Don McLeroy tells us why he believes in the Resurrection and its 500 witnesses

August 1, 2014 • 10:01 am

Don McLeroy, young-earth creationist dentist and former head (and then member) of the Texas Board of Education, left a comment on my website a while back–a comment that I didn’t approve but put it up as a main post. Here it is:

He then tendered his “evidence” for those 500 witnesses, which I also posted; let me just say that it wasn’t very convincing. Readers asked him a number of comments, but his replies were ineffectual and I suggested he lay out his evidence on his own website.

He has done so, in a post on his site (To My Listening Ear) called “My response to Jerry Coyne and his readers on the Resurrection.” It’s a long post, and I’ve eliminated the introduction for brevity, but have reproduced the bulk of his text below. Since he’s banned here, if you want to argue with him, I suggest you go over to his site, which will surely gladden him as it will boost his traffic by several orders of magnitude.

What I’m just doing here is showing you how one diehard believer justifies not only his faith in the Resurrection and the 500 witnesses, but in why he thinks Christianity is the “true faith.” I’ll leave the comments up to you either here or there.

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My Response to Jerry Coyne and his Readers on the Resurrection
Posted on August 1, 2014 by Don McLeroy
Reply to “Why Evolution Is Not True”

This blog post is my response to Dr. Coyne and the WEIT readers who made almost 400 comments to these two blog posts.

First, I would like to thank and complement the many who took the time to thoughtfully reply to my two comments on the 500 eyewitnesses. Daniel Dennett touts “Sturgeon’s Law” which says that 90% of all comments are rubbish, but here, this is clearly not the case. Most were very serious reflections and reasonable statements and questions.

Biblical scholars differ on the resurrection. I admit that I am only well-read among the conservative scholars and my familiarity with the liberal scholars is limited to the critiques of them by the conservatives. Definitely not the best policy. The only skeptical book I have read is Russell Shorto’s Gospel Truth: On the Trail of the Historical Jesus as he had interviewed me for a major essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Just as the scholars differ so do I and the readers. I accept a scholarship that dates the Gospels as written between 40 and 65 A.D. whereas most readers believe they were written 65 to 100 A.D. or later. These later dates allow for conspiracy theories and myths to be more easily developed. I don’t think any reader held the early dating gospel view.

But no matter which scholars are correct, we still have to account for the phenomenon of Christianity and its powerful influence over the last 2000 years and today. And, we have to account for the fact as to why my simple comment about “500 eyewitnesses” could stir up so much interest? Christianity seems to draw a lot more interest than it should. Of course, atheism and evolution do the same for me. I admit that I enjoy following many of Dr. Coyne’s blog posts. I like keeping up with the evolutionists and atheists; I want to understand how the atheist mind thinks and reasons. I believe that Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins are much clearer thinkers about the implications of evolution than Kenneth Miller and other theistic evolutionists.
Specific Objections

Overall, I found the objections raised to the resurrection to be focused on plain skeptical thinking about miracles in general, the accuracy and reliability of the scriptures, contradictions in the gospel story, and especially, the lack of corroborating evidence of biblical accounts concerning the resurrection—especially the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem.
Specific to the resurrection, no one advocated the swoon theory, and only a few commented that they thought the disciples hallucinated. Most focused on the idea of a conspiracy of early Christians or the gradual development of Christianity as myth. Also, no one was impressed with the experts I cited—Andreas Kostenberger, Darrell Bock, and Josh Chatraw, Peter Kreeft, Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, James Hannam, Moyshe Averick, Rodney Stark, Ravi Zacarias,G. K Chesterton, Paul Johnson, Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, and David Brog.

I do not know why there is no mention of the dead coming out of their graves and seen walking around Jerusalem. But it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened.

While we do not know their names or have the testimonies of the 500 in question, we do for Paul and James and Peter and John and Mark and Matthew. I am not too bothered about the actual number of eyewitnesses. As noted in my comment to McLeroy replies about the crucifixion the testimony of just two eyewitnesses is very powerful. Even so, if Jesus did actually rise from the dead and spent around a month among the people, it seems logical the claim of the 500 witnesses could have happened. And, Paul is issuing a challenge to those skeptics reading his words to go and ask these folks—many who are still alive. This is not something you would do if making up a myth or a conspiracy.

Another good point the readers made are why some disciples did not recognize Jesus immediately. I don’t know. Again, it does seem odd though for a bunch of conspirators to add such a detail that could easily be dismissed unless it actually happened. I can only speculate as to why he was not recognized; my speculations are not very important.

I am not in a position to debate the strength and weaknesses of Bart Ehrman’s scholarship. As noted in my first reply in Jesus Delusion I have my own set of experts I trust. I will let them have that debate.
As for Paul’s claims he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus, it certainly was more than a vision. There was light and all present heard Jesus speaking.

One reader stated that Christianity “attained its current heights due to” purely naturalistic causes. I hold the view that Christianity reached its lofty status because it is based on truth—truth about the nature of God, the nature of man and the nature of the world.

One reader asked if I would still believe if there were no eyewitnesses. A good question. I can only speculate because the account says they were eyewitnesses. With no witnesses, the biblical accounts would have been totally different and history would have been completely different. I don’t know what I would believe today if that were the case.
Biblical Trustworthiness in General

It seems to me that the starting point for many of the readers in rejecting the resurrection are an anti-supernatural bias and assumption that the Bible is not reliable or authoritative. I believe the supernatural exists and miracles happen. Miracles can happen; the greatest miracle was the creation of the world. For me, I have found the Bible to be extremely reliable; this is not the case for many of the readers; I see no way of resolving these differences here.
Other Questions

A very good question raised by Dr. Coyne and others is why I believe I am right when I have not studied other religions for 29 years. Could I be wrong? Yes, I could be wrong. I try to understand what others believe or don’t believe. This is one reason I listen to the podcast “Point of Inquiry.” They have fascinating discussions about issues such as these. Again, my testimony of “How I became a Christian” can be found on my website.

The timing of events during the “Passion Week” is difficult. I do not know for sure. A lot had to happen if the “Last Supper” was Thursday night and the crucifixion was Friday. For me, this is not insurmountable.
One reader asked “What would it take to change my mind?” This is a good question. Since my whole life is wrapped up in my faith—my friends, my church, my sense of who I am, it would be very difficult to give it all up. I believe I am honest enough to do so if I was presented evidence of a viable alternative.
This works both ways. For those of you who are atheists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence? You have to have something from “Nothing.” If “Nothing” is defined as “what a sleeping rock dreams of;” I would think you have a serious problem.

For those of you who are evolutionists, how can you hold to something with so little evidence? To explain all the diversity of life on this planet by unguided natural processes requires a titanic amount of evidence. I think the best evidence you have is the fossil record. You say the present is the key to the past, present animal life consists of life so discontinuous that it is unimaginable how you could have bridged the gaps, and the fossils record shows the same gaps—with a some transitional fossils. But it is not enough! There should be “zillions” of them. When it comes to explain the evolution of the biochemical processes in the cell, you have nothing.

