Saturday, June 08, 2013

Science and Religion...

Yet another post inspired by a recent Unbelievable podcast, I really must think for myself some day... 

Anyway, these thoughts spring from the show on "Can the Bible be retold as science?" featuring a discussion between Russell Stannard (Christian and Physicist) and Steve Jones (Atheist and Geneticist). Jones has recently published a book saying that the bible is really an early attempt to explain the world in a kind of semi-scientific manner, and the show discussed this. The fact that most of the bible clearly isn't anything like this at all didn't really come into the conversation.

This was one of the rare shows on Unbelievable where the usually impartial host Justin Brierley clearly picked a side to be on. Obviously, we know he's a Christian, but here he definitely sided with Stannard more than he usually does in such debates.

But anyway, the discussion eventually landed on the 'non-overlapping magisteria' theme. Brierley and Stannard were quite emphatic that there were some questions that science cannot answer, but religion can. Jones appeared to grudgingly agree with them. But they never got into the meat of how this actually happens. The whole discussion was expressed in terms of 'science' does this, and 'religion' does that, without actually asking the important question of how either of them answer anything.

The 'scientific method' is well established and basically goes like this:
  1. Propose hypotheses
  2. Carry out tests or observations to either confirm or refute hypotheses
  3. Discount refuted hypotheses, perhaps modify unrefuted hypotheses
  4. Repeat 2 and 3 until hypothesis is confirmed by a reasonable amount of testing and is not refuted.
  5. Always be willing to let new evidence refute an 'established' theory...
In this way, science establishes 'facts' and increases our knowledge of the universe.

But what about religion? What is the 'religious method'?

There is a science vs religion flowchart that you've probably seen that caricatures religion is basically being a set of ideas that are unchangable, irrespective of how much contradictory evidence there is. That is simplistic and in many cases outright wrong. But the question remains, how does religion answer the questions of life?

In listening to the Unbelievable podcast, I couldn't help but think that most of the time when the folk were talking about 'religion', what they actually meant was 'theology', but even then that didn't help me in my line of thinking; how does theology answer the questions of life?

On reflection, I think there are three basic methods which 'religion' uses to establish truth:
  1. Observation, hypothesis testing, etc. - that is, basically something like the scientific method.
  2. Philosophical deduction, often linked with meditation on holy texts or traditional thought.
  3. Revelation.
Of course, in religious thinking, revelation trumps philosophical deduction, which in turn trumps the scientific method. In other words, any 'facts' established by revelation are considered to be outwith the realm of scientific enquiry, and no amount of contradictory evidence can ever refute them.

To the scientific mind, of course, this line of reasoning is nonsense. If an established 'fact' can be refuted (beyond reasonable doubt), then we should dispense with it, irrespective of how the fact was established in the first place. Indeed, if the evidence refutes the 'fact', then this leads the scientific mind to question the validity of the method that established it in the first place. So not only is the 'fact' dismissed but the process of revelation is also given less weight, or is dismissed altogether. 

On thinking through these issues I have come to realise that pretty much everything asserted by religion (well, I'm thinking specifically of Christianity here, but presumably this goes for all the other religions that I don't know as much about) eventually can be traced back to some claim of 'revelation' or 'inspiration'. It may be revelation to someone a long time ago, which was then written down, which then became scripture, which was then meditated upon, which was then interpreted, which then became doctrine, and so on, but at the end of the day, if you follow the chain of thought back, somewhere we end up with inspiration or revelation, however implicit this is.

So, once we strip all the layers away, what religion is left with is claims of revelation. Within any given religious group, these may be taken as authoritative, but viewed from the outside, these are almost certain to be taken as worthless, irrespective of whether the outside observer is an atheist or a theist of another flavour. Indeed, even within a religion, say Christianity, large groups of adherents would consider certain claims of revelation or inspiration made by other groups to be worthless.

For example, the church I grew up in was very skeptical of the 'gift of tongues', so any message received by someone through the 'gift of interpretation of tongues' on hearing a 'message' delivered in an unknown language would have been completely dismissed by them. This revelation pathway would not be accepted as valid. Indeed, for the church I grew up in, the only valid revelation pathway is the existing bible. They firmly believed that God has nothing new to say that hasn't already been said in the bible or through Jesus. But other parts of the church don't hold to this kind of belief and the revelation pathway remains open.

But if an 'inspired revelation' today is not possible, then why should a similar revelation 2000 years ago be any more valid? We actually know less about the historical revelation pathway than we do about the modern one. In modern times we can find out about the person 'receiving' the inspiration, we can assess their trustworthiness, etc. Going back to biblical times, in many instances we don't know who the people were or anything about their trustworthiness, and we really don't know how faithful the transmission of the information was from the moment it was first 'received' (or conceived) until it was recorded in written form in the bible. To be honest, there are even questions about the accuracy of the written transmission in some instances.

