Materialism and All There Is

One of the main targets of religious polemicists, apologists, and intelligent design proponents is the idea of materialism. For example, the intelligent design website Uncommon Descent establishes itself in direct opposition to materialism:

Uncommon Descent holds that…

Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic worldview, but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution — an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.

UD sees mainstream science and education as beholden to materialism and committed to spreading it as a worldview. Sounds rather nefarious, but I don't believe UD. They use "ideology" pejoratively and then make the remarkable but ambiguous claim that "the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted." What they call "corrupted" seems to be nothing more than scientific conclusions and research they don't like. Yet, they are not biologists and not cosmologists themselves but rather religiously-committed engineers, philosophers, and journalists--so they don't really know (and seemingly don't care to know) about how and why the scientific method is employed in these disciplines, and within what boundaries.

But what's the big deal about materialism, anyway? To understand, I think Wikipedia's entry on materialism does a good job of introducing the basic line of thinking:

In philosophy the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism is a form of physicalism and belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism and to spiritualism.

We can see why materialism might be viewed unfavorably at UD and by committed theists: if matter is the only thing that exists and all phenomena are purely the result of physical interactions, then there cannot be God, the supernatural, the soul, or free will.

I probably am a materialist but I really don't know enough about either materialism, its philosophical alternatives, or the data behind it all to have a cogent opinion. I do know, however, that anti-Atheists love to attack Atheism through materialism. Discovery Institute guy Cornelius Hunter writes today about a supposed fatal flaw in Atheistic reasoning, and he brings materialism into it. Here's the entirety of the brief post:

Atheism's (Not So) Hidden Assumptions
Evolutionist Jerry Coyne thinks atheism is true. But if atheism (in addition to evolution) is true, then how could Coyne know it? For if atheism and materialism are true, then Coyne's brain is nothing more than a set of molecules in motion. Its various configurations are simply a consequence of its beginning, subsequent inputs, and some random motion here and there.

What Coyne thinks is knowledge would merely be certain molecular states, not necessarily having any correspondence with truth. How do evolutionists reconcile their atheism with their convictions of knowledge and truth? This Hobbesian predicament is particularly ironic in light of the atheist's strong theological convictions and arguments. We know atheism is true because god wouldn't have created this world. Do you see why atheism is parasitic on (and much less dangerous than) theism?

Hunter's first move is to introduce Jerry Coyne as the arch-Atheist. He gives a link to Coyne's site but unfortunately doesn't address the content there. So, here is what Coyne was talking about:

I think it shows far more respect for the faithful to engage their arguments honestly and openly than to pat them on the back and say, “There, there—even though I don’t share your beliefs I won’t risk upsetting you by questioning them.”

Coyne is talking about dialogue, about Atheists and theists engaging one another in an intellectually honest way--with both sides getting to say what they want in their own way. Coyne makes the very valid point that critics spend more time complaining about how "strident" and "vitriolic" the so-called New Atheists are instead of dealing with the substance of their claims about religion.

I personally think the complaints about the New Atheists' tone are completely bogus, but I also understand a bit about why people may be taken aback by a Coyne, a Richard Dawkins, or a P.Z. Myers. When I first read The God Delusion, I thought it was mean-spirited. I wasn't persuaded by it. I eventually became convinced of Atheism by the lack of substantive evidence in favor of theism, by the quality of the questions and arguments coming from the Atheist side, and by the hard data and sound reasoning in the scholarly disciplines that made religious explanations the much poorer ones. At the end of the day, the intellectual reasons against theism and for Atheism are overwhelming.

Now, here comes Cornelius Hunter. If atheism is true, he argues, then we humans cannot know whether it's true. Knowledge is just an illusion, a state of mind and not an objective fact.

This line of thinking and its specific application by Hunter has several flaws.

(1) Hunter conflates Atheism and materialism--although perhaps he just means to say that Coyne is both an Atheist and materialist.

(2) Nevertheless, there's no necessary connection between either Atheism and materialism or Atheism and knowledge (i.e., epistemology). One can reject a god (any god) and not be a materialist. Similarly, whether one admits the possibility of deities is separate and distinct from how that person learns and knows with her/his mind. The human brain works, biologically and neurologically, regardless of any deity's state of being.

(3) It's well-known that the human mind, while duly amazing, is unreliable. We remember things wrong. Our sight is limited. We are easily tricked and taken by illusion.

(4) It's also well-known that we can and do build tools to help us assess and refine the data gathered through our minds. Our data and inferences of the universe are constantly available to independent testing.

(5) Hunter seems to ascribe Coyne with a 100 percent certainty of Atheism's truth. I don't think this is the case. Most Atheists, including me, admit the possibility that one or more gods exist, and that some or one of them could have had a role in creating our universe. But we give this possibility a very, very low probability because of the lack of evidence in favor of it; the wealth of evidence showing human societies inventing tales of gods and super-humans; and the information we have gained about the universe and its history, thanks to technologies and tools we've developed.

(6) Hunter says: "What Coyne thinks is knowledge would merely be certain molecular states, not necessarily having any correspondence with truth." OK, so what? What we think we know might be wrong. It's happened before and will happen many times more. No big deal. That's why we test.

(7) Hunter characterizes an Atheist argument as "We know atheism is true because god wouldn't have created this world." This is not a true or fair characterization because we are not concluding that Atheism is true; rather, we are asking theists about their claims. If God made us and God is super-intelligent, why then does the vertebrate eye have its receptors facing backwards? As reported in a post on Panda's Thumb, "It is not the best arrangement optically." Our eye, that post continues, is --

an outpocketing of the cortex of the brain. It retains the layered structure of the cortex, even; it's the way it is because of how it was assembled, not because its origins are rooted in optical optimality. You might argue that it's based on a developmental optimum, that this was the easiest, simplest way to turn a light-sensitive patch into a cup-shaped retina.

Evolution has subsequently shaped this patch of tissue for better acuity and sensitivity in certain lineages. That, as I said, is a product of compromises, not pre-planned design.

So, we're not saying that Atheism is true. Rather, we're saying that theist claims of Godly design don't seem to match the data. We're saying that theist claims of Godly design and intent don't help us understand the way Earthly life is actually built. We're saying that we have naturalistic hypotheses that, while themselves imperfect, do a much better job of accounting for the specific data under consideration and the data beyond.

Despite these flaws, Hunter's argument has its fans. Here's "Barb" posting at Uncommon Descent:

Materialism makes reason impossible. If our mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there’s no reason to believe anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can’t evaluate between true and false; they don’t reason, they react.

I wonder how many atheists have considered this startling contradiction in their belief system.

To answer the last point first: many of us have considered the "startling contradiction." I'd heard the argument before, and it's not nearly so impressive as anti-Atheists and anti-materialists think because there really is no contradiction. Barb's error is in thinking that our mental processes are somehow diminished by being "nothing but chemical reactions in the brain." But she's right about one thing: there's no reason to believe that anything is true that we think is.  

That's the point! That's why we've devised our sciences, our technologies, and our tools. Materialism explains why reason is necessary. Does theism?

What Exactly Does Theism Explain?

[Upon closer inspection, flaws emerge]

This blog post will get a "masochism" tag. Against all good sense I followed a link to a new collection of essays: Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science, edited by William Dembski and Michael Licona. Why do I follow such links? I don't know: I always think that maybe this time I'll read a really good argument. Invariably, I'm disappointed.

I glanced through the book's table of contents using Amazon's "Look Inside" tool, and some of the titles seemed promising. Then I read a bit of David Wood's piece, "God, Suffering, and Santa Claus: An Examination of the Explanatory Power of Theism and Atheism." From what I read, it's a deceptive piece grounded in horrible thinking. Read, for example, how Wood sets the stage for the essay:

In the previous chapter, we considered three approaches theists can take when responding to the argument from evil. The present chapter addresses a related issue--the claim that theism should be rejected because it doesn't explain or account for the presence of suffering in our world.

Wood doesn't say who makes this claim, and it's good he doesn't because the claim is quite stupid. Of course theism explains and accounts for the presence of suffering. We all know that theism has its accounting fors and explanations.