Therefore, I find my biblical beliefs to be much more reasonable. For any other alternative, the evidence doesn’t support it.

In conclusion, all of us reasoning creatures hold some irrational beliefs. I find mine to be less of a problem than the way I understand yours; this is why I read your blogs—to better understand your beliefs. And, after reading your responses to these two WEEIT blog posts by Dr. Coyne, I find your reasoning much more coherent and evidence based.
Thank you.
Don McLeroy

Let’s stop teaching philosophy of religion in secular colleges

July 29, 2014 • 5:45 am

Philosophers have reproved me because, as a mere biologist, I have no right to criticize the teaching of philosophy of religion in colleges, nor to call for its end. But I reject the idea that biologists have no standing to give such an opinion, just as I reject the notion that philosophers can’t pass judgement on whether some areas of science are unproductive. All that matters is that opinions must be informed and supported with arguments. And I think I know enough about the philosophy of religion, and about how it’s taught in some colleges, to pass at least a reasonably informed judgment on the value of the discipline—which is almost nil. It’s almost nil because while it can inform us about the influence of scripture and how it was invented (a useful endeavor), it also promulgates religion and prepares students for the ministry.

I think that teaching different philosophies of religion in secular schools is fine—so long as it’s in courses on comparative religion. And some Biblical scholarship is also useful for it’s a form of historical reconstruction of a document that is taken seriously. So, too, are courses in the Bible as literature, in the same way that we should have courses in Shakespeare as literature, or in any influential form of literature (or forms that deserve to be more influential).

But too often courses in the philosophy of religion turn into courses on religious apologetics: teaching Biblical exegesis as if the Bible were true. So, secular schools like Duke and Harvard (and my own school) have “divinity schools.” Those schools teach, in part, theology. I don’t see that as a valid subject for a secular school, since it’s the study of a nonexistent entity and what he/she/it wants us to do. Comparative theology is fine, but do we need whole schools of this stuff at secular universities?

Here are a few courses from the prestigious Harvard Divinity School (to be sure, this school has a lot more diversity, in terms of courses on different faiths, than other divinity schools):

Intimacy with God: Jewish Conceptions of Communion, Mystical Union and the Holy Spirit

Introduction to Islamic Mysticism: The Sufi Tradition

Greek Exegesis of John

Religion, Gender, and Culture Colloquium: Feminist Theory and Theology

Clinical Chaplaincy: Interfaith Caregiving Skills and Practice

United Methodist Polity

Meaning Making – Thinking Theologically about Ministry Experience: Seminar

Catholicism Faces Modernity: Classics of Twentieth Century Roman Catholicism

Advanced Spiritual Counseling: Taking Care of Others, Taking Care of Self: Seminar

Pentecostal Polity Note the description: The history, principles and practice of Pentecostal believers. To understand the nature and functioning of Pentecostal denominations. To prepare Pentecostal students for ordination. The course will include liturgy, worship, and theology of the Pentecostal faith. The focus primarily will be on the major Pentecostal denominations and the charismatic flavor of other major denominations.

Mystical Theology

United Church of Christ Polity: The history, polity, and practice of the United Church of Christ. Issues addressed throughout include ecclesiology, mission, professional ethics, the ordination process, justice, as well as contemporary principles and patterns of the UCC. Students seeking ordination are urged to take this course during their middler year, but all are welcome

Communication Skills for Spanish Ministry

Unitarian Universalist Religious Education: Seminar. This course is designed to equip future ministers with the knowledge, skills, resourcefulness, and self-awareness needed to form the faith of Unitarian Universalists in the 21st century.

Introduction to Christian Preaching: This course introduces students to the theology and the practice of preaching within the Christian tradition. Special attention will be paid to developing a theological understanding of both the preacher and the preached word, and students will be expected to prepare and deliver several sermons during the course of the term.

This is only a small sample. A sudden pain in my lower mesentery prevented me from going further down the list. It’s long.

But you get the point: many of these courses are designed to prepare students to learn and preach the Word of God, while others involve minute exegesis of fiction in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated for any other influential work of fiction. There are dozens and dozens of these courses. I think many are superfluous, for they’re helping students spread delusions.

But if you reject my standing to say this, listen instead to John Loftus, who used to be an evangelical Christian preacher, but gave up the faith. Loftus is now not only writing about his “deconversion,” but also offering thoughtful critiques of Christianity. I particularly like his book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (only about $13 on Amazon), which is far more than just a deconversion tale: it’s also an incisive critique of Christian apologetics. His anthology edited with Dan Barker, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, is also very good, and contains a chapter on Loftus’s well-known “Outsider Test for Faith” (OTF), a rational program for examining why one should prefer one’s own religion over others (hint: you should reject them all). You can find a bunch of John’s online writings about the OTF here.

But I digress. Loftus has a new piece at his site, Debunking Christianity, with the no-nonsense title, “I’m calling for an end to the philosophy of religion as a discipline in secular universities.” (Note also that the next day he had a back-and-forth about this with Biblical scholar Jaco Gericke).

Loftus’s essay is a response to a book by philosopher Graham Oppy defending philosophy of religion, Reinventing Philosophy of Religion: An Opinionated Introduction, as well as a YouTube video interiew Oppy did about the topic/ I haven’t read the book, but I have watched the (or rather listened) to the video, where Oppy criticizes Peter Boghossian and my own views against teaching this discipline. Loftus’s criticisms of Oppy are on the mark:

Oppy tells us: “Philosophy of religion as a discipline, I would think, probably doesn’t date much earlier than the second World War.” This historical lesson is significant, I think, for we did without it for centuries and we can do without it again. Later Oppy offers his criticism, saying, “Most of the people who have done philosophy of religion have been theists.” So it stands to reason “it has had an extremely narrow focus…It hasn’t really been the philosophy of religion but rather Christianity with a very great emphasis on theism,” and even apologetics/Christian theology. Okay then, as it stands today the philosophy of religion is dominated by Christian theists who discuss concepts and arguments germane to Christianity, and even defending it. Given what he said, the philosophy of religion needs reinvented if it is to survive. The unaddressed question is why we should have a discipline in any secular university where theism, or Christian theism, Christian theology or Christian apologetics is privileged and considered to the exclusion of all other religions or apologetics? It shouldn’t. If this is the state of affairs then the only reasonable response is to call for the end of that discipline. NOW!

