When I Was a Child... (Part 1)

Prelude - Waking Up

    I have been asleep for some time now.  Tired of the same questions and frustrated with the same answers, I retreated within myself, tucked away from the worlds unrelenting gaze.  I have spent so much of the past year tearing down the broken foundations of my life that I forgot what it felt like to build something new.  I forgot that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of blind confidence in myself that can make me capable of doing great things, and instead settled for a life 'in neutral'.  I grew fearful of taking chances, of investing in the future and hoping for the best.  I tried so hard to protect what little good I had left in me, that I let it wilt in the darkness.  This is not what life is supposed to be and I am capable of so much more.  It is time for me to slip the chains of my protective slumber and start building something that I can once again be proud of.

Reflections

    As most of you will know, I just came back from a three week trip to Europe.  I am not exactly sure how I managed to plan and execute something like this in the state I was in, but somehow I found the smallest bit of initiative and seized on it.  It is almost impossible for me to hold the entire trip in my head all at once simply because far too much happened and I was completely unprepared for the sheer volume of experiences I had.  What I want to focus on here though, are the personal insights I had while on my own.  I place these in no particular order because I feel like these insights have always been within me, they just didn't have a way to get to the surface.  Rather than try and dump it all out in one post, I will break when my brain needs time to 'cool off' and continue when I feel inspired.  Unlike my other posts, I am speaking solely from the heart here, so expect a fair amount of speculation and assumption to be mixed in with the rational.

Reflection #1: Emotions are Illusory

    "Whoa there", you might be thinking, "That doesn't sound like a particularly healthy conclusion at all!"  Have you ever had a moment where just one piece of information turns utter despair into complete elation?  The doctor calling to say that, even though a relative was rushed to the hospital, it was a total false alarm.  Receiving a bill that you can't afford to pay only to get an unexpected bonus at work.  Our life is filled with these moments on both the large and small scale.  If despair is really a tangible thing with real power over us, how can it ever be so quickly pushed aside?  On the other side, how can a lifetime of happy feelings be torn to shreds by one event?  How can 20 years of fulfilling marriage be completely erased by a single act of infidelity?  If that happiness was real, like an emotional bank account, wouldn't the many years of "happiness deposits" more than pay for a single painful withdrawal?  If only our emotions were so rational and orderly!  In reality, our emotions are what our brains use to express complex concepts in ways that we can interpret and act upon.  Our consciousness can still choose to either acknowledge or ignore those emotions, and one of the great struggles of life is to continually refine the amount of control we exert.  Don't ever confuse, for instance, having a feeling of anger for being angry.  Anger can be used to steel our resolve to do good just as easily as it can be used as an excuse to cause destruction.  The emotion is the illusion, an echo in our head, it is our decisions in response to that emotion that are real.  This does not mean however, that our feelings are irrelevant (far from it!), but they must be placed in the proper context.  My personal struggles in the wake of my divorce are a clear testament to the fact that emotions can overwhelm even the most guarded of us.  Despite all appearances though, we are in control.  Emotions are not gods that have to be appeased to avoid punishment, they are simply advisors that we can either choose to listen to or ignore.

    Of all the emotions we experience, fear is the most pervasive and insidious.  While fear lies at the heart of many of our struggles, it has the ability to disguise itself, blinding us to its presence: 

• The bold are afraid of being overshadowed, so they make themselves stronger at the expense of others.
• The meek are afraid of being hurt, so they hide themselves away.
• The lover is afraid of being alone, so they seek out anyone they can.
• The intellectual is afraid of being wrong, so they overreach their knowledge.
• The believer is afraid of the unknown, so they cling even more tightly to their beliefs.
• The unbeliever is afraid of the power of belief, so they lash out against it.

I wrote that list from the third person perspective, but in a curious trick of the subconscious, ended up describing - for the most part - myself and my own fears (at least a subset of them).  I am most of these and much more.  The insight here is that all of these fears are self-serving.  They only exist to perpetuate themselves and 'burrow further' into our minds.  A fear of rejection leads someone to retreat into themselves, which leads to loneliness, which leads to a loss of self-confidence, which heightens the fear of rejection, and so on ad infinitum.  These cycles play over and over again until all we have left is that fear, and sometimes we are afraid to even give that up (it is the devil you know, after all).

