Atheists regularly claim that they support "Universal values". This claim is often made in the context of a Christian arguing that they support "Christian values" like love, goodwill and caring for each other. The atheist will reply with something like this: "How dare you claim those as Christian values! I support those values too, and they've been around since before your ridiculous religion even got started". Sound familiar? The implication here is that those values fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking. I would like to challenge that implication.
Here I think we have a problem that we could call the social conditioning problem. We are all conditioned, to some degree by the time and place in which we live, and the influences of our society do impact on the lens with which we view the world. Everyone who lives in a Western Country lives in a location whose heritage has been strongly influenced by Christianity. So atheists have been socially conditioned to accept values that we take for granted in our Western way of thinking, which has historically been influenced by Christianity. In other words, a large part of the reason why the atheist claims that Christian values fit in with their way of thinking is because their way of thinking has been indirectly influenced by...you guessed it, Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins has referred to himself as a "cultural christian". Professor Edwin Judge makes the following comments in an interview entitled Christianity and the 21st Century:
"In Australia, very many of the ideals of the general culture, Australian values so-called, clearly come from that tradition (Edit note- ie: Christian tradition), and what the churches need to do, and what indeed the public needs to do is to inform itself better of the true sources of these things. The matter should be studied historically"
"We stand in this dual heritage from Greece and Israel but people have lost awareness of the sources of it".
"We must make the study of the Biblical tradition available to everybody, not just under church auspices but part of the commitment of our culture as a whole to the historical study of it not as a matter of personal belief but as a matter of explanation for why our values are such as they are. We should not accept that they can be declared, as people do, to be secular values".
He concludes:
"The true source of the value system needs to be clear. Everybody needs to know that, particularly people who have no church connection".
The atheist must account for the origin or basis of their values- do they have a consistent basis within their own worldview for exclusively supporting those values? Christians certainly do. The entire Bible has a consistent theme of putting others first and loving others, right through from the ten commandments to Jesus and through to the writings of Paul in the New Testament (for example see Romans 12: 9-21). When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied with the following:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).
But what about the atheist? Can the atheist naturalist honestly claim a similar consistent basis for their values within their own view of the world? I'm inclined to agree with John Dickson, who says the following:
if human beings are only accidents in an unknowing universe, how can this choice be anything more than a mere preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?
Dickson concludes:
only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.
So do the values of love, compassion and goodwill really fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking? History and common sense would suggest otherwise.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Do Extraordinary Events Require Extraordinary Evidence?
The statement that "extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence" is a gross over-simplification.
It all depends on your prior assumptions and the surrounding ideas that you take into the discussion. If naturalism is true, then miracles are clearly impossible or at least exceedingly unlikely, so it would make sense that any claim of a miracle would constitute a claim that an extraordinary event had happened.
However, there are good reasons to doubt naturalism and there is a reasonable case to be made that a God-like being exists. Furthermore there’s a strong historical basis for Jesus claiming to be divine. Given those things, Jesus’s miracles and resurrection aren’t extraordinary at all- they become highly possible in their own right.
Following on from this, we can take Dr William Lane Craig's basic point that the evidence needs to be considered in the context of the likelihood of other explanations and whether or not the evidence would appear the way it does if another explanation were true. By reviewing the evidence concerning the events surrounding the resurrection, we can see that the various natural explanations seem highly implausible. If we consider the evidence without assuming naturalism, and instead consider it within the context of God probably/maybe existing and Jesus previously making the verbal claim that he possessed divine power then the resurrection appears to be the most likely explanation of the evidence.
It all depends on your prior assumptions and the surrounding ideas that you take into the discussion. If naturalism is true, then miracles are clearly impossible or at least exceedingly unlikely, so it would make sense that any claim of a miracle would constitute a claim that an extraordinary event had happened.
However, there are good reasons to doubt naturalism and there is a reasonable case to be made that a God-like being exists. Furthermore there’s a strong historical basis for Jesus claiming to be divine. Given those things, Jesus’s miracles and resurrection aren’t extraordinary at all- they become highly possible in their own right.
Following on from this, we can take Dr William Lane Craig's basic point that the evidence needs to be considered in the context of the likelihood of other explanations and whether or not the evidence would appear the way it does if another explanation were true. By reviewing the evidence concerning the events surrounding the resurrection, we can see that the various natural explanations seem highly implausible. If we consider the evidence without assuming naturalism, and instead consider it within the context of God probably/maybe existing and Jesus previously making the verbal claim that he possessed divine power then the resurrection appears to be the most likely explanation of the evidence.
The Cosmological Argument
The "Cosmological Argument" refers to a a branch of arguments for the existence of God. The cosmological argument comes in various forms but the general idea is that we begin with an undeniable fact- the existence of the universe- and reason to the existence of God, by arguing that God is the best explanation for the universe or that the universe requires a cause.
Recently the most popular version has been the Kalam Cosmological Argument which has been vigorously defended in both popular and scholarly works over the past 30 years by Dr William Lane Craig. That argument proposes that the universe began to exist and that God is it's cause.