Oppy calls for the broadening of the discipline to other religions. My response is similar to that of Loftus: there are thousands of religions, past and present, all with different “philosophies” (i.e., philosophies). Which ones should we study? And given that all the tenets of these religions are dubious, and their evidence for gods nonexistent, do we need entire departments to handle this stuff? Loftus responds:

To reinvent the philosophy of religion Oppy argues, “it must address questions that apply to the phenomena of religion in general.” That’s it. He argues the philosophy of religion should also discuss Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist views and religious concepts. By extension I would think, it should also discuss the views of other religions, all of them (although there is quite the discussion about what even makes a religion a religion). Oppy’s proposal would therefore include all of the dead religions too. Why not? Why assume that a dead religion, or a dead god, is no longer worthy to be discussed? Why not discuss Zoroastrianism, or Canaanite religions? Does the death of a religion mean it must not be a true one? I see no reason to think so. And who decides which religion is worthy of discussing?

. . . In any case, if the philosophy of religion was reinvented as Oppy suggests, then what we would end up with is a Religious Studies discipline and classes focusing on comparative religion, or the varieties of religious experience, where religious are compared/contrasted/considered and the secular counter-part is offered as a critique of them all. But we already have these kinds of classes.

Indeed we do. What we don’t need are entire Divinity Schools or Schools of Theology in secular universities. This privileges an entire discipline based on a human endeavor that itself rests on dubious and unsubstantiated claims. Further, they concentrate largely (but not exclusively) on active Abrahamic religions. There are few, if any, courses on atheism in divinity schools, but they should be at least as prominent as courses in religious apologetics. That is distasteful in a country that officially favors no religion in particular. If we are to have such schools, let us then have Ethical Schools, or Schools of Moral Thinking, or The School of Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. But all of these can simply be subsumed in departments of philosophy or history.

Indeed, why not have a School of Pseudoscience, which teaches courses on creationism and its arguments, ESP and its arguments, homeopathy and its arguments, and so on? Or how about a school that one can justify far better: The School of the History and Philosophy of Science? There are programs in this area, but usually those courses—courses that deal with reality instead of fiction—are subsumed in philosophy departments. And that’s fine.

I recognize that there’s room for a difference of opinion here: religion, of course, was and is an important feature of human history and thought. My own take, though is that as religion wanes, it’s time to stop privileging it by devoting entire departments of secular universities to studying religion not only as a phenomenon, but by presenting religious apologetics and giving religious training to students. Remember, many students get degrees from these schools as a step toward becoming Christian or Jewish clerics. In that way the schools are preparing students to spread or buttress lies. And in that way divinity schools differ from medical schools or schools of sociology or economics. If we are to teach apologetics to students, let us leave that to the seminaries and religious colleges.

Finally, Loftus gives some excerpts from Hector Avalos’s book, The End of Biblical Studies, Avalos is a Professor of Religious studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. He is also a former Pentecostal preacher (I’m not sure if he’s still a believer) and a well-known opponent of creationism. In his book, Avalos calls for Biblical studies to become a vehicle for ending the hegemony of the Bible. One quote from Avalos: “The sole purpose of biblical studies, under this option, would be to help people move toward a postscriptural society.” That’s the option that Avalos prefers.

If you want to see how divinity schools in secular universities buttress Abrahamic religion, read an article from the university newspaper of a secular school, The Chronicle from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina: “Duke Divinity School says it can answer what science cannot.” Read about how the Divinity school claims to enhance secular education. Some excerpts:

At a university constantly praised for its scientific advancements, the Duke Divinity School enhances secular education with an alternate but compatible perspective.

“Honestly, there aren’t a whole lot of other places in the academic world that teach us to ask, ‘Is this good?’” said Brandon Walsh, a master of divinity candidate.

Yes there are; they’re called philosophy departments.

Students in the Divinity graduate programs come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but all of them come to seek further study in the field of faith. Each come having accepted the fundamentals of their Christian faith—just as a mathematics graduate student accepts the concept of numbers, or a medical student accepts chemistry, [Dean Richard Hays] said.

Some people might consider these assumptions illogical because they are accepted on blind faith, leading them to believe that a divinity school does not belong in a modern university, said Brian Myers, a master of divinity candidate studying to become a pastor in the United Methodist Church. He noted, however, that there are flaws with this argument.

“There is no field at Duke that doesn’t take on presuppositions,” Myers said. “I don’t think the argument should be about the crazy claims that the Christian Church makes because we all have crazy presuppositions.”

Note this, which implicitly equates theology with science because both are based on presuppositions. But science is based on hypotheses that are confirmed, while theology is indeed based on blind faith and wish-thinking that is not even confirmable:

. . . Some people might consider these assumptions illogical because they are accepted on blind faith, leading them to believe that a divinity school does not belong in a modern university, said Brian Myers, a master of divinity candidate studying to become a pastor in the United Methodist Church. He noted, however, that there are flaws with this argument.“There is no field at Duke that doesn’t take on presuppositions,” Myers said. “I don’t think the argument should be about the crazy claims that the Christian Church makes because we all have crazy presuppositions.”

If this is enhancing a secular education, rather than degrading rationality, that’s news to me.

. . . When Myers entered Virginia Tech as a freshman, he was an atheist who saw himself becoming a doctor or lawyer. When he graduated cum laude, Myers chose to go to divinity school because of the transformation that he saw in people’s lives when they accepted God.Myers added that contrary to secular assumptions about Christians, he believes in scientific theories like the big bang and evolution, and they do not cloud his faith in the teachings of Jesus.

“I agree with every scientific theory out there,” Myers said. “Nothing can prove or disprove God. That is a faith decision, not a logical decision.”

. . . “Science seeks to describe empirical phenomena in a material world,” Hays said. “It describes how things work. Science cannot answer questions about why it exists or for what purposes or how it came to be. Those are the questions that theology tries to address.”

Tries to address, and does address, but never answers!

. . . The liberal arts education spans many approaches to understanding the world, and the field of religion offers an integral part of a complete humanities education at a university that also pursues science, math and technology, Hays said.

These different areas of knowledge can work together effectively. Currently, there are faculty collaborations between Divinity and Duke School of Medicine scholars as well as a dual degree program between the School of Law and the Divinity School.

The study of what it means to be human is at the heart of humanities studies, and that is where religion plays a role, said Carnes, who wants to become a theology professor.

“Humanities in general have something to do with what it means to be a human in a way that math and science can’t fully address,” she said.

. . . Hays said when students critically examine the teachings of the Bible in context to modern social movements, it allows for ethical and moral development.

Really? A kind of ethical and moral development that a secular ethics class can’t teach? Do they read the Old Testament? If so, who tells them what “morality” should be rejected?

“The questions that we ask ourselves are not simple, but we believe above all else that all humans are loved equally by God, no matter previous sexual experience,” Hays said. “What that means is that this is a community where we hope to have respectful, serious conversations about what sorts of sexual practices and concerns God would want us to have.”

Oy vey! Really? The Divinity School helps the students figure out the ways that God wants the students to have sex? How do they decide? Do the Catholic students and Jewish students and Muslim students (if there are any) achieve comity on this vexing question? Does God want the students to use condoms? Does He think that homosexuality is a “grave disorder,” as Catholics believe? What are God’s views on extramarital sex? I’d love to sit in on one of those “serious conversations”!

