At the beginning of each semester my lecturers would remind students of the fire policy, “if the alarm sounds leave the lecture theatre immediately through the nearest exit and reassemble outside the Davis law library.” Now if during class one day my lecturer had said to me, “Madeleine, do not leave class today until you have spoken with me about your brilliant essay which simply must be included in my upcoming book” [what? it is a thought experiment ok? It could’ve happened…] but then half-way through class the fire alarm rang and the smell of smoke wafted into the lecture theatre – would anyone seriously expect me to remain in my seat? Should I be paralysed with confusion by the contradictions – did my lecturer mean me to be burned alive or overwhelmed by smoke inhalation because he told me to not leave class that day until I had spoken to him or should I follow his earlier instruction to exit the classroom on hearing a fire alarm and go to the area outside the Davis Law Library? What should I do? Oh the confusion! Perhaps I should simply conclude that due to the contradictions inherent in trying to read both sets of instructions together that my lecturer, in fact, does not exist.
Is anyone buying this? I mean, clearly what I should do is leave with the rest of the class and talk to my lecturer later. [Doh!]
Illustrations of this sort are often used in conflict of laws or legal interpretation classes to show that what prima facie appears to be a contradiction between two pieces of legislation actually is not. This is because imperatives occur in contexts where commonly accepted qualifications, riders, priorities, idioms, etc are assumed to be understood; implicit background beliefs are in play.
We can see this clearly in the example above. I know it is unlikely my lecturer wants his students to obey his instructions to the extent that they burn to death. I know this because I know something of his purposes and of his character. I know him to be fairly decent, humane and not one to issue arbitrary, irrational commands. I know also something of the weights involved in the issues. For example, I know the fire policy is university policy and it concerns the issue of safety – both the physical safety of students as well as its own, it does not want to be sued or prosecuted or subject to critical public scrutiny. I know that the lecturer’s authority is derived from university authority and so his instructions cannot contradict or override it. I also know that the reason he gave the instruction for me to stay behind in class was because he wanted to work with me in the future to ensure the sales of his book make the top 10 list. So from all of this I can safely conclude that he did not mean for me to follow his instructions on pain of death today.
Of course if I already believed my lecturer to be a petty, arbitrary, narcissistic, cruel bully, capable of anything who routinely issued commands with the purpose of harming, maiming and destroying students (and if I suspected he wanted to take my essay and publish it as his own so as to keep all the book royalties for himself) I might take a different approach as to how I read his instructions together. But it would be uncharitable of me in excelsis to adopt this assumption of his character as the default one to reason from.
Taking these contextual factors together, along with a basic grasp of the English language, its idioms and a dose of common sense it is not that hard to navigate apparently conflicting instructions.
I raise this because a site ironically called “Common Sense Atheism” recently put up a short post entitled 6 Questions with which to Stump Conservative Christians. I was extremely underwhelmed by the questions and was left wondering if the author had actually read any Christian works above Sunday School level on Christian ethics, biblical interpretation and so on (and clearly had not read very far into this blog) but I found one of the questions stood out en stupidus maximus (that’s a legal latin maxim meaning it was so stupid it had to be taken out). Question 4 asks,
“The Bible says to worship God (obviously) and to obey your mother and father, but what do you do if your parents tell you to worship other gods?”
Here, the atheist is trying to establish a contradiction in the commands God issues and from this contradiction we are presumably supposed to concede that Christians are irrational or that God does not exist or some such thing (and, of course, any Christian reading it is supposed to be “stumped”).
No Christian I know would be even momentarily stumped by this because the answer is obvious: in such a case you should disobey your parents and worship God; end of. I find it no more paralysing than the issue of whether I should leave class when the fire alarm sounds or stay to talk to my lecturer. In both cases, I understand that the command cannot sensibly be understood as an absolutely unqualified imperative. I doubt very much that God, out of allegiance to Him, wants us to give up allegiance to Him.
Of course if one wanted to make God look silly and arbitrary one could interpret it this way, just as you could attribute silly interpretations of what my lecturer meant such as intepreting his instructions as a command to wait for him even if I get burned alive in a fire or that my lecturer does not exist, but why would you?
If you think I am just picking on one unfortunate atheist’s example I beg to differ. When Matt was an undergrad at the University of Waikato a leader of the campus rationalist society confronted him with Isaiah 30:26,
The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
The rationalist then informed Matt as to what the temperature of the sun was. He multiplied that number by seven and then noted that if it were to become that hot then world would burn to a crisp. He concluded that the Bible taught that heaven was hotter than hell. Matt’s initial inclination was to laugh and asked the guy if the exchange had “brightened up his day and warmed his heart.” It turned out that the example came from a highly regarded book by a scientist critiquing creationism, ironically entitled “Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism” [scientists really really shouldn’t pontificate on theology]. The book had recieved endorsements from leading Australian Clergy. [I am reminded of Rob Muldoon’s position on Australians]
Then there was a discussion I had on Debunking Christianity’s “Madeleine Flannagan is Happy to be Treated as Women Were in the Bible!” where John Loftus pointed to Deuteronomy,
“Deuteronomy 22:23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
Deuteronomy 22:28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”
Now Matt had written several posts on this atheist chestnut which saw me get embroiled in an exchange with both Loftus and Stephen Carr. Carr surmised that,
“If a woman is threatened with a knife, told she will be killed if she screams out, and does not scream out, there will always be a Christian to say , and I quote ‘isn’t she a part of the problem’?”
Apparently the non-offensive-to-God way to rape a woman is to simply render her incapable of screaming because God’s issue is with the screaming and not the raping…
Apparently when the bible lays down case laws, it cannot simply lay down a paradigm. It must spell out every possible nuance, qualification, exception, situation, application to analogous situations and so on.
Apparently if it does not do this then it is denying opposition to the act – now even modern case law precedents do not function like this and legislation is never drafted this way but apparently this is the way to read Biblical law.
Seriously.
Perhaps Carr is a too easy a target. Atheist philosopher Michael Martin makes a similar interpretation of Deuteronomy,
“it is assumed that in all cases that a rape victim could cry for help and if she did, she would be heard and rescued. Both of these assumptions are very dubious and sensitive to the contextual aspects of rape.”
I am at a loss to understand why atheists insist on reading these texts like a lawyer with Aspergers Syndrome in search of a convincing technicality by way to circumvent the spirit and intendment of the law? I mean why? We can all handle instructions that conflict with fire alarms going off, we don’t interpret modern laws like this, so why do atheists (and some Christians) switch to such silly anachronistic readings when the instructions are attributed to God?
I suspect the issue is the background factors I mention above. Many atheists believe God is a petty, arbitrary, narcissistic, cruel bully, capable of anything who routinely issues commands with the purpose of harming, maiming and destroying people. They believe that the bible is obviously silly, irrational, oppressive and supports contradictory absolutism in the family, is anti-women (and so obviously supports rape) is full of scientific absurdities (and so Isaiah was talking about cosmology) and so on.
When you have a pre-conceived notion as to what you want the text to mean – be it an uncharitable reading or what you think or have heard that the text teaches – I suppose the silly reading is congenial. What this tells us is that the reading of the text is not what leads atheists (and some Christians) to their conclusions, rather it is their conclusions lead them to read the text this way.
Tags: Bad Reasoning · Hermeneutics · John Loftus · Michael Martin · Old Testament Ethics · Rape · Stephen Carr117 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Madeleine, first of all, I agree that everyone (atheist and theist like) could benefit from some legal training. The principles underlying statutory interpretation are well worth studying.
You write: Many atheists believe God is a petty, arbitrary, narcissistic, cruel bully, capable of anything who routinely issues commands with the purpose of harming, maiming and destroying people.. Almost correct. All atheists are convinced that the god described in the Bible (written by fallible, primitive people) possesses the attributes you describe.
What continues to intrigue me is how people can spend decades and entire careers studying these texts in an effort to apologize for the contradictions and immorality laced throughout them. These texts presuppose the existence of a Judeo-Christian god who actively intervenes in our world through miracles and the power of prayer. If someone could provide me with some empirical evidence to support the existence of their god, I would pay attention. (any takers?) However, absent such evidence, I fail to understand how the divine commands of your chosen deity are any more relevant than the commands of Thor, Zeus, etc.
I like this site because it is frequented by some very smart people (atheists and theists alike). We can philosophize all we want about there is a first cause or whether moral facts exist and, if so, whether some supernatural agent must ground them. That is all very interesting. However, where I get lost is when you jump from philosophizing to belief in some or all of the Bible (Jesus being a god-man, rising from the dead, etc.). Occasionally, someone will refer approvingly to William Lane Craig and it’s at this point where the Common Sense Atheism site becomes relevant. The whole point of Luke’s site and the inspiration for the title of his blog is that Christians put aside their common sense when it comes to accepting the bizarre tenets of their faith. If I told you a gypsy lived 5000 years ago, was burned at the stake and rose from the dead – you would scoff at the suggestion. However, you and your brethren accept the same kind of stories as true in circumstances where there aren’t even any contemporaneous accounts of the supposedly miraculous events. Without getting mired in a debate about the historicity of Christ, the simple fact remains that if you believe those stories, you should also believe the Indian rope trick, that witches inhabited Salem and that apparitions appeared at Lourdes. I just don’t get it.
In summary, the reason why I wish theists would learn more about the law is so that they could appreciate that special pleading is inherent in everything they supposedly believe about their faith. I say “supposedly” because I content that most Christians don’t believe half of what they profess to believe. They can’t .. any more than I can believe there’s a dragon in my basement.
Th simple fact is that if Christ is not risen, the faith of Christians is in vain. At risk of being crass, to be a Christian you must accept a zombie story. You might want to believe it. You might be convinced that Christianity is responsible for much of the advances of our moden society. You might dread the nihilistic consequences of the story not being true. But none of that is relevant to the truth of the claim. That’s why I favor the question which I will pose to anyone interested in following me on this thread: what is the single best piece of evidence you rely on to support your belief in the Judeo-Christian god? No special pleading please.
As a follow-up, here is an excerpt from Common Sense Atheism which explains why I wouldn’t let William Lane Craig clean my basement:
Is it true that Craig would keep his faith even if all the evidence contradicted it? Apparently yes, for he writes:
“I think Martin Luther correctly distinguished between what he called the magisterial and ministerial uses of reason. The magisterial use of reason occurs when reason stands over and above the gospel like a magistrate and judges it on the basis of argument and evidence. The ministerial use of reason occurs when reason submits to and serves the gospel…. Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter.