    My trip was filled with many 'negative' events.  I got forced off of the subway in Paris by the police (funny story, in retrospect), paid $400 for a train pass that turned out to be useless, had countless people be rude or inconsiderate to me, had to deal with frustrating public transportation, cope with feelings of loneliness and isolation, destroyed both my knees in the first week, got eaten alive by mosquitoes for another week, got rained out at the opera just to name a few.  What surprised me was not that these things happened, but that they didn't really bother me and I never had a negative attitude about them.  Any time something bad happened, I just kept spinning it as a positive.  I was utterly determined to have a good time on this trip, and nothing was going to prevent that from happening.  Anyone who knows me and my cynical ways will probably understand how unusual this is for me.  What I realized though, was that these events, while certainly not good, added just as much richness to my experience as any of the truly spectacular things I did.  I did get charged 40€ by the Paris police for (unintentionally) 'disrespecting their laws', and while I do think the rule was designed to take advantage of tourists, I didn't allow myself to feel victimized.  I certainly did not want to part with the money, but now I get to talk about the most expensive subway ride of my life.  I could not control what happened to me, but I could control how I chose to perceive it.  I made a conscious decision to be happy no matter what came my way, and was astonished by how radically different my outlook became.  The cynic in me was shouting (shouting!) to stay on guard and use these frustrations as a shield.  All of my instincts tried to tell me that I was setting myself up, that I was letting my guard down, that I was going to be in danger.  It wasn't until I tossed them aside that I realized those instincts were preventing me from recognizing the very happiness I trying to protect.  I am not so delusional to think that this approach will protect me from the inevitable pain and losses of life, but the riches I reap in the process will more than pay for it.  Genuine happiness can be manufactured, if only we have the courage to let go of our fears.

    The real world, with all of its perils, can never hurt us as much as we can hurt ourselves.  We are sitting at the controls of our own life, and no one can push those buttons (for good or for ill) as well as we can.  Fear, like all emotions, is illusory and can be controlled.  Years of personal neglect may have given it a fierce momentum, but just like planets can be stopped by the gentle and persistent force of gravity, so to can emotions be eventually brought under proper control.  This is the great adventure of life, and I am just now taking my first steps on that journey.

Next Reflection: "You Can't Win What You Don't Put in the Middle"

Naturalism, Materialism, and Empiricism (oh, my!)

If we are searching for the potential existence of god, how are we likely to find him?

A strong philosophical worldview should be where any real journey toward truth starts, as it is important to consistently view all information through the same lens. How can we be truly objective, for instance, if we use different criteria to judge different sides of an argument? Forcing consistency ensures that all facts are being evaluated in a similar manner, standardizing comparisons between different sets of observations. This is not to say that worldviews can never change – this should be both expected and encouraged – but when they are changed, they should void all previously held conclusions. If we have very well defined models, identifying and compensating for a change will be straightforward as we can simply follow the logical chain of reasoning. If our models are more ambiguous however, we will drift along like a boat without an anchor, making no real progress toward any meaningful answers. Although there are many different areas of philosophy, I break down my own personal worldview into pillars focusing on the nature of the universe, the fundamentals of existence, and the nature of truth/knowledge.

The first supporting pillar of my worldview focuses on the essential essence of the universe. In other words, what is behind the vastness and complexity that we see all around us? The question to ask here is: “When we get down to the fundamental truths of the universe, are we dealing with natural or supernatural explanations?” Do we expect to find the same physical truths under every rock, or do we eventually hit a point where we have to look outside of our universe for an explanation? At first glance, it might seem impossible to answer this question without first addressing the existence of the supernatural – the very question I am setting out to answer. After all if god does not exist, then considering anything but natural explanations is a wasted exercise. The problem here, of course, comes in the absolutist phrasing of my question, allowing for only two mutually exclusive answers. Be very careful with philosophy in this regard, as things are rarely so clear cut. If a certain way of thinking tends to illicit such unrealistically polarized conclusions, the weakness most likely rests with the model itself, not the facts used within it. Anyone claiming that their particular philosophy is ‘absolute truth’ has to struggle with subsequently disproving every other philosophy that came before it. The intangible nature of logical models makes this an almost impossible task, as contradictory ideas can literally spring up overnight. Even if absolute certainty is not possible, we still have to fight the very human tendency to try and see the world via clearly delineated categories. Water is either hot or cold, the light is either on or off, and the sun has either risen or it has set. It would be strange to say that the water is 63.4°F or that the sun has reached 22% of its apex, even though we would be communicating far more information than before. We are less inclined to think of things in shades of grey, and we are left with an internal struggle to be comfortable with uncertainty. In the The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan revealed just how dependant on certainty we really are:

“Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.”