Basically it boils down to this: how can you validate a revelation? And I think the answer has to be, unless it happens to you, you can't. (And even if it does happen to you there may be room for doubt.)

So what we find is that science has a tried and tested and justifiable method for establishing facts about the universe, while religion doesn't.




23 comments:

Vain Saints said...

It is truly unbelievable that someone who earnestly used to profess a religious faith is making basic mistakes like this. The state of religious education is either utterly appalling--and thus inadequately preparing the faithful even for challenges that are easily answered--or something else is going on.

Theology has the same basic methods as any intellectual discipline does. Science is a special case of these methods that apply inductive reasoning to discern patterns in the natural world. That's it.

To privilege science in this way as the only reliable source of knowledge is to say that all knowledge consists of an endless proliferation of patterns discerned in the natural world.

Science is unsuited to answer basic questions that are ubiquitous in human experience, such as:

What job should I take?
Who are my friends?
Whom should I marry?
Is this course of action right?
Should I continue reading this book?

And so on. Critical thinking, broadly defined, can be applied to help answer to any of the questions above. Science cannot.

Science fetishists constitute a very small proportion of the population for good reason, human existence tends to be dominated by social, economic, and aesthetic considerations. Some may get a kick out of exploring the natural world, but very few incorporate such exploration into the main business of their lives.

That is why New Atheism (as a doctrine) will never penetrate further than the margins of a small group of eccentric science wonks. New Atheism is held most broadly (though still marginally) as a dismissive and unexamined attitude towards religion. Unexamined dismissal is ultimately what the New Atheists push under the pretext of critical rationality. (In this, they are consistent. If you are an atheists and you think you can build a better world by lying and using bad arguments, then there's really no reason not to lie and use bad arguments.) And I mention New Atheism because the utterly bogus dichotomy between science and everything else, and the utterly tendentious depiction of what religion is, is straight out of their playbook. It is nothing like what anyone would write who ever considered believing.

Ricky Carvel said...

Well, lets say at the start that I don't consider myself a 'new atheist'. I'm not even comfortable being labeled an 'atheist'. I suppose I'm a disillusioned Christian who has finally realised that there is no good reason for believing most of the things I was raised to believe. I don't not believe in God, but I now don't think there is sufficient reason or evidence to believe that Jesus was in any way the son of God, if there even is a God.

So, on to the question. I don't idolise science as the only way to real knowledge, as many atheists appear to. But, when it comes to figuring out how the world works, I do believe it is the best method we have.

Other things in life, such as the example questions you give, are generally best answered by weighting up the odds. What job should I take? Weigh up the evidence, what do I want, what has the best salary, is it likely to be too stressful, would I have to move house, etc.? Then weigh up the evidence and make a decision.

I probably wouldn't choose a job to do on the basis of a dream, had by someone I don't know and recorded in a book hundreds of years ago.

I'm not a 'science fetishist' its just that this particular post was in response to a question about science vs religion, so I responded in that way of thinking.

"Theology has the same basic methods as any intellectual discipline does. Science is a special case of these methods that apply inductive reasoning to discern patterns in the natural world. That's it."

Well, the second half of that is basically true. As for the claim that Theology has the same basic methods? True, it does. It uses logic and reasoning to deduce answers, based on its foundational assumptions. What I don't see is any questioning of those assumptions. Science does this, and sometimes discovers that the foundations are flawed. Theology is only as good as its foundations.

Vain Saints said...

"[I]n religious thinking, revelation trumps philosophical deduction"

Similarly in scientific thinking. The philosophical deduction that women had less teeth than men was trumped by the observation that they did not. Science deals with natural laws governing natural events that are bound to those laws. Revelation deals with observable events that are not bound by laws but by supernatural moral agency. And in between science and revelation there is a massive expanse of contingency wherein lies 99% of the truth of the observable world. (i.e. the fact that nitrogen just happens to dominate the Earth's atmosphere, that the Sun is as massive as it is, no more, no less, etc.) Science can be of use in determining these facts but it can't explain them.

"In other words, any 'facts' established by revelation are considered to be outwith the realm of scientific enquiry, and no amount of contradictory evidence can ever refute them."


You are confusing religion here with fideism.

Why then, did I come to Christianity from a secular background? Why have millions done the same? Something convinced them of its truth. If the only support for Christianity (or Islam) were claims that could not be investigated, no one would convert.

It's one thing to say that the evidence does not convince you. It's quite another to say that religious claims are by nature outside scrutiny. That just ain't so.