…We’ve already said that it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us the ultimate assurance of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role.”
So for Craig, non-Christian hypotheses are not even “on the table” as options. And yet he accuses atheists of closed-mindedness:
“I think many skeptics act in a closed minded way [and] will not allow supernatural explanations even to be in the pool of live options.”
Mark Smith confirmed Craig’s position when he asked:
“Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let’s pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection- Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.”
Craig told him he would still believe in the resurrection of Jesus, due to the “self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit.” If that’s not willfully blind faith, I don’t know what is.
None are so blind as those who will not see. I refuse to accept that most Christian philosophers would accept this kind of “I refuse to accept the possibility that I could be wrong” reasoning. It is simply an affront to reason.
“If I told you a gypsy lived 5000 years ago, was burned at the stake and rose from the dead – you would scoff at the suggestion. However, you and your brethren accept the same kind of stories as true in circumstances where there aren’t even any contemporaneous accounts of the supposedly miraculous events.”
TAM,
This is secondary to your points, but you give a wonderful illustration of how atheists minimize the case for Christianity through reducing it to something that has little actual analogue (Unfortunately Luke, who you mention in your comment above, is also a master at this). Here’s what I mean:
If someone came to me with claims about a gypsy rising from the dead, I would at least hear there case. There is nothing that excludes such things from my worldview (as in your worldview), and thus I should be open-minded toward their case. I would ask questions such as these below.
1. Did more than one person experience them risen from the dead?
2. Was there a body in the grave of this gypsy?
3. Do most scholars (secular, religious or whatever) believe that this grave was empty and that others experienced the gypsy as risen from the dead?
4. Do we have documents pertaining to this resurrection that are relatively close considering the antiquity of the story?
5. Did this gypsy die again and is there a grave somewhere today?
6. Do large groups of people claim to have experiences with this risen gypsy?
7. Has only one segment of society found this story plausible?
If these questions could be answered well, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe in the resurrected gypsy. I could of course ask more questions, but you get the picture.
Of course, Christianity meets these criteria.
1. Multiple people claimed to experience Jesus risen from the dead according to documents from various authors spread across the Mediterranean all being written within fifty or so years of the events (most earlier).
2. These authors claim that the tomb was empty and that not even Jesus’ enemies claimed that it was not, but used other stories instead (ala, “they stole the body”)
3. The overwhelming majority of secular, religious and whatever scholars believe that both the grave was empty and people experienced Jesus as risen (around 75% for empty tomb, 90+% for experiencing Jesus risen from the dead)
4. Considering their antiquity and what we know of historical documentation, the dating of the gospels is extremely close to the actual events. Consider that some leading agnostic and atheist scholars (Casey, Crossley, etc.) are now dating the major portions of Mark to within a decade of his crucifixion. That’s simply unheard of for our historical documents in antiquity. For instance, who questions the core of Josephus in regards to early 1st century Jewish history, yet he is writing at the very end of the 1st century. Who would question the core of Tacitus in regards to 1st century Rome? Yet his work originates from the early 2nd century. If you have issues with this, then you should write off any hopes of historical knowledge in general. As someone who is constantly pouring over articles from historical journals for presentations, lectures and papers, let me assure you that it doesn’t get much better.
5. No credible scholar claims that we have ever discovered Jesus’ (second) tomb, ossuary or anything similar.
6. Hundreds of millions of people throughout history and today claim to have experienced the risen Jesus, and to have experienced his guidance and direction in their lives.
7. There are Christians who believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus in the slums of India, Nepal and Bangladesh as well as in the departments of science, philosophy and history at Oxford. Christianity is more spread out than any other religion across national boundaries and demographic lines.
So obviously, the case of you telling me that a gypsy resurrected 5000 years ago isn’t an analogy at all, but a poor reduction intended to minimize the actual case that can be made. That’s why there is no similarity to the Hindu milk miracle, rope trick or anything else like this. They don’t study the possibility of the Hindu milk miracle throughout the halls of Cambridge, but they have studied the resurrection in the greatest depth for hundreds of years, and there are still plenty of faculty that believe it to be historically true.
Of course, none of us would claim that Christianity is only about making a reliable case for its claims, but God’s revelation in and through the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit’s redeeming work of opening hearts and minds to believe the gospel. Nevertheless, a good, academically credible case can be made to defend the core tenants of the Christian faith apart from God’s revelation.
TAM yes skeptics love to cite that from Craig and typically respond with the pejorative labelling you do.
In fact if one knows Craigs work in context, he is working from within the reformed epistemology movement put forward by Plantinga and others, this is taken seriously by Philosophers and is a lot more sophisticated and nuanced than the kind of comments you cite shows.
Moreover athiests do take this so called “dogmatic” stance to many beliefs. Take for example the belief that other people exist and are not a figmant of my imagination. Or the belief that rape is wrong, or the existence of an external world and so on.
TAM do you have a citation from Craig where he said that if he went back in time to the tomb and stood outside and Jesus did not raise he would still believe he did?
I suspect Craig did not say this, on the standard view of reformed epistemology which Craig appropriates this would count as a defeater.
Please find me the citation where Craig said this.
“what is the single best piece of evidence you rely on to support your belief in the Judeo-Christian god?”
The wonder of the universe we live in, and how science are finding more and more support for the existence of such God as described in the Bible, and how evolution becomes more and more ridiculous in the face of modern scientific findings.
TAM you write “If someone could provide me with some empirical evidence to support the existence of their god, I would pay attention. (any takers?) However, absent such evidence, I fail to understand how the divine commands of your chosen deity are any more relevant than the commands of Thor, Zeus, etc”.
the problem here is that this statement relies on the very special pleading you condemn.
Take the following claim:
[1] Its rational to believe in X only if X can be empirically proven.
Do you have empircial proof for this?
If you do not, then it seems [1] is irrational and as relevant as belief in thor and Zeus. Why then do you and other athiests continually assume it and use it to dismiss religious claims.
Sounds like Special pleading to me.
Similarly can you give me empirical proof that the world actually exists and we are not plugged into the Matrix?
This question has been examined as thoroughly as the existence of God is and most people who have studied it will tell you you can’t. All attempts to try and prove the world actually exist end up presupposing it. So I guess believing in the world is on par with zeus fairies and thor.
like I said Outsider tests refute themselves.
“and how science are finding more and more support for the existence of such God as described in the Bible, and how evolution becomes more and more ridiculous in the face of modern scientific findings.”
Are you serious? That doesn’t really warrant a response as it is in such contradiction to the reality of what science and the advancements in all fields have done to Christianity and other illogical beliefs based on scientific method and reasoning.
TAM wrote: “what is the single best piece of evidence you rely on to support your belief in the Judeo-Christian god?”
Direct testimony: my personal experience of him.
Now what is the single best piece of evidence you think you can rely on to unseat my evidence of my belief in the Judeo-Christian God?
Folks, Matt has just gone “nuclear” on me. See Stephen Law’s discussion on this all-too common tactic: http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2010/09/revised-chapter-for-comments.html
There are so many logical fallacies in Kyle’s comment above, I don’t know where to start. However, his response admits that the discovery of Jesus’ tomb would put all this rubbishness to rest. For anyone interested in how such a discovery might actually shake out, I commend a reading of Guy Thorne’s When It Was Dark.
The article I have recently been recommending to Christians when discussing the supposedly solid historical evidence supporting the life and resurrection of Jesus is Edmund Standing’s Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a Historical Jesus: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=7191800&jid=THI&volumeId=9&issueId=24&aid=7191792
Anon’s answer to the question I posed is downright embarassing. Can anyone do better than that?
Madeleine – you have a poor understanding when you claim for evidence: “Direct testimony: my personal experience of him.”
First of all – no details, no testimony, why should we give you the time of day?
Secondly I can give you a “direct testimony” that the Wellington Cable Car is capable of traveling through brick walls. I am convinced I saw it – it is burned in my memory. See My own miracle?.
Now what is the single best piece of evidence you can rely on to unseat my evidence that the Wellington cable car can travel through brick walls?
Madeleine, your personal experience is useless to anyone but you. However, based on the fact that you rely on personal revelation, I’m interested to hear why you are not a Mormon.
Also, I would refer to the Iron Chariots Wiki on this issue:
The problem with personal revelation is that it cannot be verified independently. The person who received the revelation may exhibit a long-term change in character, or other convincing signs that he or she had some sort of emotional experience, but it is impossible to tell what actually happened.
Furthermore, the revelation never includes information that the recipient could not possibly have known and can be independently verified, such as the time and location at which the next earthquake would occur, or any number of as-yet-unsolved problems in science, or even the meaning of “frontlets” in the Bible (Exodus 13:16 ).
Another problem with personal revelation is that so many people from other religions experience it too, yet they don’t all experience the Christian god. If personal revelation in the case of Christianity is to be believed then one must also believe the Muslim when they say they’ve had personal revelation of Allah. More than likely it is an experience that they then attach to information they received while growing up. If you were born in the US, you more than likely grew up at least knowing some Christian concepts. If you were born in the middle east, you more than likely grew up learning Islamic concepts.
Ken, based on Kyle’s comments above, he would have to believe your cable car passed through a brick wall if:
1. More than one person corroborated your recollection.
2. You could establish that you were actually travelling in the cable car.
3. Scholars (secular, religious or whatever) believed your story.
4. Documents created several decades after the event corroborated your story.
5. Large groups of people believe your story.
Makes sense to me. Not.
Ken I would not believe you because of defeators i.e. the laws of physics and lack of corroboration, no one else claims to have experienced the same thing happening at the same time and place, therefore I’d conclude you were hallucinating. Also you phrased it in a way that suggests you didn’t really believe it so you failed to convince me.
But, of course, if you really do believe that you saw a cable car go through a wall in Wellington then you would be rational to hold that belief, to rely on your own senses – even if I thought you were hallucinating. Unless you had compelling reasons for doubting your eyes then your own personal experience of seeing it would be compelling evidence for you to believe what you had seen was correct. To say otherwise is to suggest that you should disbelieve your senses until knock-down compelling objective evidence has been provided for thinking what you have seen with your own senses was reliable. It would mean taking a Matrix-type situation as the default starting point for everything we see and sense and perceive. Your position would require us to assume that we were always hallucinating until proven otherwise. We don’t do this with anything else we perceive and experience so who is special pleading?
