Thursday, November 23, 2023

Why I Don't Believe in Jesus

My old friend Publius posted a comment (which he has apparently since deleted) on my earlier essay about why I don't believe in God, saying "the God which Jesus revealed to us is nothing like [the God of the Old Testament]."  Setting aside the fact that Jesus disagreed, I thought it would be worthwhile expanding specifically on why I don't believe in Jesus.

Jesus is certainly nowhere near as odious as the God of the Old Testament, which I will refer to here as YHWH.  A central pillar of mainstream Christian theology is that Jesus and YHWH are the same, modulo some weirdness having to do with the Trinity which I am not going to get into.  Among Christian denominations that I am familiar with (and that is a very long list) Jehovah's Witnesses are the only ones who deny that Jesus and YHWH are the same.  Frankly, I find their arguments compelling, but that is neither here nor there.  The mere fact that God would have left this crucial point open to argument that is one of the reasons I don't believe that Jesus was divine.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself.  Let me start at the beginning.

I grew up in the American South (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia), a child of secular Jews.  With the exception of one three-day period at the end of a YMCA summer camp when I was 12 (that's another story) I've been an atheist all of my life.  But I've also been steeped in Southern Baptism from the age of 5 until I moved to California at 24.  I have always wanted to try to understand why and how people maintain beliefs that to me are so obviously wrong.  Towards that end I've been studying Christianity and the Bible for over 40 years.  For four years I actually ran a Bible study, first at a local church, and then on-line when covid hit.  I am by no means a Biblical scholar, I do this strictly as a hobby.  But I think I know the Bible and Christianity better than the average bear.

I mention this because a lot of Christians are convinced that the only possible reason anyone could be a non-Christian is either ignorance or willful rejection of what they know in their heart of hearts to be true.  I'm writing this essay in part to bear witness to the fact that these people are wrong.  I am not ignorant, and I do not harbor a secret belief in God.  I have come to the conclusion that there are no deities -- indeed there is nothing at all supernatural in this world -- in good faith after long and diligent study.  I might be wrong.  If I am, then I really would like someone to persuade me, because I don't want to be wrong.  I want to know the truth.  But at this point I'm pretty sure I've heard every argument there is and none of them are convincing.

Let's start with the fact that Christianity is not a unified set of beliefs.  It's a real challenge to come up with even a single claim that all people who self-identify as Christian would agree on.  Even the idea that Jesus is God is denied by Jehovah's Witnesses.  These disagreements go all the way back to the dawn of Christianity.  Even Jesus and Paul had different theologies.  But once again I am getting ahead of myself.

In order to try to avoid getting lost in the theological weeds, I am going to critique a specific hypothesis, one which no Christian denomination espouses in its entirety, but which almost all would agree with at least to some extent, even the Witnesses.  That hypothesis is:  Jesus was a physical being who walked the earth in point of actual fact, like Mohammed or Julius Caesar, and unlike, say, Harry Potter or Albus Dumbledore.  The details are debatable, but there was something extraordinary about him.  He was somehow in communion with the supernatural.  He performed miracles, which is to say, things happened when he was around that could not be accounted for by the laws of physics.  He was executed, crucified, by the Roman authorities, but he rose from the dead, and his resurrection matters because it somehow redeemed our sins and gives us a shot at salvation in the afterlife.  Or something like that.  As you will see, the exact details don't really matter.  What matters is that Jesus was somehow special.

The central evidence advanced to support this hypothesis is the Bible, which was written by humans, but is somehow distinguished from other human writings by again being somehow in communion with the supernatural.  The Bible is "the Word of God" or "inspired by God" or has some property that sets it apart from, say, Beowulf or The Iliad.  The Bible may have mythological or metaphorical elements, but it is somehow in contact with actual metaphysical truth in ways that other works of human literature are not.

The authority of the Bible is generally accepted on faith, but there is actually an argument for it which goes something like this: the Bible was written over a period of many hundreds of years by dozens of different authors.  It nonetheless contains a unified message.  In particular, it contains the story of how we were created by God, how we fell from grace by disobeying Him, how we are now as a result separated from Him by sin, and how Jesus came to redeem those sins and reunite us with our creator.  The reason we can be confident that this is true is, among other things, the Bible contains prophecies which have since been fulfilled by verifiable events, which their authors could not possibly have known except through divine revelation.  And many of those prophecies were fulfilled by the life of Jesus as recounted in the Gospels, and we can have confidence in their accuracy because the Gospels were written by four independent eye witnesses: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  In addition we have written testimony from Paul of Tarsus who met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Taken at face value this argument seems rather compelling.  Jesus is better attested than many historical figures whose actual existence is taken for granted, like Socrates.  Like Jesus, Socrates left no writings of his own.  His life is attested entirely through the writings of witnesses like his student Plato.  And yet no one doubts that Socrates was real, so how could any rational person possibly deny Jesus?

The big difference between Socrates and Jesus, of course, is that Socrates didn't claim to be God.  He didn't perform miracles.  He didn't say that it was necessary to believe in him in order to avoid eternal torment in the afterlife.  So the claims made about Jesus are rather more extraordinary, and the stakes are considerably higher.  If we get the question of Socrates's existence wrong, it doesn't really matter; we're not going to suffer any serious consequences.  In the end it really doesn't much matter is Socrates was real or mythological, just as it doesn't really much matter whether William Shakespeare was a real person or not.  What matters are the ideas, not the man.  But in Jesus's case, it is very much the man that matters.  One of Jesus's core ideas is that belief in Jesus is the key to salvation.  So in Jesus's case it's really important that we get it right.

So with that in mind, let's take a closer look at the Bible.

The Bible is not a single book.  It is an anthology.  The exact number of works collected therein depends on how you count.  The Catholic Bible has 73.  The original King James Bible had 80, but modern versions pare that down to 66.  Whatever the number, the Bible can be divided cleanly into Old and New Testaments.  The former is written mostly in Hebrew with a little bit of Aramaic thrown in, while the latter is written entirely in Greek.  The former was written entirely before the birth of Jesus, while the latter was written entirely after his death.  Jews, Christians and Muslims all accept the Old Testament as gospel (with an asterisk in the case of Muslims) but only Christians and Muslims accept the New Testament.

It is generally agreed even among the religious that the Bible was written by humans.  Believers will of course say that these humans were inspired by God, but no one claims that the Bible was literally written by God Himself.  (By way of contrast, the authorship of the Quran is attributed literally to Allah, with the Prophet Mohammed PBUH being a mere stenographer taking word-for-word dictation directly from the archangel Gabriel.)  The authorship of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, is attributed by tradition to Moses, but it is almost certain that he did not write it, at least not all of it.  For one thing, the Torah contains an account of Moses's death and burial in some unknown place, which seems an unlikely thing for Moses to have written himself.  For another, the Torah contains accounts of things that happened long before Moses was born.

We can actually see pretty easily that the Torah is almost certainly the work of multiple authors.  We need look no further than the first two chapters of Genesis, and in particular, in the abrupt transition in narrative style and content that occurs between the third and fourth verses of chapter 2.  Ge2:3 wraps up one creation narrative, while Ge2:4 starts a new, radically different one written in a completely different style.  God is no longer referred to simply as "God" (Elohim) but rather as "the LORD God" (YHWH Elohim).  Apologists claim that the second story is just an amplification of the first, filling in some details that the first one omitted, but two creation narratives are not logically compatible with each other.  In the first one, animals are created before humans, and male and female humans are created together.  In the second, Adam (he doesn't even have a name in the first story) is created first, then the animals are created in an unsuccessful attempt to find suitable company for Adam, and finally Eve is created as the LORD God's final act of creation.

At best, it seems to me that God should have hired a better copy editor.

In any case, the point is that there is considerable doubt about who wrote the various parts of the Bible, and that makes it harder to assess the truth of the claim that the Bible is the Word of God.  What does that claim even mean?  It clearly cannot mean that God literally wrote the Bible.  At best, it means that God somehow guided the process of the Bible's creation over many centuries to make it credible.  But the details of that process have been lost in the mists of time.  We have no idea who wrote most of the Bible.  We have no idea who curated the works that comprise it.  We have no way to assess the credibility and qualifications of the people who did this work because for the most part we have no idea who they were.

This is a serious problem because even if God were real and even if he guided the production of the Bible, how can we be confident that some mistakes didn't sneak in somewhere along the line?  Consider, for example, Leviticus 20:13 and Numbers 15:32-35.  These passages say (or at least strongly imply) that homosexuality and working on the Sabbath should both be capital crimes.  Is that really the Will of God, or is it perhaps something that some unknown author living in a very different time and culture sincerely believed to be the Will of God, even though author was actually mistaken?  How can we possibly know without the ability to trace these ideas back to their roots?

The New Testament has many of the same problems.  It is more recent and so we know a lot more about its authorship than we do about the Old Testament, but there are still only 13 (out of 27) books whose author is named in the work.  All of those authorship claims are the same: the apostle Paul.  There is some dispute over whether some of Paul's works are forgeries, but that is neither here nor there.  What matters is that all of the rest of the New Testament is anonymous.  The Gospels in particular, despite being attributed by tradition to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are actually anonymous works.  And it's actually pretty clear that whoever wrote them, it was not the traditionally attributed authors.  The Gospels of Matthew and John, for example, refers to to their respective putative authors in the third person, which would be a little bit weird if Matthew and John were the authors.

Christians commonly argue that the Gospels are reliable because they are four independent eyewitness accounts of the events they recount, but this is not true.  They are neither independent nor eyewitness accounts.  Matthew and Luke clearly copied from Mark, and we have no idea whether or not they are eyewitness accounts because we have no idea who wrote them.  In fact, Luke specifically denies being an eyewitness, saying instead that he is writing "a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us" and not, say, "those things which I beheld while sojourning in Judea."  In this regard I am happy to take the author of Luke at his word and accept that the Gospel of Luke is an accurate record of those things which were "most surely believed among his peers."  That says absolutely nothing about whether or not those things are actually true.

The gospels are also not internally consistent.  Matthew and Luke, for example, present radically different genealogies tracing Jesus's descent from David.  I've heard apologists explain this by saying that they were skipping generations, but Matthew denies this, specifically citing the number of generations between three key events in his timeline so you can easily see that there cannot be any unaccounted-for gaps.  There are similar irreconcilable inconsistencies in the various accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb.

Apart from logical inconsistencies, there are also a lot of events described there that just seem mighty hinky to me.  For example, Matthew (27:50-53) says:

"Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.  And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."

There are three things that strike me as odd about this passage.  First, it is recorded nowhere except Matthew.  You would think that if zombies really walked the streets of Jerusalem and "appeared unto many" that someone besides the author of Matthew would have taken the trouble to write it down.  Second, Matthew writes that the bodies of the saints came out of the graves after "his (presumably Jesus's) resurrection", but at this point in the narrative Jesus had not yet been resurrected.  That's not going to happen for another three (or two depending on how you count) days.

But the third peculiarity dwarfs the other two.  Jesus's resurrection is supposed to be the deal-closer, the one miracle that proves definitively that he was in fact (the son of) God.  But if we take Matthew at his word, Jesus's resurrection was not a singular event at all!  Jerusalem was already lousy with formerly dead bodies walking around!  So what exactly is it that makes Jesus's resurrection special?  The whole thing just makes no sense to me on both historical and theological grounds.

Now, none of this proves anything.  One of the things I've learned over the years is that apologists have answers for everything.  But the overriding question for me has always been: why are apologetics even necessary?  If there is a coherent truth behind the story of Jesus, why did God not see to it that it got written down in a way that made it self-evident?

Of course, apologists have answers for everything, and so they have an answer for that too, and the answer (at least the one given by my Southern Baptist peers in my youth) is that God specifically does not want there to be definitive proof of His existence.  He wants you to have faith, to accept Him specifically without proof, even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.  Jesus makes this quite explicit in John 20:29:

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

According to Jesus, credulity is a virtue (which, BTW, is at odds with what YHWH said in Deuteronomy 18:21-22).  This idea is deeply ingrained in our society.  Being a "person of faith" is generally considered a good thing.

But there is a fundamental problem with faith: if you're going to have faith, you still have to somehow decide what to have faith in.  If you're going to have faith in a deity you still need to decide which deity.  If you're going to have faith in Jesus you have to decide which of the many different versions of Jesus you're going to follow.  And too you will ultimately have to decide how to translate your faith into action, into policy, at least for yourself, if not for others.  You need to decide, for example, whether it is a sin to be a homosexual or have an abortion or work on the sabbath or eat shellfish.

Faith is not a virtue.  It is an invitation to chaos.

For me, the arguments above are sufficient to at least cast reasonable doubt on Jesus's divinity.  But the clincher is what happens when you arrange the books of the New Testament in the order in which they were written.  The traditional ordering of the NT is not chronological.  Paul's writings are the earliest, and they were written 20-30 years after Jesus's death.  (Not a single word was written about Jesus while he was alive.)  Then comes the gospel of Mark, then Matthew, Luke and Acts, and finally the gospel of John.  (I'm going to set aside Revelation and the non-Pauline epistles here -- things are complicated enough already.)  I'm not going to get into the weeds of how scholars figured this out, but it's pretty obvious that Mark must have been written before Matthew and Luke because the latter contain passages copied from Mark, sometimes word-for-word.  But the historical order is not at all controversial.  Everyone agrees on this.

When you read the NT in chronological order, a very clear pattern emerges.  The earliest writings, Paul's, contain no mention at all of any details about Jesus's life.  There is nothing about Jesus being born in Bethlehem or living in Nazareth, no mention of Jesus performing miracles or even having a ministry.  In fact, Paul never once quotes anything Jesus said while he was alive!  Just about the only historical detail given by Paul is Jesus's trial before Pilate, and even that is in a book whose authorship is disputed and is probably a forgery.

It is not until Mark, written several decades after Jesus died, that you get the first narrative of Jesus's life, but even here many familiar details are missing.  There is no account of the nativity, no Bethlehem, no Annunciation.  The character of Jesus is very different from what we will see later in John.  Jesus is very human, full of existential angst and self-doubt.  He never claims to be God, and he is very clearly not the same as God the Father (14:36, 15:34).  Even his followers never say that he is God, only that he is the son of God.

In Matthew and Luke you get the first mention of Bethlehem and the first genealogies that purport to show that Jesus was descended from David.  This is significant because these are supposed to show the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies.  But here again we have a problem trying to reconcile these claims with what is known about history.  Luke says that Joseph and Mary traveled from their home in Nazareth to their birthplace in Bethlehem in order to be taxed, and he says that this happened "when Cyrenius was governor of Syria".  Cyrenius (or Quirinius in Latin) is well documented, and his census is a real historical event.

The problem is that Matthew says that Jesus was born "in the days of Herod the king".  And this is not just an offhand reference, Herod plays a significant role in the narrative.  Having heard of Jesus's birth and the prophecy that he would become king of the Jews, Herod orders the killing of all newborns, which forces Mary and Joseph to flee to Egypt in order to save the baby Jesus.

The problem is that Herod died in 4CE, two years before the census of Quirinius.  It is simply not possible for both stories to be true.

My point here is not that there is a contradiction in the Gospels; Biblical contradictions are a dime a dozen and apologists have answers to all of them.  The point is that these stories appear late, almost 50 years after Jesus died.  Before that, there is no mention of any of these details in any Christian writings.

This trend of getting more and more embellishments to the story as time goes by continues in the last gospel to be written, the one traditionally attributed to John.  Here we have a Jesus who is radically different in character than what we find in the synoptics.  All of the self-doubt and existential angst is gone.  John's Jesus is self-assured and claims unambiguously to be God ("I and my Father are one.")  There is no mention of "take this cup away from me" or "not my will, but yours be done" or "Father, why have you forsaken me?"  There is also a whole collection of new miracles which appear nowhere else, including the raising of Lazarus which, again, if that had actually happened you'd think someone would have taken note and written it down sooner (to say nothing of the fact that it makes Jesus's resurrection a lot less noteworthy).

The point is that when you put the New Testament in chronological order you can clearly see a myth developing right before your eyes.  Matthew and Luke put Jesus in Bethlehem not because they had any evidence that he was actually born there (because he almost certainly wasn't born there) but rather because they believed Jesus was the messiah and so he had to have been born there because (they believed) that's where the OT said the messiah would be born.  (There are other places in Matthew where he fills in details like this in order to fulfill what he thinks the OT prophesies but gets it wrong, sometimes to truly comical effect.)

Again, I have to stress that none of this is a slam-dunk.  Apologists have been aware of these problems quite literally for two thousand years and, as I've taken pains to point out, they have answers for everything.  Obviously I don't find their answers compelling; if I did I'd be a Christian.  But they do have them.

My claim is not that my arguments here are correct, only that they are defensible.  But that's enough to make my point, which is simply that I have not arrived at my conclusions capriciously.  I have reached them in good faith after some fairly diligent study and careful consideration of the counter-arguments.  I have not, as some Christians accuse atheists of, "rejected God because I want to sin" or some such nonsense.  I've simply looked at the evidence and the arguments and found them not compelling.  Far more likely, it seems to me, is that the Bible is (mostly) mythology.

114 comments:

  1. On Evidence

    @Ron:
    >My old friend Publius posted a comment (which he has apparently since deleted)

    I didn't delete anything. The comments posts came through the RSS feed -- but were gone when visiting the website. I would postulate some WordPress misbehavior.

    >I grew up in the American South (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia), a child of secular Jews. With the exception of one three-day period at the end of a YMCA summer camp when I was 12 (that's another story) I've been an atheist all of my life. But I've also been steeped in Southern Baptism from the age of 5 until I moved to California at 24.

    Do you think your Southern Baptism has given you any biases? Baptists believe in sola scriptura, scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice. Yet for most of the past 2000 years, few people were literate and could read the Bible. People learned the scriptures from pictures inside of churches and their parish Priest. The Catholic faith, specifically, is based on both scripture and the Tradition of the Catholic Church (as not everything that Jesus did, or what the Apostles did, was written in the Bible, but was passed down via the Tradition).

    >I have always wanted to try to understand why and how people maintain beliefs that to me are so obviously wrong.

    You conclude ... what?

    >But I think I know the Bible and Christianity better than the average bear.

    I think you're also different in that you don't think Christians are necessarily stupid or evil (which is often observed from other atheists).

    >I have come to the conclusion that there are no deities -- indeed there is nothing at all supernatural in this world -- in good faith after long and diligent study. I might be wrong. If I am, then I really would like someone to persuade me, because I don't want to be wrong. I want to know the truth. But at this point I'm pretty sure I've heard every argument there is and none of them are convincing.

    As Kierkegaard stressed, you have to decide certain things as preconditions for action, independent in some real sense of the evidence.

    In your case, it's truth.

    Will truth set you free? What has happened when you've told the truth? Did it get you in a lot of trouble?

    Yet you must find truths in the New Testament. Given that, it is at least somewhat compatible with your motivating cause for action.

    What do you conclude is the theme of the New Testament? Is truth the most important motivation for action? If not, what is most important?

    ReplyDelete
  2. On Evidence

    @Ron:
    >At best, it seems to me that God should have hired a better copy editor.

    Don't let the perfect drive out the good. The Bible is sufficient as it is.

    >We have no idea who curated the works that comprise it. We have no way to assess the credibility and qualifications of the people who did this work because for the most part we have no idea who they were.

    We know who curated the Bible -- the Council of Rome, the Synod of Hippo, and the Council of Trent.

    >But the third peculiarity dwarfs the other two. Jesus's resurrection is supposed to be the deal-closer, the one miracle that proves definitively that he was in fact (the son of) God. But if we take Matthew at his word, Jesus's resurrection was not a singular event at all! Jerusalem was already lousy with formerly dead bodies walking around! So what exactly is it that makes Jesus's resurrection special?

    A moment reflection will give you the answer. Should that have not been enough, what makes it special is that Jesus caused His own resurrection.

    Furthermore, what makes Jesus special? Jesus created Christianity.

    What is special about Christianity? It's the religion that God came down to earth to establish directly.

    >Now, none of this proves anything. One of the things I've learned over the years is that apologists have answers for everything. But the overriding question for me has always been: why are apologetics even necessary? If there is a coherent truth behind the story of Jesus, why did God not see to it that it got written down in a way that made it self-evident?

    Have you ever considered how society would be if the existence of God was self-evident? If God was self-evident, would you believe?

    The story of Exodus tells of two occurrences when God dwelled among humans -- first in the center of their camp, later on the outskirts. How did that work out?

    >The traditional ordering of the NT is not chronological. Paul's writings are the earliest, and they were written 20-30 years after Jesus's death. (Not a single word was written about Jesus while he was alive.) Then comes the gospel of Mark, then Matthew, Luke and Acts, and finally the gospel of John. (I'm going to set aside Revelation and the non-Pauline epistles here -- things are complicated enough already.) I'm not going to get into the weeds of how scholars figured this out, but it's pretty obvious that Mark must have been written before Matthew and Luke because the latter contain passages copied from Mark, sometimes word-for-word. But the historical order is not at all controversial. Everyone agrees on this.

    You're explaining the Marcan priority hypothesis. The other dominant hypothesis is Q source.

    Yet it seems not the matter? Why?

    >My point here is not that there is a contradiction in the Gospels; Biblical contradictions are a dime a dozen and apologists have answers to all of them. The point is that these stories appear late, almost 50 years after Jesus died. Before that, there is no mention of any of these details in any Christian writings.

    What is the significance that the stories appear late? What message are you trying to convey? Why do they appear late? Does it matter?

    ReplyDelete
  3. On Faith
    @Ron
    >Of course, apologists have answers for everything, and so they have an answer for that too, and the answer (at least the one given by my Southern Baptist peers in my youth) is that God specifically does not want there to be definitive proof of His existence. He wants you to have faith, to accept Him specifically without proof, even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. Jesus makes this quite explicit in John 20:29:

    Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

    Yet Thomas knew Jesus before the resurrection. That statement was made to a man who already had long acquaintance with Jesus, who already believed, who had seen evidence of Jesus performing miracles. Yet he refused to believe one additional miracle, often predicted by Jesus, and vouched for by his closest friends. Jesus is not rebuking Thomas for being skeptical, or suspicious. Jesus is saying, in effect, "you should have known Me better."

    According to Jesus, credulity is a virtue (which, BTW, is at odds with what YHWH said in Deuteronomy 18:21-22). This idea is deeply ingrained in our society. Being a "person of faith" is generally considered a good thing.

    href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEASnFvLxhU&list=PL22J3VaeABQAppIsV0MmKYhGeFGJsy-dS?t=1h13m45s">Atheists often denigrate faith as belief in the unbelievable, as if it's purely propositional and it's just a denial of evidence.

    Faith is not a virtue. It is an invitation to chaos.

    Is that your experience of faith?

    When in your life have you benefited from faith?
    * when enduring the pain of a needle drawing blood from a vein?
    * when learning to ride a bike without training wheels -- "go faster, then you won't fall"
    * "hold still, I will get the splinter out for you" (hurting your finger very much more will stop the finger from hurting)
    * "relax your body, then you will float" (when learning to swim)

    It is a mistake to equate "faith" with a denial of reason, or being illogical. A young child may need a bone marrow transplant to save her life. She cannot possibly understand the evidence that her procedure will cure her and extend her life. That child, instead, has faith than her parents and doctors are acting in her best interest.

    ReplyDelete
  4. On Diligent Study

    @Ron:
    >Again, I have to stress that none of this is a slam-dunk. Apologists have been aware of these problems quite literally for two thousand years and, as I've taken pains to point out, they have answers for everything. Obviously I don't find their answers compelling; if I did I'd be a Christian. But they do have them.

    Hence the development of theology. Christianity is not sola scriptura, it's an entire theology to interpret the New Testiment.

    Atheists like to create their own strawman versions of Christianity. They don't study the actual theology of the different Christian churches.

    >My claim is not that my arguments here are correct, only that they are defensible. But that's enough to make my point, which is simply that I have not arrived at my conclusions capriciously. I have reached them in good faith after some fairly diligent study and careful consideration of the counter-arguments. I have not, as some Christians accuse atheists of, "rejected God because I want to sin" or some such nonsense. I've simply looked at the evidence and the arguments and found them not compelling. Far more likely, it seems to me, is that the Bible is (mostly) mythology.

