Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christian Apologetics

  • Atheist-Christian Discussion

    I have noticed from time to time that Christians become very angry with atheists or other skeptics in debate simply for being and saying who they are. Many regard any questioning of their faith positions as impolite, and some even regard such discussion as a form of persecution. It has always seemed odd to me.

    When I discuss theology with an atheist, for example, I expect that he or she will:

    • Deny the existence of God
    • Deny the truth of substantial portions of the Bible
    • Find miracles vanishingly unlikely at best, and most certainly denying the virgin birth and the resurrection
    • Find the idea of the atonement fairly silly
    • . . . and many, many more obvious differences of opinion

    These seem so obvious to me, but I’ve encountered some Christians who become offended when a skeptic expressed each of those positions. I’m not sure how one can fail to be offended when someone says he’s an atheist, and yet suddenly become offended when he also mentions that he believes God’s existence is about as probable as that of the tooth fairy. It seems to me that one implies the other.

    So if I wish to have a conversation with such a person–and I’m pretty much interested in dialogue on philosophy and religion with most anyone–then I have to realize we will differ on these things, and accept that in order to dialogue, we will both have to express our differences. Since I believe in God, and an atheist by definition does not, he will have to tell me in one way or another that he thinks I’m wrong. He might use words like misguided, deluded, or something similar. He may well explain all my spiritual experiences as the result of physical causes, and call them delusional. He might point to the doctrine of hell (in the form in which many accept it) and describe God, were he to exist, as a mass murderer.

    To put it bluntly, I’m quite happy with any or all of those options. If that is what someone believes, that is what I’d like them to express to me. I’m not saying they don’t need to consider the public relations angle in general. But I would like to know what they actually think.

    This little post was inspired by Duane Smith’s post Thoughts on Richard Dawkins at Cal Tech. I have to confess that I really enjoy reading Richard Dawkins. He writes wonderfully well and explains difficult topics with great clarity. I can read and enjoy him, and appreciate his writing, and yet disagree profoundly. It sounds like I would have enjoyed his presentation as well, as I have enjoyed hearing him interviewed on TV. In fact, while he is often vilified as the true example of an over-the-top atheist, I have found him to be very careful and precise in stating what he does and does not belief. He’s not unaware of the nuances in theology, even though he doesn’t choose to give those of us who “practice” those nuances much room to maneuver.

    Having said all of that, I still should make clear that I disagree with Dawkins in a substantial way. I’m a theist, and he’s not. I’m in the crosshairs of some of his remarks. But why should I not be?

    It seems to me that in much of what passes for dialogue in the public forum we have gotten whimpy about ideas. I’m not talking about name-calling, ad hominem attacks, and diversionary tactics. Those detract from the issue. But I’d really like to know where it is that Richard Dawkins has behaved in this way. I can and do get somewhat heated about his comments about providing a religious education for children. But based on the remainder of his beliefs, I have a hard time seeing how he could avoid the conclusion that children would be better off without any form of religious indoctrination.

    In fact, I would ask my fellow Christians to look and see whether the shoe does not fit all too well. Often religious education is not education, but is really just indoctrination. I hear complaints from church leaders all the time about young adults leaving the church, but often those same church leaders are looking for teachers who will “teach the young adults the truth” and keep them from going astray. When I had the opportunity to plan curriculum for youth, I went out of my way to let them hear about other faiths. There was a field trip to a synagogue, I invited an Imam to come in and talk about Islam, we read materials about positions other than those of our own denomination.

    Do I still disagree with Dawkins on this point? From what I’ve read thus far, I very much do. But I don’t think he has stepped over any sort of line in saying so.

    If we, as Christians believe that there are things that are true and things that are false, and that it’s worthwhile to accept the truth and reject falsehood as much as we are able, perhaps we need to encourage each person to express his or her understanding of what is truth, and let’s test this in open discussion. If we are to do this, we have to drop the notion that a particular view is by nature impolite. And while I’m at it, for the same reason we can’t cut off discussion from the conservative side of the spectrum. If we try to shut up those who believe that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle, or that all abortion is evil, rather than engaging in discussion, we will make it harder to find good policy positions.

    Courtesy is good, but when courtesy is interpreted as a demand to cut off expression, then it can easily become a danger.

  • An Intelligent Designer in the Gaps

    I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding of the problems with a “God of the gaps” position. This is not a logical fallacy, but rather is more like an observation on the one hand and an implication on the other. I’m not going to try here for a deep philosophical discussion, but rather a simple overview of what I see as the practical application of God of the gaps positively and negatively.