This shows clearly that the Duke Divinity School is an arm of the university that helps proselytize Abrahamic religion by teaching Biblical apologetics. What we need is what Avalos wants: a “postscriptural society.” I like that phrase.

Believer Michael Robbins exhibits Maru’s Syndrome on The Dish

July 26, 2014 • 8:26 am

On July 9 I wrote a bit about poet Michael Robbins’s review, in Slate, of Nick Spencer’s book Atheists, the Origin of the Species, a book that has pretty much tanked on Amazon. As he has done before, Robbins didn’t really review the book but, in an essay called Know Nothing” (subtitled “The true history of atheism”), used his essay to bash New Atheism. He really, really despises us all. I should add that Robbins is religious, describing himself as a “leftist Christian.”

You will probably remember Robbins: he’s the hipster poet who wore a Traci Lords tee-shirt and was easily irked. In his review, he faulted New Atheists for being dumb, for not realizing that religion is all about allegory, that its truth claims aren’t to be taken seriously since Church fathers like Augustine and Aquinas read scripture as metaphor, that you can’t fathom religion until you’ve embraced it, and, finally, the oldest chestnut on the Tree of Faith: New Atheists aren’t dolorous enough. We need to be freaked out and distressed by the absence of God, as Nietzsche supposedly was.

Robbins also claimed that I had misunderstood him, but unless he’s such a bad writer that he simply cannot translate what he thinks into English words, I stand by my critique.

Further, Robbins took a shellacking not just at my site (390 comments, very few of them favorable), but also at reader Maggie Clark’s site, and even at Andrew Sullivan’s site, The Dish, where a number of readers went after him.

Since Hipster Robbins has a fulminating case of Maru’s Syndrome (“When I see a box, I cannot help but enter”), he was compelled to respond in all three places (see my original post for his response to me). He may be hip, but not he’s not savvy enough to learn the First Rule of Blogging: “Do not keep defending yourself when you’re criticized.” He’s also flouted the Second Rule of Blogging: “When a number of people go after you independently, and you respond that they’ve all misunderstood you, it is likely that you’re either wrong or that you didn’t write clearly.”

At any rate, Robbins couldn’t leave well enough alone, and has responded to critics on The Dish. He’s still banging the drum about how un-serious we are, how we misunderstood him, and that religion is certainly not about the literalism of scripture. I’m not going to reprise his arguments except for two of them, for I suspect we’re going to hear this guy whining about New Atheists for some time to come.

I’ll start by noting that Robbins took me to task by saying that I can’t tell the difference between metaphor and allegory, and was simply wrong when I said that people read the Bible metaphorically. But I’ll be damned if there’s a substantive difference between them when you’re talking about the stories of the Bible not as literal truths, but as standing for something else. Here are the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of “metaphor” and “allegory”. Note that an allegory (Robbins’s preferred usage) can be seen an extended metaphor (my emphasis):

Allegory:

The use of symbols in a story, picture, etc., to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; symbolic representation. Also: the interpretation of this.
A story, picture, etc. which uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; a symbolic representation; an extended or continued metaphor.

Metaphor:

1. Figure of speech in which the name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to, that which it is literally applicable; an instance of this, a metaphorical expression.
2. Something regarded as representative or suggestive of something else, esp. as a material emblem of an abstract quality, condition, notion, etc.; a symbol, a token. Freq with for, of.

I do note that “metaphor” can also mean a single word or phrase that stands for something else, as when one says “She was beside herself”. Nevertheless, if it makes Robbins or the Sophisticated Theologians™ happy, I’ll be glad to use “allegory.” The point is that we all know what Robbins was saying: the Bible stories weren’t to be taken literally, but meant something else: moral lessons, observations about life, and so on.

And so on to his first claim at The Dish (Robbins’s words are indented):

Claim #1: No sophisticated believer is a literalist

Which brings me to the readers who write in to inform me of the most obvious fact in the world, that some religious people believe crazy shit. (Although I have to laugh at the trend of quoting the extraordinarily metaphor-rich Jonathan Edwards to prove this.) One of your readers comments:

“When Robbins writes: “Of course the dead in Christ don’t intervene with God to help you find your car keys, and of course the Bible is inconsistent and muddled (no matter what the Southern Baptists claim to believe), and of course I find it extremely unlikely that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse”, that’s when he gets to criticize atheist focus.”

I guess I get to criticize atheist focus, then, since I’ve explicitly written that such beliefs are superstitious nonsense, often, in Slate, the Chicago Tribune, and Commonweal. (The same reader has failed to note that “austere abdication of metaphysical premises” is a quote from David Bentley Hart in which he is praising science for its abdication.) I had assumed it was obvious that Origen and Augustine would hardly have taken the trouble to deny literalist readings of the Bible if such readings did not exist. And some of the more idiotic beliefs held by American Christians (such as young-earth creationism), are, of course, based on no readings of the Bible at all.

Let’s take the colonial American preacher Jonathan Edwards first. He may have used metaphor in his sermons, but he certainly believed in the God of the Bible, as you can see in his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry god,” delivered in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741. Here’s a famous passage:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

. . . Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom: “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”

Yes, of course the “spider” bit is metaphorical—actually, if we’re precise, it’s a simile—but what is not metaphorical is the idea of an angry god who will send you to hell if you don’t repent your sins. And of course the “slender thread” keeping you from hell is also metaphorical, but the whole point of this passage is to tell the listeners that they’ll roast eternally if they sin. Hell is NOT a metaphor here, nor is the idea that God is angry. There was a reason why many of Edwards’s audience wept bitterly during his sermons.

What kind of game is Robbins playing when he fobs off stuff like this as metaphorical just because it contains a few metaphors?

Further, if Robbins denies all Biblical claims “superstitious nonsense,” then why is he a Christian? Does he believe that Christ is both God’s divine son and God at the same time? Does he believe that Jesus was crucified and then resurrected? If he believes none of this, then I have no idea what he means by calling himself a Christian, or even religious. By all means let him tell us explicitly what he believes. (I’m not holding my breath.)

Third, it’s palpably obvious to anyone who reads the Church fathers that many, if not almost all of them, took the major contentions of scripture literally, including the divinity of Jesus, his birth from a virgin, his resurrection, God’s instantaneous creation of all plants and animals, as well as of humans, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve and the Fall, and the inherited sinfulness of humans. This is literalism, pure and simple, andI have posted about this many times (see here and here for instance). Early theologians may not have believed literally in Jonah’s ingestion by a large fish, of Lot’s wife turning into sodium chloride, but they were all literalists about some things—the major claims of Christianity as set out in the New Testament.

