God's Violence and How to Avoid Facing It

Which dummy is speaking?

I recently posted on the human cruelty sanctioned by God--and, indeed, indirectly perpetrated by Him--in biblical passages such as Joshua 6:20-21.

Some of God's defenders point out that God can do what He likes with human life, as all life "belongs" to him. This apology is special pleading par excellence. As a student of literature I note that no other single character in all of fiction or history has been praised for violently and indiscriminately taking back what he has freely given.

Other God-defenders insist that those who were killed--including non-military, children, the old, the ill, and even livestock--deserved what they got. They did something, or didn't do something, and so God was morally justified to make Israel his instrument of genocidal brutality.

Biblical scholar Peter Enns suggests, following one of his mentors, that difficult passages such as Jericho can be rendered less problematic if the Bible is understood as God letting His children tell the story. He explains:

The Bible is what happens when God allows his children to tell his story–which means the biblical writers told the story from their point of view, with their limitations, within the cultural context in which they wrote.

When children tell the story of their father or mother, parents are typically delighted by how much they get and the childlike way that they see the world. But they are also well aware that children miss a lot when they tell the story, and invariably refract the complexities of family life through their own youthful vision.

It’s not a perfect analogy, I know, but roll with it: Think of how young boys talk in the schoolyard about how great their father is. They are ways of telling the story to make sure everyone knows they have the best dad around.

No, it's not a perfect analogy. And, uh, it's hard to roll with. I'll summarize some of the difficulties I have with Enns's approach, but here's a bit more of his explanation:

When God lets his children tell the story, the way that story is told is deeply and thoroughly influenced by the “rules of the schoolyard”; in the case of the Old Testament that means ancient tribal societies that valued in their people and in their gods such things as taking land, vanquishing (i.e., killing or enslaving) their foes, and generally bragging about who has the best gods and the best kings.

That is how people thought, and this “rule” is stamped all over the Old Testament. This is a way of understanding why the Bible behaves the way that it does. It bears the marks of the limitations of the cultures.

Bear in mind this is only an analogy, but if we want to extend this to the New Testament, we can think of the teachings of Jesus as a more “mature” telling of God’s story. Jesus tells the story in a way that is more in line with who God is (“you have heard it said, but I say to you…”). Such things as land acquisition and killing and enslaving enemies is no longer part of God’s narrative.

It’s like a boy who grows up to be an adult, gets a job, and has a family of his own. Now ask him to tell his father’s story. The son’s life experiences have brought him to a deeper knowledge and appreciation of his father’s experiences, and the story will reflect that.

What problem does the "schoolyard rules" approach solve? Well, it suggests that God really didn't do as much killing as the Bible says. It also indicates that He wasn't in full support of all the killing perpetrated by the Israelites.

OK, so maybe God ain't so bad. But wait. God's exoneration comes at a heavy price, for now we have to wonder how credible "His children" actually are. What else did they exaggerate? Could they have outright fabricated a story or even several stories?

Other problems: Did God approve of some killings and not others? Which ones? Was he OK with the killing of children but not livestock? How do we know?

More problems: Did God let His children tell the whole story or just parts of it? How do we distinguish God's telling from His children's telling, since they both use human language? Is it merely a matter of using the schoolyard rules approach when God does something that makes us uncomfortable?

Even more problems: Are other holy books from the world’s many cultures also re-tellings by God’s children? When re-tellings contradict, how do we adjudicate between them?

These are serious issues. Now take a look at the second section I quote. We see clearly that Enns has the ultimate concern of dropping the "OT" and getting to gentle Jesus. Jesus offers, Enns implies, a truer (what else could "mature" mean?) account of who God is and what He does.This approach reflects a longstanding Christian paradigm wherein the Hebrew Bible prefigures the New Testament. In other words, nasty genocidal God points the way to fatherly God sacrificing himself/his Son out of...love. Yes, love.

Hold on, for Houston, we have more problems. The teachings of Jesus are themselves re-told by the gospel writers. Are these to be viewed also by schoolyard rules? Should we then apply the same questions of credibility, structure, and speaker identification to these teachings?

Sigh.

Despite his cautions on using the analogy, Enns provides no clear statement of how it unambiguously succeeds. We're given the idea that it helps us to accept God's violence but this idea gets us nothing but momentary, visceral relief. Indeed, if we think about it, God's exoneration is passed off to the Israelites. Those kooky Jews were telling tall tales.

I suspect that momentary, visceral relief is all many believers want. Many will not pursue thinking about schoolyard rules and what their truth would entail for the Bible, biblical criticism, and belief.

Sometimes I wonder why people don't just make it easier on themselves and become deists. That way, they could just believe in a supreme being and dispense with having to maintain the authority of the Bible/New Testament.

If you want to believe in the Bible/New Testament, you simply have to accept that God is a huge douche and Jesus is a surly prick--these aspects are inextricable from the characters. Against the plain readings of the Bibles in their original languages and in their many conjoined historical and linguistic contexts, you cannot maintain uniform conceptions of God the loving father and Jesus the meek savior. The conceptions don't hold.

The Postmodernism Translator

James T. Kirk using the Postmodernism Translator to learn deep thoughts from the French.

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry was having trouble with a paragraph from postmodern scholar Bruno Latour. I happen to speak postmodern, so the table below gives Latour's sentences on the left and my liberal translation on the right.

Latour

Tanner

In religious talk, there is indeed a leap of faith, but this is not an acrobatic salto mortale in order to do even better than reference with more daring and risky means, it is a somersault yes, but one which aims at jumping, dancing toward the present and the close, to redirect attention away from indifference and habituation, to prepare oneself to be seized again by this presence that breaks the usual, habituated passage of time. As to knowledge, it is not a direct grasp of the plain and the visible against all beliefs in authority, but an extraordinarily daring, complex, and intricate confidence in chains of nested transformations of documents that, through many different types of proofs, lead toward new types of visions that force us to break away from the intuitions and prejudices of common sense. Belief is simply immaterial for any religious speech-act; knowledge is not an accurate way to characterize scientific activity. We might move forward a bit, if we were calling “faith” the movement that brings us to the close and to the present, and retaining the word “belief" for this necessary mixture of confidence and diffidence with which we need to assess all the things we cannot see directly. Then the difference between science and religion would not be found in the different mental competencies brought to bear on two different realms—“belief ” applied to vague spiritual matters, “knowledge” to directly observable things—but in the same broad set of competences applied to two chains of mediators going in two different directions. The first chain leads toward what is invisible because it is simply too far and too counterintuitive to be directly grasped—namely, science; the second chain, the religious one, also leads to the invisible but what it reaches is not invisible because it would be hidden, encrypted, and far, but simply because it is difficult to renew.

Religious people take "leaps of faith" [in talking about the substance of belief]. But it's not just fancy, meaningless talk, and it's not trying for mere poetry or emotion. Instead, it attempts to articulate the wonder and extra-ordinariness of the present moment, of its present-ness. Where the events of our lives could be seen indifferently and as mundane happenings, in a religious frame the events are grand and worthy of amazement. Religious knowledge--that is, feeling sure that God exists, is watching, and is at work--is not like knowing in everyday life. It is, rather, a heroic assertion and a point of view that finds new and beautiful ways, every day, to confirm that assertion. The assertion, perspective, and continual connecting of the two make the knower a supremely open-minded learner. Religious belief therefore transcends ordinary speech. Language cannot convey the complexity of what the religious seeker is actually doing and learning in active seeking. Neither is the word knowledge appropriate to the learning done by anyone who actively looks at and in the world. Current discussions of religion and science might progress if we all shared a more nuanced understanding of the difference between "faith" and "belief." The more nuanced understanding would help locate the real difference between science and religion: the different cognitive skills and ideological commitments each brings to bear in inquiry. Science and religion are, in other words, different ways of knowing and and of advocating for personally held values. Science orients the thinker to the invisible reality that only mathematics and high-powered instrumentation can access. That reality is far from us and behaves in ways we often find counter-intuitive. Religion also orients the thinker to the invisible, but this invisible reality is the now, the unique present. It's here and close, but only momentary and unrepeatable.

Latour's prose is dense, but not inscrutable. Unfortunately, it's hard to be overly impressed with the logic of his grand--and beautiful--claims for what religion is, does, and knows.

For Latour, to be religious, to think in the religious mode, is to elevate oneself and the now. One is introspective and amazed to be part of a singular narrative in time. Every facet of one's life now is imbued with higher meaning and purpose. And exercise of religious thinking is equally noble and equally important compared to the exercise of scientific techniques.