What we have with the Epistles, for instance, is dozens of Christian communities popping up over a span of thousands of miles, from Spain to Turkey each with a basic familiarity of the basic Christian narrative, that Christ rose from the dead and was vindicated as God, all within 20 years.

This strictly indicates that there was an event in the history of the Church that motivated the Original Apostles to preach this very doctrine aggressively, decisively, and consistently everywhere they went.

The question then becomes: what was this event? Immediately, the possibility arises that the event could well have been that very resurrection, mainly because all other possibilities seem equally extraordinary:

1. An organized fraud undertaken on the part of the Apostles.

2. A premeditated fraud committed upon the Apostles themselves.

That's it. The consistency of the doctrines as they were disseminated throughout thousands of miles across scores of cultures rules out the possibility of organic legend-building. With legend building, there would have been far more variation, the variation would have reflected the various belief systems of the various Christian populations, and it would have taken longer, not to mention the fact that Paul would have mentioned something about it.

Whether you believe this argument to be sufficient is not the issue. The issue is that it is an entirely rational argument that does not assume the doctrines of revelation to be true, but to which these claims are themselves subjected to judge their authenticity. And there are many more arguments like it.

Ricky Carvel said...

Why then, did I come to Christianity from a secular background? Why have millions done the same? Something convinced them of its truth. If the only support for Christianity (or Islam) were claims that could not be investigated, no one would convert.

Good point. And if there was only one way traffic from secularism to Christianity, then I would probably be convinced of the value of the claims of Christianity. But the fact is that Christians abandon Christianity, some become Muslim, some become secular, some become Buddhists, etc. Meanwhile there are others going the opposite way.

The same evidence that helps convince an atheist to become a Christian may also be a factor in the deconversion of a Christian on their way to atheism.

I understand that you believe the case for Christianity to be compelling, because that's the belief structure that you hold to. We are all very good at finding ways to justify our own beliefs.

Anyway, I have a lot more to say on this issue, but no time to write it now. I'll write more later (probably tomorrow). For now, you might want to have a look at my post from about a year ago on "The Will to Believe" which is relevant here.

Ricky Carvel said...

Bigger response, Part 1:

ME: "In religious thinking, revelation trumps philosophical deduction"

VS: "Similarly in scientific thinking."

Erm, no. As you go on to say, in scientific thinking it is observation that trumps deduction, not revelation. Observation is generally independent of the observer and can often be repeated by other people, in other places and times. Meanwhile revelation is generally a unique, unrepeatable experience which occurs to one person only (or a small number) in one place at one time. Revelation cannot be tested by repeating the same 'experiment' in a way observation can. If you make an observation of something, I can attempt to confirm or refute that by repeating the set of circumstances that led to your observation. If you have a revelation, there is no way I can confirm or refute it.

ME: "In other words, any 'facts' established by revelation are considered to be outwith the realm of scientific enquiry, and no amount of contradictory evidence can ever refute them."

VS: "You are confusing religion here with fideism."

I don't think I am. All religions make a whole host of unverifiable claims which eventually can be traced back to a claim of revelation or a claim that the writing is in some way 'inspired'.

VS: "Why then, did I come to Christianity from a secular background?"

No idea. Please tell your story. :-)

VS: "It's one thing to say that the evidence does not convince you. It's quite another to say that religious claims are by nature outside scrutiny. That just ain't so."

I never said that. I said claims established by revelation were frequently held to be outside scrutiny. I also said that religion uses deduction and observation as well, and those claims can be subjected to scrutiny.

But take the story of Jesus walking on the water. This is basically a revelation claim. It can't be scrutinised scientifically (except insofar as we know this is impossible for a human being), or analysed by logic and deduction. Either you take it on faith or you don't.

Ricky Carvel said...

Part 2:

VS: "What we have with the Epistles, for instance, is dozens of Christian communities popping up over a span of thousands of miles, from Spain to Turkey each with a basic familiarity of the basic Christian narrative, that Christ rose from the dead and was vindicated as God, all within 20 years."

You've been listening to too many apologists! None of that has been demonstrated as historically probable.

The very first evidence we have of the Epistles of Paul is in the early 2nd century when Marcion (or Marcionites) compiled their canon. In it were 10 epistles, apparently written by Paul, to seven (not 'dozens') named churches (Corinth, Phillipi, Thessalonika, Galatia, Laodacea, Collosae, Rome). We know, from late 2nd century documents, that the content of Marcion's epistles was shorter than that of the 'orthodox' versions of the same letters, for which we have no manuscript evidence before the very end of the 2nd century, and which do not appear to have been un use by 'orthodox' churches until after the time of Justin Martyr.

