The wacko rabbi piles on

March 22, 2012 • 4:18 am

I’ve developed a much thicker skin over the 3.5 years I’ve been posting here, so it no longer bothers me when the faithful, or faithesits, go after me in print. And so I look on with equanimity as the Wacko Rabbi takes me on. Yes, Alan Lurie, real-estate manager and part-time rabbi, has taken umbrage at a two-part post I wrote about him (here and here).  You’ll remember Lurie: he’s the guy who argued (at PuffHo, of course) that atheists need psychoanalysis for not believing in God “in the face of much blatant evidence.” The “evidence” was, to Lurie, the signs of a beneficent and ingenious creator that we see all around us. Shades of frozen waterfalls!

Apparently the good rabbi was stung by my critique, for in the hours when he wasn’t selling property he’s penned a PuffHo response, “‘Crazy wacko rabbi’ responds to biology professor.”

His response is pretty much of a mess, and I don’t want to waste precious electrons reiterating arguments I’ve made previously, for I stand by what I said. On issues of physics and fine-tuning, Lurie goes after me instead of Sean Carroll, whose critique of Lurie I simply inserted into my post.  Carroll saw Lurie’s claims as not only wrong, but incoherent. Lurie further argues that he never proposed a God of the gaps, when in fact he did (read his original post). Check out this cognitive dissonance:

And we are still left with such clearly designed, and incredibly complex, mechanisms as DNA and the brain.

This is not a “God of the Gaps” explanation, any more than looking under the hood of a car and deducing a designer is “Engineer of the Gaps.” To postulate a random, undirected, meaningless, existence in the face of this unbelievable complexity and purpose of life is, in actuality, the much more irrational, and less logical, conclusion. This has been compared to proposing that a hurricane whipped through a junkyard and randomly assembled a jet plane.

If that’s not saying that things are too complex to have evolved, ergo Yahweh, I don’t know what is.

In his response, Lurie once again insists that the concept of an anthropomorphic god is childish:

Finally, again Coyne’s vision of a “bearded God” tells us of his literalistic view. I personally do not know a single believer (over the age of 5) who thinks of God in such childish terms. If that’s how Coyne thinks that all believers experience God — and that this is the ONLY way to conceive of God — then no wonder he cannot see that science and faith are partners. As his blog clearly demonstrates, though, this is his limitation, not religion’s or faith’s.

For the rabbi’s information, I never described the Abrahamic god as “bearded”—I referred to Freud as a misguided, “bearded God.” But that is beside the point. The point is that many believers see God as anthropomorphic, and not just stupid believers, either.  They include “sophisticated” theologians like Alvin Plantinga, as well the many liberal believers who think that God has human qualities like benevolence and knowledge. Here, for example—and I’m indebted to reader Myron for finding it—is a quote from Plantinga on the nature of God. It comes from his “Religion and Science” entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“[T]heism is the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing perfectly good immaterial person who has created the world, has created human beings ‘in his  own image,’ and to whom we owe worship, obedience and allegiance. …God,  according to theistic belief, is a person: a being who has knowledge, affection (likes  and dislikes), and executive will, and who can act on his beliefs in order to achieve  his ends.”

Tell me, Rabbi Lurie, do you consider Plantinga’s beliefs childish and immature? Remember that he’s a respected theologian who was once president of the American Philosophical Association. And he’s well over the age of five. I’ve love to see Lurie and Plantinga go mano a mano about whose belief is more “mature”!

In my first post I asked Lurie how he could be so sure about the nature of God given the lack of evidence for Him (i.e., I asked whether Lurie had “a pipeline to the divine?”). His response is just this:

First of all, this is logically inconsistent. If Coyne does not believe in the Divine, how can a pipeline exist? Second, there are in fact immature and mature levels of spirituality, just as there are for emotions and intellect. To conceive of God, the Creator and Sustainer of Everything, as only a physical being that is fully described in a human document and that exists completely outside ourselves is in fact immature — like a child thinking that electrons are little spinning balls. Those who have directly experienced a hint of the spiritual realm (which is all we can glimpse) across many traditions share remarkably similar understandings. I’ve seen this in numerous interfaith dialogues and by writers from around the world across thousands of years.