However other versions of the cosmological argument propose a principle called the "principle of sufficient reason" or other causal principles and propose that God is the necessary explanation of the universe. Dr Alexander Pruss is one scholar today who argues for the principle of sufficient reason. Here is a wide-ranging article titled "Some Recent Progress on the Cosmological Argument" where Pruss covers various issues in contemporary philosophical debates about cosmological arguments and the problems with the principle of sufficient reason. He focuses on various grounds for attack that opponents of Cosmological Arguments use. Here's an outline of the structure:
1. Introduction
2. Need the first cause be God?
3. Can there be an explanation not involving a first cause?
4. The principle of sufficient reason
5. Four justifications of belief in the PSR or the CP
6. The Taxi cab objection
7. Alternatives to the PSR
8. Conclusions
Pruss concludes that "The last fifty years of analytic philosophy has focused our attention on three critical questions about cosmological arguments. Each of these questions can receive a plausible answer from a defender of the cosmological argument. Moreover, a cumulative case argument can be run from the number of different principles on which a cosmological argument can be based. There is thus good reason, even on the basis of the cosmological argument alone, to suppose that a
God-like being exists.".
Is his conclusion reasonable? Read the article and see what you think! And beware: Some of it is very heavy going, especially if you're relatively uninitiated in philosophy like I am.
Recently the most popular version has been the Kalam Cosmological Argument which has been vigorously defended in both popular and scholarly works over the past 30 years by Dr William Lane Craig. That argument proposes that the universe began to exist and that God is it's cause.
However other versions of the cosmological argument propose a principle called the "principle of sufficient reason" or other causal principles and propose that God is the necessary explanation of the universe. Dr Alexander Pruss is one scholar today who argues for the principle of sufficient reason. Here is a wide-ranging article titled "Some Recent Progress on the Cosmological Argument" where Pruss covers various issues in contemporary philosophical debates about cosmological arguments and the problems with the principle of sufficient reason. He focuses on various grounds for attack that opponents of Cosmological Arguments use. Here's an outline of the structure:
1. Introduction
2. Need the first cause be God?
3. Can there be an explanation not involving a first cause?
4. The principle of sufficient reason
5. Four justifications of belief in the PSR or the CP
6. The Taxi cab objection
7. Alternatives to the PSR
8. Conclusions
Pruss concludes that "The last fifty years of analytic philosophy has focused our attention on three critical questions about cosmological arguments. Each of these questions can receive a plausible answer from a defender of the cosmological argument. Moreover, a cumulative case argument can be run from the number of different principles on which a cosmological argument can be based. There is thus good reason, even on the basis of the cosmological argument alone, to suppose that a
God-like being exists.".
Is his conclusion reasonable? Read the article and see what you think! And beware: Some of it is very heavy going, especially if you're relatively uninitiated in philosophy like I am.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Update
I haven't paid sufficient attention to this blog recently, as is evident from the time it's been since my last post. I've still been spending time reading books, however I've kept my thoughts to my minimal personal notes, along with the notes in the margins of the books I've been reading.
Here are some good links I've recently discovered on various topics:
The Christ Myth
In internet circles, many atheists consider it fashionable to make statements like "What's the point of arguing about Jesus's Resurrection? After all, Jesus might not have even existed". This is called "The Christ Myth", or the idea that no man named Jesus ever even walked the earth. This claim is fairly radical. Most intelligent skeptics argue that Jesus was a travelling wise man, or was an apocalyptic prophet who was put to death for his anti Temple rantings. However the Christ Myth claim says that not only did Jesus fail to have any supernatural powers; actually he didn't even exist.
I've heard the anti-Jesus argument refuted many times, for example in the following places:
- John Dickson's various materials: The New Atheism DVD, The Christ Files DVD and book, and The Life of Jesus book.
- John Dickson's videos on Public Christianity's web site.
- Gary Habermas and Michael Licona's A Case For The Resurrection of Jesus, where an extensive footnote lays out why Josephus is very good evidence of the existence of Jesus.
However, I was interested to hear a fuller and more detailed representation of the alternative argument, as the above sources only provided small quotes here and there. This is one reason why I purchased Five Views On The Historical Jesus, where Robert Price is alloted 20 or 25 pages to make his case. Price is one of two historians in the world that I'm aware of who argue for this view. As is obvious from the review I posted on Amazon, I was not impressed. The case that Jesus never existed relies on ignoring a lot of evidence, twisting the rest of the evidence with bizarre leaps of (il)logic and relying on mere possibility when it's crystal clear that the probability suggests another interpretation.
This is why I'm glad to have recently found James Hannam's four part series on the issue. This is a succint and clear refutation of The Christ Myth. You could read the whole thing in half an hour or less and you'd have received a solid summary of the reasons why the arguments for The Christ Myth are exceedingly weak. In another entry, I will either explain or link to an article explaining why it's historically certain that Jesus at very least existed.
Audio Bible
Go here for a fully dramatised NIV audio bible. The only downside is that you'll have to download each chapter seperately- there doesn't seem to be an option for downloading entire biblical books at a time.
Communication, information, and the beauty of the internet
One important aspect of communication is this: The medium of communication must match it's target audience.