    Yet diligent study never ends, right?
    Have you read any of St. Thomas Aquinas? St. Augustine? William James? Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
    Have you read the href="https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church">Catechism of the Catholic Church? In reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church we can perceive the wonderful unity of the mystery of God -- Pope St. John Paul II

    Here is a 17 part series (33 hours) on interpreting Exodus. I'm currently listening to it for a 2nd time. Can you identify the connection of Exodus to the Revolutionary War and the French Revolution?

    Yet, how far does your commitment to truth go? Exactly how diligent are you? Do you aspire to maximum diligence? Presumably maximum diligence would lead you closer to the truth you seek?

    Here is a Christian saying for you: "Faith comes first, then you get the proof." (Fr. Corapi) Put another way, what if faith is a pre-requisite for understanding -- "faith precedes and produces understanding." My link above for William James is to his lecture on The Will to Believe, which defends the rationality of religious faith even lacking sufficient evidence of religious truth.

    Could it be your lack of faith is an intellectual handicap to understand the Bible?

    ReplyDelete
  5. C.S. Lewis on Faith

    Consider C.S. Lewis' essay On Obstinacy in Belief.
    We have been told that the scientist thinks it his duty to proportion the strength of his belief exactly to the evidence; to believe less as there is less evidence and to withdraw belief altogether when reliable adverse evidence turns up. We have been told that, on the contrary, the Christian regards it as positively praiseworthy to believe without evidence, or in excess of the evidence, or to maintain his belief unmodified in the teeth of steadily increasing evidence against it. ... And first, a word about belief in general. I do not see that the state of “proportioning belief to evidence” is anything like so common in the scientific life as has been claimed. Scientists are mainly concerned not with believing things but with finding things out. And no one, to the best of my knowledge, uses the word “believe” about things he has found out. The doctor says he “believes” a man was poisoned before he has examined the body; after the examination, he says the man was poisoned. No one says that he believes the multiplication table. No one who catches a thief red-handed says he believes that man was stealing. The scientist, when at work, that is, when he is a scientist, is laboring to escape from belief and unbelief into knowledge. Of course he uses hypotheses or supposals. I do not think these are beliefs. We must look, then, for the scientist’s behavior about belief not to his scientific life but to his leisure hours.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Publius [part 1 of 2]

    First I'd like to say that I appreciate the fact that you're reading and responding to what I write even though we don't exactly see eye-to-eye. I have no idea what is motivating you to put so much effort into this, but I can't imagine that it's anything other than some form of concern for my well-being, so I thank you for that.

    That said...

    > I didn't delete anything. The comments posts came through the RSS feed -- but were gone when visiting the website. I would postulate some WordPress misbehavior.

    It's not a WordPress site. It's Blogger (which is to say, Google). I've been using the same platform since I started this blog over twenty years ago.

    > Do you think your Southern Baptism has given you any biases?

    Of course it has. But abandoning Sola Scriptura just makes the situation worse. There are literally thousands of Christian denominations and they are all advancing mutually contradictory theologies. If I can't rely on scripture, how am I supposed to decide which of those denominations to believe?

    > People learned the scriptures from pictures inside of churches and their parish Priest.

    So? Why should I believe the parish priest?

    > I think you're also different in that you don't think Christians are necessarily stupid or evil (which is often observed from other atheists).

    Thank you. I'm glad somebody noticed.

    > As Kierkegaard stressed, you have to decide certain things as preconditions for action,

    Yes, but...

    > independent in some real sense of the evidence.

    No. At worst I have to make choices based on incomplete information, but that doesn't mean I have to fill that void with faith. I can simply acknowledge my ignorance and make decisions based on probabilities, or I can do experiments or otherwise gather more data. I don't have to take a "leap of faith". I don't have to pretend to believe in things in order to effectively navigate reality.

    > Yet you must find truths in the New Testament.

    I have: the truth is that the New Testament is mythology. Jesus did not in point of actual fact rise from the dead any more than Spock did. This is not to say that either the New Testament nor Star Trek are devoid of value or life lessons. You just have to be careful not to take either one (or their priests) too seriously.

    > Don't let the perfect drive out the good.

    I hate that aphorism. It is too often used as an excuse for sloppiness and complacency. We should strive for perfection even as we know we can never achieve it. In this I think I am actually more Christian than most Christians because they claim to strive for God, and God is supposed to be perfect. Indeed, perfection cannot drive out the good because if it could it wouldn't be perfect!

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Publius [part 2 of 2]

    > We know who curated the Bible -- the Council of Rome, the Synod of Hippo, and the Council of Trent.

    We know who curated the New Testament. The New Testament is only part of the Bible.

    (And BTW, because we know who curated the New Testament we know that they had an agenda, and so we can legitimately ask whether their curation was done to faithfully reflect the actual truth or whether it was done to advance their agenda.)

    > Jesus created Christianity.

    No, he actually didn't. Paul did. Just as Joseph Smith and not Jesus created Mormonism, and Mohamed and not the archangel Gabriel created Islam.

    > If God was self-evident, would you believe?

    Of course. But he doesn't even have to be self-evident, he just has to be the best explanation for what I observe. I believe in all kinds of things that are not self-evident. I believe in quantum mechanics, which is about as far from self-evident as you can get. I believe in it because it's the best explanation for what I observe.

    > You're explaining the Marcan priority hypothesis. The other dominant hypothesis is Q source.

    These are not mutually exclusive. But Marcan priority is the scholarly consensus (and pretty obviously correct even to a non-scholar). Q source is legitimately controversial, which is one of the reasons I didn't bring it up. The other reason I didn't bring it up is because, as you say, Q doesn't matter.

    > What is the significance that the stories appear late? What message are you trying to convey? Why do they appear late? Does it matter?

    Yes, it matters, because when you arrange all of the sources that we actually have (which is to say, not Q) in the correct chronological order, the emergence of the Jesus myth becomes clear.

    > Jesus is not rebuking Thomas for being skeptical, or suspicious.

    Then what is the problem with my skepticism? If it's OK for Thomas to be skeptical even after having seen Jesus firsthand, why is it not OK for me to be skeptical when the overwhelming weight of the evidence I have direct access to indicates that Jesus is a myth?

    > > Faith is not a virtue. It is an invitation to chaos.

    > Is that your experience of faith?

    Yes, absolutely. You need look no further than Donald Trump to see this. The United States of America may become a totalitarian dictatorship in a year, and if it does, it will be because millions of people had faith that Donald Trump was going to bring the country back to God. (I predict the outcome will not be quite what Trump's followers have in mind.)

    When faith emerges from the shadows and actually does battle with reality, reality will win.

    > When in your life have you benefited from faith?

    None of your examples are examples of faith. The reason I believe that my bicycle will not fall over is not that I have faith, it's because when I ride a bicycle it doesn't fall over. (And before I tried it for the first time I could see other people riding bicycles without falling over, so I already knew it was possible.)

    > It is a mistake to equate "faith" with a denial of reason, or being illogical.

    No, it isn't. The kind of faith demanded by Christianity is of an entirely different character than your examples. A child doesn't have *faith* that her parents are acting in her best interests, she almost certainly has overwhelming evidence that her parents have her best interests at heart in form of literally a lifetime of observing them doing things that are in her best interests, like giving her food and clothing and shelter without asking for anything in return.

    Religious faith is more akin to believing that the bicycle will not fall over even though neither you nor anyone you know has ever ridden a bicycle -- indeed, has never even *seen* a bicycle!

    I should probably write a whole other post about this.

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  8. Scripture

    @Ron:
    >But abandoning Sola Scriptura just makes the situation worse. There are literally thousands of Christian denominations and they are all advancing mutually contradictory theologies. If I can't rely on scripture, how am I supposed to decide which of those denominations to believe?

    So you have trouble understanding scripture, yet reject any analysis of the scripture which resolves all of your questions because there is too much of it?

    You also concentrate on the differences between them, not what is common between them. They have much in common. You exaggerate the differences. Buy a wall chart and study the differences.

    Yet that's oblique to the point I was making. My point is that Christianity is not the New Testament. The different versions of Christianity are based on the theology of each. It is an error to criticize the New Testament as a method to criticize Christianity, as the basis of each version is the theology of each. If you want to criticize them, you need to study the theology. If you want to understand Catholicism, study the Catechism, not the New Testament. Or take a quiz to understand which denomination you should study first.

    If you don't read and understand the theology, then you are just making up your own version of Christianity, then criticizing your own unskilled creation. In effect, criticizing something only you believe.

    >> People learned the scriptures from pictures inside of churches and their parish Priest.

    >So? Why should I believe the parish priest?

    The point I was making is that sola scriptura is a modern invention. For the majority of the current era, almost all people were illiterate -- so there was no reading the Bible and following it. People learned their faith from pictures on the wall of their churches and from sermons. The parish priest would have been one of the few who could read. Your objection of "why didn't anyone think to write any of this down" is also answered by the fact that very few people could read and write.

    >No. At worst I have to make choices based on incomplete information, but that doesn't mean I have to fill that void with faith. I can simply acknowledge my ignorance and make decisions based on probabilities, or I can do experiments or otherwise gather more data. I don't have to take a "leap of faith". I don't have to pretend to believe in things in order to effectively navigate reality.

    Ah, bullshit? You're not a robot and you don't act without the influence of emotion.

    You can't make a decision based on probabilities if there are no prior probabilities. You can't do experiments if the action you are about to take is non-repeatable.

    You've stated you want to know the truth. So truth is important to you. Why? What prior probability or experiment informed you that should be your motivating cause to action?

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  9. Christianity
    >> Jesus created Christianity.

    @Ron:
    >No, he actually didn't. Paul did. Just as Joseph Smith and not Jesus created Mormonism, and Mohamed and not the archangel Gabriel created Islam.

    Does Paul claim he created Christianity? How could have Saul of Tarsus been persecuting Christians if there weren't already ... Christians?

    No, Paul would tell you that Christ created Christianity, and He established the Church.

    >Yes, it matters, because when you arrange all of the sources that we actually have (which is to say, not Q) in the correct chronological order, the emergence of the Jesus myth becomes clear.

    That's one interpretation.

    How about the interpretation of iteration and improvement? That is, successive books endeavor to present the story better, and closer to the truth, than the prior one?

    How about the interpretation that the different gospels emphasize a different theme, without contradicting each other? Here are the themes of the four gospels:
    Matthew - Christ the King
    Mark - Christ the Servant
    Luke - Christ, the Son of Man
    John - Seven Signs to reveal the person and mission of Christ

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Publius: [1 of 2]

    > So you have trouble understanding scripture, yet reject any analysis of the scripture which resolves all of your questions because there is too much of it?

    No, that has absolutely nothing to do with it. There is more scientific literature published in a single day than I can possibly read in a lifetime. That doesn't make me reject science.

    > You also concentrate on the differences between them

    Yes, because that is how I know that at least some of them must be wrong.

    > Christianity is not the New Testament

    The NT is the foundation of Christianity. Without the NT there is no Christianity. If the NT is not trustworthy, nothing built on it can be trusted. Moreover, the NT is supposedly inspired by God Himself, so if the NT is not trustworthy then God Himself is not trustworthy, nor is anyone who professes to speak on His behalf.

    > If you don't read and understand the theology, then you are just making up your own version of Christianity

    I'm not making up anything. I am simply observing that the NT contains some claims that cannot possibly be true (because they are mutually contradictory), and other claims that are highly suspect in light of what we know about history and physics, and so it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the NT is a work of human mythology and not the Word of God. (And if it is the Word of God, that God's trustworthiness is highly suspect.)

    > Your objection of "why didn't anyone think to write any of this down" is also answered by the fact that very few people could read and write.

    No, it isn't. It's true that only a small percentage of the population was literate, but there were still plenty of literate people that a whole lot of mundane stuff got written down regularly. The Romans were very meticulous record-keepers. It is just inconceivable that an event as momentous as dead people rising from their graves and walking around Jerusalem actually happened without any record being made of it at the time.

    > You can't do experiments if the action you are about to take is non-repeatable.

    That's not true. This is a common fallacy among Christians. Many experiments are non-repeatable. Most astronomical data comes from non-repeatable observations of singular events, but astronomy is still science. In fact, if you get down to the nitty-gritty, no experiment is exactly repeatable because you can never reproduce the conditions of an experiment in every detail.

    > You've stated you want to know the truth. So truth is important to you. Why?

    Because knowing the truth helps me make informed decisions that are more likely to lead me to achieving my goals.

    In the case of Jesus, I want to know whether or not it's true because I don't want to burn in hell for all eternity.

    > What prior probability or experiment informed you that should be your motivating cause to action?

    Throughout my life I have found that when I base my actions on the truth I get better outcomes. To give you a comprehensive list I'd have to write a complete autobiography.

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Publius: [2 of 2]

    > Does Paul claim he created Christianity?

    No, but neither does Mohammed claim to have created Islam, nor Joseph Smith to have created Mormonism. And yet they did.

    BTW, Paul never claims to have met Jesus while Jesus was alive. Indeed, Paul never actually says that Jesus was a real person. Paul received the gospel from an ethereal already-risen Jesus. It's actually very similar to how Mohammed received the Quran from the archangel Gabriel.

    > How could have Saul of Tarsus been persecuting Christians if there weren't already ... Christians?

    There were people calling themselves Christians, but that doesn't mean that their theologies were anything like what we today would call Christian. Paul invented much of the theology that we associate with Christianity today. Most of the beliefs of early Christians are lost, having been stamped out as heresies. Some of the few things that survive are truly bizarre by modern standards.

    > How about the interpretation of iteration and improvement?

    Sure. That makes perfect sense. But only if the Bible is mythology. If the Bible is Revealed Truth then there can be no iteration and improvement (unless the source of the initial revelation is unreliable).

    > How do you overcome your fear?

    By recognizing that because I had seen people riding bicycles that it must be possible to do so, and that my fear was therefore almost certainly irrational.

    > Children aren't capable of such complex and abstract thought.

    I think you would be surprised what children are capable of. But it's actually not necessary to engage in "complex and abstract thought" to get a good handle on whether or not your parents are trustworthy and have your best interests at heart. All you have to do is observe that they feed and clothe and shelter you without asking much in return. Even some animals are able to figure this out. The ones who can we keep as pets.

    > However, this analogy overlooks a fundamental aspect of religious faith—the observable impact it has on people's lives.

    I have never denied the impact that faith has on people's lives. Faith is definitely a real thing with real effects, both positive and negative. That doesn't mean that the things people have faith in are real.

    > Faith is not a matter of believing in a set of facts.

    Christian faith is. Christianity hangs its hat entirely on a set of factual claims, chief among them that Jesus rose from the dead in point of actual historical fact. This is not my position, it's Paul's (1Cor14:10-15). It's Paul who says that if you reject the resurrection then you can (and should!) reject the whole megillah. I'm just following his guidance.

    (BTW, 1Cor14 is not the only place where the Bible pins its authority to objective claims, but the waters are already plenty muddy without bringing up Deu13:1-5, Deu18:22, Mat16:28 and Mark16:17-18.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Origins
    >No, that has absolutely nothing to do with it. There is more scientific literature published in a single day than I can possibly read in a lifetime. That doesn't make me reject science.

    To understand special relativity, would you only read Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper? Or would you read a textbook on modern physics?

    To understand Christianity, why, then, wouldn't you read some of the greatest analysts of it? There aren't that many - St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, William James, C.S. Lewis? I think, in particular, you would appreciate the approach of St. Thomas Aquinas.

    It is also you building a methodology that is impervious to evidence.

    Ron: "I object to X."

    Publius: "Read to understand X."

    Ron: "I don't have time to read X."

    You should consider there are people smarter, and better, than you at understanding the Bible. Not Richard Dawkins.

    >> Christianity is not the New Testament

    >The NT is the foundation of Christianity. Without the NT there is no Christianity. If the NT is not trustworthy, nothing built on it can be trusted. Moreover, the NT is supposedly inspired by God Himself, so if the NT is not trustworthy then God Himself is not trustworthy, nor is anyone who professes to speak on His behalf.

    A well-rehearsed 3 sentence condemnation of the NT, Christianity, and God.

    Yet it has a false premise, or beginning, so is false from the first sentence. Christ is what is essential to Christianity, not the NT.

    Your view is very protestant -- that the text of the Bible is sufficient to interpret itself. You cannot find that claim in the Bible -- it is something you bring from outside it. Such a belief is unhistorical. Christ and the Apostles founded the Church by preaching and exacting faith in their doctrines. No book told as yet of the Divinity of Christ, the redeeming value of His Passion, or of His coming to judge the world; these and all similar revelations had to be believed on the word of the Apostles. Eleven apostles were tortured to death proclaiming the reality of the resurrected Jesus.

    Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christianity, not the New Testament.

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  13. Ron's Church
    >> If you don't read and understand the theology, then you are just making up your own version of Christianity.

    >I'm not making up anything. I am simply observing that the NT contains some claims that cannot possibly be true (because they are mutually contradictory), ...

    You can pull out a sentence in many books and claim it is false, or otherwise ridicule it. Yet you need to read the whole text to the end to understand it. If you read only the conclusion of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, you would conclude that Galileo believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.

    Here is a simple story for you in
    1. A brave soldier is travelling home from winning a war
    2. Three women on the side of the road inform him that he's going to be King
    3. He and his wife then starting murdering all of their friends, and the king himself.
    4. He becomes king.

    The end of the story can change how you interpret the beginning of the story.

    It is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book. Private interpretation consists in judging. Private judgment rests with the reader, who submits the dead text of Scripture to a kind of post-mortem examination and delivers a verdict without appeal: he believes in himself rather than in any higher authority.

    As Samuel Werenfels wrote, "Hic liber est in quo sua quærit dogmata quisque,
    Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua"
    ("Men open this book, their favorite creed in mind; Each seeks his own, and each his own doth find").

    If you want to criticize Christianity, you need to criticize what Christians actually believe, not your private creation of Christian belief.

    Catholics, specifically, reject sola scriptura, and base their faith on the NT and the Tradition and Living Magisterium of the Church. Not everything that Jesus did was written down in the NT.

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  14. God created Science

    >> You can't do experiments if the action you are about to take is non-repeatable.

    >That's not true. This is a common fallacy among Christians. Many experiments are non-repeatable. Most astronomical data comes from non-repeatable observations of singular events, but astronomy is still science.

    Astronomy is an observational science. Astronomers can't do experiments. Nor can geologists or archaeologists. Yes, they are still science.

    But my comment was in regards to learning to ride a bike without training wheels. You can't repeat, as an experiment, the first time you try to do that. You can't perform repeated experiments on that experience. The reason you try to achieve it is ... faith in the person teaching you.

    You haven't measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Your believe that the average distance of the Earth to the Sun is 92.96 million miles is based on your faith of the source.

    >> You've stated you want to know the truth. So truth is important to you. Why?

    >Because knowing the truth helps me make informed decisions that are more likely to lead me to achieving my goals.

    Can't it also, in some cases, block you from achieving your goals? Do you tell the truth in all cases? Has your wife ever asked you, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

    An old Turkish proverb is, "The person who tells the truth gets chased from twelve villages."

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  15. Foundations

    >> Does Paul claim he created Christianity?

    >No, but neither does Mohammed claim to have created Islam, nor Joseph Smith to have created Mormonism. And yet they did.

    Irrelevant. How Islam or Mormonism were created doesn't inform us at all about how Christianity was founded.

    Does any Christian church claim St. Paul as its founder? You're again making up your own private Christian faith, which no one subscribes to (not even you).

    Christianity is a system of religious belief and practice which was taught by Jesus Christ in the region of Palestine, during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius, and was promulgated after it's Founder's death, for the acceptance of the whole world, by certain chosen men among His followers. These men began their mission on the day of Pentecost, which is regarded as the birthday of the Christian Church.

    >BTW, Paul never claims to have met Jesus while Jesus was alive. Indeed, Paul never actually says that Jesus was a real person. Paul received the gospel from an ethereal already-risen Jesus.

    This sounds like you've been influenced by the poor scholarship of Acharya S.

    The risen Jesus is not "ethereal." He is flesh and bone, even now.

    >> How could have Saul of Tarsus been persecuting Christians if there weren't already ... Christians?

    >There were people calling themselves Christians, but that doesn't mean that their theologies were anything like what we today would call Christian.

    You're employing the No True Scotsman fallacy?

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  16. Myths

    >> How about the interpretation of iteration and improvement?

    >Sure. That makes perfect sense. But only if the Bible is mythology. If the Bible is Revealed Truth then there can be no iteration and improvement (unless the source of the initial revelation is unreliable).

    Cornelius Ryan wrote a book, "The Longest Day", about D-Day (June 6, 1944), about the invasion of Normandy. Later, Antony Beevor and Stephen Ambrose wrote books about D-Day. You conclude, then, necessarily that D-Day is a myth?

    The Gospel of St. John was read by second and third generations in Asia Minor. There was no need of initiating them into the elements of the faith; consequently, John must have aimed rather at confirming against the attacks of its opponents the faith handed down by their parents.

    Christ gave His disciples no command to write, but only to teach: "going therefore, teach ye all nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20). "As the Father hath sent me, I also send you" (John 20:21). And in accordance with this, the Church is everywhere presented to us as a living and undying society composed of the teachers and the taught. Christ is in the Church, and is its Head; and He promised that the Holy Spirit should be with it and abide in it. "He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you" (John 14:26).

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  17. Faith II

    >> How do you overcome your fear?

    >By recognizing that because I had seen people riding bicycles that it must be possible to do so, and that my fear was therefore almost certainly irrational.

    Really, when you first learned to ride a two wheel bicycle, you thought, "I've seen other people ride two wheel bicycles, so my fear is irrational, and I'll just keep pedaling and be able to learn that same skill"?

    You expect anyone to believe that?

    To be specific: I don't believe you.

    >> Children aren't capable of such complex and abstract thought.

    >I think you would be surprised what children are capable of. But it's actually not necessary to engage in "complex and abstract thought" to get a good handle on whether or not your parents are trustworthy and have your best interests at heart. All you have to do is observe that they feed and clothe and shelter you without asking much in return.

    They don't conceptualize "these people and feeding and clothing me without asking anything in return." They just know it as their natural order of life. Their parents take care of them. Their parents also instruct them. They have no conception that it could be any other way.

    >> However, this analogy overlooks a fundamental aspect of religious faith—the observable impact it has on people's lives.

    >I have never denied the impact that faith has on people's lives. Faith is definitely a real thing with real effects, both positive and negative. That doesn't mean that the things people have faith in are real.

    Ah, but you cite the positive effects of "scientific truth" in leading your life. Couldn't one look at the positive effects of "faith" and conclude that is a good approach to lead one's life?

    >>Faith is not a matter of believing in a set of facts.

    >Christian faith is. Christianity hangs its hat entirely on a set of factual claims, chief among them that Jesus rose from the dead in point of actual historical fact.

    Today we learned that Ron doesn't understand what Faith is (see also Rule of Faith").

    ReplyDelete
  18. > To understand special relativity, would you only read Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper? Or would you read a textbook on modern physics?

    These are not mutually exclusive. But if you read Einstein and found a fatal flaw in his reasoning there would be no need to go on to read the textbooks because you would already know they had to be wrong. (You would also be well on your way to winning a Nobel prize.)

    > You should consider there are people smarter, and better, than you at understanding the Bible.

    Sure. Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier (to cite but two examples) know a lot more about this than I do. So?

    > Not Richard Dawkins.

    When have I ever cited Dawkins as an authority on the Bible?

    > Christ is what is essential to Christianity, not the NT.

    The NT is our only source of information about Jesus.

    > Your view is very protestant

    I came of age steeped in Southern Baptism. That left scars that will never heal.

    > that the text of the Bible is sufficient to interpret itself. You cannot find that claim in the Bible -- it is something you bring from outside it.

    That's true. But what is the alternative? To believe the Pope or the parish priest? Or you? Or Aquinas? Without the Bible all you would have left is a bunch of fallible humans making shit up. (Which, AFAICT, is exactly how the Bible got written in the first place.)

    > Eleven apostles were tortured to death proclaiming the reality of the resurrected Jesus.

    I do not doubt the sincerity of their beliefs. But sincerity does not make it true. People have bene tortured to death proclaiming the authority of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. Does that mean I should become a Muslim? Hundreds of people died in Guyana proclaiming the divinity of Jim Jones. Does that mean their beliefs were right?

    > Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christianity, not the New Testament.

    Without the NT, what would even lead you to suspect that Jesus existed at all?

    > You can pull out a sentence in many books and claim it is false, or otherwise ridicule it. Yet you need to read the whole text to the end to understand it.

    That depends on what you mean by "understand". I don't have to understand all of the nuances of Shakespeare or the Iliad to know with absolute certainty that they are works of fiction. Likewise for the NT.

    > The end of the story can change how you interpret the beginning of the story.

    Sure, but it cannot change the fact that it's a *story*, the product of some human's imagination, not an accurate account of events that actually occurred.

    > It is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book.

    Faith is illogical, full stop. If you could make the case for Christ with logic we would not be having this conversation at all. You would present your case, and if I found it compelling, I would accept it. But you don't have a case. All you have is a desperate plea for me to "have faith", and ad hominem attacks when I decline. Your position is utterly devoid of any sound philosophical foundation.

    > If you want to criticize Christianity, you need to criticize what Christians actually believe, not your private creation of Christian belief.

    As I noted in the opening of the essay, it is virtually impossible to identify even a single belief that all people who self-identify as Christian have in common. So I chose the closest thing I could find: that Jesus was a real person who was actually crucified in point of historical fact, and actually rose from the dead, again in point of historical fact. I focused on the NT because that is the *only* source of information about these alleged historical facts.

    If you like, I could write a separate criticism of the Catechism.

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  19. > Catholics, specifically, reject sola scriptura, and base their faith on the NT and the Tradition and Living Magisterium of the Church. Not everything that Jesus did was written down in the NT.

    I acknowledge that my understanding of Christianity has been heavily colored by protestantism, but my argument does not rely on sola scriptura.

    > Astronomy is an observational science. Astronomers can't do experiments.

    That is ridiculous. Of course astronomers can do experiments. It's just that many of the experiments they do are not repeatable.


    > Nor can geologists or archaeologists.

    Of course they can.

    > But my comment was in regards to learning to ride a bike without training wheels. You can't repeat, as an experiment, the first time you try to do that. You can't perform repeated experiments on that experience. The reason you try to achieve it is ... faith in the person teaching you.

    I actually have a very clear memory of the first time I successfully rode a bicycle without training wheels. There was no one teaching me. I was with a friend and he offered to let me try his bike, which was different from mine. I have no idea whether that actually made a difference or not, but it seemed plausible that my (many!) failures to that point might have something to do with some kind of defect in my bike and so it seemed worthwhile giving it a try. I did, and it worked. Funnily enough, after I experienced what it was like to successfully ride a bike, I was able to go back to my own bike and successfully ride it as well. But faith in a human teacher never entered into it.

    > You haven't measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Your believe that the average distance of the Earth to the Sun is 92.96 million miles is based on your faith of the source.

    No, it's not faith. I have a ton of evidence that the source of this information is reliable. For starters, the people who claim that the sun is 93M miles away are able to send actual spacecraft into orbit around she sun and to other planets, so they probably know some things. And why would they lie?

    > >Because knowing the truth helps me make informed decisions that are more likely to lead me to achieving my goals.

    > Can't it also, in some cases, block you from achieving your goals?

    Yes. It can (and has) stopped me from taking risks that might have paid off. For example, I don't play the lottery because I believe I'm almost certain to lose. In so doing, I am guaranteeing that I will never win the lottery. I'm OK with that.

    > Do you tell the truth in all cases? Has your wife ever asked you, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

    Telling white lies has nothing to do with knowing the truth. Part of the truth is that people are not rational, and so sometimes telling white lies is the best course of action.

    > How Islam or Mormonism were created doesn't inform us at all about how Christianity was founded.

    Of course it does. They are existence proofs that religions can be established based on false claims.

    > Does any Christian church claim St. Paul as its founder?

    I didn't say Paul *founded* Christianity, I said he *created* it. Not the same thing. Christianity was clearly already a thing when Paul came along, but he re-invented it, and his re-invention is what is mostly with us today.

    I have no idea who founded Christianity. That knowledge is lost in the mists of time.

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  20. Hubris

    >> To understand special relativity, would you only read Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Korper? Or would you read a textbook on modern physics?

    >These are not mutually exclusive. But if you read Einstein and found a fatal flaw in his reasoning there would be no need to go on to read the textbooks because you would already know they had to be wrong. (You would also be well on your way to winning a Nobel prize.)

    I suppose if you presumed yourself to be as smart as Einstein.

    >> You should consider there are people smarter, and better, than you at understanding the Bible.

    >Sure. Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier (to cite but two examples) know a lot more about this than I do. So?

    Perhaps you should read their scholarship, along with N. T. Wright, E. P. Sanders, Dale Allison, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Pope John Paul II.

    >> Christ is what is essential to Christianity, not the NT.

    >The NT is our only source of information about Jesus.

    There are references to Jesus in writings by non-Christian historians and scholars of the time, such as Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger. These references, though brief, acknowledge Jesus as a historical figure. Some Jewish writings from that era indirectly mention Jesus or the early Christian movement, such as the Babylonian Talmud.

    Yet if nothing were ever written down, we would still have the oral tradition. We would still have His Church.

    >> that the text of the Bible is sufficient to interpret itself. You cannot find that claim in the Bible -- it is something you bring from outside it.

    >That's true. But what is the alternative? To believe the Pope or the parish priest? Or you? Or Aquinas? Without the Bible all you would have left is a bunch of fallible humans making shit up.

    No, you also have the school -- the Church which was established to teach you in the proper interpretation of the Bible.

    >> Eleven apostles were tortured to death proclaiming the reality of the resurrected Jesus.

    >I do not doubt the sincerity of their beliefs. But sincerity does not make it true. People have been tortured to death proclaiming the authority of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.

    Name one.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Foundations

    >> Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christianity, not the New Testament.

    >Without the NT, what would even lead you to suspect that Jesus existed at all?

    The Catholic Church.

    >> It is illogical to base faith upon the private interpretation of a book.

    >Faith is illogical, full stop.

    Here your thinking is incorrect, full stop.

    Faith is not illogical.

    You employ faith in your daily life. Are you acting illogically?

    Biblical faith is rational confidence in something that is not observed by the senses. Hebrews 11:1 gives us essentially a definition of what faith is: a confidence, assurance, conviction, or evidence of things unseen. The Greek word translated as "evidence" or "conviction" in English translations of this verse is elegchos and has the basic meaning of "proof." Biblical faith is not contrary to rational proof; rather, it is rational proof. Faith is confidence in what must be true.

    >If you could make the case for Christ with logic we would not be having this conversation at all. You would present your case, and if I found it compelling, I would accept it. But you don't have a case. All you have is a desperate plea for me to "have faith", and ad hominem attacks when I decline. Your position is utterly devoid of any sound philosophical foundation.

    I don't feel you've listened to me, or to Luke.

    You don't find faith in reading a cleverly convincing paragraph of text.

    Here is a cleverly convincing paragraph on why you should believe in Jesus Christ:

    Believing in Jesus Christ offers a profound source of hope, guidance, and purpose. His teachings of love, compassion, and forgiveness resonate across time and cultures, offering a moral compass for navigating life's complexities. The historical accounts, coupled with the impact of his message on millions worldwide, attest to the transformative power of faith in him. Embracing Jesus means embracing a path of empathy, kindness, and understanding, fostering personal growth and contributing to a more compassionate world. His life and teachings serve as an eternal beacon of inspiration, providing solace in times of hardship and direction in the quest for meaning. Ultimately, believing in Jesus Christ offers not just spiritual fulfillment but a framework for living a life rooted in love, grace, and purpose.

    Do you believe now? No? Why not?

    It's because it doesn't work that way.

    What have I told you to do in order to develop a belief and faith in Jesus Christ? Is the method I've told you provable via the scientific method?

    Sunday 12/16 is the third Sunday of Advent, the theme of which is "Love." Perhaps you should check it out.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Scholarship

    >> If you want to criticize Christianity, you need to criticize what Christians actually believe, not your private creation of Christian belief.

    >As I noted in the opening of the essay, it is virtually impossible to identify even a single belief that all people who self-identify as Christian have in common. So I chose the closest thing I could find:

    To say that this is the closest thing you could find is to say you haven't tried to understand any variation of Christianity, at all. You must study what they actually believe, not what you think they believe (or what you think they should believe).

    >If you like, I could write a separate criticism of the Catechism.

    That could be interesting, if you've actually read it.

    >> Catholics, specifically, reject sola scriptura, and base their faith on the NT and the Tradition and Living Magisterium of the Church. Not everything that Jesus did was written down in the NT.

    >I acknowledge that my understanding of Christianity has been heavily colored by protestantism, but my argument does not rely on sola scriptura.

    Yet it only scripture you write about.

    >> Astronomy is an observational science. Astronomers can't do experiments.

    >That is ridiculous. Of course astronomers can do experiments. It's just that many of the experiments they do are not repeatable.

    >> Nor can geologists or archaeologists.

    >Of course they can.

    Those aren't examples of performing experiments. Those are examples of model building.

    The creation of the universe is non-repeatable. The creation of Earth is non-repeatable. Astronomers and geologists cannot perform experiments that reproduce the creation of the universe, nor the creation of Earth.

    >> You haven't measured the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Your believe that the average distance of the Earth to the Sun is 92.96 million miles is based on your faith of the source.

    >No, it's not faith. I have a ton of evidence that the source of this information is reliable. For starters, the people who claim that the sun is 93M miles away are able to send actual spacecraft into orbit around she sun and to other planets, so they probably know some things. And why would they lie?

    You have no evidence regarding the average distance of the Earth to the Sun, as you've collected no data. You have faith in the sources you've read -- a faith that is justified by their credentials and success in applications of this knowledge.

    If a clerk in the UK Foreign Office told you that the UK and France had secret agreements regarding defense preparations, would you believe it? What if the Prime Minister of the UK told you that? You'd have more faith in the testimony of the Prime Minister than the clerk, correct?

    Why do you doubt the testimony of Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, and Simon? They were tortured and murdered for their testimony of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You think Einstein would have stuck to E=mc^2 under torture?

    Then ... people in the fifth and sixth centuries abandoned paganism for Christianity. Why? They found benefit in it.

    > >Because knowing the truth helps me make informed decisions that are more likely to lead me to achieving my goals.

    >> Do you tell the truth in all cases? Has your wife ever asked you, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

    >Telling white lies has nothing to do with knowing the truth. Part of the truth is that people are not rational, and so sometimes telling white lies is the best course of action.

    So your wife did look fat in that dress? Why would you lie to her? What else have you lied to your wife about? Do you lie to her often? When is the last time you lied to her? ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  23. Knowing

    >> How Islam or Mormonism were created doesn't inform us at all about how Christianity was founded.

    >Of course it does. They are existence proofs that religions can be established based on false claims.

    No, that is the logical fallacy of extrapolating from the particular to the general.

    >> Does any Christian church claim St. Paul as its founder?

    >I didn't say Paul *founded* Christianity, I said he *created* it. Not the same thing. Christianity was clearly already a thing when Paul came along, but he re-invented it, and his re-invention is what is mostly with us today.

    This is an argument of "founded" versus "created"? Really? What is the substantial difference between them?

    >I have no idea who founded Christianity. That knowledge is lost in the mists of time.

    You might look at who all the Christian churches claim as the creator, because they're all in agreement that it was Jesus Christ.

    >> Christianity is a system of religious belief and practice which was taught by Jesus Christ in the region of Palestine, during the reign of Roman Emperor Tiberius, and was promulgated after it's Founder's death, for the acceptance of the whole world, by certain chosen men among His followers. These men began their mission on the day of Pentecost, which is regarded as the birthday of the Christian Church.

    >We have no way of knowing that. Jesus never wrote anything, and no one who claims to have known Jesus during his life ever wrote anything.

    We do have a way of knowing that -- from the teaching of the Church He created -- the Apostolic Church.

    >> The risen Jesus is not "ethereal." He is flesh and bone, even now.

    >Not according to Paul.

    You need to
    1) read the entire book
    2) learn from the teaching of the Church

    You apparently think you were born to naturally have a perfect understanding of the Bible, not needing education or instruction from anyone.

    >> You're employing the No True Scotsman fallacy?

    >Not at all. I'm just pointing out that having people who self-identify as Christians is very different from having people who follow any particular theology. Only the former is necessary for Paul to be able to honestly claim to have persecuted Christians. I'm not saying anything about what it means to be a "true Christian".

    Except you argue that St. Paul created Christianity, so logically the people he was persecuting weren't "true Christians" -- because how could "true Christians" exist prior to St. Paul creating the Christian theology?

    St. Peter and the other apostles were just apparently sitting around doing nothing during this time.

    ReplyDelete
  24. @Publius: [1 of 5]

    > I suppose if you presumed yourself to be as smart as Einstein.

    If you found a fatal flaw in one of his works you *would* be as smart as Einstein. Smarter, in fact.

    > There are references to Jesus in writings by non-Christian historians and scholars of the time, such as Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger. These references, though brief, acknowledge Jesus as a historical figure. Some Jewish writings from that era indirectly mention Jesus or the early Christian movement, such as the Babylonian Talmud.

    All of these are from more than 60 years after Jesus died. By then the euphemerization of Jesus was already well underway, and so none of these references proves anything other than that by 60 years after Jesus's (alleged) death there were people who believed he was a real person. But that was never in dispute.

    > Yet if nothing were ever written down, we would still have the oral tradition. We would still have His Church.

    So? What reason is there to believe that the oral tradition is true? In fact, what reason is there to believe that today's oral tradition is the same as the oral tradition from 100 years ago or from 500 years ago or from 2000 years ago? There is a reason that written records are a thing.

    > the Church which was established to teach you in the proper interpretation of the Bible.

    How are you going to interpret the Bible without the Bible? Either you're going to put the Bible front-and-center or you're not. Make up your mind.

    > > People have been tortured to death proclaiming the authority of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him.

    > Name one.

    The Inquisition tortured heretics, including Muslims, on an industrial scale. Sadly, history does not record their names.

    But what difference does that make? Religious people regularly slaughter each other over doctrinal disputes (there is no other way to resolve them when push comes to shove) and so it is manifestly true that people are willing to die for false beliefs.

    > Faith is not illogical.

    Not only is it illogical, it is *necessarily* illogical. Why? Because if you're going to have faith you need to decide *what to have faith in*. If there were a logical basis for making that decision there would be no need for faith.

    > You employ faith in your daily life. Are you acting illogically?

    To the extent that I employ faith in my choice of actions then yes, absolutely, I am acting illogically. (But I have to wonder how you presume to know what I do in my daily life.)

    > I don't feel you've listened to me, or to Luke.

    I've listened to both of you. For years. I just think that much of what you say is nonsense.

    > You must study what they actually believe, not what you think they believe (or what you think they should believe).

    I have no way of knowing what anyone actually believes. The best I can do is listen to what they profess to believe, and most Christians profess to believe in the resurrection, and that it is central to Christianity, not as a metaphor or a myth, but as an actual historical event.

    ReplyDelete
  25. @Publius: [2 of 5]

    > >If you like, I could write a separate criticism of the Catechism.

    > That could be interesting, if you've actually read it.

    I haven't read the whole thing. And reviewing it now I don't think it's actually worthwhile critiquing it. I am not the target audience for it. The Catechism is preaching to the already converted.

    But I will say this: the very first section of the Catechism is entitled "The Desire for God", and I think this hits the nail on the head. People *want* God. They *want* answers to their existential questions and a salve for their existential dread. The Catholic church -- like all religions -- exists to meet this demand.

    > > my argument does not rely on sola scriptura.

    > Yet it [is] only scripture you write about.

    When the matter at hand is Christianity, what other scripture is there?

    > Those aren't examples of performing experiments.

    I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

    > The creation of the universe is non-repeatable. The creation of Earth is non-repeatable. Astronomers and geologists cannot perform experiments that reproduce the creation of the universe, nor the creation of Earth.

    That's true. But that's not the same as saying they can't perform experiments *at all*, which is what you originally claimed.

    > You have no evidence regarding the average distance of the Earth to the Sun

    That's not even remotely true. First, testimony is evidence. It's not the most reliable evidence, but it is evidence. Second, as I've already pointed out, the people giving testimony about the distance to the sun have demonstrated their reliability in other way, like demonstrating the ability to navigate spacecraft. And finally, I have *first-hand* evidence through observations I can make with my naked eyes that the distance to the sun is very large compared to the distance from the earth to the moon.

    > If a clerk in the UK Foreign Office told you that the UK and France had secret agreements regarding defense preparations, would you believe it? What if the Prime Minister of the UK told you that? You'd have more faith in the testimony of the Prime Minister than the clerk, correct?

    I have no idea. The idea of *anyone* in the UK seeking me out to tell me something like that is so far off-the-charts improbable that I can't even imagine what I would do if it happened. My first inclination would almost certainly be to suspect that the person talking to me was setting up some kind of scam.

    ReplyDelete
  26. @Publius: [3 of 5]

    > Why do you doubt the testimony of Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, and Simon?

    What testimony are you referring to? As far as I know, none of these people left any testimony. The only early Christian whose testimony survives with their name on it is Paul.

    > They were tortured and murdered for their testimony of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

    Sez you. Why should I believe you? And even if it is true, so what? Are you saying that no one has ever been willing to die for a false belief?

    > You think Einstein would have stuck to E=mc^2 under torture?

    Einstein had the good sense to recognize the (very real) threat of torture at the hand of the Third Reich and flee from it, so thankfully we will never know the answer to that.

    But your fixation on steadfastness of belief in the face of torture is deeply ironic. To see that people will die professing beliefs that are false by your own standards one need look no further than the countless heretics tortured to death by your very own beloved Catholic church.

    > Then ... people in the fifth and sixth centuries abandoned paganism for Christianity. Why? They found benefit in it.

    Of course: by converting (or at least professing to convert -- who knows what was really in their heart of hearts?) they avoided being killed for being heretics. That's a substantial benefit.

    > So your wife did look fat in that dress? Why would you lie to her?

    Obviously, to avoid hurting her feelings. (Did I really need to explain that to you? Are you really that clueless about human relationships?)

    > What else have you lied to your wife about? Do you lie to her often? When is the last time you lied to her? ;-)

    That is between me and her.

    ReplyDelete
  27. @Publius: [4 of 5]

    > > Of course it does. They are existence proofs that religions can be established based on false claims.

    > No, that is the logical fallacy of extrapolating from the particular to the general.

    No, it isn't. I'm not saying that these things *prove* that Christianity is based on false beliefs, only that it's a possibility. Many of the things you cite as proofs of the truth of Christianity apply equally to other religions that you and I agree are false, and so those things are not in fact proofs (or even evidence) of the truth of Christianity.

    > This is an argument of "founded" versus "created"? Really? What is the substantial difference between them?

    Whether or not they were there at the beginning. MacDonalds was founded by the MacDonald brothers, but they did not create what we call MacDonalds today. That was Ray Croc.

    > You might look at who all the Christian churches claim as the creator, because they're all in agreement that it was Jesus Christ.

    Yes, I know. They are all demonstrably wrong. Paul and Jesus have very different theologies, and Paul's is the one that dominates modern Christianity. Jesus was the MacDonald brothers. Paul was Ray Croc.

    > > We have no way of knowing that. Jesus never wrote anything, and no one who claims to have known Jesus during his life ever wrote anything.

    > We do have a way of knowing that -- from the teaching of the Church He created -- the Apostolic Church.

    Argument from authority.

    >>> The risen Jesus is not "ethereal." He is flesh and bone, even now.

    >> Not according to Paul.

    > You apparently think you were born to naturally have a perfect understanding of the Bible, not needing education or instruction from anyone.

    Ad hominem. Strike two.

    Where do you think I got this idea that Paul's Jesus was ethereal? I didn't reach that conclusion myself, I got it from reading Biblical scholars.

    ReplyDelete
  28. @Publius: [5 of 5]

    > Except you argue that St. Paul created Christianity

    What I mean by that is that Paul invented much of the theology that characterizes modern Christianity. Modern Christianity is very different from early Christianity.

    > so logically the people he was persecuting weren't "true Christians" -- because how could "true Christians" exist prior to St. Paul creating the Christian theology?

    Paul believed that the people he was persecuting were Christians. Whether or not they were "true Christians" (whatever that could possibly mean) is completely irrelevant.

    > St. Peter and the other apostles were just apparently sitting around doing nothing during this time.

    Yeah, pretty much. None of them ever wrote anything, so all we know about them comes from people who did, which is to say, from Paul, and the (anonymous) author of Luke/Acts. That's it.

    >> Of course. I can totally understand why someone would choose the blue pill. But this comes with a very high cost, namely, that you have to detach yourself from reality, and in so doing open yourself up to exploitation by all manner of charlatans. Personally, I think that is too high a price to pay for feeling warm and fuzzy.

    > So it's not ... irrational?

    It is irrational. Existential dread is irrational. That doesn't mean I don't acknowledge that people experience it (I've experienced it myself) and understand why they want to avoid it. It's not a pleasant feeling.

    > Does a Christian really detach themselves from reality?

    If the resurrection didn't happen (and it almost certainly didn't) then yes (unless you can somehow be a Christian without believing in the resurrection).

    > Truth Cannot Contradict Truth. It would appear that many faithful Christians have successfully navigated themselves through life, and many have contributed to the benefit of all humans.

    Sure. Detaching yourself from reality doesn't render you unable to navigate it. In fact, in some cases, detaching yourself from reality to some extent makes you more effective at navigating it (see above about white lies). But it's a slippery slope.

    > "Feeling warm and fuzzy" is an unskilled simplification of Christian theology and ethics. Jesus was crucified. Is that "warm and fuzzy"?

    The crucifixion isn't warm and fuzzy, but the *result* of the crucifixion -- being reconciled with God, life after death, and avoiding everlasting hellfire -- is very warm and fuzzy.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Normative Ethics

    >> So your wife did look fat in that dress? Why would you lie to her?

    >Obviously, to avoid hurting her feelings. (Did I really need to explain that to you? Are you really that clueless about human relationships?)

    Not clear what your ethical philosophy is here. You stated that truth is the most important thing in your life.

    That would appear to be compatible with the deontology of Kant, in which it is never justified to lie, under any circumstance.

    Yet in this context you justify it. The repercussions of this are unknown. Perhaps if you had been honest, your wife would have chosen another outfit that made her look slimmer and more attractive -- which could have accrued a positive outcome for her from the people she met while wearing that outfit. A life could have been saved if a person, in viewing her stunning and slim visage, had hesitated half a step when crossing a street, thereby avoiding an oncoming bus. Your choice to lie to your wife denied her the benefit of your truthful assessment, for you go gain some benefit? How is it ethical to gain that benefit at the expense of your wife?

    >> You apparently think you were born to naturally have a perfect understanding of the Bible, not needing education or instruction from anyone.

    >Ad hominem. Strike two.

    My apology. I need not intend to inflict an ad hominem assault against you.

    Let me instead ask if you claim that the Bible can be well understood by anyone of average intelligence? Or, if not, that you have specific education or experience that would let you understand it? Or, if you have a logical proof that anyone should be able to understand it? Or, if you believe in a specific philosophy that asserts that anyone should be able to understand it?

    In 1939, James Joyce published Finnegans Wake. A few years ago, a scholar published footnotes for the work that are three times longer than the text itself.

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  30. Cause and Effect

    >Where do you think I got this idea that Paul's Jesus was ethereal? I didn't reach that conclusion myself, I got it from reading Biblical scholars.

    Please cite these Biblical scholars.

    >> so logically the people he was persecuting weren't "true Christians" -- because how could "true Christians" exist prior to St. Paul creating the Christian theology?

    >Paul believed that the people he was persecuting were Christians. Whether or not they were "true Christians" (whatever that could possibly mean) is completely irrelevant.

    Then we can agree that Christianity existed before Paul? The antecedent comes before the action?

    >> You might look at who all the Christian churches claim as the creator, because they're all in agreement that it was Jesus Christ.

    >Yes, I know. They are all demonstrably wrong. Paul and Jesus have very different theologies, and Paul's is the one that dominates modern Christianity.

    If you want to criticize Christian churches, you need to criticize what they actually believe, not what you think they believe, or what you think they should believe. To to otherwise is, again, for you to create your own unskilled version of Christianity, which you then debunk as unskilled.