There is a very good case to be made that the epistles we have are 'catholic' rewrites of the Marcionite originals. And even those scholars who don't follow this line of reasoning have good reasons for believing that a single author did not write more than half of the epistles attributed to Paul. You can't base any case on what Paul 'would have mentioned', when half (at least) of his writing were not written by him.

Secular Roman history has no record of Christians (other than two disputed passages in Josephus) before the 2nd century. The blanket coverage of the Mediterranean with churches before the destruction of the temple in 70AD appears to be a Christian myth. There is no evidence to support it.

So now, with that in mind, we come to your hypotheses:

"1. An organized fraud undertaken on the part of the Apostles."
"2. A premeditated fraud committed upon the Apostles themselves."


Neither of these needs to be considered if we realise that the church seems to largely come into existence a generation or two after the time of the alleged resurrection of Jesus. The stories about the apostles are part of the same collection of stories as those about Jesus. These were all historical events and characters to the earliest Christians we know anything about.

The stories cannot be reliably traced back to a first generation of apostles. Indeed, we cannot demonstrate that there ever was a first generation of apostles. Everything we know for sure about the early church comes out of the mid second century, more than a century after the alleged resurrection of Jesus.

VS: "Whether you believe this argument to be sufficient is not the issue. The issue is that it is an entirely rational argument that does not assume the doctrines of revelation to be true, but to which these claims are themselves subjected to judge their authenticity."

Indeed, it does not assume the doctrines of revelation to be true, but it does assume calculation of very early dating of documents to be true, it assumes faithful transmission of those documents with no redaction, and it assumes the basic truth of the traditional history of the early church.

I'm not saying any of these assumptions are categorically wrong. All I'm saying is that there simply is not enough strong evidence to believe them or to base your life on them. They might be true. But 'might' is not strong enough for me.

Vain Saints said...

"Revelation cannot be tested by repeating the same 'experiment' in a way observation can."

And this is the most severe *limitation* of science, not its greatest credit.

I make the point frequently that Science demonstrates *patterns* in the universe, *not* the Universe itself. You can hypothetically exhaust science and all you'll get is all the predictable reactions in the Universe.

A pattern in the universe is validated by virtue of repetition, simply because if it weren't, repeatable, it wouldn't be a pattern. Thus, scientific reasoning (though useful) systematically excludes specific events and specific things from consideration. This does not mean that specific things and events do not exist.

The position that Everything in the Universe can be explained in terms of these predictable reactions (once you start with the proper initial conditions) is a *massive* leap of faith that flies in the face of experience and is outside any reasonable scientific perspective. It confuses the ordering principle from the existence principle, and those are ontologically distinct and irreducible. Consider an Oriental Rug designed with all sorts of nice patterns, you can never get from the pattern to the rug itself. You can make the pattern out of the rug, but not the rug from the pattern. You need the material first

Vain Saints said...

I'm sorry, but part 2 of your response is factually inaccurate insofar as any statement regarding history can be factually inaccurate.

There is very little that can be said if you don't take the dating of Biblical Scholarship into account. From Habermas to N.T. Wright, to Ehrman and beyond, the dating of the Epistles of Paul to withing 30 years of the Crucifixion is as established as a historical fact can be.

(Of course, it can't be "scientifically repeated" but see my first response. No pure fact can be scientifically repeated. The only things that can are patterns, whereas actual events are unique of themselves.)

Now, if you systematically reject all evidence that points in favor of the Resurrection being true and systematically choose to interpret historical data in such a way as is most conducive to skeptical conclusions, even when these interpretations are on the outermost fringes of scholarly opinion, then the discussion ends, because it will be evident that you have chosen skepticism and are more than willing to interpret the data to suit your choice. Just don't call this rational skepticism based on a paucity of data. Call it a position of faith from which you read the data.

(And of course, ultimately it is faith that guides how we read data; so unless a position is wildly untenable, the entire argument from insufficient evidence collapses rather quickly.)

Vain Saints said...

"The stories cannot be reliably traced back to a first generation of apostles. Indeed, we cannot demonstrate that there ever was a first generation of apostles."

Again, my friend, you are reading too much of the less conscientious variety of skeptical propaganda. These positions aren't even on the fringes of Bible Scholarship (Historical, Ecclesiastical, or even Skeptical). For some of the more outlandish claims, I doubt there is a single biblical scholar of any note (not some Community College Grad Student Crank, and probably not even they) who adhere to it.

If you're going to argue that Christianity isn't supported by facts, you have to at least get your facts straight.

Ricky Carvel said...

"Again, my friend, you are reading too much of the less conscientious variety of skeptical propaganda. These positions aren't even on the fringes of Bible Scholarship (Historical, Ecclesiastical, or even Skeptical). For some of the more outlandish claims, I doubt there is a single biblical scholar of any note (not some Community College Grad Student Crank, and probably not even they) who adhere to it.