TAM: defeators and lack of personal experience are why I am not Mormon.
As for my personal experience being useless to anyone but me as a form of evidence, did you or did you not ask me “what is the single best piece of evidence you? rely on to support your belief in the Judeo-Christian god?” Based on how your phrased the question I only needed to offer evidence that was convincing to me.
Nit-picking aside, both you and Ken clearly do not appreciate what form of evidence a court of law prefers: direct evidence.
OK, TAM. I stand by my personal testimony and justify it accordingly:
1. More than one person corroborated your recollection.
(I think my mum and dad may have said yes dear to me at the time. I was sleepy and it felt comfortable and affirmed.)
2. You could establish that you were actually traveling in the cable car.
(It was well over 60 years ago, but we lived in Karori so traveling on the cable car would not have been unusual. I certainly recognise the area from subsequent trips as an adult. Perhaps my parents had traveled into town to pay taxes or participate in a census – that would confirm it wouldn’t it?).
3. Scholars (secular, religious or whatever) believed your story.
(I haven’t found a single person who claims to believe the story but then I haven’t promoted it – perhaps I need to take some advice from religious cult leaders. However, the opinions of these scholars can be ignored because they are bound by a materialist philosophical approach which means they reject such evidence out of hand. They need to open their minds to the supernatural and the possibility of cable cars traveling in such manners.)
4. Documents created several decades after the event corroborated your story.
(Perhaps I should get stuck in and arrange for these documents to be produced. Can see I will have to get this cult going)
5. Large groups of people believe your story.
(I am sure once we get the cult going I can get plenty of believers who will provide their own witness. Perhaps many of them will have the same experience.
Actually, I can just see another advantage of that approach. There is bound to be money in it. If the megachurches can do it, why can’t I).
Madeleine, have you read The Case Against ‘The Case for Christ’ by Robert M. Price? Your evidence is sadly lacking.
Ken, I for one believe your story. Let’s start a church. You can preach. I will collect the cash.
Madeleine – surely my request for details was implicit in my statement:
“First of all – no details, no testimony, why should we give you the time of day?”
So we are all ears (or eyes as the case may be). Give us the details, the real evidence.
Realise of course you may get reactions like:
“the laws of physics and lack of corroboration no one else claims to have experienced the same thing therefore I’d conclude you were hallucinating. Also you phrased it in a way that suggests you didn’t really believe it so you failed to convince me.”
And I resent you not believing me. I can still see the cable car today. It is extremely clear. I agree it may have been an illusion. I can’t explain it any other way. But if I had an illusion like that, about something of no importance in my life, just imagine how easily others can have illusions about similar things. Especially if they are important to them. Perhaps people in white robes with beards and halos?
Hell, just today I heard a hotel owner claim black and blue that her hotel had a ghost and she had a photo to prove it. Am I being unfair to think perhaps she had commercial reasons for saying so, and for accepting evidence which was not real?
Ken unless you have evidence as to my sanity or as to the reliability of my senses you have to accept my evidence as proffered:
I, being of rational and sound mind, have perceived God.
A court operates on the assumption that all evidence offered is honest evidence. I do not have to elaborate unless you have counter-evidence or can raise legitimate questions as to my veracity or the soundness of my faculties.
Did you miss this part of my comment Ken (and TAM):
If you really do believe that you saw a cable car go through a wall in Wellington then you would be rational to hold that belief, to rely on your own senses – even if I thought you were hallucinating. Unless you had compelling reasons for doubting your eyes then your own personal experience of seeing it would be compelling evidence for you to believe what you had seen was correct. To say otherwise is to suggest that you should disbelieve your senses until knock-down compelling objective evidence has been provided for thinking what you have seen with your own senses was reliable. It would mean taking a Matrix-type situation as the default starting point for everything we see and sense and perceive. Your position would require us to assume that we were always hallucinating until proven otherwise. We don’t do this with anything else we perceive and experience so who is special pleading?
Madeleine:
I, being of rational and sound mind, have perceived a cable car going through a brick wall.
The evidence was certainly sufficiently compelling for me to believe what I had seen was correct.
You are a joke to say : “A court operates on the assumption that all evidence offered is honest evidence. I do not have to elaborate unless you have counter-evidence or can raise legitimate questions as to my veracity or the soundness of my faculties.”
Of course you don’t have to elaborate. I didn’t expect you to – my experience is that when people make such claims they become extremely shy in giving details.
And certainly that is the sort of behaviour I have come to expect around here whenever practical details are requested.
But if I was on a jury and you gave evidence like this I would assume you were lying and act accordingly to find you guilty. After all, an innocent person doesn’t usually hide the evidence of their innocence.
And in the court of normal human interaction I would just laugh at you. In fact, I might go as far as to say that your serious offer of
“I, being of rational and sound mind, have perceived God. ” as evidence suggests you are, in fact, not of a sound mind. That it is evidence that you are not sane.
TAM,
You’re fun. I love the atheist tactic of “Your post has so many logical fallacies that I won’t deal with it.” Of course, you never get around to saying what those fallacies actually are. Point them out. Show that you are capable of using that reason that you claim to value.
As for the article by Edmund Standing, I’m not sure why you spend time discussing poorly written (I also love how he can cite things and make all sorts of assertions without having to actually cite anything) articles from someone with nothing more than a BA in religious studies and an MA in cultural theory. Why waste people’s time by referencing such unless it offers something of substance or comes from an expert? I know you would be completely frustrated by a Young Earth Creationist espousing some article by a non-expert that supported Creationism. Well…that’s how the rest of the world views Mythicism (including those 2,000-3,000 atheist/agnostics at the SBL annual meetings…in other words 99.9% of the secular biblical historians).
Why would Madeleine read Bob Price? Price is a good guy (we’ve met a couple times), but let’s not kid around. If you are looking for a critique of Strobel’s points, then you should read a scholar who at least holds some respect among professionals.
You’re request is identical to the Young Earth Creationist who says, “Have you read Kurt Wise’s rebuttal of Richard Dawkins at the Answers in Genesis site!? He’s got a Ph.D. and studied under Stephen Jay Gould! Nobody should believe Dawkins until they’ve read Wise” You wouldn’t read his rebuttal because you know immediately that his work is biased and not going to be worth your time. Anyone who is familiar with the guild of professional biblical historians feels the same way about Price’s work. After all, he readily admits that many of his claims are “nothing but a hunch” and “pure speculation,” as he stated time and time again in his recent debate with James White.
I guess it’s Young Earth Creationist syndrome from the other side. “Hey someone who possibly supports our view was published in a journal, so who cares that it’s poorly written, only loosely analogous and uncited” (ala the Standing article), or “Hey, out of the 8,000+ Ph.D. professors in the Society of Biblical Literature, there is one guy who supports our view! Everyone should take him seriously and read his work!” (ala Bob Price)
Come on TAM…
Ken, again, I ask you to read what I wrote and to keep in mind that I was asked for evidence as to the rationality of my own belief. I was not asked for evidence to convince other people that my belief is correct and theirs is wrong.
You seem to be taking my answer for the former and using it to make a point about the latter.
But Madeleine you have not produced any evidence at all. No evidence to rationality of belief. No evidence to explain your belief. Let alone evidence for others to objectively consider.
All you have done is state your belief. No evidence is involved.
You may not understand this – but it just causes others to laugh when believers behave like that.
TAM,
You said, “Ken, based on Kyle’s comments above, he would have to believe your cable car passed through a brick wall”
Wow, talk about misrepresentation (or probably simply inability to understand what has actually been written). Let me clarify based on what I’ve already said. Let’s compare to the answers I gave above:
I would have an open mind to whether or not it actually happened (as I said above). My worldview doesn’t say such an event would be impossible (as yours does).
1. There were not multiple people who saw the cart go through the wall (as in the experiences of the risen Jesus)
2. There was no remaining evidence of the car going through the wall to be experienced by anyone else (as in the empty grave)
3. Scholars do not suggest that groups of people experienced the car going through the wall nor that there was any remaining evidence of the car going through the wall (as the entire spectrum admits in regards to the empty tomb and resurrection appearances). Futhermore, there are no scholars in any other fields discussing the plausibility of such an event. There are no professional conferences that discuss the event, no departments at the world’s major universities of anything similar (which is the case with the resurrection)
4. Considering the post-Guttenberg setting of the event, there should be some eyewitness account due to the widespread value of literacy in our age. If the event were two thousand years ago, then accounts that were recorded within the decade and a patterned account of those who witnessed it within six months would be sufficient (nowadays most scholars regardless of faith date the core of the gospel narrative and most sayings to within the first decade or so of the crucifixion, and Hurtado/Bauckham have recently argued that the set form of 1st Cor. 15:3ff dates within six months of the resurrection, but even the secular-minded Jesus seminar dates it within a couple years).
5. There are no documents from various authors and locations that corroborate the story of the car going through the wall (as is the case with the gospels)
6. Nobody claims to have a personal experience of the disappearing car, and definitely not hundreds of millions of people over two thousand years.
7. There is one, well educated, upper class believer in this event from New Zealand, and not a radically diverse crowd from the poor to rich, uneducated individuals to Nobel Prize winners (as is the case in the resurrection)
So yeah, using my criteria from above, there is no reason to believe Ken’s story at this time.
Ken, you seem to believe that testimony from a person who we believe is insincere is as worethy of acceptance as testimony from a person we believe to be sincere.
Since this is obviously silly, no refutation is required.
Glenn,
You’re right. The “arguments” against the rationality of believer are rather silly thus far. Hopefully that will change. I’m out for now though. Have fun guys (and gals).
G. Kyle Essary I am extremely offended by your rejection of my sincere beliefs. You are not asked to accept them but it is offensive to deny my faith and ridicule it in this manner.
I have explained why my experience is not well known (I am a very shy person – but that doesn’t negate the reality of my experience).
As I told you my parents were affirming and I am sure if TAM and I invested the effort we could convince many others of such a vision (if history is at all reliable).
You materialists are always demanding evidence but are prepared to reject the sincere evidence of an innocent child. Surely it is silly to expect material evidence from a supernatural event like this. What do you want to see – broken bricks? That just shows how you are blinded by your materialism.
I have already rejected the judgment of materialist scholars. Anyway, its not as if they have said anything about this vision at all. They haven’t denied its reality. So how can they be used as evidence against me and my faith?
As I said, all this is very offensive. Angry materialists like you are responsible for the science-visionary conflict. Reality is far more complex than you guys realise. You cant place such visions in a test tube.