His aspirations and dancing prose notwithstanding, Latour ultimately fails to make his case. Religious thinking and talk, by his characterization, are little more than very deep navel gazing. They are solipsistic exercises, the dramatic cry of one unable to escape time, and thereby death. In Latour's ornamented formulation, religious introspection re-states William Saroyan's famous quote: "Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case." Religion is the fantasy invoked to come to grips with the fact that no exception will be made.

The Why Evolution Is True crowd notes, as I do, the rhetorical game Latour is playing: "science" is the standard, and Latour wants to bring religion up to or--even better--past the standard. Science has a presumed preeminence and authority he wants conferred also to religion.

It's a silly game, and unnecessary. Religion can be very beautiful. It can make one introspective, and it can yield breathtaking insights into one's life and one's moment. It can help one question common sense and one's own prejudices.

But religion really isn't like science and today bears no relation to it. There's no basis for comparing the two.

Religion is not about truth or knowledge, even self-knowledge. Rather, religion is about understanding, about feeling rationally justified to hold a certain view. The key here, as far as I can tell, is "feeling rational." We're not talking about pure rationality but emotional sanctification with the idea that one is intellectually attuned to forces at work in the universe.

Religion taps into an enticing fantasy, the fantasy of somehow knowing something. But it's just a fantasy. It isn't true, not in the sense of modelling, observing, or schematizing a phenomenon.

I wish people could be OK with that, with the fact that religion isn't true. After all, they can still go to church. They can still pray. They can still observe the rituals and special days. They can still read holy books and discuss teachings. They can still imagine heaven. They can still contemplate hell.They can still fantasize about knowing, all by themselves, deep secrets of the universe.

Religion does not need to be true for people to be interested in it, inspired by it, educated by it, moved by it. But it needs to be true if people are going to learn about the universe and about people.

And it's not true, so let's not ask it to be, and let's not try to extract knowledge where there is none to be had.

In the end, Latour's prose and point are ineffectual because they misguidedly inflate religion into areas it cannot influence. A reformed postmodernist myself, I hope my prose and my arguments are more compelling than his indulgent apology for the unsubstantive.

At Last, What Intelligent Design Theory Advocates!

 
Over at the Intelligent Design site Uncommon Descent, a commenter called Jerad has been asking what ID theory advocates for the origin of life and development of species.

His requests are often polite and specific:

I am not asking you for the designer’s name or address, just your idea about the methods and timing. We know quite a lot about the people who built Stonehenge: what they ate, some of their rituals, stuff you can’t get from just studying Stonehenge itself. There are lots of good books about prehistoric Britain if you’re interested. AND we do ask: why did they build Stonehenge? When? In stages or all at once? Why? Always WHY?? It’s what science does. Asks questions.

You asked me a few weeks ago about finding Stonehenge on Mars and I said: you bet I’d think it was designed. And then I’d immediately start asking those questions and looking for answers and more evidence. I couldn’t just let the deign inference sit there and be happy. I’d start digging. Quite literally in that instance in fact. I’d do some archaeology and look for the designer’s trash heap. I’d ramp up SETI trying to find a signal. I’d try and date the structure. I’d hypothesise (based on careful examination of the thing) about construction techniques. If someone left a Stonehenge on Mars I’d bet they left some other traces and evidence.

Here's a second statement clarifying what Jerad wants to know about ID:

I won’t ask about the designer but, surely, a core part of ID is when; when did the designer intervene. That at least should be answerable. That is the core difference isn’t it: Darwinism says: the ‘gaps’ were bridged by natural, observable processes. ID says: the designer bridged those gaps with knowledge and abilities we extrapolate from our own currently inadequate abilities. BUT, you haven’t said which gaps or when.

Although in that thread none of the ID proponents sketches out the narrative for origin of life and development of species, the comments give enough for a reconstruction. Here, then, is my summary of ID's theory of life:

Intelligent Design is a theory of common design. At some point in the distant past, an intelligent being released one or more organismic "seeds" on earth. Each seed presumably had been designed by this being--although I am not sure we can assume this--and introduced to earth for the purpose of living here. Although each seed is crafted to give rise to organisms with common features--such as teeth, eyes, brains, and so forth--they all represent different life forms. Some seeds are for plants or plant types. Some are for humans, some are for ostriches, some are for bears, some are for ants, some are for salamanders, some are for swordfish. And so on.  The evidence of design is found at the microbiological level, where cells and cell processes indicate that they should have resulted only from a prior engineering and manufacturing process. The cells and processes of living organisms must have been planned by a being, then assembled and finished into an integrated whole. These integrated wholes were used to seed the earth with life. Without these seeds, earth would have remained forever a lifeless planet of water and rock. Following the initial seeding, the organisms reproduced. Generation after generation, they grew in number and established various ecological balances in diverging populations across the planet. These balances shifted according to climate changes, as well as according to the dynamics of different populations growing, strengthening, migrating in or out, or contracting disease. Today, many of these populations are identified as species and subspecies, and various relationships among the species can be shown scientifically. Current biology mistakenly views the relationships between species as the result of (1) common descent and (2) evolution via natural selection. Current biology errs because the level of microbiological complexity required for life to appear on earth could not have happened without an intelligent being placing seeds here. Therefore, common design better explains all of the evidence.

I hope the account above accurately reflects the theory. I expect I have the broad outlines but am off in particulars. I appreciate correction. Nevertheless, it's important to have an articulated ID theory because I, for one, am not satisfied with the following:

When we see a known adequate process that leads to reliable signs, we have every good reason to infer that like causes like, and to hold that in the teeth of any and all contrary metaphysical speculations and doctrines that do not have that sort of empirical warrant. In other worlds [sic], we are well within our scientific rights to insist on the credibility of inductive generalisation on signs that reliably point to known adequate cause.

That is what design theory is about, and it is why in the end, once people realise what is at stake in rejecting it — driving the proverbial stake through the heart of scientific methods and empirical reasoning — it will prevail.

The above defends ID, claiming it makes reasonable extrapolations from observed reality. It also attacks modern science for being driven by unsupported assumptions about reality. For all I know, these arguments have merit; unfortunately, they do not answer the questions people want science to address: What actually happened way back then? How did it occur? What were the conditions and how else might things have turned out?

It is not enough to claim only "I infer design" because to infer design is to invoke a narrative. If X is the result of design, then some designer made X and brought X into being at a certain point in time. What's more, design implies intent: to some degree, X fulfills the designer's intentions both for what X is and what X does. It's not enough, then, to conclude design without also articulating the designer, the designer's purposes, and the historical conditions under which the design first appeared. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that design cannot be offered or accepted as a serious hypothesis unless it affirms a designer, argues purposes, and establishes historical conditions and parameters.

Because ID proponents tend not to provide the sorts of details that Jerad asks for, ID continually comes across as incomplete and pallid criticism. From the thread I link to, anyone might question how much experience Jerad has with the biological data. Nevertheless, one clearly sees that his position is one that encompasses a totality of known data. ID rests on almost pure induction and seeks--seemingly--to keep design from being entirely ruled out.

*  *  *  *  *

Years ago, as a theist starting to buy into the arguments for atheism, I looked to Intelligent Design for a reasonable alternative to atheism. I thought ID might give good reasons to think our world was not without God or gods.

But Intelligent Design failed right away. I realized quickly that it would not give me what I wanted, which was a plausible, clear, evidence-based explanation of the world--including reasons for keeping the idea of God/gods. After all, if there were a good reason to think intentional design was part of life's origins, then there was also good reason to think God could have been the designer.

Unfortunately, ID's proponents, sites, and books provided no scientific development of the theory. Few people, least of all biologists, were applying ID to a full range of data from fossils, genetics, biogeography, morpohology, and so on. One could not enroll in a biology program at a university and study with an ID theorist. One could not open an academic biological journal and read about current findings in ID.

I saw, then, that ID was marginal and almost completely static. In its efforts not to identify explicitly with religion and creationism, it offered no definite theory of anything. It argued that "Darwinism" had failed and that "materialism" had thoroughly corrupted the practice of modern science. But it gave no explanation or narrative of the first design processes and subsequent processes.

Well, now we have an explanation and narrative. Once it's properly tweaked by ID advocates, we can have a real basis for assessing which accounts of life on earth best fit all the data. One final takeaway, then, is that ID postulates not a simple creationism. In the end, it is creationism and an argument that creationism can be rationally and scientifically warranted.