Often I'll read a book or an article on a particular subject and I'll want to talk about this subject with others, or will want to suggest the resource to someone (on a forum for example). However, many people simply aren't interested enough to buy books; they might not be the type of person who'll sit down and read for an hour or two. Alternatively, even when people are the reading or studying type, they often don't consider the issue enough of a priority at that point in time to consider alloting any significant amount of time on it. This is one reason why the internet can be so good: The variation and amount of information on the internet is astounding. Journal articles? Look around, you will find plenty. Some professors upload their journal articles on their faculty pages. And there's some good resource websites out there too: Last seminary.com, for example. Full length books? You'll find a few for free (for example go here and scroll down the left hand side till you find "Online Books"). Or look through bookdepository.co.uk,amazon.com and booko.com.au for the cheapest prices. Shorter, less scholarly articles? Plenty, of varying quality. Videos? Again, plenty of varying quality. Want to find further resources on a particular subject? Google is your best friend. Wiki is a good friend too, as is the "people who purchased this book also purchased...." section on Amazon.com.
I'm continually aiming to A. Build up a list of the best sites to visit online, B. Hone my internet information searching skills and C. Work through ways to best collate or record the information I find for further thought, connect the new information with other knowledge I've gained, and store information for later reference. One of the main roles I see this blog as serving is providing a summary of solid information gleaned from the depths of the vast Internet Ocean.
Women In Ministry
This is an interesting issue and it's one that I don't like being dogmatic about. It's definitely an "open hand" rather than a closed fist issue for me, to borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll. But I strongly lean towards the idea that women should have just as much of a place in ministry as anyone else. Perhaps, for pragmatic and socialogical reasons it may be wise to have a male head pastor in most cases however I don't see that as a hard and fast rule as far as the theology of it goes.
Many people have a reasonable level of interest in this topic, but I'd wager few would consider it important enough to read any extended treatment on the issue. I myself have only read one extended treatment, and that was due to the topic being couched inside a book on something else- the issue was used as a case study for Scot McKnight's approach to reading the Bible in The Blue Parakeet, a book I highly recommend.
Without further ado, check out Ben Witherington's interview with PublicChristianity.com. . The most relevant section is 3:10- 4:26. Here are my comments following brief summaries of Witherington in bold:
- Examples of Bibical Women and the roles they fulfilled: Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla etc. If women in the early church were church leaders ("apostle") and taught men, what makes us think we possess a better system for the church in the 21st century?
- An explanation of passages in 1 Corinthians and 1st Timothy which makes good sense of the fact that women acted in the various roles in point 1. This explanation highly contextualises those passages, and Witherington summarises his point very briefly. This explanation makes more sense of the Bible as a whole and the big picture than the view that women should, to put it crudely, sit in church quietly and not take any major role in church leadership or teaching type ministries.
Many would no doubt complain that Witherington's take doesn't involve a plain vanilla reading of the passages. However, as Witherington says: "A text without a context is simply a pretext for whatever you want it to say". The pastoral epistles and the doctrinal books of the NT were written to specific people in specific places and were used for particular purposes at particular times. This does NOT mean that we can simply write them off as irrelevant. However, it does mean that we ALWAYS need to be aware of the historical and contextual issues surrounding the texts and that these issues will impact on our interpretations. (Although I don't want to go along that line of thinking any further here, other than state my view of the application to the issue at hand).
With Women in Ministry, 1. We have strong reasons to doubt that a vanilla reading makes sense of other parts of the Bible. (Paul describes and works alongside women leaders and teachers in the early church and then explicitly forbids women leaders and teachers forever and beyond. Really?) AND 2. There's a case to be made that the texts in question were utilised for a particular time and are not relevant today. Scot McKnight discusses some historical and textual arguments for point 2 in his book and Witherington summarises one brief argument in the linked vid.
In combination, these two points make the interpretation given by Witherington and McKnight more plausible than the interpretation that we should take Paul at his literal word, as if it were directed to 21st century western culture and command women keep silent in churches.
Here are some good links I've recently discovered on various topics:
The Christ Myth
In internet circles, many atheists consider it fashionable to make statements like "What's the point of arguing about Jesus's Resurrection? After all, Jesus might not have even existed". This is called "The Christ Myth", or the idea that no man named Jesus ever even walked the earth. This claim is fairly radical. Most intelligent skeptics argue that Jesus was a travelling wise man, or was an apocalyptic prophet who was put to death for his anti Temple rantings. However the Christ Myth claim says that not only did Jesus fail to have any supernatural powers; actually he didn't even exist.
I've heard the anti-Jesus argument refuted many times, for example in the following places:
- John Dickson's various materials: The New Atheism DVD, The Christ Files DVD and book, and The Life of Jesus book.
- John Dickson's videos on Public Christianity's web site.
- Gary Habermas and Michael Licona's A Case For The Resurrection of Jesus, where an extensive footnote lays out why Josephus is very good evidence of the existence of Jesus.
However, I was interested to hear a fuller and more detailed representation of the alternative argument, as the above sources only provided small quotes here and there. This is one reason why I purchased Five Views On The Historical Jesus, where Robert Price is alloted 20 or 25 pages to make his case. Price is one of two historians in the world that I'm aware of who argue for this view. As is obvious from the review I posted on Amazon, I was not impressed. The case that Jesus never existed relies on ignoring a lot of evidence, twisting the rest of the evidence with bizarre leaps of (il)logic and relying on mere possibility when it's crystal clear that the probability suggests another interpretation.