    Essentially, “God of the gaps” results when people first credit some observed phenomenon to the action of God, then discover that this phenomenon has a natural explanation, and finally remove that activity from God’s sphere. In reverse it effectively says that God’s action is to be observed in the things that we do not understand.

    It is quite possible for someone to hold that God is equally active in both the things we understand and the things that we do not. But that is not the God of the gaps position. When one argues that God is demonstrated by particular things that we do not understand, and that complete understanding would remove that evidence, that person is essentially using a God of the gaps type of argument for the existence of God.

    Let’s take an example. In arguing for intelligent design, Michael Behe proposes that there are irreducibly complex systems, that there is no evolutionary explantion (using all natural causes) to explain the existence of such systems. He further claims that there can be no evolutionary explanation because incredibly improbable events would have to occur to produce all the parts of the irreducibly complex system simultaneously and in the proper relationship. The proposed solution is an “intelligent designer” who puts these things together.

    Now Behe does not claim that the intelligent designer must be God, but nobody actually proposes any plausibly designer other than God. Any lesser intelligent designer would itself require explanation. So for the moment, let’s assume that the intelligent designer is God, and that Behe’s argument is an argument for the existence of God. There is this system which could not be produced by natural causes, yet it exists, so it must be designed, and through other logic we arrive at God as the designer.

    Now suppose I am convinced of the existence of God by this particular argument. Then some fine microbiologist discovers a plausible evolutionary path for producing the system that I was convinced was irreducibly complex. What do I do? Well, if I’m honest I determine that this piece of evidence for the existence of God is no longer valid. If it was the key to my belief, I might have to give up my faith. Otherwise I might still believe, but have one less piece of evidence for that belief. God essentially would have retreated, at least in part, from this section of my universe.

    This is not precisely a logical fallacy, although it could lead to one or two. It is quite possible that something of which I am not aware has tinkered with the development of life on earth. Though I personally don’t believe it to be so, God could be intervening regularly in the development of life. One is not required to reject the notion that “God did it” outright.

    But of what value is that claim? We have two major problems. First, it’s been done many times. As natural explanations have been discovered, people have seen less and less need to assume God’s activity. Second, God makes a rather lousy hypothesis. Now before my Christian friends accuse me of blasphemy, let me note that my car makes a lousy hypothesis as well, but it’s quite an excellent car. God doesn’t make a good hypothesis because he is not an hypothesis. He is too undefined for that, and more importantly his power is not sufficiently limited in our definition. An hypothesis that explains everything explains nothing. It’s the equivalent of “stuff happens.”

    Christian students of the Bible and theology who reject the God of the gaps type of argument do not do so because it is logically impossible. We do so because it conflicts with our understanding of how God functions in the universe, and because as such it has been an untenable position in the past.

    Intelligent design resembles a “God of the gaps” argument in that it finds gaps in human knowledge and plugs God into the gap in our knowledge. I cannot be certain that they are wrong in each and every case, though I see no particular reason to believe they are right. But simply asserting that an undefined intelligent designer did it sure sounds to me like the intelligent designer in the gaps.

    It’s going to be simple to watch and see. If evolutionary scientists continue to discover new processes and fill in the gaps, then ID will continue to look like a “gaps” type argument and will have all its failings, particular a receding God, and explanations that explain nothing. ID advocates now accuse evolutionary scientists of lacking detailed explanations of the development of various systems, while in turn they simply claim that “the designer did it.” I can’t exclude that as a possibility, but I also can’t see any positive evidence in its favor. It’s pretty clear to me now, and time will serve to make it even clearer.

  • Reasons for Belief

    It seems that this week’s MBWR has produced an excellent crop. Bruce Alderman, whose blog is also in the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, wrote a post titled Why I Believe. His approach is strongly but not exclusively experiential, and in many ways resonates with my own.

    It also ties in with the current book discussion I’m hosting here on Threads on Elgin Hushbeck’s Consider Christianity books, which I publish. Elgin’s view is much more evidential, though he admits experience, and I’ve invited Chris Eyre, who is even more experiential than I am to criticize Elgin’s books. (Note that I publish Elgin’s books, so I’m not quite neutral on their value. Regard this as due alert of bias!) Chris has posted first, second, and third. I’ve also indicated that I’m willing to send free copies of the books to a reasonable number of bloggers who’d like to chime in, but that hasn’t proved popular.

    Whether you have an interest in the discussion here or not, you would do well to go and read Bruce’s entry. It should generate some good discussion.

  • Witnessing and Proselytizing

    Continuing my run through the Christian Blog Carnival, Laura has a good post Witnessing – Proselytizing – Defending the Faith.