While we cannot legitimately speak about certainties, we can still talk about things in terms of probability. I personally believe that all of the universe can be explained through natural means, a belief called Metaphysical Naturalism, but I cannot prove this fact. I have not personally witnessed all that there is to witness, and there are explanations that elude even our greatest scientific minds. If I were to base my conclusions off of Metaphysical Naturalism, I would be making the same faith-based leaps that theists make when discussing god. Without conclusive evidence, I cannot construct a properly skeptical worldview with Metaphysical Naturalism at its heart. Instead, I must compromise a bit and adopt the weaker form of Naturalism called Methodological Naturalism. Put briefly, it is my view that natural explanations should be expected for all observations, and any investigation should start there first. I believe that even if we cannot provide a good natural explanation, one should be expected at some point in the future. Those who believe in supernatural explanations, in my opinion, need to demonstrate that there will never be any potential natural models before they can defend their position. In The Language of God, Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project and devout Christian, warns that:

“…caution is needed when inserting specific divine action by God in this or any other area where scientific understanding is currently lacking. From solar eclipses in olden times to the movement of the planets in the middle ages, to the origins of life today, this “god of the gaps” approach has all too often done a disservice to religion (and by implication, to God, if that’s –possible). Faith that placed God in the gaps of current understanding about the natural world may be headed for crisis if advances in science subsequently fill those gaps. Faced with incomplete understanding of the natural world, believers should be cautious about invoking the divine in areas of current mystery, lest they build an unnecessary theological argument that is doomed to later destruction.”

Simply pointing out a gap in our understanding is not enough. Believers must also be able to demonstrate why that particular gap can never be filled by science. If a gap has a chance to be filled, as in a natural answer could be found, then there is simply no need to add the further complexity of including the supernatural. This pillar will help keep my conclusions fact-based while still leaving god as a potential answer.

Although Naturalism provides guidance on how the universe works, we still need a model to describe its constitution. When existence is broken down into its smallest parts, what kind of substances do we find? Can consciousness, sentience, cognition, matter, energy, and light all be defined with the same set of physical components, or are there more ethereal elements of existence that are not readily observable? The answer to this particular question is important because it sets boundaries around what we are allowed to consider. As with Naturalism, I hold the personal belief that the entirety of existence can be broken down into an interaction of physical matter with physical phenomena. This particular philosophy is called Materialism, and it is as equally improvable as Metaphysical Naturalism. As before, I have to sacrifice my personal belief and adopt the much more open-ended worldview of Dual-Aspect Monism. Dual-Aspect Monism simply states that the mental and physical are both two aspects of the same substance. This philosophy does not try to say whether that common substance is natural or not, just that consciousness – or the human condition, if you will - can be explained with the same techniques used to describe physical phenomena (like electrical impulses and cell structure). While not ruling out the supernatural entirely, Dual-Aspect Monism forces logical consistency between biological facilities and mental experience. If consciousness was completely separate from its physical machinery – if it were surreptitiously placed there by god, for instance – then it would not be affected by changes to the brain. Anyone who has ever taken prescription drugs, alcohol, or suffered head trauma will speak to the power that the physical state of the brain has over how we experience the world. Whatever explanation is lurking behind sentience needs to be explained with a model that takes this physical dependency into account.

With a model for explaining both the makeup and nature of existence in place, we now need to ensure that we have a consistent way of evaluating the arguments made within this framework. When faced with tough decisions, we all have different standards that we use to determine what conclusion best fits our view of the world. Are observation and experience the only appropriate tools to use, or can intuition, revelation, and a priori reasoning be used as well? It should come as no surprise that I tend to side with observable and externally verifiable statements, which is referred to as Empiricism. I do not completely rule out intuition, revelation, or personal authority as potential sources of truth, but the imprecise nature of these claims makes them less reliable than their rigorously tested counterparts. It is also important to note that the amount of evidence required to substantiate a claim should scale in direct proportion to both its probability and significance. If I want to know the score of a football game, I would have no problem trusting the word of a complete stranger on the street. After all, the risks are low in this case and the information is not significant enough to warrant further research. When it comes to buying a house or some other major life decision though, I want to see it for myself and even the word of trusted friends is usually not enough (on its own) to ease my mind. In a similar vein, while it is easy to believe the stranger with the football score, what if he also claimed that aliens attacked the stadium at halftime? The sheer improbability of this new claim would make you instantly doubt his word, and you would either disregard his testimony outright or seek out corroborating evidence. If god truly exists, then the stakes of finding out the truth cannot be greater. God would represent a magnificently complex and singularly important entity and the ramifications of his potential existence require very compelling evidence to support it. Whenever I am given personal testimony, revelation, or intuition as evidence, I will always ask for externally verifiable ways to stress the validity of those claims.