I suspect that people who buy into ID do so because they want to hold onto creationism. Sure, I suppose there is reason to dislike or be unimpressed with evolutionary science, but I find it hard to believe that one accepts ID simply because one is anti-evolution. No, I think one accepts ID out of rational necessity: these are people who know the Bible falls short of truth, who despise the middling ground of agnosticism, and who are repulsed by atheism.

These are, I imagine, some very conflicted conservatives--people whose intellects are at war with their values.

I'm Dreaming of Some White Christians

I mentioned recently that I was all "meh" on religion these days. It's true. I don't feel inspired to comment on matters of religion and atheism right now. Part of the problem is that I very much want to say something original. I want to get into issues. I don't simply want to link to stories or other blog posts, and I don't want only to point and laugh at religious beliefs.

Here is a story worth thinking about, an advertisement for a "white Christians" gathering in Alabama. MSNBC reports:

A three-day whites-only religious conference — which will conclude with a flaming cross — in Lamar County, Alabama, has some residents upset at the racist implications while the minister complains that his freedom of speech is being violated.

"Yes, we believe that the Europeans and their descendants are the chosen people of God," according to the website for Christian Identity Ministries, which is holding the event with Church of God’s Chosen. "We believe this, not because we think that the white race is superior, but because there is overwhelming proof in support of this belief. We do not back down from this belief, because we are certain."

Some local residents learned of the July 4-6 gathering after the group posted fliers promoting their fourth annual pastors conference, announcing "All White Christians Invited," according to a report by WBRC in Birmingham.

"It was put up throughout the town in the middle of the night. (It was) when everyone was asleep without the permission of the business owner," said Tyler Cantrell, manager of Norris Music in nearby Winfield, Ala., the report said.

According to the flier, the three-day conference, being held in a rural area, will end with a "Sacred Christian Cross Lighting Ceremony."

From this story, the feature that strikes me first is the distinction:

• European Christians (and descendants) are God's Chosen.
• European Christians are not superior to Christians of other races.

My Jewish background gives me some perspective on the "chosen" issue. The teaching from the rabbis was always that "chosen-ness" was a bad use of terms. God honored Israel by giving the Torah to them, and through them to humankind. They told us that being Jewish was not a matter of superiority but a matter of priority: we were the first to know God and His Holy Law, and to know a mission for ourselves to be a light unto the nations.

Now, this ministry says that Israelites (and by extension, modern Jews) have been replaced by European Christians. Co-opting the chosen-ness idea is hardly new. I once attended a speech by Louis Farrakhan that claimed Black Americans were chosen. The DNA of Abrahamic religions seems to hold this pernicious idea that a single swath of people has more of God's favor than other peoples.

While it's not surprising that this group claims the mantle of God's favor, it is unexpected that they insist not to be racist. There is "progress" here, in a sense. They seem not to conceive of Black people as the enemy. They seem not to consider Jews, Muslims and Asians to be lower or lesser humans. In the Alabama flier, the "Sacred Christian Cross Lighting Ceremony" reads to me as a specific attempt to divest cross-burning from its associations with KKK and their anti-Black terror campaigns.

Is the ministry racist? Of course. But they certainly are conflicted. They like being white and feel it's pretty cool. They may even feel as though the world-at-large doesn't (or no longer, to put the matter into narrative form) value racial whiteness as it should. Yet they also sense the moral wrongness of racism. They want racial coherence and perhaps insularity; they also tolerate the diversity of the world beyond their group. And so, they bury their racism by downplaying how great it is to be white and chosen--it's the "Mo' money, mo' problems" argument.

That tolerance has ugly limits, though. This ministry is fully certain that it stands closest to God's favor and intentions. It has "overwhelming proof." I wonder: If you are a Christian and you think this ministry is wrong, how do you go about showing them? How do you refute their "overwhelming proof," and how do you know that you are not the one who's wrong?

Let's close by hearing some of the comments on the story. One person says:

Alabama. 'nuf said.

This, of course is not helpful, although we all get the joke. I think the good thing that atheist criticism can add here is to ask whether this event is strictly provincial. We atheists ask whether the exclusion of this group is really so different from exclusive practices that are normal to mainstream Christianity: exclusion of women, homosexuals; the insularity of church leadership; the place of Christians generally at the top of the holy heap, above Jews and Buddhists and atheists.

Another comment:

These people obviously didn't get what Jesus was trying to say.

Riiiight. Because Jesus was saying what YOU say he was saying.

But let's continue. Here's the inevitable tu quoque:

And did the Black Caucus or The Black Law Students Association get the message too. Or maybe you need to attend a meet of the African Americans For the re-election of Obama and ask them if they got his message. Don't tell me you don't know of all of these organizations. Maybe you know the Black Panthers then. This is just the same people doing their usual racist things....but they are not whites...Right!

So tell me I am racist now....I'm not black and I am tired of everyone like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton telling me I'm racist because I'm white and not black too......get over it. We are not all black here it this country. Just look at the President....he's not all black either. Is he?

Here's the history buff chiming in:

Overwhelming proof? Really? Don't know how to break this to you Rev, but "the white race" (my ancestors) were pagan until they were dragged kicking and screaming into Christianity; ever heard of Charlemagne? Charlemagne, or "Karl the Butcher" as he was lovingly known by the Saxons, force converted Western Europe just as Jesus would...by torture and murder. So tell me, with that history, and being that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam originated in the middle-east, and each of the three claim to be God's "chosen" people...what could possibly be your overwhelming proof...ROFLMAO!!!

One more comment on how one bad Christian group does not Christianity make:

There is no such thing as a All white Christian gathering. If your not reaching out to all... your not reaching out at all.

All they are doing is trying to get news. That church (if you can call it that) been around for awhile and now they made front page on a left leaning site... wow.

Don't even try to associate all Christian with this ... All real Christians denounce this and so do I. It their deal not Christs.

There are more comments I could post, including the ones on how Jesus was dark-skinned and Jewish, on how we all came from Africa, and inroads to Obama/Romney. But it's time to sum up.

The takeaways from the story are (1) that co-opting earlier identities, narratives, and status (as in connecting myself or my group to Israel at Sinai) is part of what religion enables; (2) that overt, hostile racism and bigotry may be on the decline; and (3) we have lots of stock responses to stories like the "white Christians" gathering, but the gathering is really just one manifestation of what groups do (setting 'in' and 'out'-group boundaries) and of what seems endemic to Western religious thinking.

20 Questions for Religious Believers

Warning: These questions may induce deep reflection and a search for hard evidence:

1. Why is the physical universe so unimaginably large?
2. Why would God desire to create embodied moral agents, as opposed to disembodied minds (such as souls, spirits, or ghosts)? Why is the human mind dependent on the physical brain?
3. Did Australopithecus have a soul? What about homo habilis? Homo erectus? Neanderthals? Why or why not? (HT: Keith Parsons)
4. How do souls interact with physical matter? Do you have any answer that is not tantamount to "I don't know?" (HT: Keith Parsons)
5. Why would God use biological evolution as a method for creation? Do you have any answer that is independent of the scientific evidence for evolution?
6. Why are pain and pleasure so connected to the biological goals of survival and reproduction, but morally random? For example, why do sentient beings, including animals which are not moral agents, experience pain or pleasure that we do not know to be biologically useful?
7. Why do only a fraction of living things, including the majority of sentient beings, thrive? In other words, why do very few living things have an adequate supply of food and water, are able to reproduce, avoid predators, and remain healthy? Why do an even smaller fraction of organisms thrive for most of their lives? Why do almost no organisms thrive for all of their lives? 
8. Why is there social evil, i.e., instances of pain or suffering that results from the game-theoretic interactions of many individuals? 
9. Why does God allow horrific suffering (and relatively little glorious pleasure)?
10. Why does horrific suffering often destroy a person, at least psychologically, and prevent them from growing morally, spiritually, and intellectually?
11. Why is there nonculpable (reasonable) nonbelief in God? Why are there former believers, i.e., people who, from the perspective of theism, were on the right path when they lost belief? Why are there lifelong seekers? Why are there converts to nontheistic religions and especially nonresistant believers who arrive as a result of honest inquiry at nontheistic experiences and beliefs? Why are there isolated nontheists, i.e., people who have never so much as had the idea of God?
12. Why do some believers feel there is evidence for God's existence on which they may rely, but in which God is not felt as directly present to her experience, and may indeed feel absent?
13. Why are there such striking geographic differences in the incidence of theistic belief?
14. Why do only some people have religious experiences? 
15. For those people who do have religious experiences, why do they pursue a variety of radically different religious paths, none of which bears abundantly more moral fruit than all of the others?
16. Why do so many people report not experiencing God's comforting presence in the face of tragedies?
17. Why does the the relatively new discipline of cognitive science of religion support the claim that forming beliefs about invisible agents including gods is very natural for human beings?
18. Why does God allow such confusion or disagreement among people, including theists, about what is morally good and bad?
19. If you believe humans have free will, why would humans have free will if God exists? Why are we able to exercise free will in some situations but not others?
20. Why should we believe that, of the innumerable deities worshiped by human beings over the ages, yours is the one that really exists?  Why believe in Yahweh rather than Zeus, Odin, Marduk, Ishtar, Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, Madame Pele, Ahura-Mazda, etc., etc., etc.? (HT: Keith Parsons)

Historical Jesus Is Here!