    >>> We have no way of knowing that. Jesus never wrote anything, and no one who claims to have known Jesus during his life ever wrote anything.

    >> We do have a way of knowing that -- from the teaching of the Church He created -- the Apostolic Church.

    >Argument from authority.

    This is not an argument from authority, as you don't consider the Apostolic Church an authority.

    Yet the Apostolic Church exists. If you are going to argue against Jesus, you must face it directly.

    My argument to you has been you have to criticize Christian churches as they are, not as you think they are, or you wish them to be.

    The establishment of the Church is written in the Gospels. The Apostles were given a mission to teach. The Church was established to teach.

    >> St. Peter and the other apostles were just apparently sitting around doing nothing during this time.

    >Yeah, pretty much. None of them ever wrote anything, so all we know about them comes from people who did, which is to say, from Paul, and the (anonymous) author of Luke/Acts. That's it.

    There are epistles from Peter, James, John, and Jude.

    Plus, again, there is the Tradition of the Church. Not everything was written down.

    >> Truth Cannot Contradict Truth. It would appear that many faithful Christians have successfully navigated themselves through life, and many have contributed to the benefit of all humans.

    >Sure. Detaching yourself from reality doesn't render you unable to navigate it. In fact, in some cases, detaching yourself from reality to some extent makes you more effective at navigating it (see above about white lies). But it's a slippery slope.

    Therefore you cannot use your "atheistic truth" as a logical reason, or benefit, to not believing.

    >> "Feeling warm and fuzzy" is an unskilled simplification of Christian theology and ethics. Jesus was crucified. Is that "warm and fuzzy"?

    >The crucifixion isn't warm and fuzzy, but the *result* of the crucifixion -- being reconciled with God, life after death, and avoiding everlasting hellfire -- is very warm and fuzzy.

    Yet what is demanded of the faithful believer? It is not without cost.

    ReplyDelete

  31. @Publius [1 of 5]

    > Are you not aware that the popular understanding of the Inquisition is a myth? That it is false that heretics were tortured on an "industrial scale"?

    Do you think that matters? Do you really believe that no one has ever been tortured to death while professing a false belief?

    > I would be interested, then, in your critique of The Will to Believe by American philosopher William James

    I think it's a load of obfuscated nonsense.

    Not that this is necessarily WJ's fault. He wrote this in 1896, so he was unaware of nearly all of modern science. In fact, the only things he had access to were classical mechanics and evolution. If you're missing relativity, quantum mechanics, biochemistry, computer science, chaos theory, game theory, and Popperian epistemology you can be forgiven for reaching some false conclusions about faith (and perhaps even for writing in that atrocious pedantic style).

    > What are your non-scriptural criticisms of Christianity?

    People don't normally rise from the dead. So if you want me to believe that someone rose from the dead you need to present me with some pretty compelling evidence. The only physical evidence that I know of is the Shroud of Turin, which is pretty clearly a medieval forgery, as there is not a single mention of it prior to the 13th century and carbon dating corroborates this. Everything else is testimony. The testimony is mostly anonymous; there is only one source of testimony whose identity is not open to serious doubt: Paul. And Paul never met Jesus while he was alive. Indeed, nothing Paul wrote indicates that he believed Jesus was a real person. He never once quotes Jesus, never even mentions that Jesus had a ministry. And there is nothing else. That's not even close to being enough for me to accept that someone actually rose from the dead.

    Then there are the internal inconsistencies in the testimony. Jesus supposedly raised people from the dead, and other dead people supposedly rose from their graves and walked the streets of Jerusalem after Jesus died. So what is so special about Jesus's resurrection? If you accept the testimony, then people rising from the dead are a dime a dozen.

    The whole thing is just absurd on its face, a naked con.

    You asked.

    ReplyDelete
  32. @Publius [2 of 5]

    > This appears to be a breakthrough - "First, testimony is evidence."

    Everything you observe is evidence. The question is: evidence of *what*. The testimony of scientists does not exist in isolation; it is corroborated by mountains of physical evidence, starting with the computer you are using to read this. The testimony of Christians is so poorly corroborated that they have to resort to rhetorical tricks like you have to believe before you are allowed access to the evidence. Sorry, that's not how it works.

    Maybe you need to go back and re-read this:

    https://blog.rongarret.info/2015/01/why-i-believe-in-michelson-morley.html

    > Such as the testimony of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Jude, James, and Paul? Which has been demonstrated its reliability in helping people live successful, ethical lives? Plus your first-hand evidence of observing Christians lead successful lives while acting ethically?

    I've never disputed that faith, like any drug, can have a positive impact on some people's lives. That is a completely different question from whether the things people put their faith in are *actually true*.

    >>> Why do you doubt the testimony of Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, and Simon?

    >> What testimony are you referring to? As far as I know, none of these people left any testimony. The only early Christian whose testimony survives with their name on it is Paul.

    > The testimony that they were tortured and killed for their steadfast belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ -- and teaching the same.

    Because people believe false things. So the mere fact that people profess to believe in something is not in and of itself evidence that the thing that they profess to believe is actually true. At best it is evidence that they actually believe it.

    The reason I believe that the sun in 93 million miles away is not just because there are people out there who profess to believe it, but also because those people can tell me a compelling story about *why* they believe it, and how I can test this claim against reality by myself. One of the hallmarks of science is precisely that you are *not* asked to take anyone's word for anything. Precisely the opposite: a good Scientist is skeptical. They question, they look for flaws in the reasoning, they do experiments. And when I do these experiments (and I have) the results are always exactly what the science predicts. The testimony is only a small and relatively unimportant part of the mountain of evidence I have that the sun is 93 million miles away. But for Christianity the testimony is all you have.

    > Paul is not the only testimony that remains. We have the Epistle of James, two Epistles of Peter, three Epistles of John, and an Epistle of Jude.

    We have epistles that are ascribed to these authors but there is considerable doubt about their actual authorship. But that is neither here nor there. AFAIK none of these authors actually describe the circumstances of having met the risen Jesus. But I confess I am not very familiar with the non-Pauline epistles.

    ReplyDelete
  33. @Publius [3 of 5]

    > Paul visited visited Peter in Jerusalem.

    So? I believe that Peter was a real person, just as I believe that Paul was a real person.

    > You stated that truth is the most important thing in your life.

    I'm pretty sure I never said that. Where did you get that idea?

    I'm not sure what the most important thing in my life is. Truth is important, but so is my wife's happiness. Sometimes these are in conflict, and I don't have a hard-and-fast rule about how to resolve those conflicts. It's a very hard problem.

    > That would appear to be compatible with the deontology of Kant, in which it is never justified to lie, under any circumstance.

    Kant was an idiot.

    > Let me instead ask if you claim that the Bible can be well understood by anyone of average intelligence?

    That depends on what you mean by "well-understood". Can Shakespeare be well-understood by anyone of average intelligence? I think anyone of average intelligence can understand the broad themes of Shakespeare's stories and see that they are works of fiction. Likewise for the Bible.

    > In 1939, James Joyce published Finnegans Wake. A few years ago, a scholar published footnotes for the work that are three times longer than the text itself.

    I do not pretend to understand Finnegan's Wake. But so what? No one claims that Finnegan's Wake is anything other than a work of fiction.

    >> Where do you think I got this idea that Paul's Jesus was ethereal? I didn't reach that conclusion myself, I got it from reading Biblical scholars.

    > Please cite these Biblical scholars.

    Mainly Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier.

    > Then we can agree that Christianity existed before Paul?

    Something (actually, more than one thing) that called itself Christianity existed before Paul. Even in Paul's day Christianity had already splintered into multiple sects. They were all (at least the ones we know about) very different from modern Christianity.

    ReplyDelete
  34. @Publius [4 of 5]

    >> Paul and Jesus have very different theologies, and Paul's is the one that dominates modern Christianity.

    > If you want to criticize Christian churches, you need to criticize what they actually believe

    No, I need to criticize what they *profess* to believe. I have no way of knowing what they actually believe. And what they all profess to believe is that the Bible is scripture inspired by God, or some variation on that theme. But Paul says one thing and Jesus says something else. So unless God is a trickster, they can't both be right.

    > This is not an argument from authority, as you don't consider the Apostolic Church an authority.

    That's true, I don't. But *you* do, and *you* are the one making the argument. That makes it an argument from authority.

    > Yet the Apostolic Church exists.

    Of course it does. So does the LDS Church. So does the Church of Scientology. So what?

    > The establishment of the Church is written in the Gospels.

    And the establishment of LDS is written in the Book of Mormon. And the establishment of Scientology is written in Dianetics. So what?

    > There are epistles from Peter, James, John, and Jude.

    Maybe. There are epistles that are attributed to these names but their actual authorship is open to serious doubt.

    > Plus, again, there is the Tradition of the Church. Not everything was written down.

    Human society is chock-full of oral traditions. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. None of these oral traditions are true. Why should the oral tradition of the Church be any different?

    > Therefore you cannot use your "atheistic truth" as a logical reason, or benefit, to not believing.

    There is no such thing as "atheistic truth". I believe that there is an objective reality, and that it's the same for everyone, and so there is only one truth. Either there are deities or there are not, but whatever it is, there is only one right answer and it's the same for everyone.

    I further believe that objective reality is accessible via our senses and the scientific method, and when you follow the scientific method the truth that is revealed is that there are no deities. That might be right, or it might be wrong, but whichever it is, that is the truth. Atheism might be the truth, or it might not be, but either way it's a *conclusion*, not a premise.

    >> The crucifixion isn't warm and fuzzy, but the *result* of the crucifixion -- being reconciled with God, life after death, and avoiding everlasting hellfire -- is very warm and fuzzy.

    > Yet what is demanded of the faithful believer? It is not without cost.

    A very high cost indeed. What is demanded is that you detach yourself from objective reality, and so open yourself up to exploitation by all manner of charlatans. That is a very high price to pay.

    ReplyDelete
  35. @Publius [5 of 5]

    > Let me anticipate one of your objections:

    Yep, you nailed it.

    > How, then, do you resolve the lottery paradox?

    What paradox? Yes, some people win the lottery, but the expected value of playing the lottery is still negative. The lottery is a scam, notwithstanding that there are a few winners.

    It's actually a pretty good analogy.

    > Yet another approach is to choose a religion based on any spiritual or emotional connections you may feel towards a particular faith or belief system.

    That's pretty much what I have done. I find *spiritual* fulfillment from knowing the truth. Coming to have a deep understanding of the fundamental nature of reality, of relativity and quantum mechanics and evolution and psychology and how all of these things are interrelated, is deeply satisfying to me completely independent of how they help me to navigate reality. For me, the knowledge is rewarding in and of itself. And it's much better than faith because it's more robust. I don't need to suspend disbelief. I don't need to deal with the cognitive dissonance of trying to reconcile my beliefs with reality because my beliefs *are* reality, or at least consistent with my observations, which is good enough for me. Why should I give that up?

    ReplyDelete
  36. A Wife Doesn't Let You Just Disappear For 3 Days

    Second, the notion that medieval people (or people of any long-past era or alien culture) were "just like us" and acted out motives very much like our own and within the context of a mindset, worldview, and set of ethical standards we share leads to misunderstandings of ancient texts.

    You have benefited from books and writing, so writing is important to you.

    Do you think it was important 2000 years ago when most people were illiterate?

    Consider one guy in Jerusalem who is literate and his wife. Call them Araunah and Sarah.

    Araunah: "Sarah, look! Formerly dead people are walking around! I've met Zadok and Soloman already! I need to write this down!"

    Sarah: "You want to write that down on our expensive paper? For whom? The two other people who can read it in the city?"

    Araunah: "It's important!"

    Sarah: "Just go tell the two other people who can read what you've seen. No use to use our expensive paper!"

    Araunah: "But if I write it down, future people will know it happened! It'll be in all the history books!"

    Sarah: "You want to write it on our expensive paper for people who don't exist yet? That we don't ever know will be able to read? What is a 'history book'? You've gone mad!"

    Sound farfetched?

    What about the First Crusade -- the series of wars initiated by the Western powers to recover the Holy Land from Islamic rule (1096 - 1099).

    Isn't it just as inconceivable that an event as momentous as foreign armies invading Islamic controlled territories would happen without any record being made of it at the time by Islamic authors?

    Yet they didn't write anything of it until 1310.

    A more modern example -- the limousine that JFK was assassinated in. Wouldn't you think something as momentous as the assassination of a President would result in the limo being preserved as important evidence? Yet it wasn't. FBI agents were ordered to "clean it up" shortly after the assassination. Then the car was mechanically modified and returned to service! The last President to use it was Jimmy Carter! [The limo is currently on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum -- a museum well worth visiting if you're ever near Dearborn, MI].

    >The whole thing is just absurd on its face, a naked con.
    >You asked.

    I appreciate the honesty (versus the Trickster).

    Yet your whole response was off point. The question was what are your non-scriptural criticisms of Christianity? The resurrection is manifestly scriptural.

    Non-scriptural beliefs and practices of Christians would include the symbol of the cross, seven sacraments, holy orders, original sin, or the Immaculate Conception.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Importance of Teaching

    >> Let me instead ask if you claim that the Bible can be well understood by anyone of average intelligence?

    >That depends on what you mean by "well-understood". Can Shakespeare be well-understood by anyone of average intelligence? I think anyone of average intelligence can understand the broad themes of Shakespeare's stories and see that they are works of fiction.

    Heh, Shakespeare is very hard to understand for modern readers. In high school, I had a version of Hamlet that had Shakespeare's text on the facing page, translations and notes on the opposite page, and I was thankful for it.

    >> In 1939, James Joyce published Finnegans Wake. A few years ago, a scholar published footnotes for the work that are three times longer than the text itself.

    >I do not pretend to understand Finnegan's Wake. But so what?

    The "so what" is the point not all books can be understood without a teacher to help you.

    Let X1, X2, X3, and X4 be independent random variables each having the same distribution with mean 5 and standard deviation 3, and let Y = X1 + 2X2 + X3 - X4.
    a) Find E(Y)
    b) Find Var(Y)

    Don't understand it? Perhaps a teacher could help you.

    >> Then we can agree that Christianity existed before Paul?

    >Something (actually, more than one thing) that called itself Christianity existed before Paul. Even in Paul's day Christianity had already splintered into multiple sects. They were all (at least the ones we know about) very different from modern Christianity.

    Then we are agreed that Christianity existed before Paul.

    >> If you want to criticize Christian churches, you need to criticize what they actually believe

    >No, I need to criticize what they *profess* to believe. I have no way of knowing what they actually believe. And what they all profess to believe is that the Bible is scripture inspired by God, or some variation on that theme.

    This is a typical Ron-ism: I didn't say that, I said this other thing, and under this new interpretation, I am right (or at least not wrong). Here you execute it for "actually" and "profess". You've recently executed this strategy for "founded" and "created", as well as "prove" versus "possibility". I am not fooled by this strategy.

    What Christian churches profess to believe is more than what is in the Bible.

    Let me restate: If you want to criticize Christian churches, you need to criticize what they profess to believe.

    To clarify: what Christian churches profess to believe, and not:
    1) what you think they believe
    2) what you think they should believe
    3) the unskilled Christianity you have created, but the profession of faith of existing churches.
    4) how some non-Christian church developed its beliefs.

    >But Paul says one thing and Jesus says something else. So unless God is a trickster, they can't both be right.

    A third possibility is that you lack the education and experience to understand it. [A fourth possibility would be that you are the Trickster].

    Do you understand:

    (defun hypotenuse (x y)
    (sqrt (+ (square x)
    (square y))))

    You've had education and experience to understand the above.

    Similarly with Christianity, one needs education and experience to understand it.

    To criticize Christianity without education and experience is to come off as one saying, "LISP is stupid."

    ReplyDelete
  38. On Criticism

    >> The establishment of the Church is written in the Gospels.

    >And the establishment of LDS is written in the Book of Mormon. And the establishment of Scientology is written in Dianetics. So what?

    The "so what" is that the books you criticize (sola scriptura) state a Church will be established to educate the people in the faith. Which means that sola scriptura has a built-in paradox, the scripture itself states that a Church will be established to teach the faith, and the faith can't be understood solely from the scriptures.

    >>> The crucifixion isn't warm and fuzzy, but the *result* of the crucifixion -- being reconciled with God, life after death, and avoiding everlasting hellfire -- is very warm and fuzzy.

    >> Yet what is demanded of the faithful believer? It is not without cost.

    >A very high cost indeed. What is demanded is that you detach yourself from objective reality, and so open yourself up to exploitation by all manner of charlatans. That is a very high price to pay.

    Interesting. I don't feel detached from objective reality. Indeed, I made a career out of manipulating objective reality. If your computer isn't very new, I may have had a hand in the successful fabrication of its microprocessor.

    Atheists are also beset by all manner of charlatans.

    >> How, then, do you resolve the lottery paradox?

    >What paradox? Yes, some people win the lottery, but the expected value of playing the lottery is still negative. The lottery is a scam, notwithstanding that there are a few winners.

    The paradox is that, you are surely expected to lose. The expected value, as you say, is negative.

    Yet, there are winners.

    Thus, even if a choice is difficult, it doesn't mean you can't end up with the correct decision. You can't win if you don't play.

    ReplyDelete
  39. @Publius [1 of n]

    > First, it's highly alarming you would believe and spread a myth designed to stir up hatred towards a particular religion.

    The Inquisition was not a myth. At worst my characterization of it as "industrial scale" might have been a bit harsh, but there is no doubt that the Inquisition happened, and that over its historical run the Inquisitors tortured many people. We can quibble over whether they did it by the thousands or the tens of thousands or the hundreds of thousands, and whether any of these numbers rise to the level of "industrial scale", indeed if that phrase can even make sense before the Industrial Revolution. But to quibble over these details is to miss the point rather badly, which is that there can be no doubt that over the course of history many people have been tortured to death professing a wide variety of sincerely held beliefs, not all of which can possibly be true.

    > I believe it is a work of art. Although it is a very puzzling work of art...

    Agreed on all counts.

    > Peter was an Apostle, who learned from Jesus during His ministry, and witnessed his crucifixion and resurrection.

    We have no first-hand testimony from Peter. Peter never wrote anything, just as Jesus never wrote anything, so all the information we have about Peter is *at best* second hand. So *at best* we have someone saying that they heard Peter claim to be a witness to the resurrection (and BTW, AFAICT we don't even have that).

    But all this is neither here nor there. I am happy to grant that Peter claimed to have seen the risen Jesus. I am happy to grant that *many* people claimed to have seen the risen Jesus. I am even happy to grant that all of these people were sincere in their beliefs, and that some of them went to their deaths under torture as a result. At the risk of repeating myself, many people have been tortured to death professing a wide variety of sincerely held beliefs, not all of which can possibly be true.

    Many people claimed to have seen Our Lady of Lourdes. Many people claim to have seen Bigfoot. Many people claim to have been abducted by aliens. I don't doubt that most of these people are sincere in their beliefs. But by itself their testimony is not compelling evidence that their claims are true.

    > It's ironic you're writing in an age when people are revived from death.

    Not after three days. And only in the presence of technology that didn't exist in Jesus's day.

    But why is this ironic? If we could explain the resurrection naturalistically that would not weaken my position in any way. The *whole point* of the resurrection (I am given to understand) is that it does not and cannot have a naturalistic explanation, that it was a miracle. Otherwise it's: OK, so Jesus was dead, and was revived my medical technology. And your point would be...?

    > Way back when, "dead" people coming back to life wouldn't be such a rare occurrence.

    Look, you can't have it both ways. Either the Resurrection was an extraordinary singular event, in which case you need to present me with some compelling evidence before I will believe it, or it wasn't, in what case you'll need to explain why it should matter to me at all.

    ReplyDelete
  40. > Establishing the resurrection of Jesus are three great, independently established, facts which are supported by the historical evidence:

    Neither of the first two "facts" are supported by historical evidence. I don't have time to do a thorough debunking, but here is a sketch:

    > the tomb of Jesus was discovered empty

    That link points to an article entitled "8 Strong Arguments for the Empty Tomb". The first actual argument presented, which one would presume would be among the strongest, is "Paul’s testimony provides remarkably early evidence for the burial account." But Paul didn't become a Christian until long after the Resurrection. So Paul's testimony has no value in establishing the empty tomb for the simple reason that he wasn't there.

    > Various individuals and groups of people witnessed the appearances of Jesus alive.

    No. Paul, and some anonymous Christian sources, *claim* this, but their claims are not "historical evidence" that this happened, at least not in isolation.

    > The original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead

    This I do not dispute. But see above about Bigfoot and alien abductions.

    > What makes Jesus' resurrection special is it is the resurrection of the man who claimed to be the Messiah

    Jesus is not "the" man who claimed to be the Messiah. Many people have claimed to be the Messiah. What you mean is that it is the resurrection of the man who actually *was* the Messiah, right? That's the only interpretation I can think of under which this makes any sense at all.

    But that doesn't solve the problem. It just shifts it from the question of whether the Resurrection happened to the question of whether Jesus was actually the Messiah. And the evidence for *that* is even thinner than the evidence for the resurrection.

    > The "holy city" may not refer to Jerusalem at all, but a heavenly city

    OK, but in that case, why would Matthew even bother to mention this event? Dead people walking around a heavenly city would not be at all unusual. In fact, who else could the inhabitants of a heavenly city possibly be? Why would the author of Matthew bother to mention this event at all if it did not involve bodies coming out of graves *here on earth* and being seen walking around *here on earth*?

    > Do you think [writing] was important 2000 years ago when most people were illiterate?

    It was important to the Romans. They kept meticulous written historical records.

    > What about the First Crusade

    Sorry, I don't know anything about the crusades.

    > the limousine that JFK was assassinated in... was mechanically modified and returned to service

    So? What does that have to do with Jesus?

    ReplyDelete
  41. > The resurrection is manifestly scriptural. Non-scriptural beliefs and practices of Christians would include the symbol of the cross, seven sacraments, holy orders, original sin, or the Immaculate Conception.

    Then I guess I don't understand what you mean by "non-scriptural". AFAICT, all Christian beliefs have some sort of scriptural foundation. Original sin, for example, comes from Genesis.

    > The "so what" is the point not all books can be understood without a teacher to help you.

    Sure, but again, so what? I don't understand Finnegan's Wake, but I can still tell it's a work of fiction without any help. I don't understand the details of the math of general relativity but I can still tell that Kip Thorne's "Gravitation" is a work of non-fiction without any help.

    > What Christian churches profess to believe is more than what is in the Bible.

    Of course. But all of the ones I've talked to profess to believe that the Bible is in some way foundational to their belief. That makes if fair to focus on the Bible, just as it would be fair to focus on the Quran if I were critiquing Islam, notwithstanding that there is a lot more to Islam than the Quran.

    > This is a typical Ron-ism: I didn't say that, I said this other thing

    Because very often it is in fact the case that I didn't say what you said I said, and in fact I said this other thing.

    > To criticize Christianity without education and experience is to come off as one saying, "LISP is stupid."

    Indeed. But I have quite a bit of education and experience. I've been studying Christianity for most of my life.

    > sola scriptura has a built-in paradox

    No, I don't think so, because...

    > the scripture itself states that a Church will be established to teach the faith,

    Yes, that's true, but...

    > and the faith can't be understood solely from the scriptures.

    No, I don't think that's true. Where does it say that the faith can't be understood from scripture alone?

    But that is neither here nor there. I'm happy to concede that the faith cannot be understood from scripture alone. How does that change anything? The Bible is still fiction AFAICT, and if you start with fiction I don't see how you're going to arrive at reality no matter how much additional stuff you pile on top of it.

    ReplyDelete
  42. > You can't win if you don't play.

    There is a reason that line is a perennial favorite among scam artists.

    > Carrier is good; Ehrman not so much.

    I'm pleasantly surprised to hear you say that because I agree.

    > How do you avoid the "Documentary effect"? That is, the last thing you've read or viewed is what shapes your beliefs?

    It's a challenge. But one of the things I do is engage with people holding opposing views (like you) and see if my current beliefs can withstand their criticism. So far, so good.

    > William Lane Craig

    Sorry, Craig is a moron. How about Tim Keller?

    >>> You stated that truth is the most important thing in your life.

    >> I'm pretty sure I never said that. Where did you get that idea?

    > I think you're right -- I've never been able to goad you into saying that.

    Maybe that's because it isn't true.