This is why I'm glad to have recently found James Hannam's four part series on the issue. This is a succint and clear refutation of The Christ Myth. You could read the whole thing in half an hour or less and you'd have received a solid summary of the reasons why the arguments for The Christ Myth are exceedingly weak. In another entry, I will either explain or link to an article explaining why it's historically certain that Jesus at very least existed.
Audio Bible
Go here for a fully dramatised NIV audio bible. The only downside is that you'll have to download each chapter seperately- there doesn't seem to be an option for downloading entire biblical books at a time.
Communication, information, and the beauty of the internet
One important aspect of communication is this: The medium of communication must match it's target audience.
Often I'll read a book or an article on a particular subject and I'll want to talk about this subject with others, or will want to suggest the resource to someone (on a forum for example). However, many people simply aren't interested enough to buy books; they might not be the type of person who'll sit down and read for an hour or two. Alternatively, even when people are the reading or studying type, they often don't consider the issue enough of a priority at that point in time to consider alloting any significant amount of time on it. This is one reason why the internet can be so good: The variation and amount of information on the internet is astounding. Journal articles? Look around, you will find plenty. Some professors upload their journal articles on their faculty pages. And there's some good resource websites out there too: Last seminary.com, for example. Full length books? You'll find a few for free (for example go here and scroll down the left hand side till you find "Online Books"). Or look through bookdepository.co.uk,amazon.com and booko.com.au for the cheapest prices. Shorter, less scholarly articles? Plenty, of varying quality. Videos? Again, plenty of varying quality. Want to find further resources on a particular subject? Google is your best friend. Wiki is a good friend too, as is the "people who purchased this book also purchased...." section on Amazon.com.
I'm continually aiming to A. Build up a list of the best sites to visit online, B. Hone my internet information searching skills and C. Work through ways to best collate or record the information I find for further thought, connect the new information with other knowledge I've gained, and store information for later reference. One of the main roles I see this blog as serving is providing a summary of solid information gleaned from the depths of the vast Internet Ocean.
Women In Ministry
This is an interesting issue and it's one that I don't like being dogmatic about. It's definitely an "open hand" rather than a closed fist issue for me, to borrow an analogy from Mark Driscoll. But I strongly lean towards the idea that women should have just as much of a place in ministry as anyone else. Perhaps, for pragmatic and socialogical reasons it may be wise to have a male head pastor in most cases however I don't see that as a hard and fast rule as far as the theology of it goes.
Many people have a reasonable level of interest in this topic, but I'd wager few would consider it important enough to read any extended treatment on the issue. I myself have only read one extended treatment, and that was due to the topic being couched inside a book on something else- the issue was used as a case study for Scot McKnight's approach to reading the Bible in The Blue Parakeet, a book I highly recommend.
Without further ado, check out Ben Witherington's interview with PublicChristianity.com. . The most relevant section is 3:10- 4:26. Here are my comments following brief summaries of Witherington in bold:
- Examples of Bibical Women and the roles they fulfilled: Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla etc. If women in the early church were church leaders ("apostle") and taught men, what makes us think we possess a better system for the church in the 21st century?
- An explanation of passages in 1 Corinthians and 1st Timothy which makes good sense of the fact that women acted in the various roles in point 1. This explanation highly contextualises those passages, and Witherington summarises his point very briefly. This explanation makes more sense of the Bible as a whole and the big picture than the view that women should, to put it crudely, sit in church quietly and not take any major role in church leadership or teaching type ministries.
Many would no doubt complain that Witherington's take doesn't involve a plain vanilla reading of the passages. However, as Witherington says: "A text without a context is simply a pretext for whatever you want it to say". The pastoral epistles and the doctrinal books of the NT were written to specific people in specific places and were used for particular purposes at particular times. This does NOT mean that we can simply write them off as irrelevant. However, it does mean that we ALWAYS need to be aware of the historical and contextual issues surrounding the texts and that these issues will impact on our interpretations. (Although I don't want to go along that line of thinking any further here, other than state my view of the application to the issue at hand).
With Women in Ministry, 1. We have strong reasons to doubt that a vanilla reading makes sense of other parts of the Bible. (Paul describes and works alongside women leaders and teachers in the early church and then explicitly forbids women leaders and teachers forever and beyond. Really?) AND 2. There's a case to be made that the texts in question were utilised for a particular time and are not relevant today. Scot McKnight discusses some historical and textual arguments for point 2 in his book and Witherington summarises one brief argument in the linked vid.
In combination, these two points make the interpretation given by Witherington and McKnight more plausible than the interpretation that we should take Paul at his literal word, as if it were directed to 21st century western culture and command women keep silent in churches.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Logos, Pathos and Ethos
Almost a year ago, I came across an idea and I was intrigued by it. The idea was from the ancient philosopher Aristotle, who claimed that people's beliefs are influenced by numerous different factors- specifically factors relating to Logos, Pathos and Ethos. This clearly has importance when looking at communication and persuasion, and that's the context in which I came across the idea: I found a book titled "How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator".