Finally, Robbins says this: “And some of the more idiotic beliefs held by American Christians (such as young-earth creationism), are, of course, based on no readings of the Bible at all.” Is the man insane? Claims of a young earth come directly from totting up the “begats” given in the Bible, for the Bible provides a largely unbroken lineage of ancestors and descendants up to historical times. From this, Archbishop Ussher calculated that the world began in 4004 B.C. And he was not alone. As Wikipedia notes about Biblical chronology, after recounting how Ussher did his calculations:

Ussher’s proposed date of 4004 BC differed little from other Biblically based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3761 BC),Bede (3952 BC), Ussher’s near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). Ussher’s specific choice of starting year may have been influenced by the then-widely-held belief that the Earth’s potential duration was 6,000 years (4,000 before the birth of Christ and 2,000 after), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). This view continued to be held as recently as AD 2000, six thousand years after 4004 BC.

No readings of the Bible at all? In fact, the notion that the Earth was young comes largely from a literalistic reading of the Bible, and from calculations based on it. When Robbins makes a statement that palpably false, he is either completely ignorant of the history of Christianity, or he is dissimulating.

And of course creationism itself—the instantaneous appearance of all species (or “kinds”) by God’s fiat—comes directly from reading Genesis.

Creationism is based on no readings of the Bible at all? Really?

Claim #2: Atheists neglect “the best arguments for God”

Robbins notes:

But the New Atheists did not write books that simply attacked creationism. They wrote books that purport to challenge theistic belief as such. They therefore have a responsibility to address the best cases for God, not the dullest. When Dennett asks if super-God created God, and if super-duper-God created super-God, he is simply revealing a lack of acquaintance with the intellectual traditions of the major religions. If you want to argue against something, you have to understand what you’re arguing against. That’s axiomatic.

You know, it would be easier for us to argue against concepts of God if people like Hart and Robbins would tell us precisely what they mean by God. If they simply mean something nebulous, like “Ground of Being,” something that is ineffable but sustains everything (and is divine), then it is up to them to adduce evidence for that, which means being explicit about what God is, what God does, and what the world would be like without Him/Her/It. If they can’t provide evidence, what reason do we have to take them seriously, or engage them in argument? This is not, after all, an argument about philosophy, but an argument about an existence claim. The “best case for God,” therefore, comes down to this: “the case for God that has the strongest evidence behind it.” An “intellectual tradition,” as anyone with two neurons to rub together knows, is not the same thing as evidence. But theologians seem to lack that second neuron.

Since neither Robbins, nor Hart, nor any other Sophisticated Theologian™ or Hipster Poet has produced any evidence for God that would convince someone who wasn’t already a believer or an incipient believer, we needn’t take their claims seriously. The reason people like Robbins sneer at the New Atheists’ call for evidence is because believers don’t have any.

McLeroy replies about the crucifixion

July 20, 2014 • 10:07 pm

Okay, for a one-time bonus, I have allowed creationist and Biblical literalist Don McLeroy to answer your questions about the supposed 500 witnesses to the Crucifixion, and I’ve asked him to respond to all of the readers’ serious questions. He has begun to do so. But this is your chance to question a true believer about his beliefs (stick to the Crucifixion claim), so ask questions in the comments to the previous post. [UPDATE: readers appear to be violating this en masses, so, go ahead and respond here. McLeroy did

Be polite, but of course you can also be firm.

McLeroy has his own website, where he’s simply reposting my posts, something I don’t like. It also has the usual creationist blather.

Well, I tried to divert your questions to McLeroy to the earlier post, but it looks as if he’s monitoring both, so go ahead and leave questions or comments right below this one.

In the meantime, here’s one of his “responses” I’ve allowed on this site site:

Dr. Coyne: Thanks for the opportunity.

It is not unreasonable to accept the the scriptures as authoritative; I have some amazing company. For example from my desk top library at this moment, you could read Peter Kreeft, Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, James Hannam, Moyshe Averick, Rodney Stark, Ravi Zacarias,G. K Chesterton, Paul Johnson, Abraham Kuyper, C. S. Lewis, David Brog, and from my bookshelves many more. These are serious thinkers who have thought deeply about the Bible and for most a lot about the resurrection.

After 29 years of studying the Bible,I am now totally convinced that the Bible and Christianity are true. Are there still intellectual and rational difficulties to my faith? Yes. But, I have come to see that all people have rational problems with what they believe. Even the most dogged atheist is left with “something from nothing.” That certainly is not rational. For me, Christianity brings everything together, in thought, in science, in history, and in life. (From my testimony see: http://donmcleroy.com/ “How I became a Christian.”)

As you are amazed at me and how I could hold what to you understand are wildly unreasonable ideas, I am amazed at how you (evolutionists and atheists) can do likewise. This week,I have just posted my analysis of the weakness of Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levines’s explanation for the evolutionary origin of the ribosome. Check it out and please show me where the analysis fails or send links to more evidence.

Why Evolution is Probably False (revised)

Also, check out the blog post on Neil deGrasse Tyson and Anne Druyan’s opening episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, nd their definition of science and show me where I am wrong.

http://donmcleroy.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/an-observation-on-cosmos-a-spacetime-odyssey/

The Resurection

Peter Kreeft in his “Handbook of Christian Apologetics” (176-198)states that there are five possible theories about what happened that first Easter morning: Christianity, hallucination, myth, conspiracy and swoon. He then presents 9 refutations for the swoon theory, 7 for the conspiracy theory, 13 for the hallucination theory and 6 for the myth theory.

He then deals with 5 other general objections.

His reasoning is sound and convincing and he is just one among many others. I suggest someone who is really curious, check out his book.

Again, thank you. It is a privilege to be able to join your discussions.

Remember these roolz for this discussion:

1. Stay away from arguing with McLeroy about evolution. There’s nothing to be gained by that.

2. You’re not going to change the man’s mind about either Jesus or evolution. So ask him questions if you wish, but if you think you’ll change his mind—or even make him question his belief slightly—you’re deluded.

Why does putting up this most make me feel like I’m throwing a bone to a pack of hungry dogs? But the bone is indestructible!

Catholic biologist Ken Miller talks about God and evolution

July 19, 2014 • 10:28 am

Panda’s Thumb called my attention to an interview of biochemist, author, ID opponent, and theistic evolutionist Kenneth Miller from Brown University. Miller once described himself to me as an “observant Catholic.” Here he has a 33-minute conversation with Samuel Varg (see below), who asks him several penetrating questions about God and evolution.

Panda’s Thumb author Matt Young notes:

While searching for the source of this cartoon, I ran across the website of Samuel Varg, a Swedish magician and skeptic. Mr. Varg has posted an interview with Kenneth Miller on YouTube and promises interviews with Candida Moss and John Safran.

Mr. Varg and his colleague Anders Hesselbom were unusually well prepared. Professor Miller, in turn, was an excellent spokesperson for theistic evolution, though I had to take issue with his claim that the universe is “overflowing” with the possibility for life. His position seems to me to be very close to deism, but you can listen to the interview and decide for yourself.