If you're going to argue that Christianity isn't supported by facts, you have to at least get your facts straight."


One of the main problems with biblical scholarship is that the vast majority of people who get into it start off as Christian believers of some flavour. So even before they begin their studies they have a massive bias in favour of certain interpretations of the data (e.g. that Jesus actually is/was the Son of God, or that the writings of Paul are early and inspired). While a subset of these scholars do lose their faith along the way, the majority still support the basic orthodox belief structure. And these believers get to the top of their professions and have the control of who to hire for positions in their departments. Thus scholars who come to hold to 'heretical' positions can't actually get teaching positions or publish articles in 'peer reviewed' journals.

So given that the field has a massive (and obvious) selection bias, it is fallacious to use the excuse that [whichever critical scholar] isn't accepted by the majority, therefore their views and reasoning should be discounted.

Having said all that, which 'facts' have I not got straight? There simply are no data that prove the existence of pre-Marcionite 'Pauline' epistles.

Ricky Carvel said...

And regarding the 'observation vs. revelation' part of the discussion, I don't think (or claim) that science can reliably provide the answer to everything. As you say, science is limited to only being able to test the repeatable aspects of the universe. This is a limitation.

But the problem is we have no other method for testing and confirming the unrepeatable aspects of the universe.

The issue here is not that the scientific method has limitations in its validity, but rather that it cannot be demonstrated that revelation as a pathway to knowledge has any validity at all.

I accept that science can't answer everything. But what i am questioning is whether revelation can reliably answer anything?

Ricky Carvel said...

"the dating of the Epistles of Paul to withing 30 years of the Crucifixion is as established as a historical fact can be."

Nope. There are some historical facts which can be established with huge certainty. But the further back in history you go, and the fewer bits of reliable data you have to work with, the less certain a historical conclusion can be.

I agree that some of the data of the epistles can be interpreted to place them in that period of history, but this interpretation has not been proven 'beyond reasonable doubt' and so can't be treated as an 'established historical fact'.

Even given my comments above about the selection bias in Biblical studies, there is a surprisingly large proportion of scholars who hold that at least half of the epistles attributed to Paul are pseudopigrapha (or 'forgeries' as Bart Ehrman would have it). And some of them have compelling cases for discounting some of the 'authentic' ones as forgeries too. Beyond that, textual criticism has revealed that there has been considerable redaction of the epistles and the versions we have are considerably 'edited' compared to the (now lost) original versions. And many of the epistles contain clear anti-Marcionite material, which suggests that some parts of the epistles (at least) are 2nd century compositions.

So which bits of the epistles date to within 30 years of the crucifixion? Its certainly not all of all of them.

Vain Saints said...

"One of the main problems with biblical scholarship is that the vast majority of people who get into it start off as Christian believers of some flavour. So even before they begin their studies they have a massive bias in favour of certain interpretations of the data."

Of course. If you discount an entire field of scholarship as biased when that field does not give you the positions you want, then you can conclude falsity simply by assuming/explaining away all evidence of truth and exaggerating all evidence of falsity. This makes sense in the context of anti-Christian polemic, and you would be my guest to portray your blog as a collection of anti-Christian and anti-religious polemics, and not as statements of reasonable doubt.

This is not to say that reasonable doubts don't exist, but people grappling with doubt don't just blithely dismiss legitimate evidence when they come across it and dismiss the strongest arguments for belief in ways that are unjustifiable.

For instance, take this position:


But the problem is we have no other method for testing and confirming the unrepeatable aspects of the universe.

"The issue here is not that the scientific method has limitations in its validity, but rather that it cannot be demonstrated that revelation as a pathway to knowledge has any validity at all."

This is a highly radical claim. It is basically stating that repeatable patterns are the only things that we can know about the universe: that all knowledge is predictive.

The only predictive knowledge is that which we completely understand, which is why science has to be done under carefully controlled conditions to test specific hypotheses.

If such a claim were accurate, we could doubt the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte and Joan of Arc, as well as the 99.99% of things we "know" that are not predictive.

Ehrman himself dates the most reliable Epistles of Paul according to historical consensus. He is just suspicious of certain Epistles, but for Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and several others, he abides by the overwhelming consensus. If you are going to set a standard of knowledge that would necessitate
my not believing in Joan of Arc as well as the Apostles, I should say fine and go on acknowledging both, and hope that you would be consistent enough to deny both, that is, unless this blog is pretty much what it seems to be, a series of anti-religious polemics that confuses itself for expressions of reasonable doubt. It would mean that I was on to something in my first comment when I wondered if something else wasn't going on.

Ricky Carvel said...