Shortly after finding this book online and becoming fascinated by Aristotle's idea about beliefs, I attended a talk by Dr John Dickson. Little did I know beforehand, that Dickson uses these ideas in his presentations on Jesus as well- although in an entirely different context to the "How to Argue" book. After hearing Dickson's presentation, I decided I had to go out and buy the "How to Argue" book, and find out more about the Logos, Pathos and Ethos idea.
Dickson's presentation was about the evidence for Jesus Resurrection, but one theme he hit on during his talk was the idea that skeptics need to be honest enough to admit that their beliefs are influenced by several factors other than the intellectual element. He recently wrote an article which neatly presents some of these thoughts on this theme which he discussed during the talk I attended last year.
Click here to read the article, titled "The Way We Believe".
(Note: as with any online article most of the comments miss the point, disagree and abuse but don't provide any reasons why they actually disagree, or discuss something entirely irrelevant to the article actually written):
Shortly after finding this book online and becoming fascinated by Aristotle's idea about beliefs, I attended a talk by Dr John Dickson. Little did I know beforehand, that Dickson uses these ideas in his presentations on Jesus as well- although in an entirely different context to the "How to Argue" book. After hearing Dickson's presentation, I decided I had to go out and buy the "How to Argue" book, and find out more about the Logos, Pathos and Ethos idea.
Dickson's presentation was about the evidence for Jesus Resurrection, but one theme he hit on during his talk was the idea that skeptics need to be honest enough to admit that their beliefs are influenced by several factors other than the intellectual element. He recently wrote an article which neatly presents some of these thoughts on this theme which he discussed during the talk I attended last year.
Click here to read the article, titled "The Way We Believe".
(Note: as with any online article most of the comments miss the point, disagree and abuse but don't provide any reasons why they actually disagree, or discuss something entirely irrelevant to the article actually written):
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Philosophy of the Bible- Video
Today I've found a video by Gordon J Glover, titled "The Evolutionary Creation Video". This 9 minute piece basically combines the modern scientific consensus (Big Bang and Evolution) with the timeless story of Jesus revealing himself to humanity and cancelling the sin of the world by reconciling people to God the Father.
I title this "Philosophy Of The Bible" because the point made so clearly by Glover in his accompany blog post is that we need to challenge the presuppositions around how we look at the Bible and what we expect from it.
For example, would it have made sense for God to have told Moses that E=MC squared, or would it make more sense for God to reveal things that people in that day and age needed to hear...? If you look at history and it's development, it's clear that in every age and culture, people's needs are different, EVERYTHING, in fact, is different.
I feel there are major difficulties in the way many conservative Christians read the Bible- how they approach it. I would bluntly summarise some of the problems as: lack of regard for context and history, minimal attempts to consider the implications of other fields of knowledge, a lack of integration between what we know about the Bible itself and how this might relate to our understanding of it, and a small picture outlook (as opposed to a Big Picture outlook). All of this leads to a unrealistic and occasionally absurd understanding of inerrancy and a general lack of thoughtfulness when approaching the Bible. I found Scot McKnight's book Blue Parakeets to be very helpful in exploring these issues, and it's a topic I enjoy thinking about and discussing so it will receive significant attention on this blog, I'm sure. Glover's video is superb, but it was the food for thought he provides around what I call "Philosophy of the Bible" that captured my attention.
See the blog post and video here:
http://www.blog.beyondthefirmament.com/video-presentations/the-evolutionary-creation-video/
I title this "Philosophy Of The Bible" because the point made so clearly by Glover in his accompany blog post is that we need to challenge the presuppositions around how we look at the Bible and what we expect from it.
For example, would it have made sense for God to have told Moses that E=MC squared, or would it make more sense for God to reveal things that people in that day and age needed to hear...? If you look at history and it's development, it's clear that in every age and culture, people's needs are different, EVERYTHING, in fact, is different.
I feel there are major difficulties in the way many conservative Christians read the Bible- how they approach it. I would bluntly summarise some of the problems as: lack of regard for context and history, minimal attempts to consider the implications of other fields of knowledge, a lack of integration between what we know about the Bible itself and how this might relate to our understanding of it, and a small picture outlook (as opposed to a Big Picture outlook). All of this leads to a unrealistic and occasionally absurd understanding of inerrancy and a general lack of thoughtfulness when approaching the Bible. I found Scot McKnight's book Blue Parakeets to be very helpful in exploring these issues, and it's a topic I enjoy thinking about and discussing so it will receive significant attention on this blog, I'm sure. Glover's video is superb, but it was the food for thought he provides around what I call "Philosophy of the Bible" that captured my attention.
See the blog post and video here:
http://www.blog.beyondthefirmament.com/video-presentations/the-evolutionary-creation-video/
Sunday, April 25, 2010
News
Vox Day throws some more barbs the way of the New Atheists. . The article he links from David Bentley Hart is worth reading in full.
Some interesting articles lately from Online Opinion. Atheism repels feeble Easter attacks, Buddhism and Science.
Some interesting articles lately from Online Opinion. Atheism repels feeble Easter attacks, Buddhism and Science.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Links
Ed West reminds us that: The horrific abuse committed by Catholic priests, and the cover-ups by bishops, has given the neo-Bolshevik New Atheists a spring in their step, and led to ever increasing levels of hostility to Catholicism. But it’s worth remembering that, terrible though those crimes were, far, far more terrible things have been done in the name of progress, equality and the pursuit of heaven on earth than in the name of God. Happy Easter. here
Archbishop of NSW Peter Jensen raises an interesting point about modern society and individualism contributing to loneliness. I've long thought this was the case, personally.