Here Miller espouses theistic evolution, making some arguments that I find dubious, especially for someone who, as he says, is an exponent of science and reason. (Miller also talks about the Dover trial, in which he played a large role in keeping Intelligent Design out of American public schools.) It’s well worth listening to all 33 minutes of this:

Miller speaks well, and it’s interesting to hear how an intelligent and eloquent scientist manages to justify theistic evolution. Miller begins by citing—unfortunately—Aquinas and Augustine on the issue of how “natural phenomena don’t take god out of the picture.” (If you’ve read them, you’ll know that’s not exactly true, for those theologians firmly believed in supernatural phenomena like Paradise, Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, and inherited original sin.)

He then goes on to make a sort of god-of-the-gaps argument, asking, “Why do we live in a universe that is simply overflowing with evolutionary possibilities for life?” Miller’s answer is that “We live in a world that was fashioned by an intelligent creator who intended to have a process of evolution that would give rise to the beauty and the diversity of life—our own species included.” In other words, he’s making a virtue of necessity, for he admits that many religious people dislike evolution because it tells us we’re nothing special (and we’re not!). The interpretation of a naturalistic process as reflecting God’s plan is Miller’s form of theistic evolution. But there are some exceptions: Miller has stated (as he does in this video) that the universe appears fine-tuned for life, and in his first book he suggested that God worked directly in evolution by His undetectable quantum-mechanical manipulation of particles.

It is telling, though, that Miller’s own Sophisticated Theology™ is completely at odds with other Sophisticated Theologians™ who constantly tell me that everybody who truly understands God sees Him as a Ground of Being, whose presence is essential for sustaining all things. Miller appears to reject this. He explains that, though he’s a theist, he doesn’t see God as having to do any sustaining: he says a real God would have created a universe like ours that works without his intervention, and “sustains itself.” But the universe sustains itself, as Miller says it does by simply following natural (though God-decreed) law, then God cannot be a Ground of Being without whom the universe couldn’t exist.

Miller also broaches God as the answer to why Earth was able to evolve “reflective, self-aware, intelligent life,” another common argument for God by science-friendly theists. I deal with this question in my book: was the evolution of such life really inevitable? My answer is “We don’t know, but I doubt it.”

At about 9:30 in, Miller implies that the book of Genesis is wrong, and is seen literally only by fundamentalists and atheists (who decry the fundamentalists but attack religion as if all of it were based on pure literalism). Yet Miller’s own Catholic Church insists that Adam and Eve were real people who were the ancestors of all human beings. I’d love to ask him if he thinks that Adam and Eve are fictional characters.

At about 23 minutes in, Miller admits that he has had some doubts about God, based on the problem of evil in the world, and adds that he changed his mind several times about religion but, in the end, always came back to God. I’d like to hear his own take on the existence of “natural” evils like childhood cancers and deaths from natural disasters.

At 29 minutes in, Miller is asked whether he thinks Jesus walked on water and turned water into wine. He waffles a bit, saying he “does not know,” but adds that the Bible might simply include fictional tales concocted to highlight Jesus’s teachings. As a Christian, Miller says that, to him, “It doesn’t matter.” Miller adds that he sees Jesus as divine and as “saviour of the world.” That being the case, Varg should immediately have asked him if he thought Jesus was resurrected from the dead. I don’t think Miller would have been on as firm a ground if he had said that that, too, might just have been just a story to underscore Jeus’s “teachings”. For if Miller really thought that, he would be flying in the face of very important Church dogma, and in fact could hardly call himself a Catholic. (If Jesus wasn’t crucified and resurrected, on what grounds do we consider him saviour of the world? And isn’t a denial of the Resurrection a heresy?)

At any rate, the interview shows a religious scientist walking the fine line between theism and deism. This line was depicted by reader Pliny the In Between at his website Pictoral Theology:

Do believers see scripture as literally true?

July 12, 2014 • 11:24 am

In all the to-and-fro we’ve had in the last couple of weeks, some people have maintained that very few people—and almost no theologians—see the Bible as literally true. If you live in the US, you’ll know how ludicrous that is. While I agree that Americans who take the whole document as the literal word of God aren’t in the majority, most believers (indeed, most Americans) see parts of it as literally true. My own aphorism, which is mine, goes as follows:

“Some believers are literalists about nearly everything, but nearly every believer is a literalist about some things.”

I like that, and and hope it will become a meme!

But first, the latest data on how many American see the entire document as the literal word of God. This is from a 2011 Gallup Poll (article by Jeffrey Jones):

It’s 30%, and, although fluctuating, has dropped 8-10% since 1977. Still, only 17% saw the Bible as a book of “legends,” while 79% thought of it as either literally true or “inspired,” in which some but not all of it should be taken literally. As expected, belief in the Bible as either partly or wholly true increases with increasing church attendance, is higher among those with less education, and is higher among Republicans than Democrats. Protestants show a higher degree of literalism than Catholics (see the original article for the data).

There are non-negotiables for most believers, at least in the U.S, which, for many Christians, include the divinity of Jesus and our redemption from sin through his crucifixion, resurrection, and acceptance of Christ as our personal savior.

But (at least in 2004) there were far more non-negotiables than this (we need a more modern survey , since this kind of belief has probably declined). These data are from an ABC News poll, which one should take with a bit of salt because of the small sample size (a bit over 1000). Here are are the 2004 data for what they’re worth, as reported in the conservative Washington Times (my emphasis):

God’s creation of the Earth, Noah and the flood, Moses at the Red Sea: These pivotal stories from the Old Testament still resonate deeply with most Americans, who take the accounts literally rather than as a symbolic lesson.

An ABC News poll released Sunday found that 61 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible’s book of Genesis is “literally true” rather than a story meant as a “lesson.” [JAC: note that here they’re asking about the creation story in Genesis, not the entire Bible as reported in the Gallup Poll above.]

Sixty percent believe in the story of Noah’s ark and a global flood, while 64 percent agree that Moses parted the Red Sea to save fleeing Jews from their Egyptian captors.

The poll, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points, was conducted Feb. 6 to 10 among 1,011 adults.

. . . The levels of belief in the stories, however, differed among Christians.

The poll found that 75 percent of Protestants believed in the story of creation, 79 percent in the Red Sea account and 73 percent in Noah and the ark.

Among evangelical Protestants, those figures were 87 percent, 91 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Among Catholics, they were 51 percent, 50 percent and 44 percent.

The stories still proved somewhat compelling among those who had “no religion.” A quarter said they believed in Creation, almost a third said Moses parted the Red Sea, and 29 percent believe in Noah.

Remember, this was a survey of a sample of all Americans, not just Christians or even believers.

But this next part I find really funny, but also a bit sad:

“These are surprising and reassuring figures — a positive sign in a postmodern world that seemed bent on erasing faith from the public square in recent years,” said the Rev. Charles Nalls of Christ the King, a Catholic-Anglican church in the District.