Glenn – I don’t personally know Madeleine so make no judgment on her sincerity. However, if she continues to claim a simple statement of belief is evidence this will certainly cast her sincerity into doubt. To claim evidence and not present it is surely insincere. (But as I said, very common in such situations).
As for the pope, many theologians and religious leaders who continually moralise against people like me yet commit their own real and moral crimes – yes I do find them insincere. I think most people do these days.
How the hell can the Vatican condemn the Noble Prize for the British in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) pioneer Robert Edwards because of the “sanctity of life” while covering up the inhuman and illegal treatment of children by their priests.
No wonder this hypocrisy causes people to be angry.
Ken, you are mistaken. To claim that one has had an experience without providing evidence for that claim doesn’t make it insincere.
But to suggest that we should trust claims that we think are insincere just as much as we trust claims that we think are sincere? That’s just crazy talk. You can’t mean that, Ken. You’re just not crazy enough.
But there’s no point in becoming upset and angry just because people don’t *believe* that youre sincere. Your emotional response (obviously) isn’t going to tip the scales.
It is a very typical reaction among the atheist crowd who are afraid they might be wrong. It’s a ploy to get good people to get angry and frustrated and _appear_ bad.
A confident atheist would keep to an unemotional, rational discussion.
Unfortunately, those don’t appear to be the people objecting to your post.
Good work Madeleine!
Glenn – people can be sincerely right, or insincerely wrong.
Sure. I make no judgement on Madeleine – I don’t know her. But to claim evidence and then refuse to present it causes me at least to laugh out loud (especially as I fully expected that little behaviour – so common around here).
Her statement as it stands is of absolutely zero interest (well actually it is of negative interest becuase it suggest something).
Why should I, or anyone, waste the time of day on such puerile discussion.
If Madeleine has any real evidence she will present it in good time, I guess. Yeah right.
Surely she is old enough to look after herself – she doesn’t need you to come in and dirty the waters for her, does she?
“Are you serious? That doesn’t really warrant a response as it is in such contradiction to the reality of what science and the advancements in all fields have done to Christianity and other illogical beliefs based on scientific method and reasoning.”
Yep, I’m dead serious
Read here: http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/index-to-christian-posts/
See if your belief (or lack of belief, or whatever) is as rational and grounded in science.
Arcamaede – you have your facts wrong. I am not the atheist. I had the vision. I am offended because others are not accepting my beliefs or faith and are attempting to explain it away. They are the atheists in this matter.
I have the right to be offended about evil materialists refusing to accept my evidence. They just cannot remove their blinkers. Expecting to see broken bricks – how ridiculous.
And you are being just as offensive. Your just want to suppress us believers and remove us from society. If you angry, militant, fundamentalist, dogmatic atheists who refuse to accept these visions had your way we would return to Nazi Germany. Thats’ what you really want.
I bet you are a friend of Dawkins. That would explain your mocking behaviour.
Great post Madeleine. I agree that many of the atheist complaints about the Bible are underwhelming. Even a literalist like myself finds their inability to grasp context ridiculous, and their forced hyperliteralism artificial. I find reconciling some passages less than clear at times, but they are not the foolish “contradictions” most atheists claim to be so devastating.
Come on! Who do hermaphrodites marry? True hermaphrodites are exceedingly rare. Couldn’t they come up with something a little more challenging? like Can a eunuch marry?
Ken: “Glenn – people can be sincerely right, or insincerely wrong.”
How is that even remotely relevant to what I said? If you’re relying on testimony but you know the person is not being sincere (your cable car comment) then their testimony isn’t going to count for anything.
Right?
Ken,
You have repeatedly claimed Madeleine provided no evidence for her belief. But she did she stated she experienced God’s presence. In the absence of reasons to the contrary, experiencing something s existence is evidence. I know fire is painful because I felt it, I know that my carpet is brown because I see it. I know basic axioms of logic are true because I intuitively see them to be true, these are also cases where I know something on the basis of experience.
You only response to this is your “bus” example. But again Madeliene responded to this, she said that if a person percieved that is saw a bus going through a wall, right in front of them and they had no reason for thinking they were hallucinating and no reason for thinking what the saw was false, then they have evidence buses can go through walls.
Now in your case I suspect the reason you do not believe this happend is because you have reasons for thinking your experience or memory is unreliable. You know that what you remember is physically impossible and you know you were a small child and so on.
So this really does not answer Madeleines point.
I note you also ignore the really important point Madeliene made. If you reject her principle that : In the absence of evidence to the contrary one is rational in accepting that what one experiences is true. and demand that people have to prove that what they experience really exists before they believe it then you are going to fall into a real skeptical bog. You will in essence take the default position to be that one is always halluinating and never trust ones senses at all until they can be proven reliable. This would mean you can’t believe your computer exists right now until you prove it.
So once again we see you ignoring the arguments, changing the subject and repeating assertions.
TAM sorry but simply calling my argument “going nuclear” does not really respond to it.
You claim
[1] You should not claim things are true unless they can be proven empirically.
Now [1] is a claim, so if its true no one should accept it untill you prove it. So where is your proof???
is [1] true or not?
The point I am making is that [1] is actually a dubious claim. In fact no contemporary epistemologist would accept that every claim must be proven to be true. This claim is self refuting its like saying “I don’t speak a word of english” in english.
When you have an objection which is not based on accepting a self contradictory position, and is not based on demanding others meet a standard of proof which you yourself reject when applied consistently, then I will feel compelled to respond.
I note also that when I asked for “proof” that a particular claim about WLC was accurate you did not provide it. Funny how the demand for proof and insistence on skepticism seems to switch on and off as convenient isn’t it.
“[1] You should not claim things are true unless they can be proven empirically.
Now [1] is a claim, so if its true no one should accept it untill you prove it. So where is your proof???
is [1] true or not? ”
I get so %&$*ing sick of reading this sort of ‘argument’ for wantt of a better word. Does it need spelling out to you – or do you know the response to this sophistry?
TAM you write:
1. ”Madeleine, your personal experience is useless to anyone but you.” this is true of a lot of things we know by experience, my knowing what colour my carpet is on the basis of my sensory experience is useless to a person in the US who cannot see my carpet. So what? That does not mean that I don’t know my carpet is brown.
2. ”However, based on the fact that you rely on personal revelation, I’m interested to hear why you are not a Mormon.” Madeliene did not claim personal “revelation” she said “experience”. Moreover the answer is quite simple (a) she has never had a direct experience of the Mormon God (b) she has reasons for thinking Mormon beliefs are mistaken.
3. Iron Chariots brings up the standard arguments against religious experience all of which Christian philosophers like William Alston ( see his Percieving God) are aware of and have responded to. Lets go through them
(a) The problem with personal revelation is that it cannot be verified independently. he person who received the revelation may exhibit a long-term change in character, or other convincing signs that he or she had some sort of emotional experience, but it is impossible to tell what actually happened. This is true of numerous things we know on the basis of experience. What song I sang to myself in the shower when my family was out cannot be independently verfied. Yet I know what I sang because I heard it, that is I knew it by a mode sensory experience.
(b) Furthermore, the revelation never includes information that the recipient could not possibly have known and can be independently verified, such as the time and location at which the next earthquake would occur, or any number of as-yet-unsolved problems in science. Again true of many things we know by experience, I know that yesturday I felt a pain in my elbow when i was walking outside. This does not predict when earthquakes can occur or solve scientific problems. Nor does my knowledge that I had porrige for breakfast when i was at boarding school. But this does not mean I cannot know these things by experiencing them happening.
(c) Another problem with personal revelation is that so many people from other religions experience it too, yet they don’t all experience the Christian god. If personal revelation in the case of Christianity is to be believed then one must also believe the Muslim when they say they’ve had personal revelation of Allah. This assumes that different religious practioners experience different gods. Allah, and YHWH are different conceptions of the same God.
(d)if you were born in the US, you more than likely grew up at least knowing some Christian concepts. If you were born in the middle east, you more than likely grew up learning Islamic concepts.
This is true of sensory experience, Bablyons reported seeing holes in the firmament. Modern kiwis report seeing stars in the sky. If I was brought up in medieval france, while I would conceptualise the physical world very differently to the way I would if I were brought up in 19th century england. Yet I still know that the external world of trees, chairs etc exists and I know it on the basis of sensory experience.
As has been pointed out, the skeptical arguments used against religious experience if sound actually rule out almost everything we know by experience including our knowledge that physical objects exist.
Like I said, your arguments if consistent would lead you to deny not just that God exists but that anything independent of your own mind exists
Anon, sophistry occurs when you respond to an argument by swearing, asserting it obviously bad, calling it sophistry, but not actually addressing it.
Matt,
You seem to think that William Craig holds to the Reformed Epistemology of Plantinga. I think you are wrong. Have you read Five Views on Apologetics ed. Steve Cowan? Craig says in reply to the chapter on Reformed Epistemology that:
1. He doesn’t believe that the sensus divinitatis exists (p. 285).
2. Instead he believes that the “inner witness of the Spirit” is the ultimate way in which one knows that God exists. This “inner witness” is experiential and cannot be defeated. He writes: A person knows Christianity is true because the Holy Spirit tells him it is true, and while arugment and evidnece can be used to support this conclusion, they cannot legitimately overrule it (Reasonable Faith, p. 38).
Thus, no evidence can overrule or defeat the witness of the Spirit. This is different than Plantinga’s “sense of the divine” which can be defeated.
See this video clip as well in which Craig saying that evidence cannot defeat the witness of the Spirit.
Matt,
I agree that empiricism can be self-defeating as you show with your argument, but can I ask a related question? I hold that God’s revelation of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ and recorded in His Word is a baseline axiom for reality that provides a foundation for morality, logic, doing science and a whole assortment of other things. Apart from any defeaters (and as with you, after years of in-depth research I’ve yet to find any), this axiom seems warranted.
Why could an atheist not respond in a similar manner? They do it all the time in regards to their ever growing list of “brute facts.”. For instance, I’ve been told that moral facts are simply a brute fact, or that the laws of physics are simply brute facts, or that the quantum vacuum was just a brute fact, consciousness or the laws of logic, etc., etc., etc. Not all atheists would agree that these are brute facts or that they all exist, but I’ve heard many an atheist tell me that they are, which effectively stops the conversation since they aren’t willing to investigate beyond that point.