    But it's interesting to learn that goading me into saying things is a tactic that you embrace.

    > You have said you think hypocrisy is the greatest ethical offense.

    That's true, I have said that. And I stand by it.

    > From that, one could derive you think truth is most important

    No, that is absolutely wrong. Hypocrisy is simply doing things that are not in accord with your professed beliefs. My ethical criterion says absolutely nothing about what those professed beliefs are. It is quite possible to be a non-hypocritical Christian. It's not easy, but I've met a few, and I generally respect them even as I vehemently disagree with them.

    > You've become the image of the deity you claim to worship, Loki, the Trickster.

    I don't worship Loki. Loki is a cautionary tale, not a role model. (And he's fiction too, BTW.)

    > In game theory, you cooperate most of the time -- except occasionally you defect.

    No, lying is not defecting, at least not necessarily. It depends on the circumstances.

    Also, not every statement that I later disavow is a lie. Sometimes I just make mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Janus

    >> The "so what" is the point not all books can be understood without a teacher to help you.

    >Sure, but again, so what? I don't understand Finnegan's Wake, but I can still tell it's a work of fiction without any help. I don't understand the details of the math of general relativity, but I can still tell that Kip Thorne's "Gravitation" is a work of non-fiction without any help.

    Do you have this ability to determine fiction vs. non-fiction for every book? Does this ability extend to books you do not understand? Does it extend to books written in foreign languages you don't understand? Just what are the limits of this ability you have? Have you ever made an error? Is it possible for you to make an error?

    >> What Christian churches profess to believe is more than what is in the Bible.

    >Of course. But all of the ones I've talked to profess to believe that the Bible is in some way foundational to their belief.

    This is you wanting to have it both ways.

    One, you claim the NT is the source of foundational beliefs of Christianity, and the belief in Christ's resurrection is foundation, so you can concentrate your criticism on those.

    Two, you observe there are multiple Christian sects, all different, so you are therefore unable to choose between them for you to follow or believe.

    When it suits you, you either criticize Christianity for being all the same, or for being all different.

    You want absolute, ironclad proof on which Door A to walk through.

    Does anyone get that proof? Has anyone ever gotten that proof?

    What you'll find, if you walk through Door A, is not The Answer -- no, you will find a path to find the answer.

    What you do, though, is criticize the NT by creating your own unskilled version of Christianity (your method one). When are challenged that you're not criticizing any particular Christian theology, you respond with method two.

    ReplyDelete
  44. > Name one person.

    Why? Are you seriously disputing my claim? Because if you're not then you are not making this demand in good faith.

    > Just how "meticulous" were the Romans in recording events?

    Meticulous enough that the absence of any mention of dead people rising en masse from graves in Jerusalem is pretty good evidence that it never happened.

    > However, your reference to the Romans is misdirection. Surely the residents of Jerusalem were Jews, not Romans.

    Jerusalem was part of the Roman empire. There were Romans living there. But that is neither here nor there. The point is there are a lot of historical records from many different sources from the time of Jesus. Only one, Matthew, mentions dead people rising en masse from graves.

    > The point is what we think today would be important evidence to document or preserve is not necessarily considered important to people who were living at the time the event happened.

    You can't be serious. Are you seriously trying to equate dead people rising en masse from graves to the assassination of a political leader? The latter is a (sadly) pretty common event. There is not a single reliable record of the former ever happening. They are not even remotely comparable.

    > Do you have this ability to determine fiction vs. non-fiction for every book?

    I don't know. I have not read every book.

    > Does this ability extend to books you do not understand?

    That depends on what you mean by "understand". I can't read Mandarin, so I can't understand books written in Mandarin, and so I can't classify them. But if we constrain ourselves to books written in (or translated into) modern English, yeah, I think I can probably classify them with >99% accuracy.

    > Have you ever made an error?

    I don't think so, but of course it's possible that I've made one and just been unaware of it.

    > there are multiple Christian sects, all different, so you are therefore unable to choose between them for you to follow or believe.

    Belief in the resurrection as an historical event is the closest thing I've found to a belief shared among all Christian sects, so yes, I focus on that because it provides the broadest coverage. Given a goal of trying to explain why I don't believe in *any* flavor of Christianity (in the sense that I don't believe that their factual claims are true), focusing on the resurrection gives me the most bang for the blogging buck. This is not "having it both ways", this is choosing how to allocate my limited time.

    > You want absolute, ironclad proof

    No, I don't, and the fact that you think that I do indicates that you don't understand the scientific method at all. There is no such thing as absolute ironclad proof in science.

    > How much has your learning advanced in the past 6 years?

    A lot. I ran a Bible study for four of the last six years at a local church. It was intended to be for non-believers but ended up attracting mostly Christians. I learned a lot.

    > No, I don't agree to disagree. You're wrong.

    Says the person who just attacked a straw man by saying that I want absolute, iron-clad proof. Sorry, dude, but your credibility is shot.

    > It is manifestly true and provable one can be a faithful Christian and an outstanding scientist, engineer, or scholar.

    I don't doubt that. But all that shows is that it is possible to be an outstanding scientist, engineer, or scholar while being at least somewhat detached from reality. But we don't need to look at religion to find examples of that. Kary Mullis won a Nobel prize but was an HIV-AIDS denialist.

    > still at flownet?

    Yes.

    > Do you ever get to Southern California?

    Occasionally. But if you are really willing to talk IRL there is this cool new technology called video conferencing. You might want to check it out.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Put Up or Shut Up

    @Ron:
    >Why? Are you seriously disputing my claim? Because if you're not then you are not making this demand in good faith.

    Your claim began with an assertion of anti-Catholic bigotry, which you apparently think "everyone just believes and agrees to." Which casts extreme doubt on your character and the quality of your scholarship.

    Yes, I dispute your claim. Name one person who was tortured to death while professing a belief that person knew to be false. Was the person tortured to death during the Inquisition? No name comes to mind?

    I can name a person who was tortured to death for professing a true belief -- Maximilian Kolbe.

    >> Just how "meticulous" were the Romans in recording events?

    >Meticulous enough that the absence of any mention of dead people rising en masse from graves in Jerusalem is pretty good evidence that it never happened.

    This is nonsensical. It would lead you to conclude that the First Crusade didn't happen, because no Muslims wrote about it before 1310 A.D.

    Your theory is pretty damn poor. A rare literate person has to decide to write it down -- for what reason, to "communicate" to an illiterate population? Then the writing has to survive the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the murder and enslavement of its population? Then the writing substrate has to survive the environment for the next 2000 years.

    >Jerusalem was part of the Roman empire. There were Romans living there. But that is neither here nor there. The point is there are a lot of historical records from many different sources from the time of Jesus. Only one, Matthew, mentions dead people rising en masse from graves.

    We're damn lucky it survived then, as most records didn't.

    >> The point is what we think today would be important evidence to document or preserve is not necessarily considered important to people who were living at the time the event happened.

    >You can't be serious. Are you seriously trying to equate dead people rising en masse from graves to the assassination of a political leader?

    No, I'm not trying to equate the two. The point -- again -- as I wrote originally (see above), is that what we think today would be important to document or preserve is not necessarily considered important to the people who living at the time the event happened. You also have a modern bias towards writing and documentation, and learning from such.

    ReplyDelete
  46. > Your claim began with an assertion of anti-Catholic bigotry

    It did? What did I say that you perceived as anti-Catholic bigotry?

    > Yes, I dispute your claim. Name one person who was tortured to death while professing a belief that person knew to be false.

    That is not my claim. I have never doubted the sincerity of Jesus's followers' beliefs. What I doubt is that those beliefs were actually true. My claim is that people have died for sincerely held false beliefs, i.e. beliefs that the person believes to be true, but are not actually true.

    > It would lead you to conclude that the First Crusade didn't happen

    Like I told you before, I don't know anything about the crusades. I neither know nor care whether or not the first crusade actually happened.

    > A rare literate person has to decide to write it down -- for what reason

    To record it for posterity. What else? (BTW, a rare literate person manifestly *did* write it down!)

    > what we think today would be important to document or preserve is not necessarily considered important to the people who living at the time the event happened

    Yes, that is certainly true. But people rising from the dead manifestly *was* considered important enough for Christian authors to record it on more than one occasion. Also, people 2000 years ago were not so different from us that seeing actual zombies walking the streets would not have totally freaked them out.

    ReplyDelete
  47. @Publius: I deleted your second comment (the links for publishing and deleting are right next to each other) and now I can't undelete it. If you kept a copy please re-post it.

    ReplyDelete
  48. @Publius:

    > you are not criticizing any particular Christian sect

    That's right, I'm explaining why I don't subscribe to *any* sect of Christianity. Happily for me, there is one argument that provides very broad coverage, so I use it. If I didn't do that, if I had to go sect-by-sect, I'd be writing a multi-volume treatise rather than a blog post.

    > Ad hominem

    No, that was not an ad hominem. Not every mention of your interlocutor is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is an attack on the character or motives of the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. But in this case I was responding to a false statement that you made in the course of advancing your argument. I was not attacking your character nor your motives, but rather your understanding of the scientific method, which is manifestly lacking.

    > I'm 100% confident if I wake up early enough, I will observe the Sun rising from the East.

    Really? You are 100% confident that the sky will not be obscured by clouds? That you will not be kidnapped and held for ransom in an underground bunker? That you will not be somehow transported to the north pole?

    > Who was your teacher?

    I have had many. I'm not going to name them, but one was Luke whom you may know from this blog.

    > You were an HIV-AIDS denialist too

    No, I wasn't. Just because I took the HIV denialist hypothesis seriously enough to warrant further investigation doesn't make me an HIV denialist. Actually, it shows that I'm willing to seriously consider some pretty outlandish ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  49. @Publius:

    Oh, I just realized...

    > I have had many. ... one was Luke

    and another is you (though I have to say that your pedagogy leaves room for improvement).

    ReplyDelete
  50. The Myth of the Inquisition Created by Protestant Bigots

    >> Your claim began with an assertion of anti-Catholic bigotry

    >It did? What did I say that you perceived as anti-Catholic bigotry?

    @Ron:
    The Inquisition tortured heretics, including Muslims, on an industrial scale. Sadly, history does not record their names. [In another conversation thread, you stated "To see that people will die professing beliefs that are false by your own standards one need look no further than the countless heretics tortured to death by your very own beloved Catholic church."]

    >> Yes, I dispute your claim. Name one person who was tortured to death while professing a belief that person knew to be false.

    >That is not my claim. I have never doubted the sincerity of Jesus's followers' beliefs. What I doubt is that those beliefs were actually true. My claim is that people have died for sincerely held false beliefs, i.e. beliefs that the person believes to be true, but are not actually true.

    To quote you:

    >Do you think that matters? Do you really believe that no one has ever been tortured to death while professing a false belief?

    You contradict yourself.

    Also: Name one person.

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  51. > but no one would write down about crusading armies passing through, sacking cities, and murdering your neighbors? Not just on one day, but for 3 years?

    So first of all, armies marching would not be the same kind of Big News as dead people rising from graves. Armies marching would not be unprecedented, and would not indicate anything supernatural. Dead people rising from graves would.

    Second, the fact that the crusade was recorded after three years gives a valuable data point regarding the time scales on which things got recorded back then. But Matthew was written ~40 years after the alleged events.

    Third, in the case of the rising-from-the-graves we have additional data: Paul and the anonymous author of Mark both wrote about Jesus *before* Matthew, and neither of them mention this extraordinary event. So either they knew about it and didn't write it down, or it happened and they didn't know about it, or it didn't happen. My money is on door #3.

    > You have modern biases that lead you believe important events should be written down.

    That's true, but I also have evidence that people back then considered resurrections to be extraordinary events worth recording. Which kind of makes sense. These people were not that different from us.

    > Yet you reasonably demand a document on "the dead visiting people" to survive that catastrophe?

    Why would it have to? The idea that all of the records would be in Jerusalem is just stupid. 40 years is plenty of time for the word to spread beyond the city limits of Jerusalem. In fact, we don't need to speculate. We can be certain that this actually happened because there are surviving writings about Jesus that pre-date the destruction of Jerusalem addressed to communities of believers as far away as Rome.

    Are you even bothering to think these things through, or are you just desperately throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks?

    > On 9/11/2001, I saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse on live TV. I didn't write anything about it until the prior phrase you just read.

    Again, this is just stupid. For any historical event, the number of people who did not write about it will always vastly outnumber the number who did. Nonetheless, historical events do get recorded.

    > your method is misguided

    Sez you. Why should I believe you?

    > You're trying to seek Christ apart from the Church.

    Yes, there are hundreds of millions of protestants who tell me that's the right way to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  52. @Publius, P.S.:

    You should watch this:

    https://youtu.be/wl26CyW13PY?si=i8oFqJ6xXM46E0F7&t=738

    The whole video is worth watching, but I've indexed it to the relevant part, which is about a minute long. Paulogia puts it much better than I did: "sincerely mistaken people will die just as readily as someone sincerely correct."

    ReplyDelete
  53. "People have been tortured to death proclaiming the authority of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him."

    > Other experts told journalists at the Vatican yesterday that many of the thousands of executions conventionally attributed to the church were in fact carried out by non-church tribunals.

    >So the Church contracted out its wet work. 1250 is the best-case-scenario count of people who died directly at the hands of the church. God only knows how many more died at the hands of "non-church tribunals" who were doing the Church's work for them.
    I don't see how any of this is "anti-Catholic bigotry".


    The Inquisition, as a church-court, had no jurisdiction over Muslims and Jews as such.

    You misunderstand the little research you did. The church-court tried cases of heresy, and the overwhelming sentences consisted of penances. When a suspect was convicted of unrepentant heresy, canon law required the inquisitorial tribunal to hand the person over to secular authorities for final sentencing. A secular magistrate, the "secular arm", would then determine the penalty based on local law.

    Homework for you: why would secular authorities put heretics to death? What purpose did they think it served? What was there motive?

    There were no extra "non-church tribunals" operating parallel to the inquisition, so there are not "God only knows how many more died" to be counted. Yet it is telling you would invent this in your mind -- revealing a common atheist bigotry that religions cause violence (to quote you: "Religious people regularly slaughter each other over doctrinal disputes (there is no other way to resolve them when push comes to shove)").

    Current estimates are 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 history. Over the same time period, there were 150,000 documented witch burnings outside of the Inquisition process.

    The Inquisition Myth did not arise until 1567, when a propaganda campaign began with the publication of a Protestant leaflet penned by a supposed Inquisition victim named Montanus. This character (Protestant of course) painted Spaniards as barbarians who ravished women and sodomized young boys. The propagandists soon created "hooded fiends" who tortured their victims in horrible devices like the knife-filled Iron Maiden (which never was used in Spain).

    To say "The Inquisition tortured heretics, including Muslims, on an industrial scale. Sadly, history does not record their names." is hateful bigotry, equivalent to someone quoting "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". You may have been ignorant of the truth, which can excuse culpability for the offense, but it does not erase the offense itself.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Matthew 27:52

    >Are you even bothering to think these things through, or are you just desperately throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks?

    I've actually gotten you to move your position a little bit. Instead of mindlessly repeating "the Romans were very meticulous record-keepers" you've had to think about it a little bit -- acknowledge that most people were illiterate and couldn't write it down. Now your claim is the illiterate people would talk about it, and some literate person upon hearing this, would write it down. You seem frustrated someone would challenge an assertion you think is "obviously" true.

    >Second, the fact that the crusade was recorded after three years gives a valuable data point regarding the time scales on which things got recorded back then.

    You misunderstood. The First Crusade lasted three years (1096-1099). No mention of it was made in Muslim writing until 1310 -- 211 years later.

    Let's summarize your original claims:
    A) " It is just inconceivable that an event as momentous as dead people rising from their graves and walking around Jerusalem actually happened without any record being made of it at the time."
    B) "... because dead people walking around would be Big News even in Jesus's time."
    C) "... in the case of the rising-from-the-graves we have additional data: Paul and the anonymous author of Mark both wrote about Jesus *before* Matthew, and neither of them mention this extraordinary event. So either they knew about it and didn't write it down, or it happened and they didn't know about it, or it didn't happen. My money is on door #3."

    ReplyDelete
  55. Objection 2: Silence

    Even if we accept your premice people would write down their observation of "dead people walking around Jerusalem", that writing would have to survive through history for us to know it.

    It could be it was written down by many people -- but none of it survived.

    Papyrus and vellum degrade quickly.

    While "Romans may have been meticulous record keepers," not a single document from that time period in the Levant has survived. Few documents from the first century have survived. Surviving documents from the first century would fill one bookshelf.

    Explain why you conclude it is reasonable to demand a document describing one particular event survive.

    As to why only Matthew contains this event:

    >So either they knew about it and didn't write it down, or it happened and they didn't know about it, or it didn't happen. My money is on door #3.

    You advance the Marcan priority for the Gospel writing. Could you be wrong? Another hypothesis is the Matthew priority. There are many others.

    You've given 3 options. Can you think of another?

    Here's another one: the writers of the Gospels were writing for different audiences. Matthew's Gospel was targeted to the Jews who would have memory of it; the other Gospels targeted Greeks and others. Now you have 4 doors to choose.

    Dozens of more reasons why Matthew includes the event and not the other gospels can be postulated.

    The argument from silence is infinitely flexible, letting you to fallaciously conclude whatever you desire. If it can prove everything, then it proves nothing.

    ReplyDelete
  56. > You misunderstand the little research you did.

    And you misunderstand my argument. It doesn't matter who did the torturing and killing, all that matters is that it happened. And on that point you and I are agreed:

    > 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 history

    OK. And at least some of those people died professing sincerely held beliefs that were considered heretical by the church, right?

    > You misunderstood. The First Crusade lasted three years (1096-1099). No mention of it was made in Muslim writing until 1310 -- 211 years later.

    OK, I guess I don't understand your point at all. Are you really arguing that there is reasonable doubt about whether or not the first crusade actually happened? It was extensively documented by the crusaders:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sources_for_the_Crusades

    > First, are engaging it what is called Proof Texting. You pull out a single verse, or a small set of verses, to support your proposition in eisegesis.

    Nope, I am simply observing that the author of Matthew makes an extraordinary claim that is not corroborated in any way. The most likely explanation is that the author of Matthew did not intend it to be a factual claim.

    > Second, you are using a logical fallacy, the argument from silence.

    That's not a fallacy. In the case of extraordinary claims, the absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence. If someone claimed that (say) Donald Trump once walked on water, the fact that there are no records of this is fairly persuasive evidence that the claim is false.

    > Context matters.

    Of course it does, and that's one of the reasons I'm looking at Matthew in its historical context. But in this particular case it really doesn't matter that much. Either the author of Matthew is making a factual claim about the saints rising from the dead or he isn't. If he isn't then that calls into question whether he is making a factual claim about Jesus rising from the dead.

    > It could be it was written down by many people -- but none of it survived.

    Yes, that's possible. It's possible that there were records of Donald Trump walking on water but that they were all somehow destroyed. But it seems unlikely. That would be some very selective destruction.

    > You advance the Marcan priority for the Gospel writing. Could you be wrong?

    Of course. But 1) it explains a lot and 2) it's the scholarly consensus. So if you want to dispute this, you need to take it up with the community of Biblical scholars, not me.

    > You've given 3 options. Can you think of another?

    No. The options I gave are logically complete.

    > Here's another one: the writers of the Gospels were writing for different audiences. Matthew's Gospel was targeted to the Jews who would have memory of it; the other Gospels targeted Greeks and others. Now you have 4 doors to choose.

    That's the "they knew about it but didn't write it down" option.

    But it's not just the silence of the gospel writers that you have to explain, it's the silence of *all* other authors of the time, both Christian and secular.

    > The argument from silence is infinitely flexible

    No, it isn't. It applies only to extraordinary claims. If someone claimed that Donald Trump once had eggs for breakfast, that could very well be true even if no one wrote it down.

    The argument from silence would be fallacious in this case if people rising from the graves was as commonplace in Jesus's time as people eating eggs for breakfast is today. But I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Free To Write About Dead People Walking

    >> 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 history

    >OK. And at least some of those people died professing sincerely held beliefs that were considered heretical by the church, right?

    Name one.

    >> You misunderstood. The First Crusade lasted three years (1096-1099). No mention of it was made in Muslim writing until 1310 -- 211 years later.

    >OK, I guess I don't understand your point at all. Are you really arguing that there is reasonable doubt about whether or not the first crusade actually happened?

    The point is different. It is well documented the First Crusade happened.

    Yet no Muslim wrote about it until 211 years later. Marauding crusader armies were invading and leveling villages. Yet no Muslim living at the time found it significant enough to write down.

    The point is: what modern people think might be important to document is not necessarily what medieval (or classical) people think was important.

    Therefore, you cannot argue "If Event X happened, then people living during that time definitely would have written it down."

    I gave other examples in my unpublished comments.

    >> First, are engaging it what is called Proof Texting. You pull out a single verse, or a small set of verses, to support your proposition in eisegesis.

    >Nope, I am simply observing that the author of Matthew makes an extraordinary claim that is not corroborated in any way.

    It's exactly what you are doing. Exactly.Proof Texting could be redefined by what you are doing. In the next dictionary, your picture should be placed next to the definition of Proof Texting. While you wouldn't qualify as the Patron Saint of Proof Texting, you would earn mention as a minor prophet or something.

    Let me clarify: Proof Texting is exactly what you're engaged in.

    The most likely explanation is that the author of Matthew did not intend it to be a factual claim.

    This is a different explanation. It requires context and discernment. Cue up your complaint on "how can I know what is metaphor and what is history?" argument.

    >> It could be it was written down by many people -- but none of it survived.

    >Yes, that's possible.

    So far so good ...

    It's possible that there were records of Donald Trump walking on water but that they were all somehow destroyed.

    For an analogy to be useful, informative, or enlightening, the situations must be analogous. Your analogy is not analogous and therefore a distraction and wast of time.

    >But it seems unlikely. That would be some very selective destruction.

    This is your enormous error. The reasonable expectation is that no document survives from the first century for any specific event. Outstanding support for this is in my unpublished comments.

    >No. The options I gave are logically complete.

    Well, to be complete, you would have 4 options.

    > The argument from silence is infinitely flexible

    >No, it isn't. It applies only to extraordinary claims.

    Who told you that? Justify it. Try not to use the fallacy of the argument from incredulity.

    To clarify, I am not objecting to you not believing the resurrection of the dead referenced in Matt 27:53 (for many reasons you have cited).

    My objection is you demanding a second document as precondition to you, or anyone else, believing it. I object to you asserting it is obvious that many would have documented it, it being incredulous they didn't, and those documents would be reasonably expected to survive to the present day. I have provided outstanding arguments against your position.

    Furthermore, I would expect if I produced 100 documents, from 100 different authors, that conform with the description in Matt 27:53, you still would not believe it.

    ReplyDelete
  58. @Publius:

    > Name one.

    Why? What disagreement would that resolve? You have already conceded that between 3000 and 5000 people died during the inquisition while professing heretical beliefs. What difference does it make if I go look up some of their names? If you really want to know their names just go look them up yourself.

    > The point is different. It is well documented the First Crusade happened.

    > Yet no Muslim wrote about it until 211 years later.

    Well, none that we know of. But again, so what? There is no doubt that the first crusade happened because of documentation from other sources. The fact that no Muslims wrote about it does seem a bit odd, and it would be interesting to figure out why, but it in no way calls the into question that the crusade actually happened.

    > Proof Texting could be redefined by what you are doing.

    Only if you employ the Humpty Dumpty theory of what words mean. Proof texting has a well established meaning: it is the practice of using a short passage of scripture to support a *theological* position. But I'm not advancing a theological position, I'm advancing a purely secular one, namely, that the Bible is (mostly) mythology. And I'm not relying on that passage in Matthew in isolation, I'm looking at the entire Bible. It happens that the passage in Matthew is a particularly compelling piece of evidence -- in context, because it's just so *obviously* fabricated. But I could actually cite pretty much *any* of the miracles in the Bible as evidence that the Bible is mythology because *none* of those miracles have enough corroborating evidence to provide a compelling (to me) argument that *any* of them (let alone all of them) actually happened.

    > Therefore, you cannot argue "If Event X happened, then people living during that time definitely would have written it down."