R. Joseph Hoffmann has issued the The Jesus Process, a series of essays (one by him) discussing the historicity and non-historicity of Jesus, and the processes of scholarship used to adjudicate between historical arguments on Jesus.

This is a moment of supernova-esque importance because, for the first time that I know, the public (indeed, the world) has quasi-direct access to academic scholars in the process of making scholarly arguments. This is not a journalist's report of an academic conference or paper. This is not a mass-market book made by an academic. This is not a non-academic book challenging academic scholarship.

This is the academy on the "home turf" of the public. This is the opportunity for the academy to show how and why its professionalism serves the world better than amateur scholarship in books and blogs. Now, alert readers may note that one of the three essay writers, Stephanie Louse Fischer, is a graduate student and not yet a professional academic.

Nevertheless, professionalism is what is at stake in this academic volley against prominent mythicist bloggers. This essay series puts professionalism at the center of its concerns. The facts, the knowledge, the inferences and interpretations all serve the application of professional methodologies and techniques. The final outcome of these essays and their aftermath will be both the definition of professionalism and the professional viability of mythicism. This is why the moment is so fascinating.

I am very excited about this moment and these essays. I plan to read and analyze every one. I encourage others to do so, too. From there, we on the sidelines will await what I am sure will be an equally momentous reply from Richard Carrier. There may be other mythicists, academic and non-academic, who chime in on The Jesus Process essays, but now that the essays are out, Carrier is the man. Initially, no reply will matter more than his.

Indeed, the credibility and reputation of non-academic scholarship may rest on what Carrier does with this opportunity. If Carrier can make a strong scholarly case in favor of both his use of Bayesian techniques and his mythicist position, he will have achieved something very significant and unique in modern scholarship.

But Hoffmann's essays are determined, make no mistake about it, to go after Carrier and expose his mythicism as less than professional grade. One of the essays of The Jesus Process is by Hoffmann, a long piece called "Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus." In it, he promises that the weight of history is "decisive" in favor of the historicity of Jesus. On this point, Hoffmann offers his thesis as follows:

It is my view, simply stated, that while facts concerning the Jesus of history were jeopardized from the start by a variety of salvation myths, by the credulity of early believers, by the historiographical tendencies of the era, and by the editorial tendencies of early writers, the gospels retain a stubbornly historical view of Jesus, preserve reliable information about his life and teachings, and are not engulfed by any of the conditions under which they were composed. Jesus “the Nazarene” did not originate as a myth or a story without historical coordinates, but as a teacher in first century Roman Palestine. Like dozens of other Hellenistic teachers, but lacking sophisticated “biographers” to preserve his accomplishments, Jesus is distinct only because the cult that formed around him perpetuated his memory in ritual, worship, and text, while the memory of other attested personalities of antiquity, even those who enjoyed brief cultic popularity like Antigonus I, Ptolemy I and Demetrius of Macedon are known to us mainly through literary artifacts.

You'll have to read the rest of the article to see how Hoffmann defends the thesis. Let me note, however, that Hoffmann's use of the gospels in his argument may have similarities with the narrative-based methodology employed by Joel S. Baden for the Pentateuch. Both Hoffmann and Baden are interested in immediate sources of religious texts. Hoffmann argues that a person, the subject of the texts, is probably a source for his texts; Baden argues that earlier, separate versions are the sources for his.

In addition to the positive case for the historical Jesus, Hoffmann holds the mythicist position "as fatally flawed and subject to a variety of objections." Here, Hoffmann's thesis is, well, devastating:

The attempt of “mythicists” to show that Jesus did not exist, on the other hand, has been largely incoherent, insufficiently scrupulous of historical detail, and based on improbable, bead-strung analogies.[1] The failure of the myth theory is not the consequence merely of methodological sloppiness with respect to the sources and their religious contexts; that has been demonstrated again and again from as early as Shirley Jackson Case’s (now dated) study, The Historicity of  Jesus (1912). It is a problem incipient in the task itself, which Morton Smith aptly summarized in 1986: The myth theory, he wrote, is almost entirely based on an argument from silence, especially the “silence” of Paul. “In order to explain just what it was that Paul and other early Christians believed, the mythicists are forced to manufacture unknown proto-Christians who build up an unattested myth . . . about an unspecified supernatural entity that at an indefinite time was sent by God into the world as a man to save mankind and was crucified… [presenting us with] a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the Gospels.”[2]

As I said, Hoffmann's essay is long, yet it's well worth careful reading and re-reading.

So, grab your popcorn and read up. I won't say "This is gonna be good," because it already is good.

The Suffering Spouse: A Story of Religious Melodrama

Woe is me! How much I suffer!

I consider myself a "New Atheist" because when I assess the effects of mainstream religious beliefs on the world, religion more often than not appears to be harmful.

The harm shows not only in criminals like the pope or in the violence of religiously motivated groups, but also at a very basic, everyday level. At Spiritually Unequal Marriage, a website for Christians married to "non-believers," a woman writes an open letter to the community:

I remember when I came across your site. I was so thankful that I was not alone! I think the most powerful thing that you and Dineen [i.e., Lynn and Dineen, the site owners] have done lately is to post honestly and transparently. Women in these marriages WANT to have hope but they also don't want to necessarily hear that others in "unequal" marriages are thriving and joyful etc. That may sound strange but for the most part unequal marriages suffer, greatly.

This woman wants to be part of a community...of suffering! She will hear nothing of couples happy and satisfied in "unequal" marriages but prefers to dwell in sadness and difficulty.

As the woman continues, see how religious beliefs give her life a context with a narrative based on war/struggle and characters such as the devil:

And truthfully if the marriage is unequal the home has a constant open doorway for the devil. He is always welcome and WE must do battle continually. We may get "breaks” the fog may lift to some degree but the battle is continual. For those of us in marriages where there are serious addictions the battles are that much more intense. The need to cling to the Lord is that much more necessary. I think your honesty lately is revealing more Truth than ever. Because the truth is, we may live our entire lives with our spouse and they may never be saved. The hardest thing to grasp in these relationships is that it is not God's WILL that ALL be saved. It is His desire and He woos and calls people to Himself but He gives them the free will to love Him in return.

This poor woman imagines herself a solitary warrior in her own home. She mentions "addictions," so perhaps she or a loved one (likely) has substance issues. True enough, plenty of people never shake their addictions. More than anything, this woman seems trying to cope with the uncertainty of the addict. Her reality is an allegory of the religious: one may not be saved from addiction as one may not be saved religiously. The final result is beyond her ken and control, even beyond--to some extent--her loved one's control. The woman invokes God because she wants SOMEONE to be in control. The idea of God covers over the unpleasant scenario of no one having intelligent governance over her affairs.

Yet, the idea of SOMEONE being ultimately in charge, even if that someone is God, does not comfort the woman. It costs her to feel part of a purposeful universe, and that cost is separation from her loved one:

This is so difficult for us who have loved ones who are unsaved. At times, I find myself with a lump in my throat, my spirit crying out, and pain that goes deep beyond description, as I watch my loved ones walk further and further away from the Lord. Yet, at other times, there is great peace and there is a sweet surrender. It is then that I realize the peace that Christ had. He mourned those who are lost but pressed forward into God's will, trusting the entire world to God's sovereign care. Jesus prayed that God would "make another way" but prayed nevertheless, that God's WILL be done. God's will called for Christ to die. This side of the Cross we don't argue with God's decision. On the side of the Cross where Jesus' mother Mary kneeled God probably seemed to be failing His people in more ways than they could imagine. But, He knows what He's doing. We must remember that Jesus said . . .Matthew 7:13-14:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

My great peace has not come from giving up hope.
I cling to the Promises and I declare:

"But I will keep on hoping for your help; I will praise you more and more"
Psalm 71:14

In each successive paragraph, the woman toggles between grief and sad resignation. True, the notion of God keeps her from falling into an emotional abyss. However, she would do much better to discard the idea of God altogether.