Scott Monk argues that the Bible should be part of the National Curriculum. His final point might disgust you, or you might find it particularly potent..or just thought provoking. For me it's mostly the last one.
They’re unpopular ideas—exactly as they were 2000 years ago when Jesus overturned conventional thinking and ended up being crucified, much to the delight of the self-righteous Pharisees. Neither will be the teaching of the Bible in public schools now.
But when boys are accessing internet porn for the first time, on average, aged eleven, teenage guys are using their mobile phones to swap images of sex with their girlfriends like footy cards, and sportsmen and women cheat on their partners by engaging in group orgies, we have to accept that as a society we’ve drifted too far from our common foundations.
If the best and brightest artists of the past were brave enough to explore the wide-ranging impact of the Bible on Western thought, why can’t we challenge our own generation’s best and brightest? The compulsory national curriculum is a perfect time for a rethink.
Archbishop of NSW Peter Jensen raises an interesting point about modern society and individualism contributing to loneliness. I've long thought this was the case, personally.
Scott Monk argues that the Bible should be part of the National Curriculum. His final point might disgust you, or you might find it particularly potent..or just thought provoking. For me it's mostly the last one.
They’re unpopular ideas—exactly as they were 2000 years ago when Jesus overturned conventional thinking and ended up being crucified, much to the delight of the self-righteous Pharisees. Neither will be the teaching of the Bible in public schools now.
But when boys are accessing internet porn for the first time, on average, aged eleven, teenage guys are using their mobile phones to swap images of sex with their girlfriends like footy cards, and sportsmen and women cheat on their partners by engaging in group orgies, we have to accept that as a society we’ve drifted too far from our common foundations.
If the best and brightest artists of the past were brave enough to explore the wide-ranging impact of the Bible on Western thought, why can’t we challenge our own generation’s best and brightest? The compulsory national curriculum is a perfect time for a rethink.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Feser on scientism
Catholic Philosopher Edward Feser is a blogger at edwardfeser.blogspot.com, and I'm a regular reader of this page. He mainly seems to focus on three things: As a philosopher of mind who espouses substance dualism, a thomist who writes about the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, and a right wing idealogue who promotes conservative Catholic social positions. I don't agree with all of Feser's positions (especially on the conservative issues) but generally I find that he has lot of potent points to make, and that he's a rhetoritician capable of putting a serious sting in the tail of his writings.
Recently he wrote a two part series on scientism:
Here- Part 1- Blinded by scientism
and
Here-Part 2- Recovering sight after scientism
In Part 1 Feser argues that scientism is either self refuting or trivially true and thus should be rejected. In Part 2 he suggests we need to return to traditional philosophical metaphysics. Part 1 was more convincing that Part 2. I'd like some more detail on exactly what's so special about Aristotle and Aquina's, and I suspect there's some very strong counter arguments which may contend that there's some very good reasons why modern day intellectuals have moved away from those ancient ideas. For this reason, Feser's The Last Superstition is a book I wouldn't mind reading one day.
Here are some quotes that best summarise his main ideas from the two articles:
The claim that scientism is true is not itself a scientific claim, not something that can be established using scientific methods. Indeed, that science is even a rational form of inquiry (let alone the only rational form of inquiry) is not something that can be established scientifically. For scientific inquiry itself rests on a number of philosophical assumptions: that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; that this world is governed by causal regularities; that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and so forth. Since science presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle. And if it cannot even establish that it is a reliable form of inquiry, it can hardly establish that it is the only reliable form. Both tasks would require “getting outside” science altogether and discovering from that extra-scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality—and in the case of scientism, that only science does so.
Here we come to the second horn of the dilemma facing scientism. Its advocate may now insist: if philosophy has this status, it must really be a part of science, since (he continues to maintain, digging in his heels) all rational inquiry is scientific inquiry. The trouble now is that scientism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could be put forward as evidence against it. Worse, it makes scientism consistent with views that are supposed to be incompatible with it
If a certain method of studying nature affords us a high degree of predictive and technological power, all that shows is that the method is useful for dealing with those aspects of nature that are predictable and controllable. It does not show us that those aspects exhaust nature, that there is nothing more to the natural world than what the method reveals. Neither does it show that there are no rational means of investigating reality other than those involving empirical prediction and control. To assume otherwise is fallaciously to let one’s method dictate what counts as reality rather than letting reality determine what methods are appropriate for studying it. If wearing infrared night vision goggles allows me to perceive a certain part of the world remarkably well, it doesn’t follow that there is no more to the world than what I can perceive through the goggles, or that only goggle-wearing methods of investigating reality are rational ones.
If we are to know what that inner nature is, and to know of anything else about which empirical science is silent, we must go beyond science—to philosophy, the true “paradigm of rationality,” as John Kekes puts it.
But can philosophy really tell us anything? Don’t philosophers notoriously disagree among themselves? Even if it is conceded that there is more to the world than science tells us, mightn’t we nevertheless be justified in throwing up our hands and concluding that whatever this “more” might be, it is simply unknowable—that scientism is a reasonable attitude to take in practice, even if problematic in theory?