    That's not my argument. My argument is that if *one* person wrote it down (and one person manifestly did) then, if it really happened, it seems odd that no one *else* recorded it. That doesn't prove anything, but the most likely explanation for an uncorroborated extraordinary claim is that the claim is simply false. It's the same heuristic I apply to big foot, alien abductions, faith healing, ghosts, exorcisms, yada yada yada. I see no reason to treat Zombies in Jerusalem any differently. All of these *might* be true. But I'll give long odds against.

    > This is a different explanation.

    No it isn't, I was just trying to be polite and avoid saying "the author of Matthew made the story up."

    ReplyDelete
  59. @Publius (2 of 2);

    > Your analogy is not analogous

    It is. Zombies in Jerusalem is just as unlikely a priori as Donald Trump walking on water, and the amount of evidence you'd need to provide me to persuade me that either one is true is comparable. One person's anonymous testimony is certainly not going to be enough.

    BTW, notice that Matthew's claim is not just "Zombies in Jerusalem", but that there were many witnesses! That makes the claim *less* credible than if he were the only witness. It Matthew were the only witness that would actually explain why there are no other accounts. But because Matthew claims there were witnesses, indeed, not just witnesses but *many* witnesses, so many he can't even put an actual number to it, it raises the question: what did all those witnesses do after seeing this extraordinary event? Why is there no record of anyone hearing the story from any of these many witnesses? Again, the most likely explanation is that there were no witnesses because the whole thing is a fabrication.

    BTW2: can you name any of these alleged witnesses? No, you cannot, because Matthew is the only account of this event and he does not name the alleged witnesses. Keep this in mind the next time you want to draw a conclusion from the fact that I don't happen to have the names of any of the Inquisition's victims ready to hand.

    > The reasonable expectation is that no document survives from the first century for any specific event.

    Yes, that's true. But this is not just any event. It is an *extraordinary* event that was allegedly witnessed by many people.

    > Well, to be complete, you would have 4 options.

    Nope. Knowledge of an event is contingent on the event actually happening. Having actual knowledge of an event that did not actually happen is logically impossible, so my three options are logically complete.

    >>> The argument from silence is infinitely flexible

    >> No, it isn't. It applies only to extraordinary claims.

    > Who told you that? Justify it.

    Seriously?

    There are countless ordinary events for which there are no records. Millions of people have gotten up in the morning and prepared meals and gone to the bathroom and washed their hands and looked at the sky and hugged their loved ones and played checkers and engaged in myriad other mundane activities without anyone writing them down. The fact that no one wrote them down does not call into question that these things happened.

    By way of very stark contrast, the absence of a record of Donald Trump walking on water very much calls into question whether that ever happened.

    Did you really need me to explain that to you?

    ReplyDelete
  60. Heh, people figure things out

    >Only if you employ the Humpty Dumpty theory of what words mean. Proof texting has a well established meaning: it is the practice of using a short passage of scripture to support a *theological* position.

    Wrong, it is also used to establish a proposition in eisegesis, which is what you're doing.

    >But I'm not advancing a theological position, I'm advancing a purely secular one, namely, that the Bible is (mostly) mythology.

    If it's mythology, then the authors are really bad at writing mythology.

    >And I'm not relying on that passage in Matthew in isolation, I'm looking at the entire Bible.

    No you're not. You always criticize the literal interpretation of the Bible. After all, you argue, " if parts of the Bible are not literally true, then you have the problem of deciding which parts, if any, are literally true."

    This is part of your process of creating your own straw man Christian religion, which you then argue against.

    >It happens that the passage in Matthew is a particularly compelling piece of evidence -- in context, because it's just so *obviously* fabricated.

    Wait, now you claim you can decide which parts of the Bible are not literally true?

    Well, if you can do it, why can't other people? If fact, haven't other people studied the Bible in depth and written voluminous books on how to interpret the Bible literally, symbolically, metaphorically, ethically, historically, mystically, and personally? It's like . . . like a lot of smart people, and a few geniuses, read it and developed a rich literature on understanding it. I guess you didn't see that coming.

    >> Therefore, you cannot argue "If Event X happened, then people living during that time definitely would have written it down."

    >That's not my argument. My argument is that if *one* person wrote it down (and one person manifestly did) then, if it really happened, it seems odd that no one *else* recorded it.

    As I've explained to you many times, it is not "odd" that none one else recorded it; in fact, if should be your expectation that we don't have any other documents recording it.

    >That doesn't prove anything,

    So stop citing it as a reason not to believe Mat 27:53!

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  61. Zero product property

    >but the most likely explanation for an uncorroborated extraordinary claim is that the claim is simply false.

    No No No, a thousand times No!

    "the most likely explanation" is one or more of these:
    1) The people at the time didn't think it significant to write down (other examples: Muslims didn't write about the First Crusade for 211 years, Pliny the Younger didn't mention the complete destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum).
    2) The people at the time were not free to write it down due to government or religious suppression.
    3) The people at the time didn't have the means or ability to write it down
    4) Some people did write it down, but it didn't survive to present times. You started out mindlessly repeating "the Romans were meticulous record keepers" -- a well-rehearsed atheist argument. Which is completely stupid, as not a single Roman document -- zero -- survives from the Levant in that time period. If a million people write it down 10 times each, it doesn't matter if zero documents survived from that time period.
    5) Papyrus breaks down in a few decades. Documents from that period only surive due to recopying over and over. Who was going to recopy those accounts? Jews, who were suppressing Christianity? Romans, who were suppressing Christianity? Christians, who were having their writings suppressed?
    6) A hundred other reasons any writing documenting the event didn't survive to present day, just as 99% of the documents didn't.

    >It's the same heuristic I apply to big foot, alien abductions, faith healing, ghosts, exorcisms, yada yada yada. I see no reason to treat Zombies in Jerusalem any differently.

    Not comparable. One happened in the first century and the rest are claimed in modern times.

    Did you know almost no documents survive from the first century?

    >> This is a different explanation.

    >No it isn't, I was just trying to be polite and avoid saying "the author of Matthew made the story up."

    I.e., proof, err, evidence you were interpreting it literally.

    >It is. Zombies in Jerusalem is just as unlikely a priori as Donald Trump walking on water, and the amount of evidence you'd need to provide me to persuade me that either one is true is comparable. One person's anonymous testimony is certainly not going to be enough.

    Donald Trump is modern day, not first century, so they are not analogous.

    I don't think it's unreasonable for you to doubt it based one one account.

    What is unreasonable, illogical, wrong-headed, unfair, and against good sense is expecting a second document from an era when almost no documents survive.

    >BTW, notice that Matthew's claim is not just "Zombies in Jerusalem", but that there were many witnesses!

    Also note he didn't mention if the witnesses recognized the resurrected people walking through as having been resurrected. The witnesses could have just thought them as strangers walking through. If the witnesses didn't know they were resurrected, would they be writing that down? Yet recall all those witnesses were likely illiterate and couldn't write!

    >But because Matthew claims there were witnesses, indeed, not just witnesses but *many* witnesses, so many he can't even put an actual number to it, it raises the question: what did all those witnesses do after seeing this extraordinary event? Why is there no record of anyone hearing the story from any of these many witnesses?

    Why is there no record? Because nearly zero records survived from that period. No a single Roman (the "meticulous record keepers") record survives from that time period from the Levant.

    Also, did you consider the possibility the religious leaders or government murdered the people who wrote it down and burned their writings?

    Also, you are invoking over and over the logical fallacy "the argument from incredulity."

    ReplyDelete
  62. One good witness is all it takes (and all we have)

    Again, the most likely explanation is that there were no witnesses because the whole thing is a fabrication.

    Wrong again. The most likely explanation is that any writing documenting those events didn't survive. Similar to all the other writing from that time period didn't survive.

    >> The reasonable expectation is that no document survives from the first century for any specific event.

    >Yes, that's true. But this is not just any event. It is an *extraordinary* event that was allegedly witnessed by many people.

    "Yes, that's true." So stop saying that one or more additional documents should exist.

    It doesn't matter how "extraordinary" the event, or how many people witnessed it, if zero documents survive from that period. You're also assuming they would have found it extraordinary, had the means to write it down, and had the ability to write it down.

    In modern times there are places in the world it would be difficult to write that down. You think you could write your blog if you were living in Pyongyang, North Korea? Or Tehran, Iran?

    >>> The argument from silence is infinitely flexible

    >>> No, it isn't. It applies only to extraordinary claims.

    >> Who told you that? Justify it.

    >There are countless ordinary events for which there are no records.

    The "argument from silence" is in the context of historical events, not mundane daily events. I suppose you could argue that "historical events" are "extraordinary" -- although few historical events are as extraordinary as resurrection of the dead.

    Yet you are making the Super Argument from Silence -- demanding a second corroborating document for an extraordinary event -- from a period in which hardly any documents survived.

    Corroborating documents are helpful in modern times, but extremely unlikely be to available from ancient times. Only once source documents the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. The earthquake in Antioch in 37 AD, which destroyed much of the city and the neighboring Daphne, is known from one source -- Malalas.

    To know the history of ancient times, we often depend on a single good source.

    Ron: I demand a second corroborating source for first century events!

    Historians: there aren't any.

    Ron: Then nothing happened in the first century!

    ReplyDelete
  63. > Your initial belief had these false elements:
    > 1) The Inquisition tortured people, including Muslims, on an "industrial scale"

    I've already retracted the "industrial scale" part. If you keep harping on this, I'm going to stop publishing your comments.

    But all of this is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter if the Inquisition tortured people or not (it did). It doesn't matter if some of those people died (they did). It doesn't matter if some of the victims were Muslims (they were, though it turns out that the Inquisition was much more focused on Jews and heretics than on Muslims). All that matters is that there are examples of people being willing to die for sincerely held but false beliefs, and so the fact that someone is willing to die for their beliefs is not evidence that those beliefs are actually true. I may have been a little glib and hasty in pointing to the Inquisition's persecution of Muslims for examples of this, but a poor choice of example doesn't invalidate the claim.

    So forget the Inquisition and focus on the actual substance of my claim: people are willing to die for sincerely held but false beliefs, and so a willingness to die is not evidence of the truth of one's beliefs. Do you dispute this?

    > 2) There were no records of the people affected.

    No, I did not say that. I said the victims *names* were not recorded, not that there were no records. Obviously there were records, and some of those records contained the victims names, but not all of them.

    Again, if you keep misrepresenting my position and forcing me to correct you I will stop publishing your comments. I'm trying very hard to take you seriously, but I don't have time for this kind of bullshit.

    > So it could be that some Muslims did write about it, but their writings didn't survive to the present time?

    Yes, that's possible.

    > It could also be that Muslims at the time it was happening didn't find those events of any significance to write about?

    That's also possible.

    > Hmmm ... could this inform us about how to reason about people and writing in the first century?

    Yes, that is also possible. It is also possible that all of the people who were going to write about it were abducted by aliens.

    What matters is not what is *possible* but what is *probable*. And Zombies in Jerusalem witnessed by many leaving exactly *one* record is highly improbable.

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  64. >> That doesn't prove anything,

    > So stop citing it as a reason not to believe Mat 27:53!

    Um, no. I adhere to the scientific method. In science, nothing is ever proved. All conclusions are tentative, subject to revision if new data or better ideas are discovered. But the lack of corroboration for Matthew, along with the prima facie improbability of people rising from the dead, is absolutely a reason not to believe Matthew's account.

    > > but the most likely explanation for an uncorroborated extraordinary claim is that the claim is simply false.

    > No No No, a thousand times No!

    You can say no until you are blue in the face, that won't change the fact. If someone claims that they saw a zombie, the most likely explanation is not that they actually saw a zombie for the simple reason that zombies almost certainly don't exist. [drops mic]

    > Not comparable. One happened in the first century and the rest are claimed in modern times.

    Absent compelling evidence to the contrary it's reasonable to suppose that the same laws of physics that apply in modern times also applied in the first century, and so there were no zombies then for the same reasons there are no zombies now.

    > Also note he didn't mention if the witnesses recognized the resurrected people walking through as having been resurrected. The witnesses could have just thought them as strangers walking through.

    Yes, that's possible, but the problem is that Matthew's claim is not "resurrected people walking through", it is that "the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose", i.e. dead bodies literally coming up out of the ground.

    I suppose it's possible that the witnesses only saw the bodies *after* they had come out of the ground, and at that point they looked unremarkable, but if you're going to take that possibility seriously you could argue that there are zombies walking around today but nobody notices because they look like regular people.

    You can't have it both ways: either the witnesses saw bodies coming out of the ground, in which case the argument from silence very much applies, or they didn't, in which case they aren't actually witnesses to the extraordinary claim.

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  65. You have the evidence?

    >> No No No, a thousand times No!

    >You can say no until you are blue in the face, that won't change the fact. If someone claims that they saw a zombie, the most likely explanation is not that they actually saw a zombie for the simple reason that zombies almost certainly don't exist. [drops mic]

    "change the fact"? What "fact"?

    It is reasonable for you to doubt that people were raised from the dead.

    >What matters is not what is *possible* but what is *probable*. And Zombies in Jerusalem witnessed by many leaving exactly *one* record is highly improbable.

    THIS IS NOT REASONABLE.

    To put it in the positive sense, how do you justify (without using the logical fallacy of the "argument from incredulity"), that it is probable that we would have more than one record witnessing resurrected people walking through Jerusalem.

    I have given many arguments (above, and unpublished) on why one would expect to have no other documents regarding this event.

    Please point out how those arguments are wrong, in detail. Justify, in detail, how your expectation to to have one or more additional documents is reasonable (without using the "argument from incredulity").

    >> If it's mythology, then the authors are really bad at writing mythology.

    >Manifestly not. But just out of curiosity, what does good mythology look like to you?

    First, it would have to conform to the know forms of mythology from that time period.

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  66. > You say there are examples of people this happened to, yet you cannot name one person that this happened to.

    I can't name a single victim of the crusades either. That doesn't mean they didn't happen.

    I actually could name someone who has been tortured to death for false beliefs. I could probably name many such people. But I won't because it's irrelevant, and would just give you one more thing to which to attach your many unsound arguments. This discussion has already spun wildly out of control, I'm not going to give you another excuse for muddying the waters. Case in point:

    > The 11 Apostles ate and drank with Jesus after His resurrection. They weren't martyred for false beliefs.

    You are begging the question. The only evidence we have that the apostles ate and drank with Jesus after the Resurrection is the testimony of the anonymous gospel writers. You cannot assume that Christian testimony is true to prove that Christian beliefs are true.

    > You're transferring a method useful in the laboratory to the adventure of your life

    No, the scientific method is not just useful in the lab. It's applicable to everything, and anyone can do it. You don't have to have a lab or wear a white coat or even be good at math.

    > You're also neutering your own human agency and intellect to answer the question.

    Not at all. Using the scientific method is tremendously empowering because it leads you to actual truth. To be precise, the scientific method *converges* to something stable, and that thing turns out to be the most reliable way of predicting the future that mankind has ever devised. That thing that science converges to that lets you make reliable predictions is called "truth" even though it may or may not be metaphysical Truth.

    But it's actually more than that. Because science seeks *explanations* it's not just that the truth it converges to lets you make reliable predictions, it also lets you *understand* the world around you in a way that I find deeply and spiritually satisfying. And in particular, it guides me to making the most of this life rather than frittering it away hoping for something better in an afterlife that almost certainly does not exist.

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  67. >> The literal truth of the Resurrection is a straw man? I know a lot of people who self-identify as Christian who will disagree with you.

    > This is just you Proof Texting again.

    No, it isn't. It's taking Christians at their word and observing that belief in the Resurrection is the closest thing I could find to a common factor among all Christian denominations.

    > Christian religions aren't based solely on the NT

    I never said they were. If you keep attacking straw-man arguments I will stop publishing your comments. Life is too short to put up with this sort of bullshit indefinitely.

    > "change the fact"? What "fact"?

    The fact of the matter about zombies, whatever that might be. Either there are zombies, or there are not zombies, but whichever it is, your shouting "NO NO NO!" will not change it.

    > It is reasonable for you to doubt that people were raised from the dead.

    Hallelujah.

    > how do you justify ... that it is probable that we would have more than one record witnessing resurrected people walking through Jerusalem.

    I have no idea what would actually happen if zombies walked the streets, just as I have no idea what would happen if Hogwarts turned out to be real. Both of those are so far outside of the realm of reasonable probability that to move the needle on my Bayesian prior would require a lot of evidence. Do you think I should believe in Hogwarts? Why not? It is *vastly* better attested than Matthew's zombie story.

    >> what does good mythology look like to you?

    > First, it would have to conform to the know forms of mythology from that time period.

    So... innovation invariably makes things "really bad" in your eyes? That would explain a lot.

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  68. First Century

    >I never said they were. If you keep attacking straw-man arguments I will stop publishing your comments. Life is too short to put up with this sort of bullshit indefinitely.

    Right back at you. You accuse me of creating straw-man arguments against your straw-man inventions of Christianity. I guess we could have achieve a detente if you were to stop creating straw-man Christianities and I were to stop criticizing them.

    >> how do you justify ... that it is probable that we would have more than one record witnessing resurrected people walking through Jerusalem.

    >I have no idea what would actually happen if zombies walked the streets, just as I have no idea what would happen if Hogwarts turned out to be real. Both of those are so far outside of the realm of reasonable probability that to move the needle on my Bayesian prior would require a lot of evidence.

    I will take this as you surrendering the point. I hope you learned something.

    >>> what does good mythology look like to you?

    >> First, it would have to conform to the know forms of mythology from that time period.

    >So... innovation invariably makes things "really bad" in your eyes? That would explain a lot.

    Perhaps it explains a lot you think constraints of a narrative form constrain creativity instead of enhancing it.

    ReplyDelete

  69. > We're not in disagreement the Inquisition, nor the Crusades, happened.

    Good. Let's see what else we can agree on. You wrote:

    > Current estimates are 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 history.

    You didn't explicitly say so, but I presume we agree that those 3000-5000 people died while being tortured, right? So then my next question is: *why* were those people being tortured? And why were they allowed to die? Could it be because the torturers believed they were heretics, that is, because they professed to believe things that the Church thought were false?

    > Did Edith Stein die for false beliefs?

    Of course not. She died because the Nazis considered her a Jew.

    > Please list one of my unsound arguments.

    Edith Stein. Non-sequitur.

    > you aren't knowledgeable enough about Christianity to identify my mistake above -- only 10 Apostles were martyred

    I know enough to know that there is no evidence that any of the apostles were martyred other than Peter and Paul.

    https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/whatever-happened-to-the-twelve-apostles-11629558.html

    But that is neither here nor there. There is no doubt that many Christians have died for their beliefs, just as there is no doubt that many heretics have died for theirs. They can't all have died for professing true beliefs.

    So your focus on the identities of the martyrs -- on either side of the equation -- is another non-sequitur.

    > What questions cannot answered via the scientific method

    Interestingly, this question can be answered by the scientific method! There are many questions that cannot be answered by the scientific method. The most famous of these is the question of whether or not a given Turing machine halts or runs forever.

    > Yet before the scientific method converges to something stable, large deviations can (and have) occurred. Could that be avoided?

    Probably not.

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  70. > Does the scientific method have no concern for the ethical behavior of the scientists that are performing the method?

    When properly applied, the scientific method takes this into account. The scientific method is not, "Believe everything scientists say", it is "Find the best explanation that accounts for all the data." There is nothing special about scientists except insofar as the fact that they are scientists is among the data that needs to be taken into account, but there is always the possibility that anyone, even a scientist, could be mistaken or lying.

    > What would you rate as the #2 and #3 methods for predicting the future?

    I don't know of any other method that works at all, so I'd say everything else is tied for last.

    > Science may explain the natural world, or it may not -- it may just describe it.

    There isn't a bright line between explanation and description. Simply saying "God did it" isn't an explanation unless you tell me what "God" means, and you can't do that without describing God.

    Part of the Christian description of God is that God is a *person*, an *agent*, that is, a thing with high Kolmogorov complexity. There is no evidence for anything with high KC at the foundation of reality. To the contrary, the foundation of reality appears to be shockingly simple, so simple that it can be grasped by a single human mind (albeit with considerable effort).

    > Why magnetism?

    I'll let Richard Feynman take that one.

    > How does the scientific method guide you to make the most of your life? Does it provide any guidance on what you should do?

    Yes. But that's much too long a story for a blog comment.

    > Why do you think religious people are frittering their lives away?

    Not all of them are of course, but religious belief leads people to make objectively bad decisions. The worst of those decisions is to take no thought for the morrow because Jesus is coming back Real Soon Now.

    > Do religious people believe that?

    No, of course not. That doesn't change the fact that Jesus is not coming back any time soon and so living your life on the assumption that he is and failing to plan for the future is a serious mistake.

    > your straw-man inventions of Christianity

    Do you believe that the Resurrection happened in point of actual fact? Is this belief central to your worldview? Could your faith survive being persuaded that the Resurrection is a myth? Are you even willing to entertain that as a serious possibility?

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  71. Methods to Predict the Future

    >> What would you rate as the #2 and #3 methods for predicting the future?

    >I don't know of any other method that works at all, so I'd say everything else is tied for last.

    There are lots of methods.

    One method is: I predict today will be the same as yesterday. For example, the best predictor of today's weather is yesterday's weather. Another example: the best predictor of a stock's price is the price it closed on yesterday.

    You can easily think of examples where there are large errors. However, if you evaluate it analytically, it's a hard model to beat for bias and error. One often has to construct quite sophisticated models to outperform it.

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  72. Oh, I guess I should reiterate the follow-on questions, which are equally important:

    Assuming you believe that the Resurrection happened, is this belief central to your worldview? Could your faith survive being persuaded that the Resurrection is a myth? Are you even willing to entertain that as a serious possibility?

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  73. And something else that just occurred to me that I would really like to know at this point: why are you putting so much effort into this? Why is it so important to you to persuade me that I'm wrong?

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  74. I pull a Rom-ism!

    >> No one died while being tortured.

    >Then what did you mean when you wrote "Current estimates are 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 [year] history"?

    3000 to 5000 people were executed by secular authorities during the 350 year duration of the inquisition. Note that "were executed" is not the same as "tortured until death."

    Hey, I just got to pulled a "Ron-ism"!

    >> No one was executed for heresy. Why were they executed? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

    >Nope, sorry, you're going to have to give me an answer to that, because you are the one who said that between 3000 and 5000 people died during the inquisition. I want to know what you meant by that.

    3000 to 5000 people were executed by the secular government, having been referred to from the Inquisition lawyers, along with a request for mercy.

    Why would the government care about heresy?

    If the government wouldn't care, why were those people executed? What crime did the government fear they committed? How was a person such a severe threat to the government that he required execution?

    >> Torture was only used for interrogation, could only last for 15 minutes, only 3 torture methods were allowed...

    >And you think this is relevant because...? Do you think all of these restrictions made it morally defensible?

    Living in our present time, we have developed a social structure, government, and ethical norms that regard torture to obtain a confession as highly unethical.

    Examining the practices of the Inquisition in retrospect, they can be seen as a major advance in fairness and justice. Inquisition courts were far fairer and just than secular courts of the time. Inquisition lawyers considered it problematic to obtain confessions via torture, as they were coerced -- hence, they could be denied afterwards, with no threat of re-torture. The Inquisition courts were a major step forward towards our modern standard of jurisprudence.

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  75. Models

    >> the best predictor of today's weather is yesterday's weather
    >> the best predictor of a stock's price is the price it closed on yesterday.

    >That depends on how you measure the quality of your predictions. Your method guarantees that you will get it wrong 100% of the times that it actually matters, that is, when the weather or the price changes. (An even better example is: will an asteroid destroy civilization tomorrow? If you just answer "no" you will get it "right" 99.999999...% of the time, but calling that a win is missing the point rather badly.)

    Yes, that is why we have more complicated models. However, if the consequence of error is small ("ew, it's raining"), it's a good modeling strategy. I use it quite frequently. Specifically, I expect the weather tomorrow (1/17/2024) to be similar to today (1/16/2024). It's a pretty useful model.

    Yet it's just one model. People use multiple models. Another model is "Uh, the sky has black clouds forming to the West" means "A thunderstorm may come our way, let's finish up our business and seek shelter as quickly as possible". The thunderstorm may not pass over me, but it's still a useful model (as, sometimes, the thunderstorm does pass over me).