God and Bible quotes give her consolation, but the potential for happiness lies outside of God and the Bible. If she were not so preoccupied with the "spiritual warfare" scenario, she would have no worry of the saved/unsaved problem. This problem would not exist. She would own her life and her life choices. She would understand that her decisions and actions would be able to help her feel better about her life. Although she would never be able to control her loved one's addictions or know if he would re-lapse, she would be able to adopt a proper "we'll deal with it if it comes up" attitude.To ditch God would be to claim her life in the present.

For this reason, I find that atheism better allows one to compartmentalize. In contrast, religion encourages an awful combination of ceaseless naval gazing and self-flagellation. This woman seems driven to see and open her own wounds:

I pray continually for the salvation of my husband and my loved ones but my hope is not in that outcome. If I hope in that I will find myself disappointed. But if I hope in God, trusting that HE knows best even if that means that He must allow some of my loved ones to turn away from Him then, I will not be disappointed. Just as Jesus' Disciples were not disappointed at the resurrection! So, I guess to make a LONG email short, haha. I just think that the more you share your struggles, the more power you will see in your ministry. God will not force ANYONE to love Him. If He did then the love He offers would not be love at all. You can't FORCE someone to love you. Therefore, each person may choose. Though it is difficult for saved spouses to watch, their unsaved spouse may continue to drift back and forth. It is the power of God moving. Yet, in the end it is the decision of their heart and yes, God allows it. Because of His great love.

Those who have engaged in any sort of discussion with religious people know the familiar fallback, "you must freely choose to love (or fear or submit to) God/Jesus." The fallback, again, says more about the woman's fear and need to cope.

Indeed, the woman says almost nothing of substance about her loved one. In the end, her message has nothing to do with her loved one or God/Jesus. It's all about her and her oh-so-valiant struggle to fight the devil. It's about her telling us to look at her and admire her being tied to the train tracks.

She's like the lyric from the Offspring's great song, "Self Esteem":

The more you suffer,
The more it shows you really care.

And this is where I have a real problem with this woman's outlook and the religious context from which she draws. All of her "suffering" is self-inflicted and totally unnecessary. Any moment she really wanted to, she could remove herself from her marriage and just get along with her life. She could, and she'd probably be happier. Look, I take marriage and divorce very seriously, but when the two people in the marriage are not happy they should separate.

It takes more than love to make a happy marriage. It takes attitude, communication, effort, flexibility, giving, reflection, teamwork, and more. In a happy marriage, no one is "suffering" because of the other partner. On a personal level, there is no freaking way I would ever want or allow my wife to suffer because of me--and I'm sure she feels the same way. We didn't get married to be sources of suffering to each other; we married to be constant sources of comfort, encouragement, and support. For this reason, marriage partners do not need to share the same religious beliefs any more than they need to support the same political candidates or parties.

But if your beliefs or your politics cause you pain if your spouse isn't in the same camp, then you need to re-assess those beliefs and politics. And if those beliefs and politics turn out to be more important to you than your spouse, then break away from the relationship. I doubt your spouse wants to be a pre-text for your suffering.

New Atheism looks at some types of religious narrative--such as that of a world engulfed in spiritual conflict--and religious characters--such as the devil--and argues that these are not only ungrounded but poisonous. The woman who wrote the email I've examined here is one case, but notice all the assent and agreement she gets in the comments section. Instead of advising the woman to chill out and then do something productive for herself, the comments are all of a "me too" variety (although there are some disagreements on bits).

If suffering is avoidable, it should be avoided. If happiness is attainable, it should be attained. These statements seem commonsensical, but in practice we often act against common sense.

A Jesus Fight...And What It Means for the Jews

Religious historian and humanist R. Joseph Hoffmann has declared war on Jesus mythicists:

This little rant (and it is a rant, I acknowledge and I do not apologize for it: somebody’s got to do it) will be followed  next week by three essay-length responses to Richard C. Carrier’s ideas: The first by me, the second by Professor Maurice Casey of the University of Nottingham, and the third by Stephanie Fisher a specialist in Q-studies. We will attempt to show an impetuous amateur not only where he goes wrong, but why he should buy a map before starting his journey. Other replies will follow in course, and we invite Carrier, his fans, and anyone else interested in this discussion to respond to it at any stage along the way.

As you can see, Hoffmann's main target is Richard Carrier, a Ph.D. in ancient history, author/speaker, atheist, and mythicist. Hoffmann aims to show both Carrier and his atheist applauders that the Jesus-as-myth view is probably untenable.

But it's important also realize everything that's at stake in this war on mythicism:

• What are viable ideas in scholarship versus crankery and crack-pottery?
• Who are scholars and what does it mean to practice responsible scholarship?
• What authority do consensus views have?
• What consideration should be given to marginal and fringe views?
• What status is given to non-professionals, hobbyists, and scholars in outside disciplines?
• What roles do tradition, bias, ignorance, innovation, and personal ideology have in scholarship?
• What methods work in historical and humanities scholarship, and how do we know they work?
• Where should scholarly debates be conducted, and in what forms?

I don't know this list is exhaustive, but it is accurate and reflects a timely angst about today's hyper-traffic in ideas and opinions.

I look forward to Hoffmann and cohorts bringing in solid data and arguments. I also eagerly await Carrier's replies. I hope we'll get to see whether mythicism withstands scrutiny or not. Most of all, I hope to see how all sides of the debate directly and indirectly wrangle with the issues I've listed.

This is, folks, an important moment.

Yes, you might say, but is it good for the Jews? (i.e., we begin the humorous part of the post.) Consider this:

• The outcome of the debate will not likely stir up antisemitism, unless people walk away thinking Jesus was a myth perpetrated by the Jews to make them look foolish.
• The debate may turn out to be high impact. American and world evangelicals could get stirred up regardless of mythicism's standing afterwards.
• The Jewishness of Jesus and his first followers should be one recurring item. Some, of course, will repress the idea.

Therefore, this debate may turn out not so good for the Jews. The best case scenario for the Jews is that Jesus is concluded to have probably existed and we all return to our regularly scheduled fantasies.

Speaking of Resurrection

I'm back, baby. This is my time of year!

With Easter coming, there's been the unsurprising uptick of historical Jesus talk. This year's chatter brings popular attention to mythicism, the position that Jesus Christ was not a person in history.

The occasion for this development is a Huffington Post article by Bart Ehrman, a very good biblical scholar and former-evangelical-turned-agnostic. Ehrman writes:

In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed?

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

Why then is the mythicist movement growing, with advocates so confident of their views and vocal -- even articulate -- in their denunciation of the radical idea that Jesus actually existed? It is, in no small part, because these deniers of Jesus are at the same time denouncers of religion -- a breed of human now very much in vogue. And what better way to malign the religious views of the vast majority of religious persons in the western world, which remains, despite everything, overwhelmingly Christian, than to claim that the historical founder of their religion was in fact the figment of his followers' imagination?

The view, however, founders on its own premises. The reality -- sad or salutary -- is that Jesus was real. And that is the subject of my new book, "Did Jesus Exist?"

Readers can decide how solid Ehrman's argument is (hint: it's decent but hardly unproblematic or iron-clad), but at least one scholar finds Ehrman's piece wanting. Richard Carrier is a scholar and mythicist; his book on the subject is due out soon. Carrier argues that the historical position has nothing substantial enough to warrant confidence:

To say that the Gospels contain a lot of myth, therefore they “can’t” be entirely myth, is not valid reasoning. They might contain a historical core, they might not. That has to be determined, and is at least an honestly debatable question. As Dr. Thompson admitted. I think on full analysis they come out as completely mythical (most of the attempts to argue otherwise fail on basic logic, as I demonstrate in Proving History, chapter 5). That should at least be a respectable position, even if Ehrman or anyone disagrees with it.

The second century references, meanwhile, cannot be shown to be independent of the Gospels (e.g. the reference in Tacitus, even the Testimonium Flavianum, even if it were completely genuine–and it’s not–says nothing that could not have simply been read out of a Gospel or gotten from any other Christian source relying on one), or to derive from any real source at all (e.g. the Infancy Gospels). And like any other mythic being, the Gospels would not be the earliest versions of the creed; many mythical demigods “died and were resurrected,” some were even “buried” or hung or burned or cut to pieces; that doesn’t make them historical. Thus, in Paul, that Jesus was created out of the “seed of David” (in fulfillment of prophecy) and “born of a woman” are claims that could just as easily be made of any mythical demigod (all of whom were born of a woman, and some of whom were “magically” born from the seed of their fathers, like Perseus, or even, as in the case of Dionysus, their previous corpses). They also said things–none of which were historical. Paul himself only identifies two sources for his sayings of the Lord: scripture and revelation (e.g. 1 Corinthians 11:23 in light of Galatians 1:18-20). No historical Jesus is needed there.

