which we construct a contingent human reality. If we are mistaken, say, in a spouse’s fidelity, we suffer emotionally but sooner or later reconfigure our sense of trust and think, ‘I no longer believe that judgment is true.’
This is nothing at all like religious belief, in which the very lack of perception serves as its basis (ironically, its fundamental, its ‘ground of being’)–amounting to precisely nothing we can justly call knowledge.
Yet folks like PCC(E)’s Christian apologist throw out words like ‘epistemic,’ as if theology were philosophy were science. In the process they aim to dissolve the barrier between natural reality and the (putative) supernatural. This would make their ‘other way of knowing’ intellectually respectable. We note, however that no such barrier exists, nor needs to, since the supernatural itself is non-existent.
Deference to non-authority is what constitutes Christianity? Oh, right, only if you play mind games and insist the nebulous non-authority is not only an existing one, but can be completely trusted as he has a hotline to his daddy, god, yet another vague creature. But not as unformed as another relative, the holy spirit, who seems just to float or flame about.
Jebus junkies are jebus junkies and fixing-up is their game, a game of which they want us to be fooled into thinking is the truth. I see their track marks all the way from here.
“I believe that only Christianity can make a claim to revealed supernatural truth because of the credentials of Jesus. I find that Buddha, Mohammed, and all other religious founders to be lacking in producing the evidence necessary to substantiate their message.”
What Credentials would those be ? those attributed 400 years after the “fact”, the only “Evidence” of his existence is the Gospels, not one contemporaneous Writer mentions Jesus of Nazareth ,and you would have thought a Guy who could who could walk on Water , change the aforementioned into Wine and raise the Dead, would at least get a passing mention. !
If credentials are the issue, this guy should be a Mormon. After all, we have the signed statements of several historically identifiable people testifying to the reality of the golden plates.
the credentials of Jesus?
“The resurrection, of course, being the pinnacle of this evidence.”
Yet more evidence that nearly all Xians really do make one non-negotiable factual claim.
“…I find that Buddha, Mohammed, and all other religious founders to be lacking in producing the evidence necessary to substantiate their message.”
Really? Where is the substantiation of the following message when you consider the deadly consequences of practicing them since Christianity appeared 2000 years ago?
Mark 16:17-18 “These signs will accompany those who have believed: (…) 18 they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
What really happens even today (just one example of many…):
“Liberia Conquers Ebola, but Faces a Crisis of Faith”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/world/africa/after-ebola-outbreak-liberian-churches-confront-crisis-of-faith.html)
Quotes:
” …the nation [Liberia] was trying to stitch itself back together after more than 4,700 deaths from the disease, by far the most of any nation in the epidemic.”
“Last year, after congregants at the United God Is Our Light Church laid their hands on a visitor with Ebola during a healing prayer, eight members died within weeks.”
…
“It is impossible to know how many church officials or members died of Ebola from such contact, but the numbers are high, according to the Inter-Religious Council of Liberia, the country’s main umbrella group for Christian and Muslim institutions.”
How much time will people need to see that the substantiation for the miracles and signals of the gospels don’t match the reality? For many people the eternity would not be enough…
Others have already made this point, but I’ll add my voice. You are the one who is mistaken about the meaning of the term ‘faith’ in the mainstream Christian tradition. I was raised in, and embraced, the teachings of the Methodist church when I was young, a quite “mainstream” protestant sect. I was taught precisely what Jerry and others such as Dawkins have said of faith, viz., the more unlikely and improbable the claim, the more virtue in its acceptance via faith. I do not recognize your formulation of probable expectation as a basis for Christian faith. That is a secular, not a Christian, reading of the term.
I still get newsletters from a Methodist church my family went to in my/our waning years of religiosity. One column in particular stands out for the claim I’ve seen from so many sophisticated theologians that atheists misrepresent what faith really is. Here’s what our local Methodist pastor had to say:
And here’s the link to that article:
http://www.fumcwf.org/on-football-and-faith/
Yeah, I know not all Christians think of faith that way, but can those Christians at least agree that there are many Christians who do?
Yes the phrase “keep the faith” does mean that one’s faith is on shaky ground.
The pastor will conflate that meaning with the other meaning (i.e. hope) with the intention of confusing the believer that both are one and the same thing (i.e. atheists have no faith). The intention here is to state that hope is a positive feeling and therefore belief without evidence is also positive.
From what I can tell, the ‘mainstream Christian religion’ uses the term “faith” BOTH ways. It’s belief based on good, solid, convincing evidence. They’ve got the Bible, they’ve got the miracles, they’ve got the mystical encounters with God, they’ve got the lovely things that happen when you believe. It all adds up to a persuasive case. Faith follows fact.
Until skepticism rears its head and successfully challenges the evidence, showing that it’s poor evidence. Now it turns out that faith is a choice to believe something on insufficient evidence … because you are motivated by love, hope, bravery, and humility.