    I think there are two important points to keep in mind:

    • Listening to the other person(s) in order to find out what their interest is. I’ve found that many people are interested in discussing my faith while I’m not trying to convert them.
    • Remembering, as Laura points out, that it’s not our mission field, and it is not up to us to “convert” people in the first place. Much rudeness results from people getting desperate to accomplish conversion. Christians are to be witnesses, not to render verdicts.

    I’d like to tie in a reference to my post Being a Witness without Being a Pest.

  • Conscience of a Christian Publisher

    A friend tipped me off by e-mail to a post, and I think it is appropriate to respond. The poster, Centurion, expresses his concern about Christian booksellers and publishers, and their choices in terms of what to offer their customers, especially considering that many of them regard their business as a ministry as well.

    I’m a Christian publisher, a very small one, offering 15 titles at this point, some of them my own, and I certainly do have a conscience about what I publish. My conscience, however, seems to tell me something substantially different than Centurion’s.

    (more…)

  • Consider Christianity – part 3

    This is the third of my set of comments on Elgin Hushbeck’s “Consider Christianity” series. In the previous two messages I introduced my approach and dealt with Chapter 1. I now move on to Chapter 2.

    Chapter 2 is called “The Bible and Modern Criticism”. Now, Elgin doesn’t like modern criticism very much. To quote him:-

    “Where prophecies and miracles do occur, they must somehow be explained away. This was very clearly stated by the German scholar Frank, when he wrote:- ‘The representation of a course of history is a priori to be regarded as untrue and unhistorical if supernatural factors interpose in it. Everything must be naturalised and likened to the course of natural history’.
    “Conservative scholars have no such limitations. They believe that those who wrote the Bible were inspired by God. Prophecies and miracles are not seen as proof that the Bible cannot be relied upon. Instead they serve to confirm it’s divine origins. It is often the different assumptions which scholars make that lead them to their different conclusions”

    He adds a footnote:-

    “It is important to note that scholars need not assume that the writers of the Bible were inspired by God. A scholar need only leave the question of the supernatural open and examine the evidence for alleged occurrences to see if they happened”.

    Neglecting for a moment that God may well inspire a writer to write something in a historical style without it being intended to be historical, and a wholly uninspired writer might yet faithfully report an historical supernatural event, doesn’t that sound reasonable? It did to me at first reading.

    But it isn’t setting out a level playing field between Christianity and any other historical document. Frank’s statement is not exclusive to Christianity, it is standard historical practice when dealing with any historical document. An a priori assumption can be rebutted – but supernatural events are extraordinary by definition, and extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence. (I’m quite happy to accept Bill’s statement that he walked down to the shops today, but I’d need a lot of convincing if he then claimed he teleported back).

    The Conservative scholar will clearly not think extraordinary evidence necessary. Will the Mainstream or Liberal scholar? Well, perhaps not the extremes of Liberal scholarship, who probably won’t accept even extraordinary evidence (there’s an excluded middle logical fallacy here – there isn’t just Jesus Seminar and Conservative) but certainly a significant swathe of Mainstream.

    I personally criticise Frank’s statement mildly, in that it’s too close to “the supernatural never occurs”, and I criticise some of the Jesus Fellowship scholars on the same basis. But Elgin admits openly that Conservative Scholars “believe the Bible to be inspired by God”. I’ve no problem with them doing that for purposes of theology, but for purposes of Apologetics it’s the “assuming your conclusion” logical fallacy.

    In addition, if you accept that in Christianity, an account of something supernatural is possibly correct (and particularly if you go on to say that if it’s witnessed to and there’s no contradictory evidence it’s true), you have to do the same with accounts of supernatural events linked with any other religion. Of course, historians don’t do this, but I can see the possibility that, to be even handed, we might need to accept that Augustus Caesar was a God – after all, it’s hugely multiply attested by contemporary archaological inscriptions and therefore better attested than anything in the new Testament.

    Movind on to Elgin’s account of the Documentary hypothesis, he struggles hard to demonstrate one very conservative Jewish legend about the composition of Torah, and ignores another Jewish legend which has the Prophet Ezra assembling scholars to collect and edit an oral tradition, which is hardly advancing all the evidence. I note Elgin’s footnote referring to Exodus 24:4 and Deuteronomy 31:9, but the first refers only to such law as had already been expounded in Exodus (and at least one Jewish tradition has it that the later restating after the breaking of the tablets revoked this portion), and the second may well only refer to the succeding passages of Deuteronomy.

    My attitude to his section on Historical Criticism can be summed up by the statement that on the basis he suggests, “Gone With the Wind” should be regarded as authentic history, as it has some authentic historical detail in it.
    Yes, Luke uses a correct term for the then leader of Malta. But then, John gets his Palestinian geography right, and the synoptics broadly don’t.