I assume that anyone holding opposing worldviews will now start accusing me of rigging the game against god. There is some validity in this, as the natural, physical, and observable slant to my models puts the burden of evidence squarely on the supernatural side of the argument. Unless I find compelling evidence to move toward a supernatural explanation, I will always default to a natural one. This is both intentional and appropriate, in my opinion. Those claiming to know god are the ones who are making extraordinary claims and they should be held accountable to build a supporting case. If the evidence presented is not compelling, why should I believe in god? There is the tendency among believers to want to flip this argument around, asking for a reason not to believe (see Pascal’s Wager). Just like the strangers claims of an alien attack at the football game, it is not our job to explain why he is wrong. We are naturally skeptical at first, and it is his job to present a case compelling enough to make us listen to his story. All I ask is that we take a similarly prudent look at the evidence for god. If the case is not strong enough, there is simply no reason to believe in his existence.

The Nature of God

The discussion that is developing around my last post “Can Believers Really Afford to be Subtle?” has taken an interesting turn that I feel would benefit from a new post and discussion thread. In my opinion, much of the debate around literalism versus relativism boils down to a fundamental disagreement about the nature of god and by extension his revelation to humanity. The god who demands absolute obedience to a strict moral code is, after all, very different than the god who wants us to simply be genial and tolerant to each other. As an agnostic, I have my own ways of determining the potential nature of the supernatural even if I am not convinced that such a being exists. There are limitations to what I can consider though, as I have to be careful to avoid ideas that require faith (non-evidence-based belief) one way or the other. In light of this, I am very comfortable admitting that those whom god has chosen to have a personal relationship with would probably have a more robust means with which to quantify the essential qualities of his existence. If that is the case, it seems that there is much we can learn from each other. I would like to share my own impoverished viewpoint, ask questions about the two Christian views that have been shared in other discussions, and then see how those opinions impact interpretation of scripture. I think that exploring the depths of our collective view of god will reveal our deeper reasons for siding with either relativism or absolutism.

Before stepping into my main point, I did want to address and then push aside the unavoidable problem of omnipotence. An all powerful god is free to do anything he desires, including obscuring his own true nature from our view. God could have manifested the Bible as a grand cosmic joke, the absolute standard of truth, or just a neat story. Omnipotence makes any of these possible, so we need to be careful to keep our definition of god logically grounded. When we are talking about the god of eternity, we need to respect the infinite power that our definition ascribes to him. Characters like Jesus make it all too tempting to put a human face on god, granting him a much more terrestrial context than is appropriate. God cannot be defined as all-powerful while simultaneously being restricted with a human personality. If we are going to stay rationally grounded in this discussion, we need to make the assumption that the true nature of god is greater than any revelation passed down to us. While this might be a problem for someone trying to determine the actual nature of god, we are not so impeded. If the Christian god is the one true god, then we only need to discuss his revealed nature. The true nature of god will forever remain out of our reach, as that would require us to transcend our universe and observe god directly. In lieu of this unlikely event, I propose we treat the revealed nature of god as a reasonable facsimile for the real thing. This will allow us to have a rational conversation without having to worry about an infinite regression of ‘what if’ scenarios that simply demonstrate the points already stipulated above. Yes, an omnipotent god could have pulled the wool over our eyes, yes he can make reality be completely different that we are able to observe, and yes he could be laughing at me and my naturalist sympathizers. These points are all legitimate, but they do not advance the discussion in any meaningful way. This is made even more obvious when the argument is turned on its head to attack religion. What if god really despises faith? What if he setup religion as a way to test our resolve? This is an equally unassailable argument that also goes nowhere. In the end, I choose to believe that there is order to the universe and that we are capable of understanding at least a part of it. This could be a complete delusion on my part, but I am not about to start looking for divine conspiracies around every corner. Omnipotence might push the true nature of any potential god out of our reach, but we can still have a reasonable discussion about the nature he chooses to reveal to us.