Imagine that they see no conflict.
My brain hurt reading that person’s question!
There was no question. Just seeking an opportunity to add some shred of credibility to a nonsense belief. It didn’t work.
“A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence.”
Carl Sagan would have been amused by that.
Ha! I just now noticed the parallel.
“I believe that only Christianity can make a claim to revealed supernatural truth because of the credentials of Jesus”
And it’s precisely because of this elitist tribalism that I left Christianity. It’s hateful nonsense. It’s also profoundly ignorant.
I’m sti9ll stumbling over the credentials of Jesus. What credentials? Did he have papers? A secret handshake? A tattoo?
I can tell you that I spent years searching, and in the end, I found that there are no credentials.
The e-mailer writes: ‘But a “cluster of miracles” increases the credibility of the messenger.’
In other words: You should believe in supernatural stuff, because Jesus says there is supernatural stuff. And you can trust Jesus on this, because he did supernatural stuff.
A classic case of begging the question.
“have cursorily scanned your new book”
How about actually reading the book?
It would also be nice if he/she/it thought about the parts they did not understand or disagreed with.
Next book Jerry writes he should do some of those stick doodles on one of the corners of the page, the kind where you flip rapidly through them and see a man walking, or a cat dancing, or something else of the sort. Primitive “moving pictures.”
That way those readers who “cursorily scan” his new book can be both entertained — and tested.
“I didn’t read your book, but I skimmed through it once.”
“Oh yeah? What was the movie about?”
“What? What ‘movie?'”
“A-HA! I KNEW it! It was a man jumping rope with an elephant. You did not cursorily scan the book or else you’d have noticed that. Liar.”
Emailer: You have chosen to believe in something that has no evidence. This is actually your main thesis: ‘I have faith in something that no one can prove.’
Look around your world and discover for yourself that nothing depends on the faith developed within your religion or any religion.
Atheists do nothing to complicate reality; it is an easier life. Try it out.
it is an easier life. Try it out
I did, and I highly, highly recommend it. So much better 🙂
It’s a miracle! I had just opened FvF on my Kindle (after a long time) and I’m on the part about the equivocation of the word faith, and then I opened this post. Praise Ceiling Cat!
The stories in the Bible cannot be proven true because there’s nothing tangible today to test for validity, today. Miracles cannot be reproduced in science experiments but science (theories, tenets, facts) can.
It seems the email sender has put his faith not in God or Christ but in those who wrote the books of the bible (because they attest to having seen the so-called miracles).
I’m no scientist having taken my most advanced science course back in high school in the 70s. My atheism was formed back in my elementary years when I attended Sunday school. As a little girl, I couldn’t believe the adults around me buying these stories as reality. Even I knew that folklore gets exaggerated, added to, mis-heard, and mangled over many iterations over the years. I just can’t understand to this day why anyone believes in any religion.
There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see – (?quote). Perhaps they just have no baloney detectors?
Most Christians do not look for evidence in the tenets of their faith – because there is none and that realization would be far too scary.
The bible is essentially a collection of myths. For one of many interesting discussion on the historicity of the bible see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21NoQuKTB8Q
IMHO, the writer goes off the rails right at the start of paragraph four: “A supernatural message requires supernatural evidence.” This is the usual religious mistake.
She (or he) argues that God must send a special message in order to be believable. This is reasonable, and implicitly says that this evidence must be believable by a skeptic. But the given example is MORE miracles instead of just one, without critically examining the evidence for any of them.
That simply doesn’t explain how how the evidence(s) itself is supernatural rather then just more data that can be explained by science. It shifts the same argument back one step, similar to the argument “God created the universe, but then who created God?”
The writer still hasn’t addressed how you progress in a logical step-by-step fashion from “normal” evidence to supernatural evidence. The argument is still the standard religious “It looks supernatural, therefore it must be supernatural.”
I was wondering how a person can possibly know what is or is not supernatural if supernatural must be evidenced by supernatural evidence?
It’s the equivalent of saying: Don’t look behind the curtain.
Theists and their equivocation.
I’m perfectly content to admit that, while I have a certain level of confidence that my wife won’t cheat on me, based on the evidence of my experience of knowing her for some time, I can’t say I *know* she won’t. Her conscious agency is involved. There is no conscious agency involved in the knowledge that water is composed of one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen. Water can’t choose to alter itself. This is one of the ways that the different connotations of “confidence” aren’t equivalent.
Any belief about transcendent spiritual realities has to of necessity be believed with a lower level of certainty than beliefs about the natural world. There simply doesn’t exist a universally reliable way to verify them.
And if one’s faith-commitment compels one to believe things that are patently contrary to the best assessment of natural evidence, re the age of the earth, the origins of man, etc., than this is a sure sign that one’s faith commitment has led one astray.