“This poll tells me that America is reading the Bible more than we thought. There had been a tendency to decry or discount Bible literacy among the faithful,” he said.

“But this indicates a strong alliance among Americans with the inerrant word of God, as opposed to simply the inspired word of God, as viewed in the context of faith tradition,” Father Nalls said.

I don’t know what a “Catholic-Anglican” church is, but I thought both of those denominations were supposed to be less literalistic than American Protestants. Still, an American reverend in that Church finds the widespread belief in miracles “reassuring,” for they show Bible literacy. But the distressing thing is that a.) they don’t really show much Bible literacy (everyone knows about creation, Moses, and the Ark), and b.) they show not literacy but literalism. As we all know, atheists show more familiarity with what’s in the Bible than do believers, so, for a reverend, literacy is not something to be especially proud of!

I document more recent surveys in my book—not only of Christianity, but of Islam and other faiths. And there is a surprisingly large tendency to be literalistic about some parts of the Bible, even among UK Christians. For Islam, literalism is a given; it is not kosher (excuse the pun) to see the Qur’an as a metaphor rather than as the words God dictated to Muhammad.

Do have a look at Julian Baggini’s surveys of UK Christians. Baggini used to disparage New Atheists for criticizing strawmen, and for saying that religion depends on belief in empirical truths. Then he did his own surveys (granted, not very systematic ones) and found to his surprise that some literalism was ubiquitous even in British Christians. As he noted in his Guardian piece on the surveys:

Nevertheless, it is essential to stress that I take these surveys to be no more than indicative. And as the survey was exclusively about Christianity, what we can extrapolate about the likely beliefs of people in other religions is especially limited. So I see these results as being no more than highly suggestive and would like to see more rigorous work done to test what the reality is. I want to thank the various Comment is free readers who have already pointed me to other research. I’ve still got to work my way through a lot of it but I have yet to see anything that achieves quite what I’d like to see.

So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value. They believe that Jesus is divine, not simply an exceptional human being; that his resurrection was a real, bodily one; that he performed miracles no human being ever could; that he needed to die on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven; and that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. On many of these issues, a significant minority are uncertain but in all cases it is only a small minority who actively disagree, or even just tend to disagree. As for the main reason they go to church, it is not for reflection, spiritual guidance or to be part of a community, but overwhelmingly in order to worship God.

This is, I think, a firm riposte to those who dismiss atheists, especially the “new” variety, as being fixated on the literal beliefs associated with religion rather than ethos or practice. It suggests that they are not attacking straw men when they criticise religion for promoting superstitious and supernatural beliefs.

Baggini, an atheist himself, was intellectually honest enough to admit that he was wrong. I give him kudos for that.

Now we know that stuff like the Ark, Adam and Eve, and the parting of the Red Sea are fiction, so believers who see them as fictional are clearly right. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t underestimate the number of people who see other parts of the Bible as historical truth. Which parts are those? The parts that science hasn’t yet, or can’t (because of lack of data) refute.

What about the Sophisticated Theologians™ who claim that throughout history, neither Church Fathers, nor early theologians, nor believers themselves, saw Scripture as historical truth? I think that is largely a bogus argument constructed by theologians who want to rewrite history to pretend that the scriptural literalism decried by New Atheism is a recent development.

My response is that this is simply wrong for lay religionists, and theologians never show otherwise. Historical truth of the Bible has been a constant strain in Christianity: it’s what you see portrayed in the stained-glass windows of medieval cathedrals.

As for the theologians themselves, I’ve shown already how the supposed Kings of Biblical Metaphorizing—Aquinas and Augustine (as well as other theologians before the 18th century) were literalists about many things, although some believed one could read a metaphorical meaning into scripture as well. But for Augustine and Aquinas, the historicity of things like Adam and Eve, Paradise, heaven, angels, and so on, was never in doubt, and their empirical reality took precedence over interpretation.

Further, even Sophisticated Theologians™ see parts of the Bible as historically true, especially the whole Jesus story involving his status as both God’s son and God at the same time, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the value of that sacrifice for saving humanity. Now, given the absence of extra-Biblical evidence for that tale, on what grounds do theologians see that as credible but the Genesis stories as metaphor? Only because science has disproven Adam and Eve (and the creation story in Genesis) as false, but hasn’t been able to scientifically examine the Jesus story. What we know is that there is no extra-Biblical evidence for a historical Jesus figure, much less for his divinity or the crucifixion and Resurrection stories.

On what grounds, then, do theologians buy the Jesus myth as true but reject much of the rest of scripture as “not a textbook of science” (i.e., “not true”)? Only because the Jesus story hasn’t yet been disproven! The only criterion for what theologians see as metaphor is what reason and science has failed to confirm. There are no other criteria for the theological acceptance of some parts of scripture as historical and other parts as fable, allegory, or metaphor.

Finally, how much should we care about what theologians believe versus what laypeople believe? It is, after all, mostly the laypeople who do the harm inflicted by faith. It is laypeople who try to get the Genesis story taught in public schools. It is lay Muslims, not imams, who riot and kill—and they kill not just non-Muslims, but each other. And much of that killing is based on literalism, either of the Qur’an, or of the hadith. Catholic opposition to abortion is based on the dogmatic claim that a fertilized egg has a soul, and their insistence on procreation (and their discourage of condoms, even in AIDS-ridden Africa) is based on the claim that God wants every act of sex to potentially produce a child.

In the end, the question to ask the Theologians Who Love Metaphor is this:

“On what grounds do you know that some parts of the Bible, like the divinity of Jesus, are true, while others, like the creation story of Genesis, are false?”

An honest theologian would give this answer: “Because science hasn’t yet falsified the Jesus stories.”

Sadly, there are few intellectually honest theologians on tap. (And if I weren’t feeling charitable, I’d replace “few” with “no”.)

The best argument for God? Really?

June 27, 2014 • 9:15 am

Either a reader called my attention to the articles discussed below, or I found them on my own; I am aged and forgetful. If someone pointed them out to me, my belated thanks. Both articles deal with what is claimed to be the best argument for God’s existence—one based on the existence of moral agents, i.e., us.

I’m always a sucker for “best arguments” arguments: they are a box that I cannot help but enter. So when I heard about a post on Jefferey Jay Lowder’s Patheos site The Secular Outpost that was written two years ago—a post called “The best argument for God’s Existence: The argument from moral agency”—I could not help but enter. Lowder, who examined a series of arguments for God back then, is the founder of one of the first atheist internet sites, Internet Infidels.