The real problem is that theism doesn't do a very good job of accounting for and explaining--and, and, and it doesn't provide evidence of sufficient quantity and quality!

Theism stinks as an answer because it explains everything all the time. The answer is always "God did it." It's as simple and definitive you can get without getting into the actual complicated details.

• Why is there something instead of nothing? God did it.
• Why does our world have just the right combination of conditions (i.e., fine-tuning) for life? God did it.
• How did life on Earth begin and how did so many different and various species of animal emerge on our planet? Why, God did it!
• How is it that people developed consciousness. Hey-na, Hey-na, God did it.
• What about morality? Yep, God did that.
• How do we explain miracles, smarty pants? Uh-huh, God. Checkmate.

However, "God did it" never makes a satisfactory answer and simply is not viable as an explanation. To illustrate, let's look at Wood's very first argument about the explanatory power of theism:

[T]heism explains why we have a world at all: God has the power to create, and he exercised this power in creating the world. We know scientifically that the universe had a beginning, and we know philosophically that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. Theism posits a cause powerful enough to create the universe.

I have to admit that this three-sentence argument stuns me, not only because it's woefully inadequate but also because there must be people who will find it persuasive! Let's break it down a bit:

(1a) Theism explains why we have a world at all. Big deal. On its face, this statement blandly asserts that we have a world because some god exists who preceded the world and caused it to come into being at some point in time through some means. We could replace the word "god" with "alien," "physical event" or "something" and the statement would be just as true. Just because theism makes an explanation does not mean the explanation is good or that it's accurate.

(1b) God has the power to create. Sorry to repeat myself, but big deal. I was skimming Ovid's Metamorphoses over the weekend, and his gods also had the power to create worlds. How do we know that Wood's God or Ovid's God(s) can create? What are the bases for knowing this?

(1c) And he exercised this power in creating the world. This is according to a book that's thousands of years old, a book with an oral history that precedes it for centuries and with contemporaneous analogues in neighboring cultures. But going beyond the dubious authority of the Bible, the questions of the nature of the creative power and what/how we know anything at all about it are insurmountable. It seems to me that at some point every power that we ascribe to God becomes indistinguishable from the unfolding workings of a vast natural universe operating according to laws of physics.

(2a) We know scientifically that the universe had a beginning. OK, but so what? How does this knowledge unambiguously point to one or more immortal beings preceding and causing this beginning? And what's the connection between having a beginning and being created? It's one thing to say the universe begun, but that doesn't help us figure out whether it was created, whatever "created" means.

(2b) And we know philosophically that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. This statement sounds very much like the first premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, championed most notably by arch-apologist William Lane Craig. The KCA purports to provide a virtually iron-clad philosophical argument for the existence of God. But consider this question: when exactly does something begin to exist? What is the defining instance--that ultra-small fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond--that constitutes the very first instance of something having begun to exist? Now I'm no philosopher, I don't pretend to be, but it seems to me that "the beginning" is a human convention rather than a natural one. Or it's at least some part conventional and some part natural. Thus, we don't know philosophically that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. We think it or we speculate about it, but we don't know it. The KCA's first premise is to me an intellectually squishy thing and surely not something upon which to base one's whole life.

(3) Theism posits a cause powerful enough to create the universe. This essentially re-states (1a), which means we've come full circle. I don't care, and neither should you, that theism posits cause A or cause B. What's the evidence for each? What's the strength of the evidence for each? How do we determine the better one?

Wood argues that "Atheists maintain that theism is a poor hypothesis because it fails to account for suffering." He further asserts that "theism accounts for a number of significant facts about our world." I have just shown that theism does not at all account for much of anything. Indeed, theism hardly accounts for itself. Theism's explanatory power stops at the first level of accounting: something caused something else to happen. Forget about accounting for suffering, theism is a poor hypothesis because it fails to account for the specifics of what it's trying to explain.

Wood also tries, deceptively, to pit theism against Atheism as two different modes of explaining facts in/about the world. This is a misrepresentation of Atheism. As a theist, Wood may see theism as attempting to explain the world. However, as an Atheist I don't ask Atheism to explain the world, and I don't use it that way. How do I "use" Atheism? I once wrote:

Atheism has something important to say about the world, our assumptions about the world, and the institutions we use to teach us about the world (including religion and science).

Atheism is commentary. What it says is not an explanation of the world but rather a determination of what makes some explanations better or worse than others. Theism and Atheism, then, are not at the same level; they are not trying to do the same things.

Atheism most decidedly is not an answer. it's rather a commitment to continue pursuing answers at their source. To me, theism's claims to have answers are very much overstated. Those of us who identify as Atheists are committed to scrutinizing theism's claims as we do all other claims, and when we find overstatement we call it out.

This, therefore, is what theists really must understand about Atheists and Atheism:

We Atheists are looking very closely at the explanations theism provides. We take theism's statements seriously. We consider these statements and want to understand them. We can and often do approach them without malice and without prejudice. But we're not going to lie and say that theism provides answers when it really doesn't. And we're not going to wink and call theism's explanations "good enough." They aren't.

I don't want to be called hostile or unfair to religion. I don't want to be thought of as someone who is blindly or heedlessly contemptuous of religion and religious beliefs. The fact is that I'm considering theism's arguments earnestly, and these arguments fail badly every time. They just don't work.

What's an honest and good person to do?

Purity and Sin

[A time and place of purity gets introduced to sin.]

In the writing of my last post, on running, I struggled with the concept of purity:

There's no purity about running, in my opinion. Rather, running allows one to circumscribe purity--to enable a personal vision of how a purely human life might be lived.

My original version of the above was along the lines of running being a pure kind of activity, just a person out in the world. But of course this is not entirely true. A person wears shoes and special running attire, and the world is often the social world of the road or even the trail. Purity is but a conceit.

And that's the thing about a concept such as purity: it represents an ideal or a theoretical construct. It's a term for setting context, not a term of practical reality. It thus sets the context for other concepts. Sin, for example, amounts to a transgression or violation; its meaning relies on and relates to the meaning of purity. Whereas purity sets a line between the ideal and the real, sin crosses that line and even breaks it. The sin is the rejection of the natural, of established order, of differentiation. Sin explodes purity.

Sin is a profoundly evil idea, then. But more than this it is taught with evil intent. The teaching that says "you are a sinner" instructs people to know themselves as out of sync with the universe, as divided against one's family and community, and as polluting the world. Some teachings suggest that sin can be redeemed, purchased or managed--by the teachers, of course, and for a price. Always for a price.

So, I'll reject and dismiss both purity and sin in the same motion. They are distractions. They are dangerous. And the person bringing in these terms seeks to bring you in line. Such a person is attempting religion's primary purpose: imposing conformity. Such a person wants you to respect her or his authority. I won't do it. You don't need to, either.

On the Run

Me in 2007(?) after a particularly hilly 10K.

Five years ago, I trained to run long distances. In 2006, I ran two marathons--Boston and Lowell.

Although my marathon days are probably behind me for good (but who knows?), I am back out on the road most mornings.

Two races upcoming:

The Harvard Pilgrim 10K at Patriot Place, 4 July 2010

The Run Gloucester 7-Mile, 22 August 2010

So far I seem to enjoy running even more than I used to. I don't talk to myself in my head as much as I once did--or at least I'm better at controlling it. Because I'm an introvert, a lot of my activity is thinking and dreaming. But when I'm out running, I give my mind a break and let it coast. I let it be an observing organ, an instrument for processing all that I see and hear and feel about me. This is one of the things I really enjoy about running.

Like many activities, running teaches. A runner learns about things like letting the mind coast. About just listening, about setting oneself tall and strong, and about getting to one's center when adversity strikes. About moving out and returning home.

Every runner has to run in her or his own unique way. What's more, every runner has to learn how to find this way. Every runner has to learn how to relate to the world: the weather, the terrain, the traffic, and the surprises.

There's no purity about running, in my opinion. Rather, running allows one to circumscribe purity--to enable a personal vision of how a purely human life might be lived.