Now obviously, the Christian worldview brings coherence to each of these brute facts, but what is to stop the atheist from simply responding that the axiom of empiricism is yet another brute fact of existence and apart from any defeaters that they are justified in believing it?
test – I have not been able to leave a comment.
This went into pending comments – but you are not the only one having trouble, two I have left just now have not shown up at all – Madeleine
Glenn – You argument is refuted because you aren’t being sincere. Anyway, to go nuclear (popular around here) you can’t prove that being sincere proves you are sincere or honest. Or that you being sincere proves that Madeleine was being sincere. You might be sincere about her insincerity.
But at least you showed me the respect of getting the details of my vision of the Cable Car correct. Others have talked about trucks, carts, and buses, etc. Just shows that have no respect for my faith if they can’t get that simple detail correct.
And Matt is typically attacking a straw man by claiming “you have reasons for thinking your experience or memory is unreliable.” That is just an ad hominen so he has discredited himself before he even started.
Once again we see Matt ignoring the arguments, changing the subject and repeating assertions.
You guys have no imagination. Unless you can put it in a test tube you won’t accept honest testimony. I had that vision. I saw the Cable Car go through the wall. It was extremely clear. No bricks were broken – but FFS this was a supernatural event. Your naturalism obviously is not appropriate here.
You have to accept my words for this. It is dishonest to talk about me being insincere.
If you demand that people have to prove that what they experience really exists before they believe it then you are going to fall into a real skeptical bog. I have related my experience. It certainly existed for me. You are falling into a skeptical bog by asking me for more proof.
And there is one fact you continue to ignore. I have given the details of my vision. Madeleine has not. She has claimed an experience but won’t even say what that experience was. So how can you believe her. Either she is insincere or sincerely devious.
Matt, here’s your answer for WLC: http://www.atheistmissionary.com/2010/10/why-i-wouldnt-let-william-lane-craig.html
Madeleine, as you progress with your legal career, you will learn first-hand about the notorious unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Don’t take my word for it – ask any seasoned judge.
Matt, given the passage from Reasonable Faith reproduced in my blog post, why would you have any doubt that WLC answered in the manner described by Smith?
I also ask you to answer the question which Smith posed to WLC: Having seen with your own eyes that there was no resurrection of Jesus, having been an eyewitness to the fact that Christianity has been based upon a fraud and a lie, would you renounce Christianity?
“you can’t prove that being sincere proves you are sincere or honest”
Astounding logic there Ken. Being sincere doesn’t mean that one is sincere. Just astounding. Again.
T.A.M – what an amazing own goal you just scored – and to top it off, you were completely oblivious to it!
You just said, in effect: “Personal testimony is unreliable. Just get the testiomy of a judge to prove this.”
Utterly self refuting. You and Ken must be trading notes. You comment reminded me of Ken’s argument: You guys are just name dropping, but I’ve read a book by so-and-so.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee! Now I just need to figure out which is which…
Glenn, judges spend their lives assessing the credibility of witnesses. They review all kinds of evidence, viva voce, documentary (including video) and circumstantial. Judges are the best authority to refer to as to whether eyewitness testimony is reliable and they will tell you it simply isn’t. Two people who witnessed the same event, with no vested interest in the outcome, will often give remarkably different descriptions … under oath. You also might be interested to know that the recollection of children in accident situations is almost always more accurate and vivid than that of adults.
Glenn – your claim: “Being sincere doesn’t mean that one is sincere.” is incredible. But that is the problem with logic isn’t it. You can’t logically prove that using logic produces the truth. So one might as well agree with you – perhaps being sincere can’t be used to prove one is sincere.
Bloody hell, I’ll have to watch myself. I am so successful at this logical debate racket that people will start thinking I am a theologian.
Glenn,
Consider what TAM has “argued” thus far concerning Craig. He’s trying to make the point that Craig goes further than what he says in the famous video clip (which is the basis of Luke’s comments that TAM picks up on), to the point that even in the face of strong defeaters Craig would maintain belief.
So Matt asked, “do you have a citation from Craig where he said that if he went back in time to the tomb and stood outside and Jesus did not raise he would still believe he did?”
TAM’s response was to quote Mark Smith. What’s Mark Smith’s source for this Craig quote? It’s merely his testimony, as there is no documented evidence that the discussion even occured apart from his testimony.
So TAM is telling us in his discussion with Madeleine that she “will learn…about the notorious unreliability of eyewitness testimony,” but in his discussion with Matt he’s asking him to rely on another fellow anti-theists testimony that what he claims Craig said is true, heh.
Ken:
Ken – this is your claim, not mine. I was merely drawing attention to it. When called it astounding, I was being sarcastic. It’s not actually astounding. It’s crazy.
I’m sorry that I lost you. I will try to type slower in the future. I was showing you the implication of your own claim: “you can’t prove that being sincere proves you are sincere or honest”. But this is just nuts. Of COURSE being sincere means that a person is sincere or honest.
So once again: It was your claim. I was just mocking it. And yet, when I say it, you realise that it’s silly. How come you didn’t realise that when you said it? Bias perhaps?
Try taking the blinkers off, Ken.
Glenn – I can’t keep this up.
You guys have no sense of humour.
I thought you would have joined in by now!
TAM – OK, so your new position is that a person’s testimony is reliable if that person is in a unique position to know whether it’s reliable or not. (You said a judge was in such a position)
Your new position is fine for Madeleine’s claim. If Madeleine’s claim about knowin God is correct, then she is in a unique position to know it.
Boo yah.
Ken: “Glenn – I can’t keep this up.”
That has never stopped you before, jumping in and getting in over your head.
Come on Glenn.
Can’t you even allow yourself to have a wee giggle?
It’s Friday afternoon. Time for a drink
TAM actually what WLC says on Reasonable faith does not entail the conclusion you assert. He states
“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa”.
What Craig says here is that his properly basic belief defeats objections to Christianity based on argument and evidence, that is non basic beliefs argued to from other beliefs via some inference. Craig’s position here is based on Plantinga’s response to Philip Quinn’s intellectual sophistication argument. The point is that your average believer does not have to examine all the literature, look up every argument, develop a rebuttal if they have a experiential based basic belief.
The situation you state however is not one where a person develops and argument against the ressurection, its where due to time machine one directly percieves that Christ was not raised. That would not be an objection based on an argument or evidence, it would be basic belief based on direct experience and so the conclusion you state is not entailed by the direct quote from reasonable faith.
Contrary to what you say, claiming that one is warranted in accepting a basic belief in this way is not intellectually vacious. Take the belief that physical objects like computers exist, this is a basic belief based on experience, most people maintain this belief even when in say a 1st year philosophy course they encounter skeptical arguments that they do not know how to respond to. Similarly, almost no-one rejects the belief in an enduring self, or other minds, even though they might read skeptical literature and not have no idea how to respond to it. So your suggestion that this is ips facto intellectually dishonest is false.
I see however you are relying on an eyewitness testimony from a skeptic about what he heard. The very thing you say Madeliene cannot do. So again we see you adopting a skeptical standard to sources which warrant Christian belief and then contradicting this standard when its a source that calls it into question.
Oh dear Ken, there is nothing more pathetic than a scientist who does not understand philosophy pretending he does and trying to be clever.
Lets turn to your comment you write “And Matt is typically attacking a straw man by claiming“you have reasons for thinking your experience or memory is unreliable.” That is just an ad hominen so he has discredited himself before he even started”.
Actually that is not an ad hominen, ad hominen refers to the fallacy of attacking the person as opposed to the proposition the person is asserting. In that comment I suggest that even if you are sincere in claiming you really believe you saw a cable car go through bricks< ( which i doubt) there are reasons for thinking the particular experience or memory is unreliable. That is not an ad hominen, try and understand philosophical terms before you cite them.
”You guys have no imagination. Unless you can put it in a test tube you won’t accept honest testimony.”
Actually thats false, what I did say was that if a person experiences X then they are justified in believing X provided they have no reason for thinking X it is false and no reason for thinking the source of the belief is unreliable. Try to respond to what I actually said for once.
” I had that vision. I saw the Cable Car go through the wall. It was extremely clear. No bricks were broken – but FFS this was a supernatural event. Your naturalism obviously is not appropriate here.
You have to accept my words for this. It is dishonest to talk about me being insincere.”
Err No, because I have heard you repeatedly on this blog say you do not believe in the supernatural, and express belief in naturalism, so in light of this I have strong reasons from both induction and your own testimony that you claim to believe this on the basis of experience is false. I also know from this testimony and induction that you have beliefs which contradict the claim that a supernatural event happend as so you have reasons for thinking the experience is false or unreliable.
Again, ignoring what was actually said and mocking is not an argument.
”If you demand that people have to prove that what they experience really exists before they believe it then you are going to fall into a real skeptical bog. I have related my experience. It certainly existed for me. You are falling into a skeptical bog by asking me for more proof.”
Again wrong, I did not demand you prove your experience, I pointed out that you had reasons fornot accepting the belief based on your experience. Here you are confusing believing X on the basis of experience with no proof in favour of X. and believing X on the basis of experience in the presence of reasons for rejecting X. This is not the same thing, if you actually understood the topics you wrote about before you wrote you’d know this.
“And there is one fact you continue to ignore. I have given the details of my vision. Madeleine has not. She has claimed an experience but won’t even say what that experience was. So how can you believe her. Either she is insincere or sincerely devious.”
This is a very poor argument, that does not follow. You are suggesting that if a person does not provide a detailed account of what they saw it follows they are lying. That is simply false. Do I have to tell you in detail what pain feels like before you will believe me that it hurt when I put my hand in a fire?
I suspect that many people if asked what pain feels life wont be able to say much in detail except that it hurts. By your logic they must all be liars.
Once again Ken, you demonstrate that (a) you caricature what people say (b) ignore the arguments already made against your position (c) don’t understand what you are talking about.
This might pass in science, but in philosophy we actually require more rigor than simply asserting philosophical nonsense and expecting to be believed because you are a scientist.
Matt, you too! Can’t even see a joke let alone appreciate one. Come on, lighten up. Have a laugh.
You and Glenn are ridiculous!
You seriously get into arguing against your own arguments when they are repeated back to you in jest!
The ridiculous nature of the debate was started by Madeleine’s silly “evidential” claim. That just had to be ridiculed – it was the sort of claim that just can’t be considered serious.
For Christ sake let yourself have a little laugh. You might feel more human.
Ken, the problem is my argument was not repeated back me as I pointed out, a made up caricature was.