    Other predictive models are "that stench surrounding my child means the diaper needs to be changed" and "my wife is scowling at me means I did something wrong" are also useful predictive models.

    In life, we usually can't run experimental designs (randomized block, latin square, factorial, response surface, etc.) to predict the future. We use other models that are pretty good.

    Beyond that, however, certain ethical principles can be taught that are universally useful. The first ethical principle taught to children is do not bite other people. The principle that biting another person is not acceptable is strongly reinforced with violations of this ethic swiftly punished. The model then, is: never bite other people. A good model. Later, people learn when exceptions to that model are justified.

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  76. If you think you understand God, you're wrong

    >> God is ipsa esse subsistens

    >You can't weasel your way out of this by throwing Latin at it. It doesn't really matter what God *is*, what matters is what God *does*. God may not *be* a person, but he certainly *acts* like one, at least on occasion.

    God acts like God, not a person. God's behavior my coincidently be similar to a person; that is just a simile between human and divine behavior. That may reflect how we are created in the image of God versus how God is a "person."

    >> Why did the Universe begin in such an unlikely state that allowed us to emerge?

    >Because our universe is only one of countless many. Only universes that start in low entropy states allow beings like us that wonder about their origins to exist.

    Ah, the multiverse (no evidence), the inverse gambler's fallacy and the weak anthropic principle.

    I guess we've discovered what you have faith in.

    >> How do we find answers to excellent questions that Science cannot answer?

    >You keep working at it. You certainly don't find them by appealing to superstition.

    This is the atheist "Gap of Time" -- given enough time, anything can be figured out. "We don't understand it now, but give us much more time, and we'll figure it out."

    One must say it is an optimistic view of science -- that given enough time, anything can be figured out. A more pessimistic (or realist?) view would be science is reaching a plateau and is impotent to find the answers to certain questions.

    Is superstition applying a method that is outside of the domain of science? Or is the domain of science infinite (and how to you empirically justify that)? Science has its own set of axioms, distinct from its own conclusions -- what is outside of those axioms?

    >> Christian ethics hold greater significance for humanity than science.

    >You mean the same Christian ethics that say it's OK to torture people as long as you don't do it for more than 15 minutes at a time? Fuck that.

    Did you mean to say the Christian ethics were a major leap forward over secular society? Were you contrasting the differences, at the time, between Inquisition courts (and jails) versus secular courts (and jails)? How Inquisition courts are more similar to present-day courts versus the secular courts during the same period? Did you mean to say that Inquisition lawyers recognized the problematic nature of using torture to obtain confessions?

    Or did you expect modern ethics to have been birthed fully formed?

    Yet you dodge the major point of the question. Non sequitur?

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  77. Why?


    >Oh, I guess I should reiterate the follow-on questions, which are equally important:

    Why is this important?

    >Assuming you believe that the Resurrection happened, is this belief central to your worldview? Could your faith survive being persuaded that the Resurrection is a myth? Are you even willing to entertain that as a serious possibility?

    Four facts can be confidently justified:
    1. A man called Jesus existed and travelled around teaching an ethical code
    2. Jesus got into disrepute with Roman authorities
    3. Was killed by crucifixion
    4. Afterwards, groups of people claimed to have seen Him

    Those who choose to embark on the challenging and unconventional journey toward His kingdom approach the evidence of His divine mission with an open mind. On the flip side, those who prefer an easier and more widely accepted lifestyle tend to convince themselves that Christ's claims lack foundation. Some reject His assertions due to preconceived biases or apathy, while others attempt to fortify their anti-Christian stance through a scientific facade.

    Aware that Christ's divinity can be supported by the miracles He cited as evidence, they adopt the stance that "miracles are impossible." Realizing the inconsistency of this viewpoint, especially in light of acknowledging a Creator of the world, they pivot to the next assertion: "There is no Creator." Confronted once more with the undeniable evidence of a Creator, proven by various compelling arguments, they introduce new axioms.

    They first assert that the origin of matter is too remote to be ascertained, asserting: "Matter is eternal." Similarly, they explain the origin of life through the arbitrary notion of "spontaneous generation." To dismiss the wisdom and order evident in the celestial bodies and the flora and fauna of the earth, they avoid stating outright that "all order in the world is causal," deeming it offensive to common sense. Instead, they express this axiom more scientifically, claiming that "from eternity, the world has undergone an infinite number of forms, and only the fittest have survived."

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  78. Why this is important to Publius


    >And something else that just occurred to me that I would really like to know at this point: why are you putting so much effort into this? Why is it so important to you to persuade me that I'm wrong?

    I first became aware of you from your presentation, The Quantum Conspiracy, which validated my intuition the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was not correct. [Later I would find out you received a patent for "turning the two slit experiment on and off" -- something I had thought of]. We must always remember that we have more in common than our differences.

    Yet why argue with you?

    I think this was answered in the comments of your September 2014 post:

    "Yawn. These atheist "gotchas!" are easily dispensed with. Do atheists really think that they're going to find the 1 illogical thing in the Bible, or one unsavory statement, that will cause a sudden epiphany in a Christian - "My God! He's right - it is all bullshit!"

    First, the Bible is the most studied book in human history. Every word has been studied, counted, and cross-referenced to every other occurrence - in multiple languages. Theologians are smart people and they know all about the problems with the texts (translation, date of writing, who wrote it, poor geographic knowledge of Israel, etc, etc). There are no surprises you can find, no irreducible illogical conundrum, no unsavory moral teaching that has not already been studied, dissected, interpreted, and re-interpreted.

    Second, these little gems are always based on Sola Scriptura and a strict literal interpretation, or ignorance of the Bible, or a deliberate intent to deceive by taking passages out of context, or failing to explain them fully. A bumper sticker and nothing more. Not all Christian faiths subscribe to Sola Scriptura - reference, for example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church."


    So all atheists arguments are quite old, as are the theist defenses to them. The theists, and in my particular case, the Christian theists, have a self-consistent rational, logical, system of belief based on its axioms. If you have faith in the axioms, you have faith in the Christian religion. You cannot find God from the natural world -- God is revealed, not discovered.

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  79. 0 or 1 | You Choose

    You either believe in that revelation, or you don't. If you don't, you have have faith in certain axioms
    1) Knowing that Christ's divinity can be proved from the miracles to which He appealed as testomonies of his Father, an axiom is formulated: Miracles are impossible
    2) Seeing, however, the inconsistency of the formula as long as there is a Maker of the world, they are driven to the next postulate: "There is no Creator".
    3) The origin of matter is too remote for its cause to be ascertained, and plead matter was spontaneously created in the distant past.
    4) The origin of life is explained by the arbitrary postulate of "spontaneous generation"
    5) The order displayed in the heavenly stars and the flora and fauna of the earth must be disposed off as the result of natural selection.

    Yet you cannot argue it is irrational, illogical, inconsistent, geographically wrong, or contradictory -- as any arguments along those lines have been asked and answered long ago.

    Anything you post against religion is therefore:
    1) not original
    2) has been refuted before
    3) is invalid inside the religion logical framework

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  80. Why should you believe the revelation?

    Start with why you shouldn't:
    1) We have explained most of the natural world using scientific methods
    2) Humans have worshiped various gods over history and constructed many myths regarding them
    3) Truth matters -- if we are to survive in a generally hostile environment, knowing the truth is useful in staying alive, and beyond that, thriving
    4) Religion is just one step of human evolution, reflecting a time where ignorant beliefs could still have high utility regardless of ultimate truth, but at times causing calamities of death and destruction. Eventually, those primitive superstitions were shown to be false, and humans could rationally abandon religious beliefs.

    What could be argued for accepting the revelation?
    1) Questioning the truth of the philosophy of materialism -- a philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things.
    2) The revelation passed down from prior generations.
    3) The utility of the belief passed down from prior generations (not a "burden," but a "gift")
    4) Classic ontological arguments, especially the "prime mover" argument of St. Aquinas.
    5) The utility of a method, or belief, is no evidence of its Truth.
    6) Private knowledge believers know, but cannot prove to others.

    To expand on #6, my wife is a faithful believer in Jesus. When she was in middle school, one day she had a very bad day and prayed to Jesus to comfort her. She then felt a warmth come over her and enveloped her.

    Here we have cause and effect:
    Cause: My wife prayed to Jesus for comfort.
    Effect: a warmth came over her and enveloped her.

    A minor miracle?

    Atheists will dismiss it as a psychological experience.

    Yet, how can those psychologists, or any person, possibly know the objective truth?

    If you're honest, they can't. We only have the testimony of my wife. The psychologists may point to many examples of people who had false supernatural experiences, due to various mental dysfunctions.

    This is applying statistics to the individual -- which is an invalid method, as no one is average, nor typical. Everyone is on a continuum of everything that can be measured about them.

    However, I know my wife. She is scrupulously honest and ethical. She's incapable of lying, and if she tries, it's obvious in her expression and behavior, with the result it is revealed quickly.

    Therefore, I cannot logically deny her experience with Jesus.

    You will deny it. You will explain it away. But what do you know? Nothing about her. You have some general knowledge about humans, but nothing about her.

    Can you accept that individuals know truths than are inaccessible to you except through personal testimony?

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  81. And also ... Luke

    Luke was (is?) hugely instructive. You and I are probably more technical. Luke brought a more historical, classical, and romantic argument to the discussion.

    Participating in the comments, I learned a lot from Luke. I really appreciated Luke's comments and frequently learned from them.

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  82. Prayers for Don

    How about Don Geddis? Don always seemed to have a special access and influence on your blog. Certainly a smart person, but not quite as learned as Luke.

    Don suffered a severe personal tragedy that regular readers of this blog may be unaware. Don, I was unaware of your loss until today -- I would like to offer my sincere condolences to you. It never stops hurting, you only get used to the pain. May God replace your pain with only cherished memories.

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  83. > 3000 to 5000 people were executed by secular authorities during the 350 year duration of the inquisition. Note that "were executed" is not the same as "tortured until death."

    That seems to me to be splitting a pretty fine hair. If you're going to draw that distinction, how do you know that the Christian martyrs were "tortured until death"? Also, some of the Inqusition's victims were burned alive. Do you not think that qualifies as being "tortured until death"?

    What exactly is the criterion that causes someone's willingness to die for their beliefs to become evidence that their beliefs are actually true?

    > 3000 to 5000 people were executed by the secular government, having been referred to from the Inquisition lawyers, along with a request for mercy.

    Those requests for mercy were manifestly not very effective. Did it not occur to the Inquisitors that it might have been better not to refer those people for execution in the first place?

    But you still haven't answered my question: what were the underlying charges that caused these 3000-5000 people to be referred to the government for execution? Or did the Inquisition just pick 3000-5000 people at random and say, "Hey, let's have these people killed (mercifully of course) for no reason at all"? Or were some of those people charged with, oh, I don't know, heresy perhaps?

    > Examining the practices of the Inquisition in retrospect, they can be seen as a major advance in fairness and justice

    OK, fine, but that just highlights how utterly morally bankrupt the Church was before the Inquisition. (And, BTW, the Church has continued this proud tradition of moral bankruptcy into the modern era with its practice of covering up child sexual abuse.)

    > In life, we usually can't run experimental designs

    You don't have to. Science is about explaining *all* of the data, not just that gathered in science labs under controlled conditions.

    > The first ethical principle taught to children is do not bite other people.

    So... hitting other people is OK? I think your First Ethical Principle could use a rewrite. Here are some suggestions.

    > God acts like God, not a person. God's behavior my coincidently be similar to a person; that is just a simile between human and divine behavior. That may reflect how we are created in the image of God versus how God is a "person."

    Potato, potahto. The point is: God's behavior is *complicated*. It cannot be described by simple mathematical laws, right? But there is no evidence of anything that happens in the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws.

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  84. > Ah, the multiverse (no evidence)

    You said that I first came to your attention through my "quantum conspiracy" talk. You need to go back and review that, because if you think there is no evidence for the multiverse you obviously did not understand that talk at all.

    > This is the atheist "Gap of Time" -- given enough time, anything can be figured out. "We don't understand it now, but give us much more time, and we'll figure it out."

    It's not the atheist anything, it's the observed fact that over time more and more phenomena come to have scientific explanations, including many things that religious people insisted (and continue to insist) could not possibly have scientific explanations. And BTW, this observation itself has a scientific explanation, so to believe that this trend will continue takes about as much faith as believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.

    > Why is this [my follow-on questions about the Resurrection] important?

    Because you have charged me with constructing a straw-man version of Christianity by focusing on the Resurrection. If the Resurrection is central to your personal beliefs that is evidence that your charge has no merit.

    > Four facts can be confidently justified:

    No, they can't. Mythicism is a defensible position.

    > Christ's divinity can be supported by the miracles He cited as evidence

    But there is no evidence that Jesus performed miracles other than the gospels, which are anonymous and uncorroborated.

    > miracles are impossible

    No, miracles are possible, there just isn't any evidence that they actually happen. (BTW, if you are going to accuse me of raising straw-man arguments you need to be a little more careful not to commit this sin yourself.)

    > atheists arguments are quite old

    I guess that depends on what you consider "old". The argument that God was necessary to explain life was a defensible position until 1859. The argument that God was necessary to explain the complexities of human behavior was defensible until 1936. The argument that Darwin got something wrong because altruism existed was defensible until 1976. The argument that God might have a hand in quantum randomness was defensible until 1982. Personally, 41 years doesn't seem that old to me.

    > You either believe in that revelation, or you don't. If you don't, you have have faith in certain axioms.

    No, you don't. All you have to do is follow the scientific method. The scientific method has no axioms.

    > Atheists will dismiss it as a psychological experience.

    Indeed.

    > Yet, how can those psychologists, or any person, possibly know the objective truth?

    Well, for starters, because I once had a similar experience.

    But you are making a fundamental mistake here: science is not about finding objective truth, it's about finding the best explanation that accounts for all the observed data. Your wife's testimony and my personal experience are both data that need to be explained. But the explanation needs to account for *all* of the data, including the fact that there is no evidence of anything supernatural happening anywhere in the universe outside of this kind of human testimony. The most likely explanation is that the experiences that lead to this testimony are psychological and not supernatural.

    (Note that the existence of an objective truth is part of the current best explanation that accounts for all the data. But this is a *conclusion*, not an assumption!)

    ReplyDelete
  85. What care ye of heresy?

    @Ron:
    >But you still haven't answered my question: what were the underlying charges that caused these 3000-5000 people to be referred to the government for execution? Or did the Inquisition just pick 3000-5000 people at random and say, "Hey, let's have these people killed (mercifully of course) for no reason at all"? Or were some of those people charged with, oh, I don't know, heresy perhaps?

    Certainly those people were referred to the Inquisition court for heresy, and referred out of it for the same.

    But why would the secular government care about heresy? It's not the business of the monarchy, or other secular government, to police heresy. Why would they take any action against those people at all? Would you care about heresy?

    Yet those people were executed. What crime against the government where they considered to have committed?

    >> Examining the practices of the Inquisition in retrospect, they can be seen as a major advance in fairness and justice

    >OK, fine, but that just highlights how utterly morally bankrupt the Church was before the Inquisition.

    Name some morally bankrupt jurisprudence performed by the the Church prior to the Inquisition. Prediction: you can't, because you don't know the history.

    Next, compare and contrast Church jurisprudence to secular jurisprudence throughout history. Prediction: you can't, because you don't know the history.

    You only have your bigotry and prejudice.

    >(And, BTW, the Church has continued this proud tradition of moral bankruptcy into the modern era with its practice of covering up child sexual abuse.)

    You might have posted something insightful regarding the historical development of jurisprudence from Rome in classical antiquity, how that evolved during the medieval period with incorporation of Christian theology, the development of the concept of individual rights and the social contract during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, finally ending with the legal positivism developed in the 19th and 20th centuries by Jeremy Bentham, John Austin, and Roscoe Pound.

    Instead, you posted a cheap shot on the child sexual abuse scandal within the Catholic Church.

    Well, here's a few cheap shots on the morally bankrupt actions of scientists in the name of Science . . . no, that wouldn't be fair, insightful, or useful.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Ethics Mathematics

    >> The first ethical principle taught to children is do not bite other people.

    >So... hitting other people is OK? I think your First Ethical Principle could use a rewrite.

    Stand down childless dude. As a parent, I know the first problem you have with children is stopping them from biting people. A one year old cannot harm anyone by hitting. Their teeth is their best weapon. Use of it is severely sanctioned. You're out of your domain, and anything you say just reveals your ignorance.

    >But there is no evidence of anything that happens in the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws.

    There are many, perhaps infinite, things that happen the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws. Examples of these are easy to come by.

    >You said that I first came to your attention through my "quantum conspiracy" talk. You need to go back and review that, because if you think there is no evidence for the multiverse you obviously did not understand that talk at all.

    That I did not understand it ("at all") is one possibility. Another possibility is you didn't explain it well (pro tip: don't do math in front of audiences). Yet another possibility is that you didn't adequately justify the idea. Still another idea is that you are wrong. So may possibilities!

    Yet if the multiverse exists, we must be the most unluckiest beings in the multiverse, as we are living in the worst universe of them all -- if it were any worse, life could not exist at all. Yet we are somehow privileged to be living during a time where we can observe and understand our universe.

    "For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there is an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence, it requires the same leap of faith."
    -- Paul Davies

    But now we know at least one thing Ron Garret has Faith in.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Science, Scientific Method, Scientism, Materialism

    >it's the observed fact that over time more and more phenomena come to have scientific explanations, including many things that religious people insisted (and continue to insist) could not possibly have scientific explanations. And BTW, this observation itself has a scientific explanation, so to believe that this trend will continue takes about as much faith as believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.

    This is the fallacy of extrapolating the past into the future. You know, if you assume today is the same as yesterday, you miss the important break points.

    Look at physics. It appears to have plateaued. Experimental physics has done well recently -- discovering the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, and the polarization of the microwave background radiation. Yet the existence of those phenomena were predicted decades before.

    What have theoretical physicists come up for what's next? String theory after 50 years is not even wrong. Progress in physics has stopped, they're not discovering anything new. The LHC at Cern discovered the Higgs boson, and then . . . nothing else of significance. Dark matter? Can't find it.

    Biology will always have more to discover, as the biological systems of Earth are of nearly infinite size. Yet neo-Darwinism has trouble explaining the fossil record; during the Cambrian explosion, as practically all major animal phyla appeared fully formed -- it turns the "tree of life" upside down. Origin to life research is derelict and void, with no informative or useful theory developed that can even hint towards a possible abiogenesis process. "but ... but ... billions of years!" the atheists will sputter, as if "more time" makes it better and not worse (this asserting the "Gap of Time" to explain every improbable thing).

    Increased knowledge of cells only makes them harder to explain them, not easier. Today we have pure starting materials, clean lab ware, and controlled environmental conditions, yet we cannot create cells from scratch. Not even close. We have no theory on how information for the genetic code was developed. Even farther away is any theory that would allow abiogenesis on a dirty Earth.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Myths

    >No, they can't. Mythicism is a defensible position.

    No, it's laughably unjustified and unlearned. It only appears plausible to the hopelessly uneducated.

    >No, miracles are possible, there just isn't any evidence that they actually happen.

    You just dismiss all miracles, as they violate your axioms. You're a keyboard miracle denier. It's not like you do any investigation.

    >The scientific method has no axioms.

    LOL.

    Start with the philosophy of materialism, which regards matter as the only reality in the world, which undertakes to explain every event in the universe as resulting from the conditions and activity of matter.

    Even more fundamental, it has an axiom that we can discover and understand physical phenomena.

    >But you are making a fundamental mistake here: science is not about finding objective truth, it's about finding the best explanation that accounts for all the observed data.

    This characterizes science as model-building, which as a statistician, I can get on board with. Better and more refined models are developed over time. A great example is Newton (F=ma) and Einstein (relativity). To quote George Box, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful." Newton's model is still useful.

    >Your wife's testimony and my personal experience are both data that need to be explained. But the explanation needs to account for *all* of the data, including the fact that there is no evidence of anything supernatural happening anywhere in the universe outside of this kind of human testimony.

    Isn't that just availability bias? We have a lot of humans, and those humans have the ability to communicate what they've experienced. Rocks and laser beams can't talk to us.

    > The most likely explanation is that the experiences that lead to this testimony are psychological and not supernatural.

    It can also be an example of a truth that one person can know, but not prove to another person. Last week, I didn't think of pink elephants. Do you believe me? Really, you should believe me. No, I can't prove it to you.

    What to do with that? For the curious, seek out that experience yourself. It doesn't just happen to you.

    You're not going to be driving along and exclaim, "Look honey, a burning bush! Pull over!".

    ReplyDelete
  89. > those people were referred to the Inquisition court for heresy

    Hallelujah! There, was that really so hard?

    > why would the secular government care about heresy?

    What difference does that make?

    I think you've lost the plot here. The only reason I brought this up at all is to counter your claim that someone's willingness to die for their beliefs is evidence that their beliefs are true.

    (BTW, there was no "secular government" back then. There was no separation of church and state. Everyone was a Catholic. Anyone who did not hew to the teachings of the Church would be denounced as a heretic, referred to the Inquisition, tortured, and killed.)

    > Name some morally bankrupt jurisprudence performed by the the Church prior to the Inquisition.

    Why? You are the one who characterized the Inquisition as a "major advance in fairness and justice". Whether that is actually true I neither know nor care. I'm just saying that *if* it's true then the situation it improved upon must have been truly horrific.

    > compare and contrast Church jurisprudence to secular jurisprudence throughout history

    Secularity is a modern invention, at least in Western civilizaton. It didn't exist before a few hundred years ago. The United States of America was the first country in the West that was founded as a secular nation, where the power base did not rest on the (supposed) divine right of kings.

    And yeah, I'll take modern secular jurisprudence, flawed as it sometimes may be, over a theocracy any day.

    > you posted a cheap shot

    Sorry, no, *you* are the one who brought up the moral character of the Church as a talking point, not me, when you wrote:

    "Examining the practices of the Inquisition in retrospect, they can be seen as a major advance in fairness and justice. Inquisition courts were far fairer and just than secular courts of the time."

    That makes it fair game for me question the moral character of the Church. You can't say, "Look how good the Church is!" and then cry foul when I point out that the Church might not be quite as good as you say.

    > As a parent, I know the first problem you have with children is stopping them from biting people.

    Just because I don't have children of my own doesn't mean I know nothing about them. Maybe biting was the first problem *you* had with *your* children, but that doesn't make it universally true.

    > There are many, perhaps infinite, things that happen the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws. Examples of these are easy to come by.

    And yet you didn't list even one.

    > how is the existence of the other universes to be tested?

    By doing quantum mechanics experiments. The existence of other universes (modulo some quibbling over what "existence" means) is a logical consequence of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, which is the single best-confirmed theory in all of science.

    ReplyDelete

  90. > This is the fallacy of extrapolating the past into the future.

    No, it isn't. Like I said, the fact that science makes monotonic progress has a scientific explanation. It is this explanation that makes it reasonable to believe that scientific progress will continue, not the mere fact of progress to date.

    > Look at physics. It appears to have plateaued.

    Not even close. Maybe particle physics has, but particle physics != physics.

    > > Mythicism is a defensible position.

    > No, it's laughably unjustified.

    You obviously haven't read Carrier's book.

    > You just dismiss all miracles

    No, I simply observe that there is no evidence for miracles. People being healed of diseases doesn't count as a miracle. Medical science is imprecise, and "surprising" is not the same as "miraculous."

    (Actually, there are some kinds of healing that would be miraculous, like having a person's amputated limb spontaneously regenerate, but that seems to be beyond God's capabilities.)

    > Isn't that just availability bias?

    No, it's a first-hand data point that allows me to be more confident than most people in my assessment that feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit is not a reflection of anything that actually exists in objective reality.

    > Last week, I didn't think of pink elephants. Do you believe me? Really, you should believe me.

    Why? For reasons that should be obvious, I have no trouble at all drawing a straight line between pink elephants and feeling the Presence of the Holy Spirit. But I do have a hard time believing that was what you intended.

    So unless you can explain to me why you think your contemplations of pink elephants are relevant to the matter at hand, please refrain from future non-sequiturs. They are almost as annoying as your ad hominems.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Capable

      @Ron:
      >(Actually, there are some kinds of healing that would be miraculous, like having a person's amputated limb spontaneously regenerate, but that seems to be beyond God's capabilities.)