“Logically inconsistent”? I was asking Lurie how he is so certain about the nature of God, and how he knows that God isn’t anthropomorphic (after all, He made us in His image!). My query was bout evidence.  Lurie’s assertion that I have no right to query because I’m an atheist is totally irrelevant.

And his response is the one the faithful always give: we just know how God is, because lots of people concur: “Those who have experienced a hint of the spiritual realm. . . share remarkably similar understandings.” Really? Try telling Muslims, devout Catholics, and evangelical Protestants that their God is “immature.” Is the God of the Bible not anthropomorphic? He’s jealous, angry, vindictive, sometimes loving, egomaniacal, and fond of people kissing his rump—all the emotions we think of as human. And I shouldn’t have to point out to Lurie that agreement among people is not itself evidence of truth, particularly when it’s a agreement among revelations.

Two more points. Lurie, who claims to know something about science, says this:

. . . yet when I suggest that someone who adamantly refuses to even consider the hypothesis of a Designer in the face of what certainly appears to be deliberate design is in need of psychological help, the same person is offended. It is cowardly to throw a punch and then whine when hit back. Plus, note Coyne’s blanket dismissal of psychoanalysis and Freud, ignoring the shelves of evidence that psychoanalysis works.

May I suggest to the good rabbi that scientists now reject the idea of a designer not because we deliberately ignore the possibility, but—shades of Laplace—because we no longer need that hypothesis. Scientists once did consider the hypothesis of God—He was supposed to be responsible for organic design, for instance, as well as for keeping the planets in orbit—but we’ve since found that natural processes are actually responsible for these things. Over time, scientists have found that considering the God Hypothesis doesn’t advance our understanding of nature one bit, no more so than considering the Leprechaun Hypothesis.  So we don’t consider it any longer.

As for psychoanalysis, there’s tons of evidence that it doesn’t work (Freud’s famous cases, for instance, produced no cures), or at least doesn’t work any better than any other interaction in which one pays to talk to people about one’s problems.  Other forms of therapy, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), have been shown to have better results, and they last a much shorter time and cost a lot less.  Psychoanalysis is based on a flimsy edifice of lies and unsubstantiated claims, and, as everyone knows, it’s beginning to fall apart. There are few analyists left, and Freud’s theories are much in disrepute.

But I digress. This is about science, and psychoanalysis isn’t science. (If the rabbi was really interested in curing atheists of our delusions, he’d recommend CBT.) It’s about whether the idea of God enhances our understanding of nature, and it doesn’t. It’s also about whether Lurie is the one anointed person who truly understands what God is like, and that’s just hubris and nonsense. There is no argument he can offer to show that his understanding of God is better than, say, William Lane Craig’s.

I needn’t address Lurie’s other points because his piece, at least to anyone with two neurons to rub together, is self-refuting. Besides, Lurie’s commenters are, as usual, taking him apart.

But reader Sigmund has provided a humorous PhotoShop take on the kerfuffle. Recall that Lurie sells real estate, and you might recognize the building:

“If you believe what I said, then I have an Atheist Temple I’d like to sell you.”

R. Elisabeth Cornwell on Republicans’ “War on the womb”

March 21, 2012 • 4:24 pm

Read it at the Washington Post’s “On faith” section.

And there’s still more madness from Republicans:

Wisconsin state senator Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) said “unwanted or mistimed” pregnancies are the “choice of the women” who should learn “that this is a mistake.”

A Wisconsin representative says that battered women who seek divorces are “bad mothers.”

Kitteh contest: An unknown Florentine cat

March 21, 2012 • 12:31 pm

Reader Frank from Denmark posted a picture and story about a cat that doesn’t belong to him, but one encountered on his travels.  This entry came in last December.

As a regular reader of your blog* I have become aware of your love of cats. This week I am visiting the beautiful Italian city of Florence and today, while on my way to the lovely Palazzo Pitti, I came across this cat in the Boboli Gardens. It had parked itself on a wooden bench and was enjoying the bit of sunshine we were having today. It didn’t seemed to mind me approaching it and gave me (what I would like to believe) an approving purr.