Comedy Favorites: Woody Allen and Mel Brooks

No big ideas today. I'm a fan of comedy, and Woody Allen and Mel Brooks are two favorites.

Here's the wonderful opening to Annie Hall:


I like several aspects of Woody's bit. I especially like how the second joke--the Groucho Marx/Sigmund Freud one--expresses a condition that seems so human to me. Think about it: why wouldn't someone want to be part of a club that would have him as a member? It's a joke about doubt and self-esteem. It's also a joke about the communities and granfalloons to which we belong--and those to which we think we might want to belong. I wonder if other animals besides humans have similar thoughts that our group isn't so cool as that one.

Woody's brilliance is to make the joke personal and intimate. I hear in the joke the echoes of something that might be  true for people generally: that many of our "wounds"-- our troubles and worries--are self-inflicted and not nearly so significant as we make them out to be. Not that these wounds don't deserve attention and care, but they could perhaps not be accompanied by so much drama. The irony, of course, is that the drama accompanying the wounds of Woody's character wind up being the substance of a classic movie, a movie that ends with Woody's character having written a play about his experiences.

Here's a terrific interview with Mel Brooks, though it's more like a monologue:


Mel so obviously loves being in front of an audience. He wants to talk with them and perform for them. He tells stories and sings songs; he's not just firing off jokes. And he's tangential: it seems he could go to almost any subject or mode from wherever he is at the moment. I love how he talks over the interviewer, not out of rudeness but rather out of just being excited to say whatever it is that's come into his mind. Mel is simply a treasure.

This Is Why I Am an Atheist

Not very long ago, I wrote about how I became an Atheist. In that piece, I concluded by describing my transformation from theist-leaning agnostic to self-identifying Atheist:

I kept reading the science and religion blogs that were part of the project. I continued studying the claims, reasoning, and evidence that people brought out. I began posting on some of these blogs as a commenter and debater. I kept learning, and I kept developing my positions. By summer of 2009, I realized that it was no longer rational for me to accept

• The claim of existence for God or for any divinity.
• The claim of existence for anything like the supernatural.
• The claim of divine inspiration for the scriptures of any religion.
• The claim of any sort of moral or social authority for any religious group.

I determined that none of the religious faiths or their spokespeople were putting out anything other than fantasy. I decided that it was no longer responsible or honest for me to call myself anything other than an Atheist.

And so I say I am an Atheist.

Now, I want to explain why I felt it was necessary to self-identify as an Atheist. After all, I could have simply realized that I was more an Atheist than an agnostic, kept this realization to myself, and moved on.

My thinking on the four bullet points quoted above hardly changed. For example, I always had questions about God's being. Same thing regarding the supernatural and divine inspiration. So there really was not much of a transformation in my thinking, just a bit more conviction fueled by greater understanding of both the atheist and the theist arguments. But that last bullet--on claims of moral and social authority for religion--that one deserves attention because it's the beginning of why I felt a responsibility to stand up and be counted among the Atheists.

I want the world--the whole world--to be a better, safer, saner place. Atheism contributes to this goal in a way that religion cannot. A mindset unencumbered by imaginary agents, repressive dogma, and restrictive doctrines is more available to reflect on observational and experimental data, on reasoning, and on the influences of bias.

When I look at the world, I see serious issues:

• Education: cost, access, quality, curriculum.
• Health care: cost, access, quality.
• Economy: jobs, wages, long-term growth, poverty, debt.
• Environment: environmental care and responsibility, post-BP.
• Government: Size, power, reform.
• International relations: diplomacy, sensible arms and military policies.
• Science and technology: exploration, leadership, promotion.

Can anyone look at these topics and explain to me what God, the Bible, Mohamed, or Jesus have to do with any of it? Is there any reason to invoke God in a discussion of public school costs and quality programs, for example. Do we need to consult the Bible to understand the prospects for jobs and unemployment in the U.S.?

In all of the issues and topics--hardly an exhaustive list--our conversations as an electorate and a society will be helped by common access to pertinent facts, by shared understanding of the relevant issues, and by willingness to accommodate both short and long-term views. But our conversations will be made all the more difficult if we mingle facts with holy writ, current issues with ancient platitudes, and informed opinions with self-righteous pronouncements.

And take a good look in the newspaper:  It's religious belief driving controversy in the classroom. It's religious belief poisoning the health care debate with fear-mongering. It's religious belief that champions a have and have-not society. It's religious belief that sanctions domination of the environment. It's religious belief that takes shelter beneath the ever-fattening wing of government. It's religious belief that catalyzes ancient conflicts and ideological challenges. It's religious belief that thwarts scientific potential.

I know, people have strong personal and family/cultural ties to their religions and to their religious beliefs. But I think people need to learn to accept that it's unhealthy to hold onto wishes that life is other than it is. When a loved one or a friend dies, that person is gone permanently. When a loved one or a friend goes out into the world, there's no guardian protector looking down to keep bad things away.

It's up to us, each of us, to remember love and to work to make good things a reality in the world.

This is why am I an Atheist. Because the world needs voices to speak for reason and for reasoning. Because the world needs people to show that they are opposed to social governance by doctrine and dogma. Because the world needs people who want to learn, to think, and to teach about the issues developing before us. Because the world needs leaders who consider opinions rather than dictating them.

This is why am I an Atheist. Because the world needs people like me to do something.

Let the Dead Bury Jesus

[Jesus and Mo]

The last time I talked about historical Jesus, I concluded:

[W]e don’t know much of anything at all about the historical Jesus. All we can say for certain is that the New Testament reports on him as a teacher, executed rebel, and religious icon.

Biblical scholar R. Joseph Hoffmann, whom I admire, seems to be of the same opinion. His years of scholarship on the matter and involvement with the relevant sources lead him to conclude that --

[T]he sources we possess do not establish the conditions for a verdict on the historicity of Jesus.

This statement from Hoffmann's important essay on historical Jesus scholarship declares that there's not much we can know about the historical Jesus. But the picture gets even more complicated because what we know has often been wrapped tightly in what we believe. To Hoffmann, we need to reality check both the content of our knowledge and the emotional investment we often make in that knowledge:

I accept that most of what we have learned about Jesus is “wrong” in one sense or another. Almost all of what the churches have taught about him--the christology that undergirds the doctrines of the Christian traditions, for example--is wrong at a literal level. It has to be because it is based on doctrines derived from a naive supernaturalist reading of sacred texts whose critical assessment had not even been contemplated before the eighteenth century.

But so too, the critical assessment is wrong, because it has been motivated by a belief that by removing the husks of dogmatic accretion--a process initiated by Luther’s liberal scholastic predecessors, in fact--a level of actuality would eventually be reached. There would be an assured minimum of truth (often assumed by the end of the 19th century to be primarily ethical rather than Christological, as doctrines like ascension and virgin birth were sent to the attic) which some historians on both the Catholic modernist and Protestant side thought would be unassailable.

In both church and school, our understanding of the historical Jesus has traditionally had more to do with ideology than reality. But if I understand Hoffmann, the historical Jesus is also a decidedly modern phenomenon in the West:

Odd...that the historicity of Jesus should be of any concern at all in relation to a person whose humanity, in the letters of Paul and in the gospels (to a lesser extent, perhaps) is of no consequence to the core tradition. The battle of the post-New Testament period in the early Church, as Harnack recognized, was not to define the divinity of Jesus but to defend his humanity.

Hoffmann notes that in the formative centuries of Christianity, the humanity of Jesus (which is not quite the same thing as his historicity) was actually de-emphasized in favor of his divinity--so much so that keeping hold of the idea that he was a walking and talking person at one time was a struggle. By comparison Hoffmann discusses a bit of the Islamic tradition, in which the humanity (again, not the same as historicity) of Jesus was cherished:

Love, fear, joy, pleasure, mother-love, and compassion equally have their origins in emotion and human evolution and are nonetheless “real” in daily life–indeed, shape daily life–constantly expressing themselves in thought and action. Religion consolidates these aspects of existence in a way that simple curiosity and information does not. It roots them not in the self but in something external, like God, or incarnates them in messengers like Jesus and metaphors like sin, forgiveness and redemption. That is what is going on in the New Testament, not an episode of To Tell the Truth.