      Here you go:

      The Miracle of Calanda

      Delete
    2. Wow, a genuine miracle! Halelujah, I believe! Praise Jesus!

      Oh, wait, what's this?

      Delete
    3. You'll want to read the link you cited all the way to the end.

      Delete
    4. I did. What exactly is it that you think is relevant there?

      Delete
    5. The "alternate explanation" failed.

      Delete
    6. Um, no? Why do you think it failed?

      Delete
    7. Evidence on offer

      Dunning had asserted that "that no evidence exists that his leg was ever amputated — or that he was even treated at all — at the hospital in Zaragoza other than his own word. He named three doctors there, but for some reason there is no record of their having been interviewed by either the delegation or the trial."

      Dunning then subsequently published a correction to the original article. In the correction, it is accepted that "Two doctors named by Pellicer (Estanga and Millaruelo) were interviewed in the trial. However, neither said they'd been involved with the amputation of his leg".

      Yet even that is wrong, as the canonical transcript of the trial states that Estanga was involved with the medical care and surgery of Miguel Pellicer.

      But go back to the beginning to Dunning's begining statement: "We can't say that the Miracle of Calanda is not genuine, and we can't prove that Miguel Juan Pellicer's leg was not miraculously restored."

      He then goes on to author a fictional alternative. An infinite number of fictional accounts could be written. As you say, "We can only ever be in possession of a finite amount of data, and that data will always be consistent with an infinite number of potential theories."

      Yet Dunning's fiction is not consistent with the facts determined at the trial, where all the witnesses said, under oath, that the leg of Miguel Pellicer was really amputated.

      More responses to Dunning's fiction can be read in The Historicity of the Miracle of Calanda.

      As an aside, reading the above, I found out where "Damascene" came from in the "Damascene process" of semiconductor fabrication.

      Delete
    8. Air Tight

      Your response supports my conclusion that you will never accept any evidence for miracles, or for God. You will invent fictions to deny any evidence.

      >And witnesses never lie, and are never mistaken.

      Here is your first fiction "the witnesses lied or were mistaken." You have no evidence for this.

      The evidence we do have is that legal proceedings were began to determine the veracity of the event, took about one year, and all hearings were public and no voice of dissent was recorded. Twenty-four witnesses spoke out, selected as the most trustworthy from among the great number of people that knew Pellicer, both from Calanda and from Zaragoza.

      Your fictional solution: all twenty four for were lying or mistaken.

      >Here is the smoking gun:

      Which is not a smoking gun, but rather evidence that Miguel's leg has miraculously restored. The workers who did the digging testified -- first that they buried the amputated leg, and then, after the miracle, they went back to try and dig it up and didn't find it.

      >the *only* evidence we have that his leg was amputated and buried is testimony years after the fact.

      You mean, of course, 3 years after the fact. Which is not that long of a period.
      Testimony offered by 24 trustworthy witnesses, under oath, in public hearings.

      What better evidence could you have from 1640?

      Delete

  91. > It may not be perfect evidence, but it is evidence.

    Everything is evidence. The question is what is it evidence *of*. Being willing to die for a belief is very strong evidence that that belief is strongly held, but it is poor evidence that the strongly held belief is actually true simply because many people have strongly held beliefs that are demonstrably false. And it is not necessary to identify what those false beliefs are to see that this is so, it is only necessary to observe that the world is chock-full of religious people who strongly believe mutually exclusive things. So some of them (indeed *most* of them!) *must* be wrong.

    > Besides, if you recall, you first wrote "willingness to die for a false belief."

    Not exactly. I wrote "people are willing to die for false beliefs". I wrote that because you wrote:

    > Eleven apostles were tortured to death proclaiming the reality of the resurrected Jesus.

    offering that as evidence that there were witnesses to the resurrection. Well, sorry, no. For starters, there is no evidence that this claim is even true. There is a little bit of evidence that Paul and Peter were martyred (though not that they were tortured to death). There is no evidence for any of the others. And BTW, Paul specifically denies having seen the risen Jesus, and Peter never says one way or the other. (And BTW2 there is considerable doubt as to whether the works attributed to Peter were actually written by him.)

    Either way, I'll see your 11 apostles and raise you three to five thousand (by your own count!) heretics killed during the Inquisition.

    > And you know this how?

    Uh, by reading?

    > Oh, so you know nothing about this history, nor do you care to know it.

    I know nothing (well, not quite nothing, but it's a good first-order approximation) about the history of western jurisprudence. But so what? I know that *you* believe that 3000-5000 people were killed for heresy during the Inquisition, and I know that you think this was "a major advance in fairness and justice".

    > The issue at hand wasn't the moral character of the Church,

    Then why bring it up? What difference does it make if the Inquisition was "a major advance in fairness and justice"?

    > it was the development of fairer and most just standards of jurisprudence.

    OK, but I ask again: what difference does that make? It doesn't change the fact that I have on my side 3000-5000 people willing to die for beliefs that are heretical, which is to say, false by your own standards, against which you only have a very shaky claim of 11 people willing to die for beliefs that you consider true. So your argument fails *even on your own terms*.

    > Yet you went off topic to take a cheap shot at the Catholic Church. What was your motivation? Why would you do that? How did it benefit you? Were you trying to impress someone? Did you somehow feel better and more powerful after writing that attack?

    I was doing my best to give you the benefit of the doubt that there was some legitimate reason you brought up the Inquisition being "a major advance in fairness and justice", that this was not just a red herring. The most charitable reading I could come up with is that you said this to support the idea that the Church has some kind of moral authority, particularly since I'm pretty sure you actually believe that to be true.

    But if I got all that wrong, by all means, enlighten me: what does the Inquisition being "a major advance in fairness and justice" have to do with anything?

    ReplyDelete
  92. > Oh, so now I am the person who has to name one?

    Well, yeah, because you conceded that 3000-5000 heretics were killed during the Inquisition, and so their identities are no longer relevant to our dispute. But I do not concede that there are phenomena in the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws, so yes, you have to name one.

    > I can actually do that:

    Well, no, you can't. Not unless you can demonstrate that any of the things you mentioned somehow violate the Standard Model, and good luck with that.

    > Do you need more examples?

    No, but I do need you to explain why you think that any of your examples cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model. (If you can do that you will win a Nobel Prize in physics, which is why I am quite confident that you can't.)

    BTW, I'll also say this:

    > The three body problem has no closed-form solution using simple mathematics.

    You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for a phenomenon to be "described by simple mathematical laws". It does not mean that we can actually solve the equations, it just means that we know what the equations are.

    > The "logical consequences of the mathematics of quantum mechanics" doesn't mean it's describing the real physical universe.

    That's true, but it does mean that it almost certainly has some kind of contact with objective reality. (I hedge with "almost certainly" only because we can never be 100% certain that we are not living in the Matrix.) As you (should) know since you watched my talk, I happen to believe that *none* of these parallel universes are "actually real" (whatever that might actually mean), including the one we inhabit. Classical reality is a kind of illusion, accessible only by taking a "mortal's eye view" and ignoring vast swathes of "actual reality", which is described by the wave function. This may or may not be "true" but it is scientifically and philosophically tenable, and so it's a perfectly adequate naturalistic explanation of why (we think) we live in a universe with a low-entropy past.

    > Many mathematical models of physical laws are time reversal [sic], but that doesn't mean time can move in reverse.

    You need to (re-)read this.

    ReplyDelete

  93. > your belief is simply Faith

    To some extent. I have faith that the problems with current cosmological models will eventually be worked out. Science has a long track record of working things out. But my lack of belief in deities has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that there is no evidence of anything in the universe with high Kolmogorov complexity other than what is produced by Darwinian evolution.

    > You're not an investigator, nor a scholar, who studies the evidence for miracles.

    I'm not a physicist either. That doesn't stop me from understanding physics.

    > Oh, this old atheist chestnut.

    There's a reason it's a classic.

    > Well, here you go.

    You know, Publius, I am trying really hard to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are actually a serious person debating in good faith and not just a troll. But sometimes you really don't make it easy.

    Did you know that Smith Wigglesworth also raised 14 people from the dead?

    > It can also be an example of a truth that one person can know, but not prove to another person."

    But your contemplation of pink elephants is not even remotely like Jesus's resurrection. Your contemplation of pink elephants is a purely subjective experience accessible only to you, so you are necessarily the ultimate authority on it. But the whole point of Jesus's resurrection is that it was part of objective reality; it actually happened in point of actual historical fact. And the whole point of people's testimony about feeling the Presence of the Holy Spirit is that it is supposed to be further evidence of God acting within objective reality, a phenomenon that supposedly cannot be accounted for in any other way. Your pink elephant example is none of those things.

    > Carrier, along with The late Archarya S, are some of the hopelessly uneducated. They do not present original scholarship

    Now it is *really* obvious that you have not read Carrier's book.

    Earlier you pointed to my ignorance of the history of western jurisprudence. Well, Pot, meet Kettle. (Except that what Carrier has to say is actually relevant.)

    > Did you really think you were reading new, original historical insights into the Gospels and the letters of Paul?

    Yes. There is no doubt about it. And if you actually read the book, so will you.

    ReplyDelete
  94. Grand Unification

    >And it is not necessary to identify what those false beliefs are to see that this is so, it is only necessary to observe that the world is chock-full of religious people who strongly believe mutually exclusive things. So some of them (indeed *most* of them!) *must* be wrong.

    This can be turned back on you. How can you have faith in "Science"? Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are not compatible, so one of them must be wrong. Given your precedent with religion, you should reject them both. After all, how are you to decide?

    >> Besides, if you recall, you first wrote "willingness to die for a false belief."

    >Not exactly. I wrote "people are willing to die for false beliefs". I wrote that because you wrote:

    Pretty close?

    >> Eleven apostles were tortured to death proclaiming the reality of the resurrected Jesus.

    >offering that as evidence that there were witnesses to the resurrection. Well, sorry, no. For starters, there is no evidence that this claim is even true. There is a little bit of evidence that Paul and Peter were martyred (though not that they were tortured to death). There is no evidence for any of the others.

    Andrew: martyrdom by crucifixion ("X-shaped") at Patrae, Achaia.
    Bartholomew: martyrdom by being skinned alive and crucified, head downward, at Armenia.
    James the Greater: martyrdom by being beheaded or stabbed with a sword by Herod Agrippa near Palestine.
    James the Lesser: martyrdom by being thrown from a pinnacle of the Temple at Jerusalem, then stoned and head bashed in with a club.
    John: natural death
    Jude: martyrdom by being beaten with a club then crucified.
    Matthew: martyrdom by being staked and speared to the ground.
    Simon Peter: martyrdom by upside-down crucifixion as he did not consider himself worthy to be crucified like Jesus.
    Philip: martyrdom by being tortured, impaled by iron hooks in his ankles and hung upside down to die.
    Simon: martyrdom by crucifixion in Britain and then sawn in half.
    Thomas: martyrdom by a thrust through by spear in India.
    Matthias: martyrdom by stoning and beheading in Jerusalem.
    James: martyrdom by being throw some 100 feet off a wall, then beaten to death with clubs.

    >> And you know this how?

    >Uh, by reading?

    Except you don't read about that topic? Nor care to know about it?

    ReplyDelete
  95. True History

    >> The issue at hand wasn't the moral character of the Church,

    >Then why bring it up? What difference does it make if the Inquisition was "a major advance in fairness and justice"?

    To instruct you on historical facts, of which you were extremely ignorant. Recall you started with believing the Inquisition was torturing and executing people on . . . a large scale. The truth is only 2% were tortured (only to obtain confessions, only for 15 minutes, etc.) and only 3000-5000 people were executed (torture was not involved in the process) over 135 years. Then, in contrast to your prejudice, the legal procedures were fairer and more just than secular courts at the time.

    Over the same period, secular courts murdered 150,000 women for being witches. The Inquisition courts considered witchcraft an imaginary crime, and witches were routinely acquitted. Plus secular courts executed people for larceny, burglary, bankruptcy, forgery, counterfeiting, and more.

    The overall point being that your bias and prejudice are contradicted by historical facts -- so much so, that your original conception of the Inquisition as a fanatical murder machine is so thoroughly wrong and backward that the truth is the exact opposite, that the Inquisition advanced standards of the humane treatment of the accused and the adjudication of their cases. Not only were you wrong, you were like 200% wrong.

    >> it was the development of fairer and most just standards of jurisprudence.

    >OK, but I ask again: what difference does that make? It doesn't change the fact that I have on my side 3000-5000 people willing to die for beliefs that are heretical

    They weren't executed for heresy.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Gravity? Quantum Mechanics? I can't decide!

    >> Oh, so now I am the person who has to name one?

    >Well, yeah, because you conceded that 3000-5000 heretics were killed during the Inquisition, and so their identities are no longer relevant to our dispute.

    Yet you still cannot name one.

    >No, but I do need you to explain why you think that any of your examples cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model. (If you can do that you will win a Nobel Prize in physics, which is why I am quite confident that you can't.)

    So it comes down to "things in the universe" that can't be explained by the Standard Model (which, apparently, you characterize as being "simple mathematical laws")? How very materialistic and reductionist of you.

    Examples of "things in the universe" that cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model are even easier to list:

    1. Gravity
    2. Gravity
    3. Gravity
    4. Why do neutrinos have mass?
    5. What is dark matter?
    6. Why is there so much matter in the universe?
    7. Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

    >> The three body problem has no closed-form solution using simple mathematics.

    >You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for a phenomenon to be "described by simple mathematical laws". It does not mean that we can actually solve the equations, it just means that we know what the equations are.

    That we can't solve them would be evidence that they are not "simple." That they are unsolvable is even stronger evidence that they are not "simple."

    Perhaps you need to define "simple."

    >> The "logical consequences of the mathematics of quantum mechanics" doesn't mean it's describing the real physical universe.

    >That's true, but it does mean that it almost certainly has some kind of contact with objective reality. (I hedge with "almost certainly" only because we can never be 100% certain that we are not living in the Matrix.) As you (should) know since you watched my talk, I happen to believe that *none* of these parallel universes are "actually real" (whatever that might actually mean), including the one we inhabit. Classical reality is a kind of illusion, accessible only by taking a "mortal's eye view" and ignoring vast swathes of "actual reality", which is described by the wave function. This may or may not be "true" but it is scientifically and philosophically tenable, and so it's a perfectly adequate naturalistic explanation of why (we think) we live in a universe with a low-entropy past.

    This is very detached from my everyday experience.

    >> Many mathematical models of physical laws are time reversal [sic], but that doesn't mean time can move in reverse.

    >You need to (re-)read this.

    Homer Simpson on time travel risks

    ReplyDelete
  97. Deceitful trolls, they're everywhere

    >> Well, here you go.

    >You know, Publius, I am trying really hard to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are actually a serious person debating in good faith and not just a troll. But sometimes you really don't make it easy.

    I vowed years ago to never troll you, and I've kept to that.

    You know, Ron, I try to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are a serious person debating in good faith, and not just regurgitating atheist talking points rather than putting in serious thought. But sometimes you don't make it easy.

    >Did you know that Smith Wigglesworth also raised 14 people from the dead?

    Yet you still won't believe! ;-)

    Ask better questions.

    >> It can also be an example of a truth that one person can know, but not prove to another person."

    >But your contemplation of pink elephants is not even remotely like Jesus's resurrection. Your contemplation of pink elephants is a purely subjective experience accessible only to you, so you are necessarily the ultimate authority on it. But the whole point of Jesus's resurrection is that it was part of objective reality; it actually happened in point of actual historical fact. And the whole point of people's testimony about feeling the Presence of the Holy Spirit is that it is supposed to be further evidence of God acting within objective reality, a phenomenon that supposedly cannot be accounted for in any other way. Your pink elephant example is none of those things.

    My objective was more modest: simply an example of a truth that one person can know, but cannot prove to another person.

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  98. Mythicism is not enhanced by Probability

    Yes. There is no doubt about it. And if you actually read the book, so will you.

    Bayes theorem? Carrier is a self-appointed expert who leads the equally gullible and unwary amateurs down a path of pseudo-mathematical probability based on the absurd notion that the Gospels can be approached using true or false modalities, without reference to the recipients who neither accepted nor understood the preaching about Jesus in modal terms. It invites the opposite of careful research because it relies on an anachronistic and "legal" approach to the Gospels as a collection of truth claims that can be answered yes or no.

    No serious and responsible scholar who makes a thorough study of the discussions of the early church would argue that Jesus never existed.

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  99. > Examples of "things in the universe" that cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model are even easier to list:

    You have once again lost the plot. Your task was not to come up with things that cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model, it was to come up with examples of "things that happen in the universe that cannot be described by simple mathematical laws". The examples that you listed didn't even come close. All of your original examples can in fact be described not only by simple mathematical laws, but by a set of *known* simple mathematical laws, namely, the Standard Model. Yes, there are things that the Standard Model does not account for, but those were not among your original examples. You don't get to move the goal posts just because your first attempt was lame.

    > This is very detached from my everyday experience.

    Yep, quantum mechanics is weird and unintuitive. Sorry but there's nothing I can do about that.

    > Bayes theorem?

    Yes.

    > No serious and responsible scholar who makes a thorough study of the discussions of the early church would argue that Jesus never existed.

    No true scholar would ever put sugar on his porridge.

    > I vowed years ago to never troll you, and I've kept to that.

    No, you haven't. Citing Homer Simpson on time travel risks is trolling. So is this:

    > Ask better questions.

    And since we're on this topic, did you really intend for me to take Smith Wigglesworth seriously? Do you really think that the web page you pointed me to should be considered persuasive, particularly when you are so dismissive of Richard Carrier? Do you really believe that simply reciting the oral history of how the apostles died ought to be considered a persuasive argument? Because if you didn't then all that was trolling too.

    (And if you really did intend for me to take all of that seriously, then you should read this.)

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  100. BTW, Publius, since you're so fond of videos, here is one you should watch.

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  101. Slack

    >> Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are not compatible, so one of them must be wrong.

    @Ron:
    >Yes, that's right. But there are different kinds of being wrong. Newtonian mechanics is in some sense "wrong" too and yet it is perfectly adequate for predicting just about everything that happens in our solar system.

    Why don't you cut religion the same slack?

    In the same way that Newtonian mechanics, though technically "wrong" in certain respects, remains highly practical for predicting celestial events within our solar system, religious teachings offer practical and ethical frameworks for navigating the complexities of human existence. The metaphorical or symbolic aspects of religious narratives often convey timeless moral lessons, guiding individuals towards compassion, empathy, and ethical behavior.

    >but one thing you have taught me is that you tend to twist what I say . . .

    One thing you've taught me is that you twist what you say.

    >> They weren't executed for heresy.

    >Then what did you mean when you wrote, "those people were referred to the Inquisition court for heresy"?

    Those people were referred for heresy, investigated for heresy, tried for heresy, and convicted of heresy.

    Except they weren't executed for heresy.

    >If I named one, would that convince you of anything?

    It would help persuade me you have some knowledge of the history and weren't just making it up. So far, you've just been making it up.

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  102. > Why don't you cut religion the same slack?

    It's not religion in general that I hold to a higher standard, it's Christianity in particular, and the reason for that is that you Christians claim to have God on your side. One of God's defining characteristics is that He is supposed to be perfect. Perfection is not entitled to any slack.

    > Those people were referred for heresy, investigated for heresy, tried for heresy, and convicted of heresy. [But] they weren't executed for heresy.

    Then what were they executed for?

    > So far, you've just been making it up.

    No, I have been relying on your version of history. In same cases word-for-word.

    (BTW, you are so invested in this idea that I know nothing of history that you didn't even notice that I actually *did* name someone who was executed for heresy.)

    > I don't want to engage in discussions of time moving backwards.

    You are the one who brought it up:

    > Many mathematical models of physical laws are time reversal [sic], but that doesn't mean time can move in reverse.

    You know what, I've had it. You can't even keep track of your own position. If you are going to bring up argument and then bury your head in the sand and say you don't want to talk about it when your argument is destroyed by facts, then you are not arguing in good faith, and I will no longer publish any more of your comments on this post.

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  103. @Ron

    Man, this was a slog, I tell you what . . . reminds me of my 40+ years of debating the faithful, something I'm less willing to do.

    It sure took long enough to get to your last comment. I think I would have given up long before that.

    As usual, 'they' want to debate about things they think you said and not the actual points being made.

    As for your answer to "Why don't you cut religion the same slack?", yours is the helicopter answer.

    I might quibble a bit in singling out Christianity, even if well-deserved. I think all religions diminish us, but I have a more direct — and personal — answer: because religion doesn't cut me any slack as an atheist.

    It's not just their presumption of having an inside track to the divine, but the further assumption that it gives the religious the right to make assumptions about me and even tell me what I ought to be doing, both in my day-to-day affairs and with my life.

    Here's the other thing . . . I'm asked to accept a person's faith as sufficient as a basis for belief (as opposed to evidence), but 'they' don't accept my faith as a basis for non-belief.

    In fact, I have a lot of faith in god being a human construct, especially if one takes the non-myopic view of human history and the multitude of beliefs relating to deities.

    Anyway, thanks for the great read, and although I didn't need the frustration of reading the comments (my logic circuits may have gotten damaged, but they'll heal), I'll benefit from the reminder as to why I mostly quit engaging the believers. It's not quite as bad as engaging Trumpers, but it's a close second.

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  104. @ejd:

    > Man, this was a slog

    You think it was a slog to read, imagine what it was like to write :-)

    If you don't mind my asking, how did you find it, and what made you stick it out to the bitter end?

    > yours is the helicopter answer

    I assume that's a good thing? In which case, thank you for the kind words.

    > religion doesn't cut me any slack as an atheist

    How far have you looked? "Religion" is a very broad term. I'm pretty sure if you tried you would find quite a few people who self-identify as religious who are willing to cut you a lot of slack. I know I have.

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  105. I don't have to imagine . . . as I said, 40 years, lots, and lots, and lots of words, spoken and written. Some are even on my blog.

    In those forty years, I know of two people whose minds I've changed (one many years after the fact). I'm not sure it was worth the time, given other stuff I could have been doing. In fact, I know it wasn't and I regret spending as much time on it as I did.

    As for religion, not cutting me any slack, that's a general term for a society that is, on the whole, not very friendly to atheists.

    Meaning, nothing personally affecting me other than the occasional annoyance of people assuming I can't be an atheist because, you know, I'm moral, don't drink, rarely swear, help others, etc. etc., but it does affect others in more visceral and physical ways. I basically see Christianity as a religion of hate. That's not to say all Christians are hateful . . . but they kind of lean that way if they are adherent to the beliefs associated with the faith.

    Let me go a bit further . . . spiritual, religious, etc., all involve the person eschewing some measure of rationality for reason that makes sense to them but not to me. The end result is that there is a limit to the interaction I can have with the person unless I'm willing to ignore stuff or they are willing to be called on some stuff.

    Through the years, I knew a few people like that, but no one in a very long time.

    Perhaps it's just that I can't get past the whole willingness to believe something demonstrably inconsistent with what we know. And before anyone says it, not knowing shouldn't give anyone the freedom to make up shit as they see fit. That said, more power to them if it helps them . . . but I still can't get past it.

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  106. @Publius

    > The "so what" is the point not all books can be understood without a teacher to help you.

    > Let X1, X2, X3, and X4 be independent random variables each having the same distribution > with mean 5 and standard deviation 3, and let Y = X1 + 2X2 + X3 - X4.
    > a) Find E(Y)
    > b) Find Var(Y)


    Don't equate exact sciences with interpretable myths and pseudo-science. Yes you may need a teacher for the above math problem, but that problem doesn't have a billion interpretations depending on who your teacher is.

    Religion has a billion ways of being interpreted and as you pointed out in your lengthy discussion there is already a chart that shows all the differences and I'm pretty sure it's not complete.

    You need a teacher for Christianity just as much as you need a teacher to tell you how to live or how to be happy or how to learn alchemy. It's wish-wash. Mind you, it's very catch for the simple-minded because it offers simple answers that are hard to refute ( think P=NP ). But that doesn't make them right.

    The simple fact that you claim that Christianity requires teachers to be fully understood, and the fact that you have 1000 different 'teachers' preaching different versions of it, shows just how (in)consistent it is.

    And that's because it's myth, from start to finish.

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