"Of course. If you discount an entire field of scholarship as biased when that field does not give you the positions you want, then you can conclude falsity simply by assuming/explaining away all evidence of truth and exaggerating all evidence of falsity. This makes sense in the context of anti-Christian polemic, and you would be my guest to portray your blog as a collection of anti-Christian and anti-religious polemics, and not as statements of reasonable doubt."

Just because the majority of a field is biased, doesn't mean that the whole field should be discounted.

But it does mean that 'minority' and 'fringe' opinions which challenge the opinion of the minority shouldn't be discounted on the basis of a head count. The anti-majority arguments must be challenged on the basis of evidence and reason.

This blog didn't start out as anti-Christian or anti-religious polemics. When I started here, I was a believer who honestly believed that I could work through some of the apparent contradictions and come out the other side with a clearer understanding and a greater faith. As you can tell, that hasn't exactly worked. The more I explored, the more I found that Christian 'facts' were based on some very shaky interpretations of very vague data, and that a lot of doctrine is based on some very doubtful reasoning and evidence.

I've read the NT Wrights of this world as well as the Richard Carriers, and have increasingly found that the Christian thinkers simply don't present evidence good enough to support their conclusions. Meanwhile the atheists basically make a simple case of 'there is not enough evidence to believe [whatever], so there is no good reason to believe it' which is often compelling. OK, so they don't necessarily offer an alternative, but that's not the point, in the end we all have to decide for ourselves what we choose to believe and how we choose to live.

Ricky Carvel said...

"This is a highly radical claim. It is basically stating that repeatable patterns are the only things that we can know about the universe: that all knowledge is predictive."

You're doing a great job of caricaturing my opinions and creating straw men to be knocked down. I don't say or believe any such thing. Here I was asking for any evidence that revelation is a reliable pathway to knowledge. You have provided no evidence, no reasons and no arguments in favour of your case. All you do is seek to attack misconstructions of my beliefs.

Please give me an example of revelation leading to some useful and independently verifiable knowledge.

As for Napoleon and Joan of Arc, again, you're creating straw men. I don't argue that there is no evidence for Napoleon. I don't even argue that there is no evidence for Jesus, I'm not a mythicist. But I don't think the data we have is sufficient to conclude that either Napoleon or Jesus rose from the dead.

Vain Saints said...

Well then, if you don't want to be misconstrued or made into a straw man, make your standards of evidence clear and apply them consistently.

There is nothing that I see in your standards for proof that would compel me to acknowledge, for instance, that Jesus even existed, yet you do acknowledge this. It's really not enough to say, "I've read N.T. Wright, but he doesn't convince me". I can say "I've read Isaac Newton, but he doesn't convince me." Anybody can be convinced that he is living in his own dream, as Chesterton said, because any proof given that he wasn't could also be given in a dream.

So you side with the consensus for the existence of Jesus, but against the consensus of the current dating of the epistles. Well then, what is the standard of proof that applies for the first that doesn't apply to the second?

This criticism can be applied to your blog in general. Repeatedly, skeptical books and arguments are treated as compelling and substantial, even when they are rather flawed and weak, and books and arguments in favor of faith are minimized, even if they are strong. You seem to have admitted indirectly that this blog has evolved into a serial anti-Christian polemic from a starting point of doubt expression. I will look into the archives to see if this point stands, but what you do seem to acknowledge is that this blog is now a medium through which positive atheism is promoted and Christianity is challenged, and that your position has evolved from doubt to a rather convinced skepticism.

It's fine to put up anti-Christian polemics, and I welcome the challenge. I only question the appropriateness of presenting a blog coming from a convinced atheist arguing for atheism as a blog about doubts. You seem to have precious few doubts about atheism.

Ricky Carvel said...

Dear Vain Saints,

What an incredibly black and white world you appear to live in. I say "I'm not a mythicist" and you immediately interpret that as I "side with the consensus for the existence of Jesus" - I didn't say that.

What you seem to be misunderstanding here is the difference between certainty and doubt. If you lose certainty in a belief, for example, that the resurrection was a historical event, that doesn't mean your belief suddenly switches to an absolute certainty that the event did not happen. My present position is that I don't think there is sufficient evidence to believe that the event happened. Therefore I'm not prepared to base major decisions in my life on the belief that it did. Given the available evidence, I think it is unlikely that the resurrection happened, but if more evidence becomes available I would have to revise my beliefs in the light of that evidence.

The same goes for whether there was a Jesus. As far as I can tell, the available evidence is sufficient to believe that he might have existed. Or, at least, that some of the stories in the gospels are based on the life of a historical character. So what? There are millions of historical characters whose existence or no-existence do not impact on my daily life one bit. Jesus might have existed, or he might not have. If he was just a regular guy, and not in any way divine, then his existence (or not) doesn't affect my life at all. So really, there is no practical point, for me, of investing the effort to believe that there was no Jesus. It makes no odds. So I'll go with the consensus.