For this reason–starting with a certain lack of profundity—it is difficult not to find the musings of (many) myth-theorists frankly ridiculous. The early church found the historical Jesus all but unnecessary: that is the story. They found his humanity necessary as a theological premise, because they could not quite grasp the concept of disembodied divinity. Besides, a god without humanity could scarcely be expected to comprehend human suffering, or desire to do anything about it. History did not require Jesus; emotion did. It required as well the incredible and fantastic aspects of his personality. History required Muhammad and the non-divinity of Muhammad for other reasons. That is why the two traditions are different.

What Hoffmann is trying to do here is establish a positive space for religion and religiosity. That first paragraph above stakes out the battery of intense human passions for which religion allows such expressive power. Religion--not Christianity, Islam, or any other major religion--has never been about relaying information but rather about presenting all experience as holding overarching significance and connectedness. That second paragraph challenges mythicists who dismiss religion out of hand as superstition and fantasy. Hoffmann defends Jesus and religion against the mythicists: it's not entirely fair to crow about the lack of evidence for the historical Jesus, he says, because early Christianity didn't realize it would ever need it (assuming there was evidence).

Instead, Jesus-as-God-incarnated was very much shaped by early Christianity's battles among believers and believers-to-be:

Stuck with the Bible, the gospel, a growing body of doctrine, necessitated by struggles with heretics, and the religious demands of a growing community–a lot of weight to carry–Christianity could not very easily take the turn toward disembodied and denatured divinity. If, for the pagans, the resurrection of the flesh was a nauseating idea, for the Christians it became a useful absurdity and the prelude to two millennia of “paradoxical” theology.

Hoffmann thus seems to be heading toward an idea that we are captive today to the sources available, and those sources emphasized the divinity of Jesus while subduing his human aspect. We cannot know if there was a "real" Jesus, but we can perhaps filter out the semblance of a human being from early Christian beliefs about who Jesus was:

If, as I think, the church was largely successful in subduing the humanity of Jesus while insisting as a strictly dogmatic matter that he was both fully human and fully divine (historical and unhistorical, as in John 1.1-15?), why still bother to ask about whether he “really” existed. Shouldn’t the question really be who or what existed? It is not the same as asking whether Muhammad existed since nothing but one kind of reality has ever been claimed for him, and that is historical.

My defense of debates and discussion of the historical Jesus is not based on any confidence that something new is going to be discovered, or some persuasive “template” found that will decide for us a question that the early Christian obviously regarded as irrelevant. Still less is it based on some notion that the Church will retract the doctrine of the trinity or the hypostatic union, clearing the way for an impartial investigation into the life of Jesus. That is already possible, and as always before the journey gets us to the front door of the Church. Nothing has been more depressing than the search for the Jesus of history, and nothing more hollow than the shouts of scholars who have claimed to find him. Except the shouts of scholars who claim there is nothing to find.

Not that the shapers of the Jesus tradition, whatever their real names were, should have the final say, but they did draw the map and bury the treasure. We are the victims of their indifference to the question.

Hoffmann argues that just because early Christianity made Jesus a magical, fantastical being doesn't mean that Jesus was all magic and fantasy. So, he's calling for measured applications of skepticism--agnosticism, even.

As I said, Hoffmann is one of those scholars I admire. I like his knowledge and his application of reasoning. However, I only find a weak case here against the mythicist position. Hoffmann appears simply to dislike the attitude of mythicists--maybe they seem too biased or too gleeful at the prospect of what a 100% no-Jesus would mean. I see Hoffmann as suffering from the same problem that many smart people have when it comes to religion:

On the one hand, religious beliefs are false and wrapped up in so much of what has been both immoral and tyrannical in world history. On the other hand, many people--including those we love--have drawn strength from their religious beliefs and have powerful personal ties to religious celebrations and rituals.

The problem is one of how to let go of religious beliefs, how to finally release them into the air.

Hoffmann seems not to want traditional belief. Yet he also wants to retain some appreciation, veneration even, of religion. I agree that it's important to have a a clear and unfiltered understanding of both religion generally and religions specifically. It's important to know their beliefs, their history, and their impact on cultures and individuals.

But we also have to accept that so much in religion describes stories which rise to the level of the impossible: the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, the Exodus, the Annunciation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Assumption, and so on.

It really is OK that these are just stories. It's alright that they did not actually occur as reported. We can appreciate the stories, and we can listen to them and even learn from them. They just aren't true, and they are not stable pillars of a life.

Mt. Sinai in Negev, not Egypt?

[Har Karkom Summit]

The story below, presented in its entirety, comes from a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post. The story relates to the historical Exodus, which I discussed in another post. Archeologist Emmanuel Anati proposes that the actual location of the biblical Mount Sinai is at Har Karkom in Israel.

‘Vatican to accept that Mt. Sinai is in Negev, not Egypt’

By Steve Linde
30/05/2010

‘I‘m sure Karkom is the real mountain of God,’ Prof. Emmanuel Anati declares. ‘Israel should be proud.’

It has taken him more than a decade, but Italian-Israeli archeologist Prof. Emmanuel Anati now believes his controversial view that the biblical Mount Sinai is in Israel’s Negev desert rather than Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula will soon be adopted by the Vatican.

On Friday, he presented his theory in the form of a new book at a seminar at the Theological Seminary in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza.

“Actually it’s not a theory, it’s a reality. I’m sure of it, Anati told The Jerusalem Post by telephone from his home in Capo di Ponte. “My archeological discoveries at Har Karkom over many years and my close reading of the Bible leave me with no doubt that it is the real Mount Sinai. I’m now sure that Karkom is the real mountain of God.”

In 2001, Anati published the English edition of a book that was first issued in Italian two years earlier and titled The Riddle of Mount Sinai – Archaeological Discoveries at Har Karkom. In the book, he postulated that Karkom, 25 km. from the Ramon Crater, was probably the peak at which Moses received the Ten Commandments – and not the summit in southern Sinai where Santa Catarina (Saint Catherine’s Monastery) stands.

“I know this is revolutionary,” he conceded. “I’m not only changing the location, but I’m moving Mount Sinai to Israel, and I’m sure it will anger the Egyptians. But Israel should be proud of this. The Negev is empty and should be developed.”

“I’m also changing the date of the Exodus from Egypt to some 1,000 years earlier than previously thought,” he added. “I know this will drive everyone crazy. But I am right. I’m sure of it.”

Anati reasoned that if the account in the Book of Exodus was historically accurate, it must refer to the third millennium BCE – and more precisely to the period between 2200 and 2000 BCE.

Jewish tradition puts the Exodus around the year 1313 BCE. According to Catholic tradition, Helena of Constantinople – the mother of Emperor Constantine credited with finding the relics of Jesus’s cross – determined the location of Mount Sinai and ordered the construction of a chapel at the site (sometimes referred to as the Chapel of Saint Helen) in about 330 CE.

According to Anati, however, an abundance of archeological evidence showed that Mount Karkom had been a holy place for all desert peoples, and not just the Jews, which substantiated his case.

He said more than 1,200 finds at Karkom – including sanctuaries, altars, rock paintings and a large tablet resembling the Ten Commandments – indicated that it had been considered a sacred mountain in the Middle Bronze Age. In addition, he said, the topography of its plateau perfectly reflected that of the biblical Mount Sinai.

Finally, he concluded, the biblical tale clearly backed up his geographic argument.

“When the Children of Israel left Egypt, they reached the Arava. They couldn’t have been in Santa [Catarina], because it says in the Bible that they reached Nahal Tzin, and moved on to Hebron,” Anati said. “The whole story of receiving the Torah must have taken place in the Negev. The Children of Israel wandered in the north and not the south, in the Negev and not the Sinai.”

He was just as certain that the Holy See would officially sanction his stance, and that millions of Catholic pilgrims could soon be visiting Mount Karkom instead of Mount Sinai.

“Actually, they have already accepted my theory,” he said. “They are already organizing pilgrimages. There is already a plan, and I have meetings scheduled with theologians and others, including the Vatican pilgrimage office. They want to start pilgrimages to Karkom as soon as next year.”