That leaves nothing.

James McGrath, on the historicist side, engages Carrier's piece. McGrath's thesis is that Carrier's "is a disappointing and ineffective response that will only carry weight with people who desperately want there not to have been a historical Jesus, so much so that they cease to care about historical methods and evidence." McGrath ably defends the argument and closes with this:

Ehrman did not make mistakes in his piece, and if there is infelicitous or ambiguous wording, one should not try to use that against him any more than one should accept the use of ambiguous statements by scientists in an attempt to undermine their credibility. It remains the case, Carrier’s lengthy blog post notwithstanding, that the evidence available leads most naturally to the conclusion that a historical Jesus more likely existed than not. The attempt to manufacture controversy about this is one of the reasons why mythicists are rightly compared to creationists and other denialists.

We could go on with the back-and-forth, but instead let's make some general points about the discussion as a whole:

• Mythicism is gaining more public credence and notoriety.
• Some mythicists adopt the position for personal reasons.
• The mythicist position can be made reasonably (in academic terms), yet this doesn't automatically make it a preferable or even very good position.
• On the other hand, the historicist position may seem more "natural" (due perhaps to centuries of assuming its truth), but this in itself doesn't make it correct.
• The historicist position may be better than the mythicist one, but the margin of superiority seems not to be as wide as historicists have traditionally thought.
• The historicist question, we must remember, is entirely separate from many other questions related to Jesus and Christian belief, such as the resurrection.

Personally, I am a historicist who thinks historicism is legitimately questioned. I also recognize that the historicity question is hardly as interesting as the development of actual Christian beliefs and practices. See, for instance, Larry Hurtado's points on the resurrection,which suggest Jesus was at first believed to have been raised to life in the world to come, not to physical life on earth:

• The conviction was that it was Jesus of Nazareth who had been raised.  That is, there was a direct connection between the crucified figure who had been active in Roman Judea and the figure of earliest Christian faith.
• This was not a claim that Jesus had been resuscitated and brought back to life of this world, but instead that God had catapulted Jesus forward into life of the world to come.
• One immediate implication of this claim was that God had vindicated Jesus against the death-penalty imposed by the earthly authorities.  That is, in the earliest setting, Jesus’ resurrection was very much divine vindication.
• The likelihood that Jesus had been executed as a messianic/royal claimant meant that God’s resurrecting him vindicated this claim.  That’s probably why the messianic claim about Jesus seems to have been so central in earliest Christian preaching.
• Resurrection of the righteous was, for many Jews (but not all), a central hope and expectation.  That is, “resurrection”, the personal vivification of people by God was by Jesus’ time already a familiar concept.  This hope seems to have emerged sometime in the “post-exilic” period, and in the time of Jesus was still under debate, the Sadducees the main Jewish party portrayed as denying this belief.
• The unusual thing about the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead was that he had been singled out in advance of the resurrection that was to be given to all the righteous.  This immediately meant that Jesus was somehow special, that God had chosen to favor him apart from and in advance of the vindication to be given to the righteous (such as Moses, Abraham, David, etc.).
• The references to Jesus’ resurrection include the claim that this involved also his exaltation to heavenly glory “at God’s right hand” (the phrase lifted from Psalm 110).   So “resurrection” in Jesus’ case must be understood as connoting his vindication and glorification.  That is reflected in the “post-Easter” references to Jesus as Messiah and as “Lord”, and the assertion that he now shares in the name and glory of God.
• In short, the conviction that God had raised Jesus from death was central in earliest Christian faith, and also was powerful in generating attendant convictions as well.

As always, the historical and epistemological questions are more interesting and productive. Who cares whether Jesus would vote for Mitt Romney, or whether he died for someone's "sins"? The whole suffering savior stuff could hardly be more boring, as far as I'm concerned.

New Series: The Art of Strategy

Textuality's next series is another book walkthrough. This time, I will share thoughts and opinions on The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life. Written by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff, the book discusses many subjects meeting my natural interests: rational thinking, personal finance, professional success, and ethics.

Looking at the book's chapters, we can see how substantial this series promises to be:

Introduction: How Should People Behave in Society?

Part I
1. Ten Tales of Strategy
2. Games Solvable by Backward Reasoning
3. Prisoners' Dilemmas and How to Resolve Them
4. A Beautiful Equilibrium
Epilogue to Part I

Part II
5. Choice and Chance
6. Strategic Moves
7. Making Strategies Credible
Epilogue to Part II: A Nobel History

Part III
8. Interpreting and Manipulating Information
9. Cooperation and Coordination
10. Auctions, Bidding, and Contests
11. Bargaining
12. Voting
13. Incentives
14. Case Studies

Every series demands different responses from me as reader and blogger, so I don't yet know what structure my posts will take. I don't know how many posts or what the balance will be between chapter summary, commentary, and attempts to apply knowledge.

In other words, I will make it up as we go along, which probably seems strange for a book about strategy. Nevertheless, I have confidence this series will prove highly engaging and useful.

You Can Ban/Moderate Me, Uncommon Descent, But You Cannot Silence Me: A Reply to Kairosfocus

Welcome to Uncommon Descent. Feel free to comment.

I shouldn't post comments I make on other sites, but I want to save the following thoughts from a comment that Uncommon Descent decided not to release. They must have resented my uncharitable review of the recent purge of ID questioners.

Still, Kairosfocus had made a "challenge" to me, so it would have been nice if my post was accepted--even if the offending part was snipped. I hate to leave a challenge unanswered.

Dialoguing with Kairosfocus is difficult, and his foggy prose doesn't help. Now, I make no boasts of my own style; I mean only to point out that Kairosfocus has an information-rich and opinionated style that an interlocutor must work through. Kairosfocus gives long, ranging comments laced with snide remarks. For example, he begins his comment to me with this bit:

You of course must know about the recent exchanges here at UD (and in the penumbra of objector sites) that showed that there is a basic clash whereby evolutionary materialist atheists strongly tend to deny the reality of self-evident first principles of right reason; leading them to absurdities such as asserting that quantum physics provides empirical warrant — by contradiction to prior expectations! [oooopsie . . . ] — to dismiss the key laws of thought such as the law of non-contradiction.

See the reductio ad absurdum on denial that is a hall-mark of trying to dismiss self evident first principles?

In only two sentences, Kairosfocus raises many topics:

(1) The recent purge of ID critics from UD.
(2) A "basic clash" between atheists and theists.
(3) Atheists deny "principles of right reason."
(4) Atheists say absurd things.
(5) Atheists say that quantum physics allows "key laws of thought" to be dismissed.
(6) Atheists are forced into reductiones ad absurdum when they do #3 and #5

From the two sentences above, we understand that Kairosfocus writes in emotionally charged terms of attack (exchanges, clash) and irrationality (deny, self-evident, right, absurdities). For this reason, his long posts are akin to the Gish Gallop, a barrage of charges and dismissals that make dialogue difficult, if not impossible.

The charges are totally false, if I must dignify them by pointing this out. Atheists do not deny "principles of right reason." For most atheists that I read and observe, reasoning rightly and well is a primary concern--as well as a factor in why they are atheists. Part of good reasoning includes examining one's assumptions: everything is available for questioning and nothing is sacrosanct. That Kairosfocus and his friends want to surround their parochial version of "right reason" with high, barbed-wire fences--on pain of bannination from UD (the horror!)--tells us that intellectually there are places they refuse to go. Such refusal again makes real dialogue extremely difficult.

Nevertheless, I have aimed to give dialogue the old college try. Here's what I wrote, and you'll notice I gave a long-ish reply to match what was given to me. Your comments are invited.

KF,

I do indeed know about the recent exchanges at UD. The purge of ID critics was duly noted. In fact, it became a source of amusement for many folks, myself included, who think UD and its leadership are more bluster and bullying than substance. The “evolutionary materialist atheists” that I read were not denying first principles at all. They were demanding that first principles be considered with proper nuance and not simplistically.