The trouble is that this is itself a philosophical claim, subject to philosophical criticism and requiring philosophical argumentation in its defense.
The right answer, in my view, is a return to the philosophical wisdom of the ancients and medievals. Their physics, as Galileo, Newton, Einstein and co. have shown us, was indeed sorely lacking. But their metaphysics has never been surpassed. And while they certainly had disagreements of their own, there is a common core to the tradition they founded—a tradition extending from Plato and Aristotle to the High Scholasticism of Aquinas and down to its descendents today—that sets them apart from the decadent philosophical systems of the moderns. This core constitutes a “perennial philosophy” apart from which the harmony of common sense and science, and indeed even the coherence of science itself, cannot be understood. And it is also in this perennial philosophy that the rational foundations of theology and ethics are to be found.
Recently he wrote a two part series on scientism:
Here- Part 1- Blinded by scientism
and
Here-Part 2- Recovering sight after scientism
In Part 1 Feser argues that scientism is either self refuting or trivially true and thus should be rejected. In Part 2 he suggests we need to return to traditional philosophical metaphysics. Part 1 was more convincing that Part 2. I'd like some more detail on exactly what's so special about Aristotle and Aquina's, and I suspect there's some very strong counter arguments which may contend that there's some very good reasons why modern day intellectuals have moved away from those ancient ideas. For this reason, Feser's The Last Superstition is a book I wouldn't mind reading one day.
Here are some quotes that best summarise his main ideas from the two articles:
The claim that scientism is true is not itself a scientific claim, not something that can be established using scientific methods. Indeed, that science is even a rational form of inquiry (let alone the only rational form of inquiry) is not something that can be established scientifically. For scientific inquiry itself rests on a number of philosophical assumptions: that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; that this world is governed by causal regularities; that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and so forth. Since science presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle. And if it cannot even establish that it is a reliable form of inquiry, it can hardly establish that it is the only reliable form. Both tasks would require “getting outside” science altogether and discovering from that extra-scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality—and in the case of scientism, that only science does so.
Here we come to the second horn of the dilemma facing scientism. Its advocate may now insist: if philosophy has this status, it must really be a part of science, since (he continues to maintain, digging in his heels) all rational inquiry is scientific inquiry. The trouble now is that scientism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could be put forward as evidence against it. Worse, it makes scientism consistent with views that are supposed to be incompatible with it
If a certain method of studying nature affords us a high degree of predictive and technological power, all that shows is that the method is useful for dealing with those aspects of nature that are predictable and controllable. It does not show us that those aspects exhaust nature, that there is nothing more to the natural world than what the method reveals. Neither does it show that there are no rational means of investigating reality other than those involving empirical prediction and control. To assume otherwise is fallaciously to let one’s method dictate what counts as reality rather than letting reality determine what methods are appropriate for studying it. If wearing infrared night vision goggles allows me to perceive a certain part of the world remarkably well, it doesn’t follow that there is no more to the world than what I can perceive through the goggles, or that only goggle-wearing methods of investigating reality are rational ones.
If we are to know what that inner nature is, and to know of anything else about which empirical science is silent, we must go beyond science—to philosophy, the true “paradigm of rationality,” as John Kekes puts it.
But can philosophy really tell us anything? Don’t philosophers notoriously disagree among themselves? Even if it is conceded that there is more to the world than science tells us, mightn’t we nevertheless be justified in throwing up our hands and concluding that whatever this “more” might be, it is simply unknowable—that scientism is a reasonable attitude to take in practice, even if problematic in theory?
The trouble is that this is itself a philosophical claim, subject to philosophical criticism and requiring philosophical argumentation in its defense.
The right answer, in my view, is a return to the philosophical wisdom of the ancients and medievals. Their physics, as Galileo, Newton, Einstein and co. have shown us, was indeed sorely lacking. But their metaphysics has never been surpassed. And while they certainly had disagreements of their own, there is a common core to the tradition they founded—a tradition extending from Plato and Aristotle to the High Scholasticism of Aquinas and down to its descendents today—that sets them apart from the decadent philosophical systems of the moderns. This core constitutes a “perennial philosophy” apart from which the harmony of common sense and science, and indeed even the coherence of science itself, cannot be understood. And it is also in this perennial philosophy that the rational foundations of theology and ethics are to be found.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Great Theological Debate of Calvinism vs Arminianism
Neither Calvinism nor Arminianism are completely “biblical”. Calvinism seems to be to me slightly more “biblical” than the alternative but I don’t consider myself a Calvinist for reasons I’ll now go into.
I’ve found that there are many passages in the Bible which are difficult if you try to map the mind of God like a puzzle, which is effectively what you’re doing if you choose one system over the other and say “without qualification, this is the correct system”. And this goes both ways. The Calvinists will talk about certain passages and they make perfect sense, yet when discussing other things in the bible they really are forced to make some quite implausible interpretations and create some difficult justifications to make them fit within their system. Similarly, there are some passages in the Bible which align perfectly with the Arminian understanding, and others where the Arminian theologians are forced to scratch their heads and come up with less-than-perfect interpretations. Also, this is a philosophically difficult issue. This point gradually dawned on me, especially when I read a book 18 months ago with four theologians/philosophers making their case for different understandings of God’s sovereignty and human free will.