Anati said he was aware that he had his detractors, especially among archeologists in Israel, several of whom were interviewed refuting his claims on a Channel 1 Mabat Sheni documentary aired on Wednesday night.

“I know there are all kinds of people – including professors – who resist my theory, and it’s natural that this occurs,” he said. “I urge them all to read my book and study the evidence before criticizing me.”

Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on the subject, said he could not accept Anati’s hypothesis.

“I do not see any connection between the third millennium BCE finds at Har Karkom and the Exodus story. The latter was put in writing not before the 7th or 6th centuries BCE, and as such depicts realities which are many centuries later than the finds of Har Karkom,” Finkelstein told the Post. “Roaming the desert with the Bible in one hand and the spade in the other is a 19th-century endeavor which has no place in modern scholarship.”

Anati said it had taken the Catholic Church several years to be persuaded by his argument, and recognition had been a slow process.

“About three-and-a-half years ago, I had a telephone call from the Vatican that a priest of high standing wanted to meet with me, and he arrived here with a driver. I live 500 km. from Rome, and he sat with me for a whole day and asked me a lot of questions,” Anati recalled.

“Then he disappeared, and after about a year, a group of theologians from the Catholic Church appeared and wanted to investigate the matter more deeply. Seven theologians sat here for the whole day, and I later met with them four times.

“Six months ago they spent four days with me at Karkom, and as a result of this, the Vatican publisher – Edizioni Messaggero Padova – asked me to write up my findings. I revised and updated my book, and they have now published it in Italian, changing the title to The Rediscovery of Mount Sinai.”

“Twenty years ago, I had a hunch that Har Karkom was the real Mount Sinai,” Anati said. “Three years ago I was convinced I was correct. Today I know I’m right.”

There was no official Vatican response to Anati’s claims, nor was there an immediate reaction from the Egyptians.

Anati was born in Florence in 1930 to Jewish parents, and soon after the establishment of Israel, he moved to Jerusalem and received a bachelor’s degree in archeology from the Hebrew University. He later became a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard and was awarded a doctorate at the Sorbonne.

Fluent in Hebrew, he taught prehistory at Tel Aviv University and conducted extensive research in the Negev.

Upon his return to Italy, he founded the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici in Capo di Ponte in 1964, and he remains its executive director today. It is believed to be the only institute in the world that specializes in prehistoric art.

Anati’s study of rock paintings in Valcamonica spurred UNESCO to include the alpine valley in its list of World Cultural Heritage sites.

Tal Gottesman contributed to this report.

Anati's certainty is off-putting. My experience is that people with such certainty are usually wrong because they diminish and dismiss legitimate contradictory evidence. Anati seems to have a strong nationalist and faith-based agenda consorting with his archaeology.

Obviously, I cannot intelligently determine where the "real" Mount Sinai is. But if we assume that Anati is not completely incompetent, then we should expect that his interpretation of the data--the artifacts--has some measure of correctness. The real problem with an ideologue in Anati's position is that it falls to the rest of us to try and separate the data, the interpretation, and the ideology.

To me, the real work of scholarship and reasoning concerns doing this work of separation. Most anyone can do a dig, or conduct an experiment, or build a new tool, formulate a hypothesis, or write a blog. If one wishes to be a scholar and an intellectual, however, the important and distinguishing part is the work of separation that one needs to do for oneself.

I would be willing to take Anati much more seriously if I could read in his works an honest effort to disprove his hypothesis. However, I am not encouraged by how he seems in the article below to label those who disagree with him as "detractors."

Facepalm: Theism and Nihilism

Religious blathering about atheism--especially the "New Atheism"--is only good for generating facepalms. Father Edward T. Oakes thinks he's got the mean ol' atheists all figured out by quoting...

wait for it...

Friedrich Nietzsche:

In his book On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense, Nietzsche gives us this ultimate atheist scenario: “In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of 'world history'—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.” He continued:

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. . . . There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.

This atheist scenario undermines science itself. If the “knowledge” delivered up by “science” only serves to puff up a pathetic animal doomed to die in an uncaring universe, why bother with science anyway? If the search for knowledge is nothing more than a vain attempt to puff oneself up like some miles gloriosus in a Falstaffian comedy, what’s the point?

I posted the following comment as a response:

This seems a bit like asking why one would use a rhetorical question. We do science because we're curious. We search for knowledge because we can.

Nihilism is theism's child, not atheism's.

What makes Oakes's rant facepalm-worthy is the grandiose claim that Nietzsche's text, here cast as The Atheist Scenario™, undermines science. Wait...undermines? No, not at all.

Oakes is just flatly wrong. He uses dead and irrelevant Nietzsche as an atheist straw man so that he can make an objectionable appeal to consequences. Even if science were merely a vain (in both senses of egotistical and trivial) enterprise of a doomed humanity, it would still be worth pursuing.

I don't doubt that there's some vanity involved in the scientific enterprise, as in all human enterprise. But who says we're doomed? Yes, the universe is uncaring, but people seem to have the capacity to care. So do other animals. People seem to be able to make judgments and to establish values. Within our own little world we seem to be able to have a great impact, for better or worse.

There's a common prayer that goes:

God,
Grant me the serenity;
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage, to change the things I can;
And the wisdom, to know the difference.

We certainly can make a difference here and now. This is not a matter of free will or control or inspiration; this is a matter of fact. The fact is that we are here. The fact is that our actions have material effects in the world. The fact is that these effects are consequential. Atheism helps us to understand and deal with the facts as facts.

Only theism sees Atheism as nihilism. Only theism fears the night. Only theism hates the question. Only theism seeks to enslave the fact.

And one important fact is that God is the product of science. God (like all gods) became established to explain natural phenomena and to authorize the religious power structure. Oakes, however, turns this around and tries to make the ridiculous claim that "If God is 'our most enduring lie,' science is inevitably founded on that same lie." No, science is not founded on God at all and has absolutely no dependence on God.

Are not the fear-mongering and irrelevance of theism becoming ever more obvious? A facepalm no longer does justice to their inanity.

Jasmine

I just received my copy of Jasmine by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden. It's a beautiful recording. So much interplay goes on between the two artists.

Jarret's liner notes are very interesting, too. Worth sharing:

Music is an amazing thing. It doesn't exist as a stationary object. It moves in real time and can be uplifting both to the player and the listener. The melting, trans-figurative moment, that feeling of everything being there, just for an instant, that surrender that overcomes us as players (if we're good enough) and leads us on to the next pregnant second, patient in the knowledge that there always is, waiting in the wings, the next chance to feel this fullness and celebrate it (as it is only in the nature of art to produce it this way); to this we dedicate our lives. But it is not for us alone; it is also made for you, the listener, to feel these same feelings along with us, to participate and to also be uplifted by it. Art is dying in this world, and so is listening, as the world becomes more full of toys and special effects. With this death will come the undoing of many possible feelings: beautiful, tender, deep, trusting, true, sad, full of internal meaning and color. Closeness won't have to necessarily be physical. Intimacy will be hard to find. Communication will be lost. Here is some music for you. Take it and it's yours. Charlie and I are obsessed with beauty. An ecstatic moment in music is worth the lifetime of mastery that goes into it, because it can be shared.

This recording was done in my small studio. It has very dry sound and we didn't want to have the recording sound like anything but exactly what we were hearing while we played. So it is direct and straightforward. I chose to use the American Steinway that really isn't at all in the best of shape, yet I have this strange connection with it, and it is better for a kind of informality and slight funkiness that was going to work with the music. With a choice of songs this good, it was hard not to become engaged right away. We did not rehearse per se, but went over chords when necessary. This was really a session that came as a result of doing an interview for a film about Charlie, after which we played a couple tunes. We had not played in over thirty years, but something magical happened and I then invited Charlie and his wife to the house to do some playing for a few days with no assurance that we'd have anything (including sound) that we'd want to release. Over close to three years we lived with these tapes, talked a lot about them, disputed over choices, but eventually I found Charlie to be the most remarkable and sensitive helper in getting this finally assembled. I wanted only the distilled essence of what we had, and it took some time to wean ourselves from going for hip solos or unevenly played tunes (even though they had wonderful things inside them). Some were too long; others were somehow out of character. Charlie and I listened to this many many times (mostly late at night) and became aware that there were some that just had more magic, more moments of surrender to the mood while retaining their essential integrity. This is what I was looking for; and then I had the unenviable job of finding the right order. After I thought I found it, Charlie called me and said, "How did you figure that out?" I think I said that none of the rational ideas of how to order things made sense, so I went into "not thinking" mode and came up with (dare I say it?) the only perfect order of these great versions.