I am an atheist, but I am not an “evolutionary materialist atheist.” I tend to be satisfied that modern biology provides the best available explanation for the diversity of life on earth. I also lean to materialism as being sufficient to account for everything we see and experience in the universe. But I am not an “evolutionary materialist atheist” because I am neither a biologist nor a physicist. I simply do the best I can understanding the information before me and concluding as seems correct. My atheism, if I may be personal, starts with understanding the history of the Bible, the history in it, and the history of the religions that take the Bible as Bible: the point is that evolution and materialism were not and are not the prevailing factors in my reasoning about theism. But I digress….

My questions were directed to jstanley01. The expression “rational foundations of reason” didn’t make sense to me. It would have been like saying “the happy foundations of happiness.” Seems a bit circular, doesn’t it?

I hear your argument that an atheist and a theist equally rely on faith. You say this here:

the vaunted “bright” atheist is just as much relying on faith as the Christian whom he mocks as ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked and/or blindly credulous.

I'll quibble with you on the kinds of faith employed by an atheist as opposed to those of a theist, but I get your larger point: we’re all working as best we can with what we got.

As for my “patent and irresponsible, unfair strawman caricature”: what I said,

Folks here refuse to grant atheism intellectual permissibility.

is either generally true at UD or it is not. We can establish the truth of the statement with a poll:

(1) Is atheism a “reasonable faith”?

(2) Is it possible for atheism to be a “reasonable faith”?

I also hear your objections about atheists. You say we are pretentious and do not face the challenges of building our worldview from the ground up, which I assume is what you feel theists do. Personally, I try to develop and refine my worldview from the ground-up. I think I've done an OK job, and I see many atheists who have done the same. If you disagree, please show me specifically where I or others need to shore up our worldview.

You then say,

If evolutionary materialist atheism cannot stand on its own feet and ground itself as a reasonable faith on matters of accuracy to reality, coherence and in particular accuracy to the reality of ought, then it is not worth holding.

I totally agree. If atheism is not true, then one is better off adjusting her or his thinking. However, I happen to think it’s probably true. You clearly think it is not; what’s more, you think it is incoherent and inaccurate “to the reality of ought” (a difficult phrase to parse). That’s fine. In my opinion, Christianity (speaking generally and for example) is untrue, incoherent, and less than ideal in many of its official moral strictures.

We need to disagree, then.

Your points on Hawking and Lewontin are noted, but don’t carry much weight with me. Generally, you criticize these folks for what you wish they would have said and not what they actually say. You may now wish to retort that I am being unfair, obstinate, twisting words, lacing in red herrings and the like. I get it. But you now know my opinion, and I think that opinion is highly defensible, if you care to press me on it.

Thanks for the playbook on right reason. Yes, I think atheism works well for [1] through [6]. Atheism also does a better job than theism on [5] and [6]. Your footnote tries to answer, but does not, the questions that I know you know are coming:

Are gods something “that are”? If so, can it be found why they are? If so, how can it be found (what methods) why deities exist?

Do gods have a beginning or may cease from being? If so, can it be found why they begin or cease from being? If not, can it be found why they do not begin or cease from being?

So, we arrive where we started: atheism seems quite reasonable to me, and not to you. And theism seems quite reasonable to you, and not to me.

But I never asked for atheism to get a free pass from you. Don’t ask that theism get a free pass from me.

Finally, you may be aware that UD moderators typically hold my posts for several hours (when they allow posts to pass). This is frustrating. I will therefore not engage further on this conversation, not because I don’t want to but because it’s too irritating to be moderated all the time. Thanks for understanding.

Kuzari Principle, Round 3

Another round of discussion on Kuzari.

Is it rational to believe that a nation of former slaves, the Hebrews, experienced a mass Divine revelation at Sinai?

Frankly, I don’t know. I do know, however, that the so-called Kuzari Principle is insufficient as a basis for said belief. I have written many posts on the Kuzari Principle and I have answered many challenges. Let me briefly summarize these posts:

Round 1:

• The Kuzari Principle: Ultimate Proof of God’s Existence? – An introduction to Kuzari with background and applications.
• The Sinai Argument – A sketch of how Kuzari gets used to argue for Sinai.
• Definitively Refuting the Kuzari Principle – An analysis of Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb's Kuzari arguments that concludes Kuzari fails to prove either Sinai or Judaism.
• Kuzari Keeps on Giving, or Pay No Attention to the Assumptions Behind My Principle! – A review of early emails with Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb on my Kuzari refutation.
• Kuzari: Final Thoughts – A bullet list of key disagreements between Rabbi Gottlieb and me.
• Are Divine-Human Interactions Possible? – A meditation on establishing the possibility of the divine.
• Going Nuclear on the Kuzari Principle – An extended treatment of Rabbi Gottlieb's call for false NETs and a presentation of a real NET: the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
• Kuzari Principle: Index of Posts – Summation of important conclusions on Kuzari, and a list of all posts to date.

Round 2:

• Kuzari Returns! – A clarification and defense of the “evolving myth hypothesis,” which Kuzari defenders routinely mis-characterize.
• Belief and Evidence (and Bias, Oh My!) – A definition of a task I will take on: explaining the Sinai story.
• Deuteronomy Doesn't Validate the Sinai Revelation – An examination that concludes Deuteronomy 4:9-40 presents a later account and interpretation of the Sinai event.
• Three Sinai Stories – A presentation of the Sinai stories from the J, E and P biblical sources.
• Why Aren't There More Sinai-Like Stories? – An inquiry into the alleged uniqueness of Sinai.
• On Evidence and Hypotheses – A discussion on identifying evidence as evidence, with further points on using evidence in hypotheses.
• How the Sinai Story Originated and Developed – An opinion explaining the Sinai story as “a fabrication using pre-existing narrative elements which may have been factual at some point in the distant past.”

We now enter Round 3, a discussion of a new logical proof (rKP) developed by Sam Lebens at Philosophy of Judaism. Lebens is a philosophy doctorate and, based on our online exchange, a decent fellow. His proof, however, doesn't sway me.

Here is the full proof, which I will comment on afterward:

(rKP1) A myth will not initially find any traction with a culture who know it to be historically inaccurate, although once it has been adopted and becomes culturally significant, then a culture will not abandon it merely because of its historical inaccuracies.

(rKP2) The generations of a g-chain will not accept a g-narrative about them unless:

1. The generation is the first in the g-chain and witnessed the events for themselves, or
   
2. The generation received the g-narrative as an inheritance from their parents, although each generation after the first may have members outside of the core of the g-chain who adopt the g-narrative as they join or merge with the community and adopt its history as their own, or
   
3. The entire generation becomes convinced, presumably only with a large amount of evidence, that a g-chain that was supposed to have reached them was broken – this doesn’t seem to be the case with the small number of Jewish g-narratives, all of which seem to stretch right back into the mist of Jewish pre-history.

(rKP3) G-narratives can be subject to slow corruption and exaggeration. Thus, the fact that a g-narrative is widespread among a contemporary generation of a g-chain is no reason to believe that that g-narrative presents an accurate history.

(rKP4) The original g-narrative, before any corruption or exaggeration, must have been sufficiently impressive in and of itself to have initiated a sustained desire to transmit the story down a g-chain.

(rKP5) There are a small number of remarkable and widespread g-narratives about the Jewish people, about mass revelation and divine deliverance. These narratives are still transmitted to the majority of Jewish children by their parents at events like the Seder Night, in which Jewish parents recount the exodus from Egypt for the benefit of their children. This ritual retelling is even conducted by a very large number of Jews who no longer believe in the historical accuracy of the narrative.

(rKP6) Given (rKP3), the fact that these g-narratives are widespread among the living members of the Jewish g-chain is no reason to trust the historical accuracy of the stories.

(rKP7) But, given (rKP2) and (rKP4), the fact that these g-narratives are widespread does provide good reason to believe that the story wasn’t initially adopted by a generation to whom the story didn’t actually happen, and that the story is grounded in fact even if it’s been distorted, and that the facts, in and of themselves, were sufficiently impressive to generate the very long lasting feeling of cultural obligation to pass the story on down the g-chain.

(rKP8) We have no reason to believe that the details of Jewish g-narratives are historically accurate, but we do have reason to believe that they are grounded in extraordinary facts witnessed by an entire generation of the g-chain.

(rKP9) Therefore, we have good grounds to believe that an entire generation of the forbears of the Jewish people, or an entire generation of a tribe that would later amalgamate into an emergent Jewish people, were collectively witness to an extraordinary sequence of supernatural events, and events that would have been collectively understood as Divine revelation

In discussions with Lebens, I pointed out immediately that rKP1 made me uncomfortable. We have no reason to think it's true and we probably have better reason to think it's false. Some clarity may be gained by defining the term "myth," but otherwise I don't know what to do with rKP1.