Funny really. I spent most of the day looking at at these marvelous renaissance paintings and sculptures, but at the end of the day this turns out to be one of my favourite pictures!

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*JAC: an obvious typo

More creationist shenanigans—in Tennessee

March 21, 2012 • 10:43 am

UPDATE: The Guardian also reports on this ridiculous bill, and notes that the American Association of Biology Teachers (a big group) has weighed in against it:

But the National Association of Biology Teachers said the measure, would encourage non-scientific thinking – not critical thought.

“Concepts like evolution and climate change should not be misrepresented as controversial or needing of special evaluation. Instead, they should be presented as scientific explanations for events and processes that are supported by experimentation, logical analysis, and evidence-based revision based on detectable and measurable data,” the organisation said.

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From the state that brought us the Scopes trial (and a state I’m visiting next week), the yahoos have returned.  As the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports, the Tennessee state Senate passed a bill that tries to sneak anti-evolution and anti-global-warming sentiments into public-school classrooms. It’s the usual “teach-the-controversy” stuff. At the same time, the Tennessee House passed a clearly unconstitutional bill approving the display of the Ten Commandments on public property.

The Senate approved a bill Monday evening that deals with teaching of evolution and other scientific theories while the House approved legislation authorizing cities and counties to display the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

The Senate voted 24-8 for HB368, which sponsor Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, says will provide guidelines for teachers answering students’ questions about evolution, global warming and other scientific subjects. Critics call it a “monkey bill” that promotes creationism in classrooms.

The bill was approved in the House last year but now must return to that body for concurrence on a Senate amendment that made generally minor changes. One says the law applies to scientific theories that are the subject of “debate and disputation” — a phrase replacing the word “controversial” in the House version.

The measure also guarantees that teachers will not be subject to discipline for engaging students in discussion of questions they raise, though Watson said the idea is to provide guidelines so that teachers will bring the discussion back to the subjects authorized for teaching in the curriculum approved by the state Board of Education.

This is not surprising:

All eight no votes came from Democrats, some of whom raised questions about the bill during brief debate.

Here’s a summary of the bill from the Tennessee General Assembly:

Bill Summary

This bill prohibits the state board of education and any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or principal or administrator from prohibiting any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught, such as evolution and global warming. This bill also requires such persons and entities to endeavor to:
(1) Create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues; and
(2) Assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) reports on the opposition:

Among those expressing opposition to the bill are the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, and the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, whose president Becky Ashe described (PDF) the legislation as “unnecessary, anti-scientific, and very likely unconstitutional.”

And, according to the NCSE, all eight members of the National Academy of Sciences who come from Tennessee have signed a statement opposing the bill (download their statement here).

I’m giving a talk on evolution at Vanderbilt in Nashville next week, and I encourage my hosts to take action against this travesty.

And here’s a summary of the Ten Commandments bill, which tries to insert religious dogma into public life by hiding it in a group of secular documents, much as a cat owner conceals a bitter pill inside a cat treat:

Public Buildings – As introduced, authorizes replicas of certain historically-significant documents, such as the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and Ten Commandments, to be placed in local government public buildings. – Amends TCA Title 5, Chapter 7 and Title 6, Chapter 54.

The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports on that one:

The bill authorizing display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings — HB2658 — is sponsored by Rep. Matthew Hill, R-Jonesborough, who said it is in line with court rulings. In essence, courts have often declared displays of the biblical commandments unconstitutional standing along, but permissible as part of a display of “historic documents.”

The bill authorizes all local governments to display “historic documents” and specifically lists the commandments as being included.

Hill said the bill will prevent city and county governments from “being intimidated any further by special interest groups” opposed to displaying of the Ten Commandments. It passed 93-9 and now goes to the Senate.

Quiz:

a. The Magna Carta

b. The Declaration of Independence

c. The Ten Commandments.

Which of these things is not like the others?

Hawk cam!