Lowder’s piece is really a summary of a longer (and much more confusing) paper by Philosopher Paul Draper, “Cosmic fine-tuning and terrestrial suffering: Parallel problems for naturalism and theism,” (reference and free download below), published in The American Philosophical Quarterly. I’ve read the longer one, and Lowder’s summary is accurate but much easier to read, so I’ll deal with that. If you want to read the original paper, you’re going to have to wade through stuff like this:

This is philosophy of religion, and I have to agree with Peter Boghossian that the bulk of work in that field (indeed, nearly all of it) is worthless. I am a fan of philosophy as a whole, or at least branches of it (especially the philosophy of science and ethical philosophy), and don’t think it’s worthless by any means, but I have no use for the philosophy of religion. Look at the above: the author is telling us that it’s likely that God, had he created the Universe, would have created a multiverse (that’s what Draper means by “many worlds”)! If you want a real laugh, go see why God would have been likely to create many universes. It’s garbage: pure mental masturbation. But such is the philosophy of religion, for it’s the philosophy of a nonexistent construct. It’s like a field called “the philosophy of fairies.”

But on to the “best argument for God”. Here’s how Draper’s argument goes, as summarized by Lowder:

1. There are moral agents in the world, i.e., us. By “moral agents,” Draper means that humans have a code of morality and can freely make moral choices.

2. A naturalistic theory of our origins is less likely to explain our status as moral agents than is the existence of God, who made us moral agents.

3. Moral agency requires moral responsibility.

4. To be morally responsible, one must have libertarian free will, that is, at any time one must be able to choose between moral actions and immoral or neutral ones.

5. Such libertarian free will is much more likely to exist under theism than under naturalism.

6. Therefore, moral agency is a strong argument for God.

Draper and Lowder drag the “fine tuning” argument into this issue, but it’s not necessary. Draper’s paper was written before physicists had provided a number of possible naturalistic solutions to the fine-tuning argument (see here or here, for instance), and, at any rate, even if you accept fine-tuning as an argument for God, it doesn’t do anything except make the “existence of moral agents” claim (#2 above) even less likely under naturalism. The argument for God based on morality remains the same.

I’m surprised that Lowder considers the argument above so good. This is what he says about it:

I’ve thought about this argument often since I first read Draper’s paper many years ago. I’m inclined to believe this is the strongest argument–by far–for theism I have ever read. It is surprising that so many theists continue to press boilerplate fine-tuning arguments when the argument from moral agency is so vastly superior (or, at least, so it seems to me). It is equally surprising that the argument has not garnered the critical attention of atheist philosophers.

But to me the argument falls down like a deck of cards, for its train of logic is weak. For one thing, it presumes that theism has at least a reasonable probability; that is, that there’s enough independent evidence for God that we can somehow put it into Bayesian probability statements with an appreciable value. But I don’t see such evidence, and so one must begin without assuming the possibility of God, which is begging the question. The purpose of Draper’s argument is to show that the data ineluctably drive us to the conclusion that God exists, for naturalism simply can’t explain moral agency, free will, and the like. If it can, then I see no need to consider theism, even if we don’t fully understand the evolutionary or psychological origins of morality. God doesn’t become a reasonable alternative hypothesis until there’s at least a soupçon of evidence for God. We’ve had centuries to acquire that evidence, yet none has surfaced. One might as well argue that the existence of creative space aliens accounts for our status as moral agents.

Here’s my refutation of the above, point by point (I use the same numbers as above):

1. Yes, people do have a moral code and consider themselves moral agents.

2. There are perfectly adequate explanations for morality involving both evolution and secular reason. We have some evolutionary evidence, for instance, for rudiments of morality in our relatives like capuchin monkeys, as well as in less related species like dogs. And even rats were recently found to show a form of empathy toward caged fellow rats, releasing them from confinement even when they got no reward for so doing. In most of these cases the behaviors that look “protomoral” must have evolved independently, since they’re not highly correlated with the tree of evolutionary relatedness.

For example, capuchins show a sense of fairness, but chimpanzees do not, so protomorality probably evolved at least twice independently in primates. And it appears in animals that live socially, as one might expect if morality is partly an adaptation to facilitate living in groups. (Orangutans, for instance, which are solitary, show far fewer protosocial behaviors than do chimps or gorillas, who live in groups.)

Indeed, humans are not born with a fully-fledged code of morality. As Paul Bloom has shown, we are born with a sense of empathy only towards those with whom we’re familiar, like parents. We’re selfish towards strangers. Empathy and altruism towards unfamiliar individuals develop later—through learning. This is exactly what you’d expect if empathy was evolved through reciprocal altruism. In that case, you’d help out only those whom you recognize, for those would be members of your group (for millions of years, humans lived in small groups of a few dozen individuals at best). You would have evolved to be wary towards strangers, which is what we see in babies.

Further, there are secular explanations, based on reason, why humans would learn to develop a code of conduct if they live in groups and can recognize individuals. (Interestingly, rats are empathic only toward members of their own breed, and won’t free caged rats from other strains.) There are of course good reasons for people to develop ways of behaving that lead to a harmonious society. Those ways involve reason rather than genetic evolution, and can be passed on by cultural evolution. The immense increase in morality in our world in the last five centuries, documented in Steve Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature, cannot depend on genetic evolution, simply because those changes have appeared so quicky. Recognition of the moral equality of gays, for instance, has happened largely within my own lifetime. Such changes must depend on cognition and learning. If they reflect God’s will, then God is pretty mercurial and changeable!

3 and 4. I don’t believe in moral responsibility because, as Draper notes correctly (and contra Dennett and others), I think that true moral responsibility requires libertarian free will. How can we hold someone morally responsible for making the wrong choice if she had no ability to choose otherwise? So while I believe in holding people responsible for their acts for purely social reasons (deterrence of others, rehabilitation, and removing miscreants from society), I don’t believe in holding them morally responsible.

The above depends on my belief that we don’t have libertarian free will. Nearly all rationalists agree that we lack that faculty, even Dan Dennett, who has confected his own meaning of “free will.” (How Dennett comports determinism with moral responsibility has always baffled me.)

5. Since we don’t have libertarian free will, there’s no need to argue that it’s best explained by theism. If we had it, it would indeed be a kind of miracle, defying the laws of physics, and therefore would require a metaphysical explanation. (The only exception would be if “free will” is completely indeterminate, as through quantum-mechanical events in the brain. In such cases, given the configuration of molecules in our brain at a given moment, it might be possible that we could have behaved otherwise. But that doesn’t mean that we could have consciously chosen to behave otherwise. For even in those “quantum” cases behaviors can hardly result from “conscious choice,” and could never been seen as making us morally responsible.

6. Since morality has a perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanation (involving both evolution and rationality); and science is increasingly eroding the notion of libertarian free will (few now accept it except for theists); and because we have no independent evidence for a god, then the existence of “moral agents” is not even a remotely compelling argument for God, much less a knockout punch. If it is, then the existence of empathic rats is also a very powerful argument for God. For how do we know that rats aren’t made in God’s image?

QED

___________

Draper, P. 2004. Cosmic fine-tuning and terrestrial suffering: Parallel problems for naturalism and theism, Amer. Philosophical Quarterly 41:311-321

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