I hope many of you can hear this on a good system. There are nuances abounding and the details make the music what it is. Jasmine is a night-blooming flower with a beautiful fragrance and I hope you can hear what went into this, as there is no way to do anything as touching as this by rehearsing it until it dies. This is spontaneous music made on the spot without any preparation save our dedication throughout our lives that we won't accept a substitute: it's either the real thing or it's nothing. It's either real life or it's a cartoon.

Call your wife or husband or lover in late at night and sit down and listen. These are great love songs played by players who are trying, mostly, to keep the message intact. I hope you can hear it the way we did.

I highly recommend Jasmine.

Love That Gives Life

Today is my tenth wedding anniversary, which has tin or aluminum as its traditional symbol. It's a happy occasion that reminds me of many things but in particular my wedding day. I'm not the kind of person who gushes about the happiest day of my life, but my wedding day really lived up to the hype.

The music for the ceremony was great -- we hired a harpist. All of our friends and family surrounded us. We held a combined Catholic-Jewish ceremony with a priest and a rabbi. My wife was so beautiful. Everything about the wedding was fun, elegant, inclusive, and meaningful.

Ten years on, we are still very happy. In one way we have grown apart: religion. But in all else we are completely together. We enjoy being with each other and spending time together. We enjoy the children, our home, and our families. We look to the future with optimism.

I wouldn't say marriage is easy, but it's not that hard either. The main thing is not to be a jerk. Anyone can blow up a good marriage, a good job, a good time. It's something else to care for people and for things that give life. Children are life and they bring life. A house gives life. So does a neighborhood, a garden, a poem, a piece of furniture, a music CD, and so on. The job of a married person is to find and grow things that give life.

When I think of my marriage and my wife, I think of the good life she has given me. This is true: she has brought a special life to my love and love to my life. It's a nice thing to be married, and I'm pretty lucky to have the wife I do and the life I do.

Can We Agree on Just This?

In the blogosphere, Socratic method is really annoying.

Here's how the method tends to be employed:

(1) I assert something, with or without additional support.
(2) Questioner asks me to clarify an element of the assertion.
(3) I make the clarification.
(4) Questioner asks me to clarify another element of the original assertion or an element of the clarification.
(5) Steps 3 and 4 get repeated infinitely.

The questioner's intent is to get me to reveal my "hidden" or latent presuppositions--which are, of course, wrong. What's supposed to happen is that when I end up exposing my own biases, I'll quiver and shake with horror at how wrong I have been all along. The questioner gets to delight in his skill at having made me defeat my own arguments, and I slink away bitter and depressed.

Unfortunately, the questioner never gets it right and winds up just being a pest. As for me, I usually understand what my presuppositions and biases are. I think about such things and find them interesting.

So instead of going all Socratic on me, why not just make a counter-argument? If you disagree with anything I say, just tell me so and let's hash the fucking thing out.

'Kay?

Evolution's Gaps versus Creationism's

We are all connected.

I recently had a conversation in which I was taken to task for talking about evolution as if it were a fact. My excuse, of course, is that evolution is very well attested. I agree with the scholarly consensus that asserts evolution rises to the level of fact. In our exchange, my conversational partner reminded me that "there are huge gaps in evolution." I may agree with the proposition of there being gaps, however large, in evolution, and I probably should have articulated my opinions on evolution with greater humility.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking about the premise that evolution has huge gaps. From this initial premise, the reasoning usually proceeds to then state that the huge gaps mean the figurative jury is still out on evolution. Therefore, if evolution remains an unresolved question, then one is justified to maintain his or her preferred religious beliefs--in particular, one may comfortably hold onto the doctrine that people were created by God. One assumption running around in this reasoning is that evolution contradicts the teachings of the Bible, so if evolution is accurate, then the teachings of the Bible are false. The resulting implication, then, is that if this one core teaching of the Bible is false, then every other teaching that follows is similarly suspect and open to question.

I want to talk here about the "gaps" reasoning by looking at the theory of evolution and how a gaps charge against it is made. My intention is to show that the charge isn't very strong and to conclude finally with some thoughts on the implications for the Bible's teachings.

Let me declare up front that I have no training at all in the biological sciences beyond high school and my own reading on the subject. I will not, therefore, try to champion or to explain the scientific merits of evolution. What I would like to do, however, is present some of the key claims or hypotheses of evolution and then relate what I see.

To start, let's take a definition of evolution from the University of California, Berkeley:

The definition
Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life.

The explanation
Biological evolution is not simply a matter of change over time. Lots of things change over time: trees lose their leaves, mountain ranges rise and erode, but they aren't examples of biological evolution because they don't involve descent through genetic inheritance.

The central idea of biological evolution is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor, just as you and your cousins share a common grandmother.

Through the process of descent with modification, the common ancestor of life on Earth gave rise to the fantastic diversity that we see documented in the fossil record and around us today. Evolution means that we're all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales.

What strikes me immediately is the elegance of the definition and what it purports to explain. The theory is really quite simple and very beautiful, which of course is not a reason to think it's accurate or wrongheaded. For me, the strength of the theory lies in its specificity: gene frequencies, populations, generations, species. It tells me that I can look at gene frequencies across populations, generations, and species to confirm or to falsify the central idea of common ancestry.

What, then, are the sources of evidence for evolution? According to the same website, the main sources include:

• Fossil evidence -- Most commonly, an organism, a physical part of an organism, or an imprint of an organism that has been preserved from ancient times in rock, amber, or by some other means. New techniques have also revealed the existence of cellular and molecular fossils.
• Homologies -- Similarities between related organisms in anatomical, molecular or cellular features.
• Distribution in space and time -- Dating of fossils and elements, and population patterns of living things across all the Earth.
• Evidence by example -- Present-day organisms and recent history as sources of information about the past. Artificial selection, experiments, and nested hierarchies all provide additional information that sheds light on the development of life forms.

With the definition of evolution and identification of the main sources of evidence for evolution, we have a rudimentary sense of what evolution is and how we know what we know about it. The third and final element of evolution that I want to introduce is how evolution works, the mechanisms that drive the modifications in "descent with modification."

I like the explanation given by doctoral student Jeremy Yoder, who describes the "Big Four" processes of population genetics:

These are the four processes that account, in one way or another, for every change in the frequency of genes within natural populations. In other words, the Big Four account for much of evolution itself. They are:

• Natural selection, changes in gene frequencies due to fitness advantages, or disadvantages, associated with different genes.
• Mutation, the source of new forms of genes;
• Genetic drift, or changes in gene frequencies that arise from the way probability works in finite populations; and
• Migration, or changes in gene frequencies due to the movement of organisms from site to site.

Lay readers may be surprised both by what we know, and what we don't, about how these four processes operate in nature. Natural selection is relatively easy to measure, and apparently ubiquitous in natural populations—but we don't know how often the resulting short-term changes impact evolution over millions of years. Mutation, the source of variation on which natural selection acts, seems to vary widely among living things. Genetic drift means that a trait can come to dominate a population even if it has no fitness effect—or sometimes a deleterious one. Finally, migration across variable landscapes can interact with selection, drift, and mutation to completely alter their effects.

I highly recommend Yoder's series of blogs on the Big Four, and his blog is quite excellent generally.