March 21, 2012 • 8:48 am

What is spring at this website without an animal cam? We have a good one this year, brought to my attention by alert reader Phil.  It’s a Hawk Cam run by the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology, and it shows, live, a pair of red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) who have already laid two eggs.

Here’s the information:

The new camera stream puts viewers 80 feet off the ground and right beside the nest, where they can watch the hawks arrive, see them taking turns incubating the eggs, and compare notes on the two birds—the male has a more golden-tawny face and is slightly smaller than the female, who has been nicknamed “Big Red” for her alma mater.

The nest should be active for at least the next two months, and we hope you’ll join us as we watch the young birds hatch and grow. The parents have raised young here for at least the last four years. As signs of spring began to show, the pair began adding sticks and green pine boughs to the nest, and the male started bringing prey, such as squirrels and pigeons, to offer the female. The pair now has two eggs, laid last Friday and on Monday, and we’re waiting to see if they lay a third. The birds will incubate for 28-35 days from the date the first egg is laid.

The webcam itself is at this link.

Do bookmark it; the video is crystal clear and the animals are beautiful.


Guest post: Did Church fathers and Jesus see the Bible as metaphor?

March 21, 2012 • 4:54 am

Keeping his usual watch on BioLogos, reader Sigmund has spotted an interesting conundrum: if the Bible is read as a metaphor, then why did Church fathers like Paul and St. Augustine—and even Jesus himself—take the tale of Adam and Eve as literally true?

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Pastor Keller and the Historicity Problem

by Sigmund

Over on BioLogos, Pastor Tim Keller is continuing his series of guest posts “Creation, Evolution and Christian laypeople part 4”, answering questions about the integration of evolution and evangelical theology. The current post is particularly interesting because of the light it throws upon what might be described as the major problem faced by the BioLogos Foundation.

If it is indeed possible to interpret the Genesis story as an example of figurative language, a poetic story illuminating a deeper truth, then what exactly underlies the resistance from the evangelical community?  Why do evangelicals reject the scientific explanation of natural history of the universe and biological development and instead insist that the biblical description is truly historical?

As can be expected from BioLogos these days, all bets are hedged when it comes to Adam and Eve and the Fall.

Question #3: If biological evolution is true and there was no historical Adam and Eve how can we know where sin and suffering came from?

Answer: Belief in evolution can be compatible with a belief in an historical fall and a literal Adam and Eve. There are many unanswered questions around this issue and so Christians who believe God used evolution must be open to one another’s views.”

While refusing to admit that the historicity of Adam and Eve as progenitors of humanity is disproven by modern discoveries in population genetics, Keller does raise a useful point of biblical criticism.

Keller, quotes the commentary by N.T. Wright on the New Testament ‘Epistle to the Romans’, generally ascribed to the Apostle Paul:

“Paul clearly believed that there had been a single first pair, whose male, Adam, had been given a commandment and had broken it. Paul was, we may be sure, aware of what we would call mythical or metaphorical dimensions to the story, but he would not have regarded these as throwing doubt on the existence, and primal sin, of the first historical pair.”

This argument and its implications for the church is taken seriously by Keller:

“I am not arguing something so crude as “if you don’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve, then you don’t believe in the authority of the Bible!” I contended above that we cannot take every text in the Bible literally. But the key for interpretation is the Bible itself. I don’t believe Genesis 1 can be taken literally because I don’t think the author expected us to. But Paul is different. He most definitely wanted to teach us that Adam and Eve were real historical figures. When you refuse to take a Biblical author literally when he clearly wants you to do so, you have moved away from the traditional understanding of the Biblical authority. As I said above, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a strong, vital faith yourself, but I believe such a move can be bad for the church as a whole, and it certainly can lead to confusion on the part of laypeople.”

In other words, whether you think Genesis was allegorical or not, Paul, the architect of much of modern Christianity, clearly thought it was historical. Since a great deal of the Christian religion is based on the authority of noted church fathers, the denial or contradiction of these figures can only lead to problems with the lay community. For if you say Paul was wrong about this part of the bible, on what basis can you claim he was correct about the rest?