This seems to be common amongst scientists like yourself Dawkins, Hawkings, PZ Meyers, and so on, when you are confronted with an important philosophical argument. You claim to be open minded and willing to asses arguments Christian thinkers give for their position. However, when such actual arguments are made known you ignore what they are, fail to understand them, and instead invent silly caricatures and respond with ridicule.
That only shows that in fact what we have is not an open-minded assessment of the issue. But a close minded “I am not listening” attitude.
“Anon, sophistry occurs when you respond to an argument by swearing, asserting it obviously bad, calling it sophistry, but not actually addressing it.”
No – that is called frustration.
Matt writes: “What Craig says here is that his properly basic belief defeats objections to Christianity based on argument and evidence, that is non basic beliefs argued to from other beliefs via some inference.”
So why is his properly basic belief in god (and, based on your response, his belief in the physical resurrection of Christ) any more reasonable than Ken’s properly basic belief that in the cable car miracle? Remember, that belief is based on his direct experience.
Not surprisingly, I agree with Ken that you guys need to lighten up.
Matt,
In the mess of things did you catch my question about empiricism as a brute fact? I think that might tie into TAM’s latest question at 10:43.
TAM, this is why I said a person needs to understand the epistemology Craig works with before forming hasty conclusions.
Properly basic beliefs are justified independently of any proof for them, usually they are grounded in some direct experience, or instinctive intuition of some sort. However, properly basic beliefs can be defeated that is one might discover information which takes away the original justification. An example: I have a perceptual experience of a computer and instinctively form the belief that there is a computer in front of me, latter I wake up and realise I was dreaming, once I realise this I am no longer justified in believing there is computer in front of me.
Of course not anything can defeat a properly basic belief, and some are stronger than others, my belief that the other people exist for example is extremely strong and almost no counter evidence is sufficent to defeat it, If I was confronted with a skeptical argument to the effect that no people existed, I would simply dismiss it as absurd even if I did not know how to respond to it.
Craig’s argument is that belief in God for believers is like belief in other minds.
The example Ken gave however was of a memory of a specific perceptual belief he had when a child. Now specific memory beliefs are not like belief in other minds. One can defeat specific memory beliefs quite easily, I remember X occurring, I meet several people who were there and all of them tell me I was mistaken, in this case I would probaly justifiably conclude the original belief was mistaken. Similarly my dream example shows the same is true of perceptual beliefs.
Finally, Glenn’s point that Ken does not really believe that cable cabs can go through walls and that so he really does not have a properly basic belief also stands here. The fact that a person can make up false claims to have experienced X does not render any justification on X at all.
Matt wrote: “Craig’s argument is that belief in God for believers is like belief in other minds.”
I get it. Thank-you for confirming that properly basic beliefs can be defeated. I don’t see WLC as making that concession but, to be fair, I am not nearly familiar with his work as you evidently are.
I was amused to hear Lydia McGrew on the most recent Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot podcast using an email from Madeleine as an example justifying her belief in god!
I love this site. Keep up the good work.
Matt,
I think you are confusing Craig with Plantinga. Craig does not believe in the sensus divinitias , or that belief in God is like belief in other minds. His argument for knowing Christianity is true is based on a religious experience, i.e., the inner witness of the Spirit. This is different than Plantinga’s position. While Plantinga’s properly basic belief can be defeated; Craig’s religious experience cannot, according to his own writings.
If only non-believers would take the time to read this post and actually look at the facts, they might be pleasantly surprised to know the truth. If only they would open their minds to the intelligent design facts…
So empiricism couldn’t qualify as a brute fact or properly basic belief since it’s defeater is that it is self-defeating?
Matt, I am flattered that you lump me in with Dawkins, Hawking and Myers (even though you only got Dawkins name right – but he does obsess you doesn’t he? And I guess Hawking has now been officially elevated to the same level of demon as the others because of his new book. Another book for you to avoid reading but nevertheless hate and rant against. Oh, by the way, keep an eye out for PZ’s new book – that should get your adrenalin flowing).
I really don’t deserve that honour in terms of scientific output, writing and speaking skills.
However, I am sure that all three in their own way enjoy a good joke and a bit of satire and I certainly do as well. As this silly post surely demonstrates. Really this is the only way to respond to such silliness.
Matt does your “adrenaline get pumping” over atheists who publish books on philosophy of religion who are good philosophers, who are qualified to write on it?
No. It appears you do not. (If the respectful way you handle their works in your blog posts is anything to go by.)
Ken, see Matt’s blog posts on Michael Tooley, Walter Sinott-Armstrong, JL Mackie, David Brink, Anthony Flew, Michael Martin, Louise Anthony. There’s no hint of demonisation from Matt towards these scholars.
Then compare the respectful tone in those with Matt’s blog posts on Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, Brockie. There is quite a difference in Matt’s response to them.
Ken, wrong tree climbed it seems.
The atheist writers you are peddling have no respect within atheist scholarship, atheist philosophy of religion academics wince at the new atheists the same way Christian philosophers of religion wince at Ray Comfort. (If you tell that to the Ray Comfort supporters and they get all defensive about Comfort.)
Hi All,
Been away up north what with it being school holidays and everything. Looks like I’ve missed some fun debates!
So, Madeleine is equating her possible response to a fire alarm and a lecturers possible motivation for not leaving a lecture with rape of women and stoning or some such stupid instructions that are in the bible and it’s possible standing from a legal perspective in the present day 21st century.
Errr…… Umm….. OK.
I may have only been away a short time, but the following quote comes to mind:
“The more things change, the more they stay the same!”
Yes, Scotto. Matt does have a certain involuntary response in the knee area to many scientists. Of course he is like a fairy with a wand. Everything looks like magic. Unfortunately for him religious philosophy is a dead subject contributing nothing to the world. Perhaps that’s why he resents scientists. They long ago replaced theology as a way if discovering and understanding reality.
This post and the discussion surely shows you the stupidity that theology had sunk to. These guys don’t even recognize their own arguments when fired back at them. They end up arguing against themselves!
More to the point they cannot recognize when they are made fun of. That must make life difficult for them. Because theology is surely ripe for humour and ridicule. It’s surely not much good for anything else.
TAM I had no idea that Lydia has cited me in a pod-cast, I must try and find it and have a listen. She did say she had a pod-cast coming up recently and I meant to have a listen but I had my 2-week Profs onsite around the same time so I never got to it and I’d forgotten about it til now. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll ask her where to find it.
Lydia said:
“Yes, the interview was done in August and went up yesterday. I forgot to tell you. I used an e-mail from you as an example in the same way I’m using it in my theism and history paper (presently in draft with the editors of the Routledge volume), since we were discussing the issue of whether we can know that God has acted. Here’s the link:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=10555“
Ken, I see you simply repeat your assertion over and over. As I pointed out you did not repeat my arguments back to me. Glenn, Madeliene and I showed your example differed in important respects from the one she offered. Sorry repeating a mistake 50 times does not mean its not a mistake.
I see also you know distort what Scotto said and appear to take him as agreeing with you.
I also find it amuzing that now your complaining that I have not read the authors in question , I actually have read much of Dawkins and Myers, but I would refer you to the courtiers reply, after all thats the argument you cited when I pointed out that Dawkins and yourself never read or addressed the actual arguments philosophers had made. Funny is it not that once again the standards change?
There is of course one important difference, Dawkins et al are writing popular works in a field they are not qualified the books I refer to are peer reviewed and by specialists in the feild. But hey all that talk about Craig needing to have peer review before he should be considered on Glenn’s blog does not apply now does it Ken.
Because contradicting yourself left right and centre is vigorous science not silly philosophy which requires things like actual arguments.
Come on Matt. Get a life. Have a bit if fun. And learn to laugh a bit. It does make quite a difference.
You have been caught out a few times. It happens. Best to learn from your experiences instead of trying to continually explain them away.
We know you hate Dawkins and love Craig. Don’t need to go on about it all the time. We accept it.
Kenny that’s pretty stink aye… If you’d read the ‘about’ section on this website, you would know that Matt actually does have a life. Like he has a brown belt in Karate. I don’t know about you brotha but to me, that’s good as aye. Shows he’s got a life. You know what I mean Kenny?
Yeah Ken. I think that’s taking it a bit too far there. Judging from your profile pic, you’re looking quite pale and not going outside enough.
Come on Ken. Get a life. Have a bit of fun. And learn to laugh a bit. It does make quite a difference.
Great to see you back Paul. Looking forward to some interesting discussions ahead!
For the sake of argument, Ken had an experience when he was four years old where he saw a cable car pass through a brick wall. He acknowledges that he was half asleep at the time.
I can (for the sake of argument) accept that he believes he saw that happen.
What resemblance does this have to the testimony about the resurrected Jesus?
Ken was four, half asleep, and “saw” this in a space of a few seconds.
The disciples were men grown, in their twenties and thirties, who witnessed Jesus post resurrection for a number of weeks.
Two of the Gospel writers, John and Matthew, were (according to the earliest traditions we have access to) writing things that they themselves had seen and heard. Luke tells us he was writing down the testimony of witnesses. Mark is believed to be Peter’s scribe. This isn’t getting the eyewitness accounts of a criminal witness of something that happened a block away in the blink of an eye. They spoke of that which they had seen, heard and handled over a period of time.
I might not be able to remember which socket size I used when working on my car with my father six months ago, or even what he was wearing, but I can remember that he was there and that we spent two or three hours working.
We are simply not talking about the same thing.
Let us say that William Lane Craig would still be a Christian if he was taken back in a time machine and shown the tomb of Jesus closed and sealed on the third day.
Has anyone done that?
No. No one has built a time machine and the lack of temporal travellers suggests no one will ever build a time machine, so this exercise is merely an example of the kind of mental masturbation that atheists engage in.
What do we have to work with? Historical testimony as mentioned before. We have testimony about Jesus of Nazareth, born in the reign of Herod about 5-4BC, crucified under Pilate about 30AD and raised from the dead on the third day after. They weren’t atheists trying to score points. They were men testifying of this really weird event that had happened to them all.
Haha yea barney that’s true as eh. When Paul’s around the discussions become very interesting. Ka pai Paul, kia ora to you bro
My point Jason is that my vision was extremely clear – I can still see it. Perhaps if I had been in a different family I might have seen a bearded man in a white robe walk through that wall.