The author of the letter complains about fideism. This actually comes in several different flavors, some of which are more anti-rationalistic than others.
Being charitable with definitions, I was somewhat following him for the first four and a half paragraphs. Well, not the first one about gnu atheists mischaracterizing religion. But after that – the second paragraph about faith being used synonymously with confidence in regards to others is reasonable (though in line with what PCCE wrote in his book), and a useful heuristic when we don’t have time to fully evaluate everything. The next paragraph just kind of follows up on that. e.g. Even though I don’t fully vet every fact in an encyclopedia, I ‘have faith’ that it’s more or less reliable. The next paragraph starts off reasonably – “evidence of a ‘cluster of miracles’ ” would be very significant, and would be enough to make this atheist reconsider his views. And then it goes off the rails, “Arguably, the two greatest cluster of attestation miracles in the history of the world are Moses and Jesus.” Wait, what? A collection of Iron Age and Roman era urban legends that could have benefited from an ancient Snopes? If those are indeed the two best cases for the miraculous, then I don’t think I’ve been missing anything.
the “sophisticated” philosophy-oriented atheists like parsons and lowder also enjoy throwing the strawman charge at jerry and the other new atheists, accusing them of making freshman/philosophy 101 errors.
they often ridicule the “so what caused god?” objection as naive for dismissing the necessary v. contingent being distinction as a case of special pleading, which it seems to be.
it seems that in general the new atheists are addressing the versions of faith commonly held and the “sophisticated” atheists are not.
It should be noted that we do not have any eyewitness accounts to any miracles, whether by Yeshue bar Yussef or By Gautama the Buddha or by anyone else. Given the unreliability of eyewitness evidence according to modern research, such ‘evidence’ from 2700 or 2000 years ago wouldn’t be worth much if anything at all. And yes, the Buddha is alleged to have performed miracles every bit as impressive as those of Yeshue.
The Buddha however was himself unimpressed by miracles and would likely have dismissed Yeshue’s miracles as cheap conjuring tricks. He preferred that people be impressed by his teachings. Studying the scriptures one finds Gautama, after his enlightenment, was always very consistent in his teachings – a sharp contrast to the rambling incoherence of Yeshue who couldn’t make up his mind if he was fount of love, conquering messiah or avenging deity (none of which could he actually have been).
Therefore we do not treat allegations of miracles as evidence for anything. As Don Michael Corleone said “it insults my intelligence”.
I don’t think he/she really wanted a response. They were hoping for a conversion and didn’t get one.
Another thing that amazes me (and shows that these people are not accustomed to thinking critically) is how they present such patent nonsense and then metaphorically stand back and grin at their work like is was a devastating, knock-down, once-and-for-all piece of close reasoning.
Except when they want to act all humble and say it’s all just a question anyways!
And, oh, by the way, we don’t know why our god likes to kill children in tsunamis — he’s too deep and mysterious for us to understand (mere humans). — Except when we want to tell everyone in detail exactly what he wants us to do! — and you’ll burn for eternity if you don’t. We have GREAT evidence for all that. But not about the tsunamis. And you’re an asshole for asking about it. Shut up.
We don’t know why God likes to kill children, but we do know many religious humans like to use “faith” healing on their children instead of science based medicine. This leads to many dead children and many more children who suffer in agony needlessly.
This is what relying on faith does, kill children.
Best answer yet! 😀
..and don’t get us started on Moses’ miracle-cluster!
To the best of my knowledge, there is no corroborative evidence for, and much evidence against, any of the Mosaic “miracles” from the Captivity in Egypt, the Plagues and passover, the Exodus including the parting of the Red Sea, the 40 years of wandering, the Mount Sinai appearances of God, and even the subsequent genocidal take-over of the promised land. Not for want of biblically motivated search!
Your reader presumably believes some or all of these “miracles”, first recorded many hundreds of years after their supposed provenance, took place. Good luck reasoning with that.
cluster f .. ph .. what?
It has always amused me that there is absolutely no independent evidence for the events claimed by Christians to be the most significant in all of the 200,000 years humans have wandered around. Even the wise guys, who presumably were literate and could write, even if the shepherds couldn’t, wandered off after peering at the baby and didn’t bother to record their great adventure.
Well, the Magi were too embarrassed to write a trip report, given that they got the wrong stable the first time:
“We are three wise men.”
“Well, what are you doing creeping around a cow shed at two o’clock in the morning? That doesn’t sound very wise to me.”
I think Monty Python gets cited more often around this place than the Bible does.
Fine by me 😉
cr
I’m even lazier (since I’m full of painkillers):
“we have “faith” in another person or “believe” in them if a past track record gives us the probable indication that they will produce the expected result in the future”.
Here the email writer confuses “trust” with “faith”.