Although I think we have here a pretty good sketch of what we're talking about when we talk about evolution, I also want to devote some time and space to the idea of the "gaps" in evolution. Let me say up front that I have no doubt that there probably are "gaps," if that means unknown or unresolved elements in our picture of the historical origins and development of particular species. I don't have a problem with gaps in principle because there are a lot of species on Earth (5 to 100 million; science has identified 2 million) and there's a huge amount of time to work with. The Earth may be about 4.6 billion years old, and "[i]t is estimated that the first life forms on earth were primitive, one-celled creatures that appeared about 3 billion years ago" (extremescience.com). I don't expect minute-by-minute accounts of the development of every single population on Earth going back 3 billion years.

However, I do expect that some elements of evolutionary theory--its central claims, lines of evidence, identified processes, and the relationship between them all--would receive careful scrutiny from scientific experts and laypeople alike. Here, for example, is a description by an organization called Answers in Genesis that discusses "Gaps in the Fossil Record":

The most glaring problem with the belief that all life arose from a common ancestor is the lack of fossil evidence of the millions of transitional forms that should be evident if evolution had happened.

It must be noted that this argument is often dismissed through two lines of reasoning: 1) the lack of a complete fossil record and 2) the problems inherent in identifying what is transitional. However, this does not diminish the problem, as some evolutionists suppose, since the types of changes evolution requires to give rise to the various animal kinds over millions of years would be expected to provide ample examples in virtually every layer of the geologic record. This is not the case.

Instead, most of the geologic record is better explained by the catastrophic processes during the global Flood and the subsequent localized catastrophes after the Flood (e.g., that formed the Grand Canyon).

I must say that the above passage is rather offensive because it is quite flagrantly using rhetoric and emotional language to muddy what might be a real argument. The first paragraph frames the question about the fossil record as a "problem," and a "glaring" one at that. It also characterizes (misleadingly, I would say) the hypothesis of common ancestry as a "belief." I see this particular case as an instance of trying to equate a belief derived from scientific method with one derived from traditional teachings. The first emerges as a conclusion based on observable facts, study, and experimentation. the second emerges as a sense of intellectual satisfaction based on received stories, dialogues, and personal experience. My point is, however, that before we get to the real substance of the "gaps" challenge, the writer or authorizing agent of the challenge is trying to cheat by framing the matter as one of traditional belief.

But what of the substance of the "gaps" challenge? The basic objection is the hypothesis that if evolution had happened, then there should be millions of fossils corresponding to "transitional forms." What are transitional forms? According to the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, a transitional form is:

An organism with features that it holds in common with organisms presumed to be its ancestor and descendant but that neither of these hold in common. For instance, archaeopteryx has feathers in common with birds and scales in common with reptiles, but neither of these features belong to both birds and reptiles.

A second definition comes from the UCal Berkeley site:

Fossils or organisms that show the transformation from an ancestral form to descendant species' form. For example, there is a well-documented fossil record of transitional forms for the evolution of whales from their amphibious ancestor.

So, the Answers in Genesis charge is that there are more gaps in the fossil record than we should expect. With the caveats that I'm not a biologist and not familiar with all of the evidence that we actually do or don't have for evolution, I must say that I'm not impressed with AiG's charge. My main reason for this, however, is logical: I would expect the common ancestry hypothesis to be based on the fossils that we have, not the ones we don't have. I would also expect that the fossils we have fit with the other sources of evidence. I'm not terribly concerned about missing fossils because of the number of species and the vast amount of time involved. If the two definitions above of transitional forms can be trusted, then we have at least two examples of transitional forms, so we know that in some cases we can see it. I would like to know why we wouldn't see it in other populations and species over time.

I also don't find the final paragraph of the AiG charge as helpful as it could be. There, a counter hypothesis is made that "most of the geologic record is better explained by the catastrophic processes during the global Flood and the subsequent localized catastrophes after the Flood (e.g., that formed the Grand Canyon)."

First, it seems to me that we have abruptly switched gears. In evolution, fossils are one source of evidence. The fossil record shows evolution over time. In the AiG formulation, however, fossils are not a source of evidence but instead the thing to be explained. Could the location of particular fossils be the result of certain catastrophes? Why yes, I don't see why not. But catastrophism does not tell us anything about the relationship of different fossil specimens to one another, if there is a relationship.

This is the second element that makes the AiG charge unhelpful for me: the lack of a coherent formulation of the hypothesis set up as the alternate to evolution. Combining the explanation of evolution given before and the AiG charge given above, I imagine that the alternate hypothesis is:

Through the catastrophic processes during the global Flood and the subsequent localized catastrophes after the Flood, God made life on Earth and gave rise to the fantastic diversity that we see documented in the fossil record and around us today.

If this is an accurate representation of the special creation hypothesis, or at least a part of it, then I think it's clearly weaker than the descent with modification hypothesis. Why? Because the hypothesis will not work if

(1) We don't have positive evidence of a worldwide deluge.
(2) We don't have positive evidence of [a] God.
(3) We cannot explain what it means to use a term like "made" in the context of life formation.

I imagine a real biologist could comment much more effectively on the relative weakness of the alternate hypothesis, but I think the point can safely be made that Occam's razor applies here and we are right to approach the alternate hypothesis with extreme skepticism.

I also imagine that my conversational partner meant more than the fossil record by "huge gaps" in evolution. I won't make any guesses as to what that might mean, but I'm already not predisposed to going through another AiG-type exercise where the objection to evolution is framed misleadingly, where the objection is of seemingly minor significance, and where the alternate hypothesis actually broadens the number and scope of items to be explained.

In sum, the difference between the definition of evolution and the alternate hypothesis is that the first gives a way to solve a problem while the second one gives more problems. The descent with modification hypothesis may ultimately fail, but the hypothesis itself articulates how to go about reinforcing or falsifying it. The special creation hypothesis is less clear in its articulation and depends on unestablished categories such as global Flood and God.

When we compare evolution to creationism, then, we can fairly conclude that

Whatever the gaps in evolution, the gaps in creationism are substantially bigger and badder.

Indeed, this conclusion seems to me so obviously sensible and accurate that I really wonder why anyone would prefer creationism to evolution. Can someone explain that to me?

I'll answer my own question by returning to the idea of biblical teachings. When a believer talks about biblical teachings, the matter includes both the substance of the story told and the "lessons," the articulation of right behavior derived from the story. The matter also includes doctrinal matters, such as teachings around the "Fall," sin, afterlife, and so forth, but I am not really concerned with doctrine.

Let's say, for instance, a church teaches that the biblical story of creation, particularly the creation of humankind, implies that each person is special and valuable to God. What happens to this teaching if the story is not true? My answer is that it does not necessarily make all of the teaching untrue. The essential lesson on human specialness and value can remain intact. Specialness and value, however, become re-contextualized: humans as special against other people and other living things (which are also special), and as valuable in reference to the family and societies to which people belong.

This post is already too long, so I may continue on the above line of thinking in a separate essay, but my point here is only that evolution contradicts the factual/historical/scientific claims of the creationist's Bible. It challenges some elements of the Bible's moral teachings but allows for the core of the teachings to retain their fullest expression.

The Bad Plus

I've been too busy to post much. As compensation, here are two videos featuring the Bad Plus.

"Everywhere You Turn":

>

"Flim":

Enjoy.

The Best Case for Atheism, Christianity Edition

I recently laid out what I think is the best case for Atheism. In that essay, I summarize the concept of God this way:

It cannot really be explained, it cannot be proved, it fits nicely into a human strength for creating imaginary characters, it is deeply undermined by the problem of indiscriminate evil, it is not the best explanation for anything, and it’s the most improbable cause of observed reality.

Any one of these flaws is devastating on its own, but the collective effect of them all makes it very plain that God is almost surely a human invention.

However, as decisive as the case is against God, the story does not end here because Christians don't believe in this God. I have argued before that Christians pray to a different God than the God of the Hebrew Scriptures (see this also). They don't like the God of the "Old Testament." No one does. Before Richard Dawkins gave the definitive summation of this character, everyone already gave ol’ “I am that I am” the more pleasant sounding euphemism of being “jealous.”