This is only an example of a general problem we have as humans. Our experiences are not necessarily reliable. The man in the gorilla suit is another extremely clear example – I just didn’t see it first time around. We are all capable of seeing things that aren’t there, not seeing things that are, hearing voices, etc. – some more so than others.
You are quite within your logical and experiential rights to assume my vision was an illusion. I personally have never bothered enough to try an explain it. It doesn’t worry me enough to make a judgement.
But it does show one the limitations of testimony. And while my testimony here is very clear and trustworthy such testimonial evidence does deteriorate over time. Just imagine how my vision will be reported in 2000 years time.
Now, I have read very little about testimonial evidence of some basic Christian claims. What I have read though does introduce another problem. People making claims that their evidence is good for such claims are usually not being honest. There is an incredible amount of confirmation bias so that the claims made be the Christian lay person are often extremely wild compared with those historical claims made by an intelligent (?) theologian or bible researcher. (Just as the god beliefs of the ordinary church goer are quite different to those of the theologian).
And this post just shows the sort of mental gymnastics people will go to to confirm their biases.
So just as you reject my claims of a vision preferring instead to rely on what you know about the properties of brick walls and cable cars I reject the numerous claims people of faith make about turning water into wine (much as this would please me), walking on water or being raised from death. I also reject similar claims made by Islamists about how they had magic protection from Soviet bullets while fighting in Afghanistan. They will swear by this just ad confidently as you swear by your “evidence.”
Let’s face it. Once I accept you testimony without proper research and evidence I have to accept theirs. And similarly I would have to accept the testimony of people who adhere to one of the other thousands of faiths.
It’s much easier to adopt the approach you take with my vision and treat the testimonial evidence as unreliable, malicious, or at least not worth worrying about. Better to rely on what we know about how things behave in the real world.
Usually my judgment on such religious claims is that they aren’t worth spending my time on. It’s a problem for the believers, not me.
Ken, your latest comment actually reinforces my point not yours, you write
”This is only an example of a general problem we have as humans. Our experiences are not necessarily reliable. The man in the gorilla suit is another extremely clear example – I just didn’t see it first time around. We are all capable of seeing things that aren’t there, not seeing things that are, hearing voices, etc. – some more so than others.”
But no one said experiences are necessarily or even always reliable. What was said was that one is justified in assuming that what one experiences is reliable until one has reasons for thinking otherwise. This allows for the kind of situations you refer to, it just means we don’t start off assuming everything we see hear and touch is illusory without good reason.
“You are quite within your logical and experiential rights to assume my vision was an illusion. …So just as you reject my claims of a vision preferring instead to rely on what you know about the properties of brick walls and cable cars “
Exactly, because in this case we have reasons for thinking it is unreliable. That was my point we trust what we see hear touch, experience and so in is reliable until we have evidence that its false. In this case we have evidence, so we don’t believe it. So again this example does nothing to refut the claims I actually made.
The problem is Madeliene did not claim she based her belief on a Miracle see observed, she claimed to experience the presence of a divine being. In the cab car case what we percieve contradicts what we already know, that cars can not through bricks. So in the case of religious experience the skeptic can only discount it if they already have arguments for thinking God cannot exist.
So where is your proof for the non – existence of God.
It’s much easier to adopt the approach you take with my vision and treat the testimonial evidence as unreliable, malicious, or at least not worth worrying about. Better to rely on what we know about how things behave in the real world.
Well in the real world people do not walk around believing everything they see is a hallucination until it can be esthablished by scientific research nor do they believe everything they are told is BS until science verfies it.
If you deny this then please prove to me that your senses are reliable. Until you do then by your own method I should dismiss everything you say as delusional nonsense.
Matt, my comments were specifically made in response to Jason’s argument. I wasn’t responding to you so I don’t understand why you comment or what point you are arguing.
However, just to take you up on a few of you’re claims:
1: Trusting that our experience is reliable until we have evidence otherwise. Well you are very lucky if you can get through life successfully that way. The human brain is an amazing but very capricious thing. Most of suffer continually from the problems presented to us by self awareness. Delusional self talk is almost ubiquitous. And negative self talk would probably lead to a high proportion of us committing suicide very early on if we automatically accepted it. We get by by refusing to accept that experience, recognizing it for what it is (just a thought) or countering it with positive self talk – another delusion.
Madeleine’s experience is, as she admits, internal. Experiencing the presence of another being , divine or otherwise, is a common delusional experience. I have certainly experienced it and I think most people have. It has been studied scientifically and replicated in the lab.
In fact as a mental phenomenon it is probably understood a lot better than visions of cable cars appearing through brick walls.
2: “So where is your proof for the non – existence of God.” That’s a strange comment, Matt. Especially as I have said quite often that i believe gods do exist – in the minds of people. That makes these beliefs an important area of investigation, psychologically, anthropologically, sociologically. It’s actually a very active and fruitful area of investigation these days.
If you talk about objective existence it’s a very dishonest question because it is based on a default position that a claim, no matter how vague, must be accepted until proven otherwise. Clearly dishonest as I could demand of you acceptance of the craziest ideas which you can’t refute precisely because they are crazy and unstructured.
No one has ever advanced a structured god hypothesis. Probably extremely good reasons for this if we look at the reasons why people have these beliefs. And those vague beliefs are so numerous one would not know where to start, anyway. So there there is nothing to disprove.
Matt, I know you will claim that there is a structured god hypothesis. But whenever you have done this before it has been just that – a claim. No evidence, no description, no structure. Nothing to disprove.
That’s the nature of the fraud.
3: Of course you will dismiss everything I say as delusional nonsense. I don’t expect otherwise. That’s part if your confirmation bias. It’s also quite normal for theological “logic.”
Ken, you don’t have to be saying something in response to me to esthablish my point.
But I will note that your comments again show your propensity to contradict oneself. You start by saying ” Trusting that our experience is reliable until we have evidence otherwise. Well you are very lucky if you can get through life successfully that way. ”
but then you say
“3: Of course you will dismiss everything I say as delusional nonsense. I don’t expect otherwise. That’s part if your confirmation bias. It’s also quite normal for theological “logic.”
In the first statement you suggest we should not trust our senses, which means the default position to assume we are delusional. In the second, it you suggest to adopt this default position is “confirmation bias”.
Like I have said Ken contradictory assertions don’t count for much.
Kenny mate, you have really contradicted yourself aye. What Matt said bro, ‘contradictory assertions don’t count for much’. Still though, gotta hand it to you for trying to fight in a losing battle. Nobody can beat Matt aye haha jokes mate, ka pai to you
Matt, another example of theological “logic.” It’s a way of avoiding sensible discussion but does not respond to my serious points and does nothing to support your positions.
Quite childish.
Bro how’s it childish? Honestly Kenny what are you on about
“Madeleine’s experience is, as she admits, internal. Experiencing the presence of another being , divine or otherwise, is a common delusional experience. I have certainly experienced it and I think most people have. It has been studied scientifically and replicated in the lab.”
Ken you are being dishonest and arrogant again, and we have previously had this discussion although you never answered my criticism.
The fact that we can artificially induce human responses in the lab is utterly irelevant to whether or not the external factors that normally induce those responses are real or not.
As previously mention the pain i felt when my father died, the joy at the birth of my son, these were both real but can both be artificially induced in the lab, but my Father is dead and my son is alive.
The fact that Madeleines experience of the divine can be replicated in the lab says absolutely nothing about the reality of that experience or of the reality of God.
Infact i am perturbed that you raise the subject at all, after all, all human experience, physical, emotional, spiritual must have biological components.What do you think processes those experiences? I dont know of anyone who would suggest that emotional or spiritual experience is divorced from the body.
The fact that Madeleine experience God internally is also irelevant, the emotional pain and joy i have experienced through my life has also been internal, are you going to tell me they were delusions?
Labelling Madeleines experience a delusion says more about you than about anything else.
Jeremy, name calling and pretense at anger are just methods of manipulation. I recognise these easily and they are not worth responding to – especially when there is no sense or argument in them.
“Jeremy, name calling and pretense at anger are just methods of manipulation.”
Ken, I’m going to store this away for a rainy day.
Hey Glenno, I’ll catch up with you on that rainy day. Maybe is will be somewhere along George Street?
@ Ken, i didnt indulge in name calling or pretense at anger, i said you were dishonest and arrogant. These are adjectives ie describing words, not nouns.
Dishonest because you were repeating points previously answered but which answers you wouldnt or couldnt respond to.
Arrogant because you presume to label anothers experience a delusion for entirely invalid reasons.
Pretense at anger– i dont think so–although the entirely internal response i am experiencing may be delusional , would that make you unreal?
Actual anger–more like irritation.
You could of course address my point with respect to artificially induced biological response, but only if you are a real person.
Jeremy you’re not saying that Ken’s not a person, are you bro?
Ken- I’m real interested about knowing more of your experience. Is there a site or something where I can read about it? (Just to save you typing it all up here aye). Shot bro
silio – you can follow up any of the commenters here who have their own blog by simply clicking on their name.
Soleh Ken I’ve just read your article on Open Parachute. You say, “Have you ever seen a miracle or had a supernatural experience? I have. But I don’t believe in miracles or the supernatural.”
You also say, “I don’t believe it really happened. Maybe it was just my tired young mind trying to make sense of the cable car experience. Most people would see that as the best explanation. But if my family environment had been religious I may have seen a bearded man in a white robe appearing through the wall. Religious people may then have interpreted that as a miracle!”
If I was to loosely use the theory of syllogisms in your case I could say this bro:
1)I am in a religious Christian family environment
2)I had a supernatural experience, involving a wall
~Therefore, I saw a bearded man in a robe come through the wall
Homai te haere mai, bro that should mean your premises would be:
1)I am brought up in a cable car family environment
2)I had a supernatural experience involving a wall
~Therefore I saw a cable car come through the wall
Your comments on your website are too rax and I don’t agree with it aye. Just cause you had an experience doesn’t mean that you can judge what a religious person would experience. Can I judge that you bro? Can I assume that you were in a family environment that liked cable cars?
Also, how can you say you’ve seen a miracle or had a supernatural experience, but you don’t believe in miracles or the supernatural? Kātahi te kauhau maroke!
Ken are you unemployed just like matttagan is?
Silio – Can’t understand the relevance of your comments. However, you say:
“how can you say you’ve seen a miracle or had a supernatural experience, but you don’t believe in miracles or the supernatural? “
Well, I didn’t say a cable car had appeared through the wall – just that I saw it. I had that experience.