And famously, on religion we have no “probable indication that they will produce the expected result in the future” since they have never produced any results. (The christianist Wholly Babble myth text is for example 50 % erroneous speculation, 50 % as of now untested speculation.)
Next email!
I recall that a comment from you, posted a day or two ago, referenced high doses of pain killers. I hope it’s nothing very serious.
Is it really the “height of rationally” to a) assume that Jesus existed, b) assume that the Bible’s depiction of him is accurate, and c) assume that because of his alleged character, that his claims about God were accurate? The sheer amount of speculation and automatic acceptance brazenly passed off as evidence is frank mind-boggling.
It’s a story.
Once upon a time God contacted me and asked if I believed in Him and considered Him trustworthy. Since He was God, I said “of course!” And I could tell it was God because it was God.
See? It’s just like dealing with any other person.
And another time God did all these miracles and I believed He did those miracles because those were the miracles He did and there were reports. Again, just like drawing any other conclusion about something someone did.
Except I get to mention that it really was God. But that’s only establishing the background, so it’s not the significant part. Pay attention to what I’m doing when the action really starts. Isn’t it just like what you do? Engage with that!
Sastra,
Only put half a load in the bong next time.
God is the most powerfully entity you can think of and could reveal himself to everyone in no uncertain terms. Instead we have to rely on other peoples personal experiences and revelations or a book which in may places (irregardless of the miracles performed by Jesus) has been shown to be incorrect.
oops *regardless* not irregardless
the Prof(E) is a sly cat throwing this bleeder to the wolves, and I ‘believe’ the leader of the pack has tasted the blood of a christian, has purred his way amongst their like, licked his lips and said, is that all you’ve got!
“In fact, I would argue that it would be God’s duty to vouch for any messenger He sends.”
I totally agree! I feel that God’s failure to vouch for people who claim to be telling us what He wants is excellent evidence that either God doesn’t exist, or He doesn’t care what we think.
If God does want us to believe that somebody is speaking for Him, may I suggest giving that person a tasteful halo, that is intangible, clearly visible to all observers, and (just for fun) emits a neutrino flux strong enough to be easily detectable?
“But a “cluster of miracles” increases the credibility of the messenger.”
That made me chuckle. Typical christian assertion: actually black is white.
I’ve just been reading Raphael Lataster’s “There Was No Jesus, There Is No God.” He describes himself as “a former fundamentalist christian” and “a professionally secular PhD researcher (Studies in Religion) at the University of Sydney.”
Lataster examines only the evidence for the existence of Jesus and god. It was the lack of such evidence that led him to give up his christian beliefs, although he expresses a wish that a benevolent god did exist. I recommend the book to PCC’s corespondent.
“..it claims …. that Adam and Eve are the literal historical ancestors of all living humans”
I know this is off the main point, and also that Jerry of course knows what the much stronger false literal claim about Adam and Eve really is: that every human has every one of their ancestral lines backwards passing through those two (mythical) figures.
But science itself ‘proves’ the existence of Adam and Eve in the sense of that quote. Just take, at the moment of time referred to in the phrase “living humans”, a much earlier mitochondrial eve (for those humans) and her unique mate adam; or if non-unique, take her mother and the man who fathered all her children; or if more than one father, a grandmother who had only one mate; or etc…This terminates eventually with a woman and mate who are “ancestors of all living humans”.
Of course religiosos don’t do a ‘catchya’ on that phrase quoted at the top—mostly because they are too ignorant to figure out the argument above; but for those who do figure it out, because they know that abrahamic religions claim much more than that quote claims, i.e. the claim is as in the the second paragraph above.
Simpler, stronger and ‘falser’ than that of course is their claim that a time occured when exactly two humans existed, not more, and none had existed prior to that, and no subsequent human had a non-human parent.
What I’m saying here surely adds nothing to anyone here’s knowledge. But, maybe because I fussed about pure mathematics for about 99 years of my life, that quote at the top, seen often, bugs me to no end.
helpful for whom? i’m reminded of two quotes, the first from sam harris:
the next, a line from rapper ice-t’s 1991 song “Mic Contract”:
of course, our letter-writer fails to realize that he’s armed only with a pea-shooter …
Guy wants private consultation with PCC(E), & hasn’t even read his book. Sheesh.
The writer is assuming the bible is evidence of the testimony of Jesus, and by implication that such a person existed in the first place. A thorough review of known historical facts (and the absence of facts) shows us this is nowhere near as certain as I’m sure the writer believes it to be. I wonder if the writer developed his/her “rational” belief after considering all the known facts.
“This is why the evidence of a “cluster of miracles” is significant.”- I laughed when I read this; he’s using as “evidence” three miracles which not only haven’t been proven to have ever happened, but also are only found in his sacred book! Talk about head-up-your-ass circular thinking!