My point is that Christians have always been embarrassed with the old God, and they aren’t all that bothered by dismantling him. For Christians, all roads to the True God™ run through Jesus. If Jesus is right, they believe, then the true nature of God is known only through Jesus. Indeed, the real significance of the character Jesus is not to redeem humanity for its sins but to redeem God for his. Those silly, spiritually blind Jews just got God horribly wrong.

For the Christians, then, let’s talk now about Jesus. Let's sum up what we really know about this character and how we know it.

(1) The very existence of a real Jesus corresponding to the person described in the Gospels is highly questionable--no one can assert with certainty that a real Jesus ever walked the earth.

(2) The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are our only canonical sources of information about the events of Jesus’ life.

(2.1) Mark, the earliest Gospel, is generally agreed by biblical scholars to have been composed around 65 CE. That’s about 30-65 years after the described events are supposed to have happened.

(2.2) None of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, and none were written by the disciples Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

(2.3) The writers of the Gospels heard the stories of Jesus from others; we don’t know how many or how few others there were.

(2.4) Other, apocryphal gospels are presumed to have less historical value than the canonized texts. All of these, so far as I know, date to much later than the putative time of Jesus. In particular, I am thinking of the gospels of Peter, Mary, Judas, Philip, and Thomas. However, these "other" gospels indicates that several different Jesus traditions were around, possibly from very early on. This must lead us to ask why the orthodoxy is the orthodoxy; put differently, we cannot just assume the orthodoxy is most accurate, or accurate at all, simply because it's the orthodoxy.

(3) The story of Jesus’ empty tomb--perhaps the single most significant event of the Gospels--is different, even contradictory, across each Gospel.

(4) Before the Gospel stories, there is no evidence of any knowledge of a tomb of Jesus (empty or occupied).

(5) We have not one single writing from or about Jesus during his supposed lifetime (see here).

(5.1) We know of several people who lived during or very near the supposed lifetime of Jesus but who mention nothing about him, which would be strange for an influential healer, teacher, and political rebel. These people include Justus of Tiberias, Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Valerius Maximus, and Velleius Paterculus.

(5.2) Philo, a Jewish writer who lived from 20 BCE to 50 CE, never once wrote anything about Jesus, even though he did write about political conflicts between the Jews and Pontius Pilate in Judea.

(5.3) All non-Christian references to Jesus can be shown to have either been introduced later by Christian scribes or originally based on Christian claims.

(6) In the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, there were many conflicting beliefs about who Jesus Christ was, including beliefs that he had never existed on earth "in the flesh."

(6.1) In Marcionism, for example, Christ was a purely spiritual entity. Other schools of thought in the first three centuries of Christianity included Nestorianism (Jesus and Christ were two different entities), Docetism (Jesus appeared physical, but he was really incorporeal), Apollinarism (Jesus had a human body and human soul, but a divine mind), Arianism (Jesus was the son of God, not God himself), and Catholicism (Jesus was fully human and fully divine, both God and the son of God).

(7) In light of modern understanding of reality and of supernatural claims, it’s irrational to believe that the supernatural claims made for Jesus would be true.

(7.1) We already reject supernatural claims that have more evidence than the Jesus claims. For example, we don’t believe that the women of 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, were actually witches. But we have more historical evidence that they were witches than we have evidence of Jesus actually being a real person.

(7.2) People 2000 years ago were more ignorant about the natural causes of events than we are today. They were less educated in critical thinking and philosophy, with virtually no access to diverse views.

As in the earlier case for Atheism, I'm seeking here to compile a list of incontrovertible statements. I don't see how much contest one can make, for example, out of statement #1. The seven basic statements above tell us that we have hardly any serious evidence at all for the existence of Jesus, let alone for the supernatural claims about him. Our textual sources are self-interested and contradictory. The idea of a historical Jesus seems to have emerged and evolved amidst other competing ideas about Jesus over the course of Christianity’s first three centuries. We make special allowance for the existence and divinity claims for Jesus that we would never give to another figure.

So, we don’t know much of anything at all about the historical Jesus. All we can say for certain is that the New Testament reports on him as a teacher, executed rebel, and religious icon. Given that the case for God is so weak, it makes little sense to grant any credibility at all to supernatural claims with respect to Jesus.

If there was a real Jesus, he was born and died as a human being, and that's it. He’s gone.

Religion as Ideological Aristocracy

Atheists: Feel our anger

On another blog, I came across a message from a commenter. The commenter, it turns out, is a theist just getting started with a new blog of his own. Indeed the theist is a bona fide pastor at a church.

His first post attempts to answer why atheists are "so angry." His answer is that it's basically a massive case of SIWOTI:

Atheist Angry Reason #1: In their minds we are basing our lives, worldviews, and important life decisions on the equivalent of a fairy tale.

I took the bait and responded, thusly:

I am an atheist -- and I suppose a new atheist, at that -- and I've always been puzzled by the charge of being angry. I don't think it's so and tend to view the charge as a what religious apologists do to rationalize and minimize atheist arguments. So, I think you are mistaking blunt talk and lack of deference for anger. Even from those folks you link to [Dawkins, Hitchins, P.Z. Myers] -- I don't receive that as anger at all.

I also disagree with what you construct as the target of atheist "anger" -- your belief in a fairy tale. The specific content of your belief is a smaller part of the issue, in my opinion. The big issue, as I see it, is the free pass given to religious figures and religious teachings to be taken as authorities on subjects they know very little about. What the Bible, for example, may or may not say about the origins of the universe and the nature of humanity is simply irrelevant to contemporary public policy. People like Pastor Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach have no special expertise or moral authority on matters of abortion, stem cell research, AIDS, the environment, natural disasters, or anything else outside. The special place given to religion and to religious leaders is something I think everyone should be concerned about.

So, I think you are playing rhetorical games with the phantom "atheist anger" and the focus on "fairy tales." Neither of these are the point. The point is that we live in a world today where we must take a hard look at the ideological aristocracy to which religion belongs. Personally, I want to see that aristocracy dismantled.

I think the term "ideological aristocracy" is quite apt. Religion is an Ancien Regime that needs to be toppled. Some sects, such as Roman Catholicism, are doing a nice job toppling themselves.

The Best Case for Atheism

Jack McCoy Could Win This Case

I usually make my Atheist posts in response to some other post made by a religious person. In the case of this post, I am responding to someone who is absolutely sure he’s proven the existence of God and the truth of his particular religion. Please forgive me for not linking to said person: I’m sure you know just the sort of bloke I’m talking about.

So, what I’d like to do in my own brief way is lay out the best case for Atheism. That is, why should someone conclude that Atheism is more probably rational and right than (any) theism? Here are the reasons why:

(1) It’s not clear that a being such as God (in the modern Judeo-Christian sense of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful supreme being) could be at all. If the concept of God is logically inconsistent, then the God of that concept cannot be real.

(1.1) Omnipotence, for example, may not be logically possible.

(1.2) Omniscience, too, is a difficult concept and cannot simply be granted by us as a real attribute.

(2) The lack of a successful proof for God. If we cannot even make something like the ontological argument work, then maybe it’s time to reason that we cannot prove God because there is no God.

(3) We are justified in believing that many things do not exist: Santa Claus, Superman, unicorns, and so on. What makes God an exception here?

(3.1) If there were a God, there would be a steady influx of direct, unambiguous evidence to reinforce the view that there is a God. Yet, there is no direct evidence and nothing that cannot be reasonably attributed to natural causes.

(4) Widespread human and non-human animal suffering contradicts the concept of God.

(4.1) The innocent and the assholes are equally available to misfortune.

(4.2) What did the animals do to deserve death and their bloody struggle for survival?

(5) Generally in biology and cosmology, naturalism provides the better explanations of phenomena over all theistic explanations.

(6) Probability favors physical causes over intelligent causes for generation of features/phenomena and for the appearance of order.

In sum, the real problem with God is --

It cannot really be explained, it cannot be proved, it fits nicely into a human strength for creating imaginary characters, it is deeply undermined by the problem of indiscriminate evil, it is not the best explanation for anything, and it’s the most improbable cause of observed reality.

The best case for Atheism, then, is...God.

Note: Special credit and thanks to the "Atheism" article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, from which much of the material in this post is based.