But when it comes to things like the dating of the epistles, or the historical accuracy of the gospels, then those issues actually could impact in my life. If it can be shown that the epistles are authentic and early, and it can be shown that the gospels are eyewitness and accurate, then I'd have to take their claims seriously. So here it matters to me how the evidence stacks up, and it matters to me if good reasoning or sloppy thinking goes into the arguments. That is why I need to be more skeptical of apologist arguments for the early dating of documents, than for arguments for the existence of a human Jesus.

What is the standard of proof required? I actually don't know. All I know is that, even as a believer, I found the apologetics arguments weak and contrived.

Finally, Id like to state explicitly here something I've said elsewhere and you have either not read or have not believed.

I am not an atheist.

I suppose I have become an agnostic in the true sense of the word, as I simply do not know what to believe on many issues I sued to have certainty on. I may have shifted from belief to non-belief, but I certainly haven't shifted to anti-belief. There might be a god. As it stands I can't see sufficient evidence for believing anything specific about 'him', but I don't discount god as a possibility.

Vain Saints said...

You do realize that you do have to believe in something?

The problem with Christianity today is that in many cases it *looks like* what its critics claim it is, an inconsequential add-on, a feel-good Sunday Morning Movie.

There are no obvious life choices today that hinge on Christianity specifically with the exception of certain moral rules, such as divorce, promiscuity, and abortion. I wouldn't even count homosexuality amongst these issues, because the life choice of homosexual behavior is constricted to those with some homosexual inclination, who are overwhelmingly not Christian. For the rest of us, it's part of the Feel-Good Movie. The rest of us get to "take a stand" one way or another, i.e. to do nothing at all.

But Christianity (religion in general) is not like that, and that sort of Christianity deserves to die, and it will die, like the Episcopalians will die. Always, when Faith accommodates the World, the response is obvious: Why not just drop Faith and take the World?

You asked me why I moved from secularism to Christianity. The best answer would be thus: I learned simultaneously to love and hate the World. It was a series of flash epiphanies, combined with some Chesterton, and various others, and as a result I came to sympathize deeply with a central Christian paradox: that the ultimate virtue is to love something before it is loveable, to hate the world so much as to disown and it and yet to love it so much as to be willing to die for it.

We live in a Post-modern, secular consumerist, bureaucratic society that is almost designed (and in some cases explicitly designed) to take meaningful choices out of our hands. Christianity is a meaningful choice that condemns Post-modern secular consumerist bureaucracy as deeply anti-human, and the plight of the modern Christian is to make his belief meaningful when this belief consists in its very fibers of rejecting what seems to be (but really isn't) *everything* about standard modern life. To paraphrase: Night has come, and no one can work. But perhaps night has not come just yet.

Ricky Carvel said...

And another thing...

You ("Vain Saints") seem to be criticising my use of my blog. You seem to want to label it as "anti-Christian polemics", and you seem to want to do that because you think that if it is anti-Christian polemics, then it is addressed to you, and you will take up the 'challenge'. Sorry, that's not the point of my blog.

My blog is here for me to formulate my thoughts and write my opinions on various things to do with faith and belief. I like it when others (like you) challenge or question what I say, as it makes me rethink my opinions and presuppositions.

But what is really a waste of time is when someone offers 'criticism' of my opinions with no supporting evidence or reasoning. If you think I am wrong, please offer a case for why you think I am wrong. Merely saying that I am wrong achieves nothing.

Ricky Carvel said...

"You do realize that you do have to believe in something?"

Of course.

I believe in lots of things. Many of them I believe because they are consistent with observations, many I believe because they appear to work, no doubt many of the things I believe are my unquestioned 'default settings'. Much of my Christian belief fell into the latter camp until I actually scrutinised it and realised that maybe some of the unquestioned stuff should be questioned.

You have to believe something. But you don't have to believe anything or everything.

If there is a God, I want to believe in him. But if not, then there really is no value in believing in him. This is what I am wrestling with on this blog...

Vain Saints said...

This might be the reason why I can get "black and white" in my thinking. I have abandoned all (false) hope of justification through knowledge. I fully understand now that I will never know enough to overcome all semi-reasonable doubt. (And here is where I acquired my respect for Muslims and Islam. I don't know enough about Islam to truly reject it and I never will. I won't be on Earth long enough. They have their faith, I have mine, the post-moderns have theirs, et al. Let the Lord of the Earth do right.) I decided a while ago that there is a choice to be made. We can mull for awhile, but we are not on this earth for very long and we must eventually decide in a world where "convincing evidence" will forever elude *one way or the other*, on what principles and what hope we carry on in the course of our lives.