    For the remainder of the chapter, I think it can be summed up by his section entitled “On shaky ground”. He’s right that it isn’t possible to state that, say, the Q hypothesis or the late dating of the Fourth Gospel are proven. However, he proceeds to imply that in the absence of proof, we should accept a contrary view which is equally shaky as being accurate. There are many views; scholars disagree. Were his apparent objective to reassure Conservative Christians that certain of their positions were rationally compatible with the evidence, to date he’d be doing fairly well. But the title is “Consider Christianity”, and the introduction is aimed at someone who is not already a Conservative Christian believer, and probably not a Christian believer at all.

    Demonstrating that something is possible is not demonstrating that it is correct.

  • Free Christian Apologetics Books to Selected Bloggers

    Chris Eyre has started a series of comments (What Price Apologetics? and Christian Apologetics) on the Consider Christianity Series by Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.. Chris is somewhat critical of the series, and I thought he would provide a good starting point for discussion of it. Note that I own the publishing comany (Energion Publications) and that I edited the series. I’ll probably not get too deeply involved in this, because I think that a writer should be immune from getting beaten up by his own editor, and therefore one has to take favorable comments by that same editor with due consideration for his bias.

    Those who read this blog regularly should not expect either Chris’s or Elgin’s views to be identical to mine. I think it would be fair to say that Elgin is more conservative, and Chris more liberal, but precisely how much remains for you to discover! I don’t publish either on the web or in print because someone agrees with me, but rather because I think they have something valuable and challenging to say.

    Now, for those who have read this far and are still waiting to hear about free books, here’s the deal. I am granting myself five sets of the Consider Christianity series to hand out to bloggers who might like to join this discussion. At first I thought I’d look for the top five entries on apologetics that somehow linked into the discussion, but then I decided that if people are to discuss a book, they really need a book, and they can’t buy it to discuss it to get a free copy. Is that sentence long and unclear enough?

    So, to get a free copy of one or more of the Consider Christianity series, e-mail me with the following:

    If you are chosen to receive some books, I’ll ask for your snail-mail address at that time.

    I have no idea what the response will be, as I’ve never tried something like this before. If there are more entries than I have books, I’m going to choose in categories, and then take a first come, first served approach amongst those who are best qualified, which means essentially that other than fulfilling the categories I’m going to do my best to be fair.

    Categories are:

    • Secular bloggers who would like to challenge the contents
    • Christian bloggers from other apologetics approaches. Elgin uses evidentiary apologetics, and it would be nice to get a pressupositional response
    • Christian blogger likely to be supportive to some extent
    • Small, low-traffic blogs (I’m not that high traffic myself!), that show promise

    I’ll fill these categories first. If I get a very good response, and the discussion looks good, I reserve the right to add a set or two sent to people who either expand the range of ideas or who have particularly interesting blogs.

    I think you can guess at this point that the whole idea here is to generate discussion of Elgin’s books. I have a mercenary interest in this and I don’t claim otherwise. But I do think these books are worth discussing, and I think you will benefit from the debate.

  • Christian Apologetics

    I think that after my start, I should say that I enjoyed reading Elgin’s first two “Consider Christianity

  • Skepticism and Scholarship

    Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his conclusion, but you need to read his entire post for context.

    Skepticism is no more scholarly than gullibility. But they both have one thing in common

  • Welcome Chris Eyre

    Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he disagrees with a number of things in them, so I have invited him to present some of these issues in a series of posts. I haven’t put a limit on it. I’m expecting this conversation to be frank and vigorous. I’ll let Chris introduce himself in more detail as he goes along.

    Let me remind everyone of my comments policy. I remove spam and anything that appears likely to get me in legal trouble or will get my rated ‘X’. If you stay away from those limitations, you are free to express yourself with some vigor.

    I have also set aside some copies of Elgin’s books, both volumes and both study guides, for bloggers who want to get involved in the discussion. I haven’t decided yet on what basis to hand them out, but if you want to comment to this post or e-mail me early with a good reason that you should be one of the folks to get free copies, I’ll certainly give it consideration. The rules that I know of will be that you have a blog on which you comment on religious issues, from any perspective, and that you promise that you will comment on the books on your blog. I know also that I will absolutely not limit the free books to those who are likely to review them favorably. I would like to see bloggers from several perspectives look at these issues. There’s a lot of material in the two volumes, over 400 pages all told, and a number of interesting questions in the study guides.

    I’ll come up with detailed rules and then publicize this further at a later date.

    Have fun!