How does a Calvinist account for God appearing to change his mind? How do we account for passages that seem to say contradictory things? Why do both systems have what appear to be inexplicable problems which weaken one aspect of God's character at the expense of another? Why are theologians and philosophers who study this issue forced to supply complicated explanations which leave the average person's head spinning in order to make sense of their own system? (For example the Calvinist idea that God has two seperate wills- his perfect or sovereign will and his permissive will? Somehow an all powerful being, who ordains all things needs to have two distinct wills, within himself. Somehow man has no power to overcome God's will, except in instances where it's convenient for Calvinists. OK slightly flippant, but my point is clear- this whole idea is simply a complicated, convuluted system created by man in order to understand God).
This problem led me in the direction of some conclusions on the matter. This post is an introduction to my views so I'll summarise them here. My conclusions also closely relate to my view of the Bible and how it is to be interpreted, and this is yet another topic which will receive attention on this blog in the future.
Firstly, perhaps the Bible isn’t completely inerrant in the word-for-word sense which is assumed when topics like these are debated. Perhaps Paul, and other biblical authors were simply writing down their understanding about the will and God’s control. Perhaps we need to give more dues to context, and I'd strongly suggest we also need to question whether the Bible was meant to be some kind of word to word dictation or whether there is a more sensible approach to take. Many Christians seem to hold that the Bible is a word for word dictation like the Koran, but I think this view looks silly once you look into debates such as Calvinism vs Arminianism, Faith vs Works and compare the various passages on these topics.
Secondly, perhaps there is this conflict in the Bible for a reason. Perhaps this is a mystery that God is leaving open. In the absence of clear answers, and considering the difficulties of fitting each and every passage into one system or the other, this seems a reasonable view to take. We see through a glass dimly.
Thirdly, it makes sense that finite beings who are constrained by time may not be able to effectively figure out how an infinite being (who is not constrained by time), relates to time. Rob Bell gives an illustration of how someone in a two dimensional world would have no idea what they were looking at if someone from a 3D world entered into their 2D situation. Something similar could be analogous here. This all makes me wonder whether it's acceptable and rational to plead mystery in some instances (this being one of them) rather than create complex systems which will inevitably leave us with more questions than answers.
I’ve found that there are many passages in the Bible which are difficult if you try to map the mind of God like a puzzle, which is effectively what you’re doing if you choose one system over the other and say “without qualification, this is the correct system”. And this goes both ways. The Calvinists will talk about certain passages and they make perfect sense, yet when discussing other things in the bible they really are forced to make some quite implausible interpretations and create some difficult justifications to make them fit within their system. Similarly, there are some passages in the Bible which align perfectly with the Arminian understanding, and others where the Arminian theologians are forced to scratch their heads and come up with less-than-perfect interpretations. Also, this is a philosophically difficult issue. This point gradually dawned on me, especially when I read a book 18 months ago with four theologians/philosophers making their case for different understandings of God’s sovereignty and human free will.
How does a Calvinist account for God appearing to change his mind? How do we account for passages that seem to say contradictory things? Why do both systems have what appear to be inexplicable problems which weaken one aspect of God's character at the expense of another? Why are theologians and philosophers who study this issue forced to supply complicated explanations which leave the average person's head spinning in order to make sense of their own system? (For example the Calvinist idea that God has two seperate wills- his perfect or sovereign will and his permissive will? Somehow an all powerful being, who ordains all things needs to have two distinct wills, within himself. Somehow man has no power to overcome God's will, except in instances where it's convenient for Calvinists. OK slightly flippant, but my point is clear- this whole idea is simply a complicated, convuluted system created by man in order to understand God).
This problem led me in the direction of some conclusions on the matter. This post is an introduction to my views so I'll summarise them here. My conclusions also closely relate to my view of the Bible and how it is to be interpreted, and this is yet another topic which will receive attention on this blog in the future.
Firstly, perhaps the Bible isn’t completely inerrant in the word-for-word sense which is assumed when topics like these are debated. Perhaps Paul, and other biblical authors were simply writing down their understanding about the will and God’s control. Perhaps we need to give more dues to context, and I'd strongly suggest we also need to question whether the Bible was meant to be some kind of word to word dictation or whether there is a more sensible approach to take. Many Christians seem to hold that the Bible is a word for word dictation like the Koran, but I think this view looks silly once you look into debates such as Calvinism vs Arminianism, Faith vs Works and compare the various passages on these topics.
Secondly, perhaps there is this conflict in the Bible for a reason. Perhaps this is a mystery that God is leaving open. In the absence of clear answers, and considering the difficulties of fitting each and every passage into one system or the other, this seems a reasonable view to take. We see through a glass dimly.
Thirdly, it makes sense that finite beings who are constrained by time may not be able to effectively figure out how an infinite being (who is not constrained by time), relates to time. Rob Bell gives an illustration of how someone in a two dimensional world would have no idea what they were looking at if someone from a 3D world entered into their 2D situation. Something similar could be analogous here. This all makes me wonder whether it's acceptable and rational to plead mystery in some instances (this being one of them) rather than create complex systems which will inevitably leave us with more questions than answers.
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