At this point, Lebens wanted to shelve the issue of rKP1's possible vagueness (and falsity) and move to whether, given rKP1, the whole rKP argument worked. I appreciate his desire to move on, but I think it's a mistake to do so. I have had many conversations with Kuzari proponents, and I've always been struck with the willingness for vagueness on terms such as "myth" and "acceptance." To me, any argument using Kuzari should require specificity because myth evolution and cultural development are complex forces. If we cannot be sufficiently clear in our terms, how can we hope to say anything true and useful?

One quick example to illustrate: If I talk about the role of the King of England, that role is very different in the twentieth century ( I know we are now in the 21at century) than it was in 1520 or 1214. The term means very different things across the three dates. Consider, then, how we might assess whether a myth, story, or meme gained "traction" (see rKP1) in an ancient Near Eastern culture? Any point we want to make about "traction" would need to consider what the term meant in that world and then meant later. Thus, if "traction" meant something like "repeated approvingly by the priesthood" and then later developed into "a tenet of orthodox belief," we would want to know--the validity and soundness of our arguments would depend on it.

Throwing my discomfort with terminology and anachronism aside, let me use the following table to introduce my view of the rKP. The right-hand column offers my "translation" of Lebens's revised Kuzari argument. I have translated it to make clear my understanding of rKP's essential arguments. I have translated "myth" as "meme" because I think "meme" has less semantic baggage and actually names the essential part of what "myth" seeks to convey.

Revised Kuzari Premise (Lebens)	Larry's Translation
(rKP1) A myth will not initially find any traction with a culture who know it to be historically inaccurate, although once it has been adopted and becomes culturally significant, then a culture will not abandon it merely because of its historical inaccuracies.	A meme will "stick" if it contains some historical factuality.
(rKP2) The generations of a g-chain will not accept a g-narrative about them unless: The generation is the first in the g-chain and witnessed the events for themselves, or The generation received the g-narrative as an inheritance from their parents, although each generation after the first may have members outside of the core of the g-chain who adopt the g-narrative as they join or merge with the community and adopt its history as their own, or The entire generation becomes convinced, presumably only with a large amount of evidence, that a g-chain that was supposed to have reached them was broken – this doesn’t seem to be the case with the small number of Jewish g-narratives, all of which seem to stretch right back into the mist of Jewish pre-history.	A special meme will stick if it has some historical witnesses, if it is told to children by parents, or if it is subject to whatever rKP2c means.
(rKP3) G-narratives can be subject to slow corruption and exaggeration. Thus, the fact that a g-narrative is widespread among a contemporary generation of a g-chain is no reason to believe that that g-narrative presents an accurate history.	Special memes can change in their content.
(rKP4) The original g-narrative, before any corruption or exaggeration, must have been sufficiently impressive in and of itself to have initiated a sustained desire to transmit the story down a g-chain.	Special memes must be originally impressive.
(rKP5) There are a small number of remarkable and widespread g-narratives about the Jewish people, about mass revelation and divine deliverance. These narratives are still transmitted to the majority of Jewish children by their parents at events like the Seder Night, in which Jewish parents recount the exodus from Egypt for the benefit of their children. This ritual retelling is even conducted by a very large number of Jews who no longer believe in the historical accuracy of the narrative.	Some special memes are still transmitted today.
(rKP6) Given (rKP3), the fact that these g-narratives are widespread among the living members of the Jewish g-chain is no reason to trust the historical accuracy of the stories.	Widespread prevalence of special memes doesn’t tell us about their historical accuracy.
(rKP7) But, given (rKP2) and (rKP4), the fact that these g-narratives are widespread does provide good reason to believe that the story wasn’t initially adopted by a generation to whom the story didn’t actually happen, and that the story is grounded in fact even if it’s been distorted, and that the facts, in and of themselves, were sufficiently impressive to generate the very long lasting feeling of cultural obligation to pass the story on down the g-chain.	Widespread prevalence of special memes does tell us that they were accepted--in whatever form they originated--by a first generation.
(rKP8) We have no reason to believe that the details of Jewish g-narratives are historically accurate, but we do have reason to believe that they are grounded in extraordinary facts witnessed by an entire generation of the g-chain.	Widespread prevalence of a special meme gives us reason to think that the first generation found the special meme sufficiently impressive.
(rKP9) Therefore, we have good grounds to believe that an entire generation of the forbears of the Jewish people, or an entire generation of a tribe that would later amalgamate into an emergent Jewish people, were collectively witness to an extraordinary sequence of supernatural events, and events that would have been collectively understood as Divine revelation.	The first generation witnessed something impressive.

Is this a "better" Kuzari-based argument than others, such as Gottlieb's? It depends on one's criteria for better. To me, it's great omission is that it doesn't account for memes that change their importance or their meaning over time. My earlier Kuzari posts addressed this matter. Some memes acquire a place of centrality years after they first "stick," and this acquisition can  happen for any number of reasons. With respect to the Bible, I recommend my reading of James Kugel's How to Read the Bible because the book focuses on how Israel's ancient library of texts became the Bible.

Personally, I think Gottlieb's argument is more forceful:

In modern language the principle that the Kuzari uses is as follows. I beg you to look at it, hear it, and pay close attention to all of its details. Let E be a possible event which, had it really occurred, would have left behind enormous, easily available evidence of its occurrence. If the evidence does not exist, people will not believe that E occurred. [Emphasis in original]

If you buy Gottlieb's argument, Jewish belief about Sinai almost must be correct. If you buy Lebens's argument, the most you get is that the witnesses thought they had seen something miraculous. Of course, how much should we care about what illiterate, scientifically ignorant former slaves thought about miracles? I do not use the descriptors to belittle these people, but to set some context on what we are being asked to accept and to rationalize.

So, rKP doesn't work for me. It's a series of assumption after assumption that gets us not to reasoned belief but to a question of trust: do we or do we not believe according to what the Torah tells us illiterate, scientifically ignorant former slaves believed?

In rKP, the Kuzari Principle is neutered, but I think Lebens understands that it must be so. He says:

As far as I'm concerned, that is the only power that the Kuzari argument could possibly hope for: the power to justify our belief in Sinai, or something like Sinai, without direct historical evidence. But you'd still need something like 'indirect' historical evidence; i.e., evidence about how myths were formed in ancient times. I'm not claiming that we can arrive at justified historical beliefs a priori. I look forward to continued discussion with you, and to your answers to these questions. I'm certainly far from convinced that the Kuzari argument is even as strong as I suggested in this post.

Neither Gottlieb's not Lebens's Kuzari justifies belief in Sinai, in my opinion. I still hold to the view from my piece on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

With Sinai, we have one report given from one perspective. We don't know the report of the people closest to the mountain. We don't know the observations of witnesses in the very back. We cannot hear the voices of the women, the outsiders, and the opponents. We have no documents from the nations closest to Sinai telling us about something most unusual having happened. The strongest inference we can draw from Sinai is that something--a natural event or some other fantastic occurrence--may have happened out in the wilderness. We may even be able to justify saying something must have happened. We cannot, however, say with any confidence that Sinai happened. Kuzari changes nothing about this because even if the principle itself is 100 percent true, it doesn't tell us anything about what exactly happened at Sinai, how, to whom, over what time period, and at what stakes. It's a believer's reason to believe, a "nice to have." But it's not especially compelling to a neutral observer.

And that's why at this point it's best to leave the discussion because, with Sinai, the one thing we have not talked about is the one thing we should have been talking about all along: The actual evidence that we have for the actual people we think correspond to "Biblical Israel." Although this has been a fascinating discussion on logic, belief, and classification of events, we cannot get very far without a collection of real evidence and data. I have already shown that the pro-Kuzari side is not forthcoming when it comes to direct, positive evidence. We cannot derive a clear picture of Biblical Israel, Sinai, or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki based on a principle. If we truly want to understand the events and these people, we need to study the writings and the physical data, and we need to remember not to get carried away by the existence or non-existence of evidence. The evidence often means what we want it to mean, and the non-evidence doesn't tell us much of anything.

I also think that Kuzari proponents need to go beyond new Kuzari syllogisms. My challenge from an earlier posts still stands:

If the Kuzari discussion is to continue and be productive, it now falls to Kuzari's champions to delve more deeply into the reality of the Torah--the reality of the Torah as a cultural document that emerged in historical time in certain cultural contexts.

Sam, I'm interested in your thoughts. Do you think that Kuzari-oriented discussions will benefit from bringing in historical data, biblical criticism, and sociological studies?