In fact, the point raised by Keller in this post extends far beyond the writings of Paul.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, who commented extensively on Genesis was quite explicit in stating that the book was based on historical events.

“The narrative indeed in these books is not cast in the figurative kind of language you find in the Song of Songs, but quite simply tells of things that happened, as in the books of the Kingdoms and others like them.”

Modern investigation indicates that both Paul and Augustine were simply wrong about history. But they were human. They lived almost two thousand years ago. Devoid of the benefits of modern science, they clearly have little credibility about events that occurred thousands (or indeed billions) of years before they were born.

Jesus, on the other hand, is different.

If you accept Jesus as God (or part of the Holy Trinity) then you are forced to hold him to a higher standard of historical knowledge than either Paul or Augustine.

So what does Jesus say about the historicity question? For the most part, very little, but what he does say is telling. In the gospel of Luke, for instance, he mentions Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, in historical terms:

“So the people of this time will be punished for the murder of all the prophets killed since the creation of the world, from the murder of Abel to the murder of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the holy place” (Luke 11:50-51).”

Despite some desperate attempts at apologetic explanations for these words, it remains clear that many in the early church, including Jesus, thought that Genesis was based on historical events and real individuals.

At Pastor Keller’s BioLogos post, the idea that Jesus was wrong about history is troubling a few people in the comment section. Commenter KevinR sums up the implications nicely:

“The point should be clear – if you do not belief in a literal Genesis 1 and Adam and Eve, you are calling Jesus a person who does not know history. This would be a really strange phenomenom for someone who was there in the beginning, and through whom (sic) everthing was made. If that is the case then Jesus cannot be God either and thus is unable to be your Saviour.”

This is the essential dilemma faced by BioLogos. Modern science doesn’t just show that creationism is wrong about history. It shows that Jesus was wrong too.

Bart Ehrman says that Jesus existed

March 20, 2012 • 7:11 pm

NOTE ADDED:  Several people have pointed this out, but when we’re asking whether Jesus existed in more than the sense of simply somebody named Jesus, there are two ways of construing that claim.

1. An itinerant apocalyptic preacher around whom the myths of Christianity coalesced (and who may or may not have been crucified).

2. The miracle-working divine being resembling that of the New Testament.

Note that Ehrman is claiming only #1, NOT #2, so it’s not valid to criticize his historical scholarship if you think he’s claiming any miracles or divine manifestations.  Again, he claims #1 (and I’m not sure what he says about crucifixion.)

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If you’ve read Bart Ehrman, you’ll know that, as a Biblical scholar, he thinks that Jesus was a real person: an itinerant apocalyptic preacher who wasn’t divine.  Ehrman has a new book out on the subject, Did Jesus Exist?,which he’s vigorously flogging at at HuffPo. His answer is a resounding “yes,” and you might be interested in a summary of Ehrman’s evidence:

With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus’ life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus’ closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the “pagan” savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead (despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum in their propagandized versions).

Moreover, aspects of the Jesus story simply would not have been invented by anyone wanting to make up a new Savior. The earliest followers of Jesus declared that he was a crucified messiah. But prior to Christianity, there were no Jews at all, of any kind whatsoever, who thought that there would be a future crucified messiah. The messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who overthrew the enemy. Anyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like that. Why did the Christians not do so? Because they believed specifically that Jesus was the Messiah. And they knew full well that he was crucified. The Christians did not invent Jesus. They invented the idea that the messiah had to be crucified.

I can’t judge the first paragraph, but we should take it seriously since Ehrman is indeed a serious scholar—and an agnostic. The second and third paragraphs seem more dubious to me, simply because the “evidence” is simply the assertion that “the story is too improbable to have been concocted from whole cloth.” But I’ll reserve judgment until I read the book.

Ehrman shows unexpected contempt for people who dismiss the reality of Jesus without the proper training to do so:

That [Jesus did not exist] is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine.

Well, Ben Goren, you’re being characterized as an untrained “Internet junkie.” Have at Ehrman; I’ll expect your response on this website by 9 a.m. Chicago time!