Although I have detailed this and Madeleine has refused to detail her experience, I am suggesting that we have possibly had similar experiences. I have also had experiences of “feeling a presence.”
If you look back over my comments I explain how this can happen and that such experiences are absolutely useless in making factual claims about external events and/or “miracles.” They are, of course, useful in investigating what goes on in our brain, though.
You say I can’t “judge what a religious person would experience.” True for all of us (and you guys certainly judge my experiences). But lets face it, Silo, Madeleine claims an experience, refuses to describe it but somehow it is used as evidence for the most unlikely beliefs.
Stupid, isn’t it?
Or completely irrelevant?
That;’s why I brought up my vision – ridicule is really the only way to approach such stupidity.
@Ken/Anonymous
I just looked over your ‘supernatural’ experience, and one of the things that struck me was that you don’t even believe in the supernatural?? So what if Madeleine doesn’t want to share her experience, everyone’s entitled to their privacy- that’s not stupidity. But you know what showcases stupidity? Your story…A cable car going through a wall…sounds like something from Harry Potter. Think about it. It’s a load of BS to be honest.
You said: “Well, I didn’t say a cable car had appeared through the wall – just that I saw it. I had that experience.” That makes no absolute sense at all. What’s the difference between saying something appeared through the wall and seeing something appear through the wall.
From what you’ve said, if my family environment had been sporty, I may have seen Jonah Lomu run through a wall.
Sorry to be a bit harsh there, but it’s the truth
“Supernatural” is of course not a useful word. But as for accepting things that are not normal or can’t yet be explained I have absolutely no problem. Scientists are used to that. In fact a parallel example to my cable car vision but occurring at the atomic level is well established in quantum tunneling – familiar to chemists.
So I don’t reject these sort if things out if hand as bull shit as you seem to be prepared to do.
It is not a matter of belief but of evidence, investigation and validation. Confirmation bias is the default position for humans and science needs to adopt more rigorous procedures.
Of course Madeleine is quite entitled to keep details of her experience secret. But why mention it at all. It has absolutely no value. I suspect in fact that the details might actually be counter productive to her claims.
As for your apparent claim that what we see us always reality I think you need to go away and do a bit if reading. Most people are quite aware that is not so.
Yes, people like to think they are objective, but when it comes to spiritual truth God says our natural minds are blinded and can’t perceive it. That is reflected in the fact that many don’t want God’s spiritual light, so will take the Bible’s statements out of context and twist them to mean something inconsistent with the Bible and God’s intent.
Atheists certainly could learn something from legal interpretation 101. In fact, some legal scholars and skeptics, when examining the evidence for Christ’s miracles, resurrection and character from a legal perspective concluded Christ was who He said He was, and that Christianity was based on solid evidence.
See the legal and historical evidence for the Bible that proves Jesus Christ did miracles and resurrected from the dead, revealing Him as God, at Historical Evidence for the Miracles and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There is a problem with your analogy. Sometimes the conflict between two statutes is real. The legislators who enacted each statute would expect the judge to reach a different decision in the case before him. The judge cannot decide the case both ways though so he must have some way to reconcile the conflicting intents of the legislators.
The biblical scholar is under no such obligation. He is under no obligation to reconcile the conflicts between Luke and John or Paul and James. He can acknowledge and accept the possibility that different biblical writers didn’t agree.
Vinny, that would depend on wether one is reading the text as a canon by a single divine author who speaks through human writings or wether one treats the text as a series of independent texts by fallible human authors.
If sceptics assume the latter stance, and then argue from it to the conclusion the bible is merely a human text and not divinely inspired there argument is circular. Moreover defeaters to Christian teaching based on such a hermenutic fail because they rely on a presupposition the Christian rejects.
I don’t think it is a hermeneutic that the Christian rejects, at least not one he rejects so far as every other combination of historical or theological writings that has ever been known to mankind goes. If the Christian were to read a collection of the Fathers of the Third Century, he would happily allow for the possibility that Tertullian and Origen had conflicting opinions on particular points of doctrine. If he were studying Roman history, he would not expect Suetonius and Tacitus to see eye to eye on every event. If he were investigating any other event in history and found that two eyewitnesses gave conflicting accounts, he would not insist upon artificially harmonizing them. He would be perfectly comfortable with the hypothesis that the witnesses disagreed about what happened and that one them, at least, might be wrong.
The difference between the skeptic and the Christian is that the skeptic applies a consistent hermeneutic whereas the Christian privileges one specific collection of writings with a presupposition that he applies nowhere else.
Vinny, two things,
First, its not inconsistent to apply a different hermeneutic to different documents if there is an important difference between them, I for example would interpret a phrase in a history book differently to a phrase in a poem, and so on.
If the bible as a whole has a single divine author then that makes it different from other books, and its quite appropriate to interpret it differently to the way one would interpret different books by different authors.
Second, I don’t think its true that skeptics are consistent and theists are not here. Skeptics for example do not accept for example the stories of unicorns as true but they do accept accounts of Socrates existing as true. The reason is because they believe Unicorns do not exist and people do, if a history is in other words a metaphysical belief which they hold to be correct, determines how they take what they read. The Christian and skeptics simply bring different presuppositions to the texts, its not that one is “biased” and the other “objective”.
Finally I think you fail to appreciate the problem with using this hermenutic to attack Christians who believe the bible is the word of God. The septic argues in effect: if you take the bible merely as a series of separate disconnected books by merely human authors it entails X Y Z and Z Y Z is absurd. The problem is nothing follows from this unless you already accept its merely the word of man.
An argument that for the claim that the bible is not the word of God which requires you to believe this as a premise before its sound, is clearly a bad argument
The belief that people exist and unicorns don’t is not a matter of presuppositions. It’s a matter of empirical evidence that is objective in the sense that is equally accessible to all. The belief that the Bible was written by a single divine author is based on the subjective religious experience of the believer.
Vinny, actually a little familarity with the skeptical problem of “other minds” shows the claim that other people exist is not a claim that can be empirically proven by evidence accesible to all. In fact by using the words “accessible to all” you shows you actually assume other people exist from the outset. So it is a presupposition of sorts.
Moreover, your answer shows that you approach the text with certain epistemological doctrines, that hold its only rational to accept something if its based on “empirical evidence” acessible to all, this is actually a debatable philosophical claim, not one gleaned from empirical or historical research. ( In fact I think the claim is demonstrably incoherent)
So the facade that Christians use presuppositions, whereas sceptics approach the text with none is just that, a facade.
Moreover, your response shows you actually accept certain philosophical claims about the validity of religious experience as a basis for your hermeneutic.
I think the difference between Christians and skeptics is that the former frequently do not pretend to have no presuppositions, skeptics have controversial philosophical presuppositions but try and deny it.
Are you saying that the existence of people and the non-existence of unicorns are controversial?
Vinny, no I am not saying that, ( though I have heard there are forms of hinduism which entail that that other people really do not exist because all distinctions between us and others are illusion)
The people still exist. It is their “otherness” that the Hindus do not recognize.
I do not dispute that skeptics have presuppositions, however, I doubt that Christians have any basis to label them controversial since they are by and large the same presuppositions that Christians bring to every writing other than their own and every religious belief other than their own.
Really? Really? I mean. Really? Sheesh.
I think TAM’s statement is unnecessarily combative right off the bat. But can I ask a similar question in a politer and more curious way?
Reading your responses, Matt, you seem to want to oppose the view that evidence is a necessary grounds for belief. Which is fine, and philosophically justifiable.
But I didn’t get the sense of whether you thought there was any empirical evidence for God. Or put another way, does God leave empirical traces? Or is he either absent from the domain of empiricism, or does he deliberately refute empirical investigation of God claims?
Vinny, you write “ The people still exist. It is their “otherness” that the Hindus do not recognize.” my understanding is that on this view everything is identitical with Brahma and Brahma is not a person, and so strictly speaking people do not exist.
But suppose I accept your claim, it would follow that the claim that other people exist is one that is not accepted by all regardless of their religion or lack of it.
”I do not dispute that skeptics have presuppositions, however, I doubt that Christians have any basis to label them controversial since they are by and large the same presuppositions that Christians bring to every writing other than their own and every religious belief other than their own.”
Not sure I agree, first the presuppositions about the impossibility of miracles that many critical scholars use would not be accepted by Christians, nor do Christians approach other texts assuming Miracles cannot occur, they might hold that say Zeus does not exist and so he can’t have done miracles, but that’s a different claim. Similarly the claim that God does not exist, God is not the author of scripture, that scripture is merely a human text, that we don’t know if God exists or inspired scripture and so on would be presuppositions the Christian does not accept.
Second, suppose sceptics proceed only on common presuppositions that Christians and sceptics share and utilise none that both don’t accept. It does not follow that this stance is neutral: because Christians may still think that there are other presuppositions which are relevant which sceptics do not accept, the skeptic proceeding as they do rejects this claim.
While I don’t deny that skeptics have presuppositions, I don’t think the term “presupposition” can be applied quite as broadly as you seem to wish. Specifically, if I say that I don’t know whether God exists or whether God wrote the scriptures, those are not presuppositions. They are not suppositions at all. They may simply be statements of my ignorance on the questions. On the other hand, they may be conclusions based on my careful analysis of the evidence.
I cannot speak for all skeptics, but my problem is not that I presuppose that miracles cannot happen. My problem is that I have no logical tools by which I might determine that a miracle took place. The reason I think that fingerprints on a gun point to the identity of a murderer is I think I understand the natural processes by which patterns from human fingers get transferred to inanimate objects and, just as importantly, I think that those natural process are unvarying. If I thought that those patterns just appeared randomly or if I thought they appeared by divine fiat, I couldn’t say that fingerprints constituted evidence of anything.
Unfortunately, miracles are not subject to natural laws or natural processes. I don’t know of any physical effects that a miracle is likely to produce that would enable me to determine that a supernatural explanation is more likely than a natural one for any particular piece of evidence. It is not so much that I presuppose a natural explanation as it is that the logical process of drawing inferences from evidence presupposes the uniformity of natural law.
Vinny I agree that presuppositions is not really the correct word, I was only using it because that was the term we had started using.
Poop.
“It is not so much that I presuppose a natural explanation as it is that the logical process of drawing inferences from evidence presupposes the uniformity of natural law.”
So do people who believe in miracles, if it didnt at least appear to contradict the iniformity of natural law it wouldny be a miracle.