I have the word of a small group of fishermen long ago who said that they saw Earth Shattering extraordinary things happening. I'm sure that if I think hard enough about all the ways that word could be false, I could convince myself of a million avenues of corruption. But I have no real inclination to think of all the ways they could have lied. I truly believe the secular Bible scholars to be rather clownish. They have no hard evidence that the Gospel of does *not* somehow or other date back to Matthew, but rather little hard evidence that it does, so they say we must conclude that it didn't *as though it weren't known for millennia as the Gospel of Matthew! Now, there is precious little evidence that Matthew the Apostle did not write the next episode of Breaking Bad. In that sense, yes. It would be folly to have faith that Matthew wrote it in a scroll and it was discovered by the show's director. But this is not the case with the Gospel of Matthew, because it dates to the first century and, well, it's the *Gospel of Matthew* until someone gives convincing reasons that it isn't.

For God's sake, these people have declared that they saw a Man rise from the dead! That he conquered Death! That the sorrows of this world will end! I either believe them or I don't. And I see no reason to call them liars.

Ricky Carvel said...

"For God's sake, these people have declared that they saw a Man rise from the dead! That he conquered Death! That the sorrows of this world will end! I either believe them or I don't. And I see no reason to call them liars."

Ah, but there are reasons, even if you don't see them. I didn't used to see those reasons either. This blog is all about questioning whether or not the reasons are good enough.

Resurrection claims are not unique to Christianity. Salvation claims are not unique to Christianity. All the claims of all the world's religions cannot be simultaneously true. The majority of them must be false. It is possible that all of them could be false.

Is there really evidence that the stories told about Jesus are true, while similar stories told about the Buddha, or Mohammed, or Baal, or Attis, or Zeus, or Mithras, or Odin, or Krishna, or whoever are all false?

A very interesting look at this issue is in Chapter 8 of "The End of Christianity" which I reviewed last year. Here the author compares the apparent eyewitness testimony for the resurrection with the apparent eyewitness testimony for the Salem witch trials. Well educated, named, well documented people gave eyewitness testimony that the accused in Salem were actually witches and described, in detail, the magical things which they saw. And yet we don't believe their testimony today. The evidence of the gospels is considerably weaker, and yet you are happy to believe it without question?

Anyway, thanks for the brief biographical insight into your decision to follow Christ. I think I see where you're coming from and I can respect that choice. But I can't make the same choice myself. I've had over 20 years of giving more than 10% of my time, talents and money to the church, and I've come to realise that if this is the only life we get, and there is nothing beyond death, then more than 10% of my life is a very valuable thing and I really need to be sure I'm spending it wisely.

Of course the flipside of that is that if there is eternity ahead, then 10% of my 'four score years and ten' is a blip in the ocean. Hence the wrestling with the issues here.

Vain Saints said...

And my apologies for telling you how to run your blog. I can only say that to me, it really looked like the work of someone who didn't realize that he had become an atheist.

With regard to my lack of evidence, what can I say, but for that my pique initially started by what I considered to analysis on your part that seemed like the sort of thinking atheists are prone to that is highly skewed towards atheism, hence my first criticism.

I didn't give much evidence because neither of us are in position to do so. Can you read 1st Century Greek? Can you truly verify what Gary Habermas says when he dates the Passion Narrative to 35 AD because of a sequence of Greek text that implies claims that have been canonized? Do you truly know whose claims to historical consensus are accurate? All these things are knowable. It takes a specialist in the History of the New Testament to verify truly. The question that has to be asked and answered is: where does that leave the rest of us?


Again, it is my position that Knowledge Never Ends. The possibility of doubt will never be extinguished. Even reasonable doubts will always be present, but so will reasonable beliefs. Then it becomes a matter of reasonable reasonableness and that way, madness lies.

There is such a thing as active doubt and passive doubt. Passive doubt is inevitable. It is the voice in the back of your head that asks "Is this really true?" Could this really have happened. Active doubt is the process of giving oneself reasons not to believe. For something like the Resurrection, every one of us can give ourselves reasons not to believe to infinity. The question is, what are we believing while we are not believing the Resurrection? Because whatever that belief is, it can be doubted to infinity as well.

As with active and passive doubt, there is active and passive belief. In the Post-modern, bureaucratic world, so much is pre-determined in our lives from kindergarten onward that there is almost no breathing room for active belief of any kind, belief that motivates and leads to action and commitment. Whatever you believe, I would say, try to believe actively. Actively carry out the doctrine of atheism and see where it gets you. Actively live out the creed that we are all matter floating about in a sea of nothingness. Carry the cross of coincidence and randomness. The results therefrom are probably better than the best argument I can give for its absurdity.