My Personal View
With the omnipotence objection pushed aside, I want to briefly share my own personal view on god. I believe that god, if he exists, has a very defined and predictable nature. If we use a rough version of the Christian definition of god’s powers, then we should be able to look to his creation for some indication of what he values. The Bible even agrees with this point, stating that “His [god’s] eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:18-21). The Christian tradition clearly tells us that we can look at the universe around us for some signs of god’s “divine nature”, and I whole-heartedly endorse this concept. Just like any artist or engineer, we evaluate the creators by the artifacts they produce. Are they precise or chaotic? Do they value beauty or functionality? Is their work derivative or unique? As the ultimate creator, what does the universe tell us about god’s nature? The mathematically perfect nature of physics shows us he values logic and precision. The unimaginably elegant forces of evolution show us that he values simplicity over complexity. The vastness of space and its staggering age shows that human beings are but a small piece of his cosmic puzzle. If god exists, we are tremendously egotistical to think that we play any significant part in his grand plan. Why would god wait billions of years before ushering human beings, his supposed masterpiece, onto the stage of existence? Why go through countless cycles of creation and destruction if the rise of Homo sapiens was really all that mattered? Any god that values simplicity, elegance, and precision would not have created a universe with such waste. God could have easily manifested a much more reasonable ‘localized’ universe for humans to inhabit. The fact that he choose to create the grandness of our current 40 Billion light-year wide universe can only show that either god is inconsistent (his values shift), that we are not important (why the waste?), or that there is no god at all (no purpose or plan). The evidence has not shown me a clear path to reduce these options, but it should already be clear that all three are in opposition to the traditional Christian view of god. In the end, I expect any god to be far greater than anything we are able to imagine. I would even go so far as to say that the obfuscation probably works both ways as well. When was the last time you gave serious consideration to the billions of skin cells you lose every day? Why would god, who is defined as being so much greater in scale than we are to our individual cells, really care about what happens to us? Perhaps we are just part of his divine machinery, no more important than a single carbon atom is to the functioning of a human body. I am digressing a bit here, but I find it interesting when people talk about god as being infinite in one breath and then use their next breath to talk about their “personal relationship” with him. This seems a bit presumptuous to me, requiring a magnificently provincial view of god. A believer might be tempted to retort with a message of god’s infinite grace and compassion. This is certainly within the scope of omnipotence, but requires enormous vanity when put in the context of the scaling problem mentioned above. If a supernatural creator exists, his creation shows us that he is most likely rational, precise, and well beyond the capability of some ancient desert nomads to define.

So with my stake placed firmly in the ground, I wanted to explore two Christian views of god that lead to either relativism or absolutism. I am going to have to take some liberties here, as I cannot possibly deduce all details of a believers worldview based off of a single issue alone. Rather than try to construct a bottom-up argument like I did for my own views, I think we will all be better served by taking the opposite approach and working backwards. I will do my best to try and construct the most reasonable model of god based off of the assumption that first absolutism then relativism is correct.

Absolutism
What are the qualities of a god that requires absolute obedience to a strict moral code? The first and most obvious fact is that this god has to be extremely detailed oriented and almost obsessively interested in the entirely insignificant actions of absolutely meaningless creatures. This might sound harsh, but remember the scale difference we reviewed earlier. God has to peer way down into the cosmos to even catch a glimpse of earth, and this isn’t even counting the effort (if that word has any meaning at the supernatural level) associated with continuously monitoring the actions of all of its inhabitants. This would be similar to trying to continuously keep track of the exact location of every grain of sand on earth. Even if task were possible, it is the odd individual indeed who would bother with such trivialities. God has gone through much more trouble on a staggeringly grander scale, so calling his interest in us uncanny or obsessive is not being polemic in my opinion. With an all powerful being oddly interested in our species, it is reasonable to wonder what his intentions are. In this particular case, god is primarily concerned with establishing a set of moral rules for us to live and be judged by. We have now taken his obsession and extended to even stranger heights. The absolutist god is not happy with simply observing humanity; he must sit in judgment over each action we take. What can be his motivation behind these rules? Do they exist for our own protection or perhaps to ensure the happiness of our species? God could both protect us and make us happy with the snap of his finger, so this does not seem to be the case. If there is a greater purpose behind this moral code, then why not simply force us to comply? Since god left our free will intact, the only logical purpose behind these rules can be to demonstrate our obedience to him. Why should god care about our obedience? Why is he going so far out of his way to try and control us? Modern leaders who use their power to demand obedience are called dictators, and those who resort to force are called tyrants. The Old Testament is rife with examples of god violently punishing those who disobey, so I feel that we can reasonably classify the absolutist god as tyrannical. One last question to ask is how god chose to reveal his moral code to us. This is a critical question, because it reveals much about his nature. The more benevolent god chooses to be, the more obvious and compelling he would make his revelation. He would make the rules simple, easy to understand in any culture/time, comprehensible by any child, and completely unambiguous. Since god is capable of such a perfect revelation, anything less can only be interpreted as his intentional muddling of our understanding. So what can be said about the absolutist god’s actual revelation? Without turning this into a larger discussion, I think it is very safe to say that the Bible is far from the perfect revelation that I outlined above. Modern Christians have to rely on translations, ancient documents, transcriptions, and human influence over their sacred texts. The net result is a document whose real meanings are hard to discern in some cases and outright cryptic in others. The absolutist does not have as much ground to make up here as the relativist though, as they traditionally try to add as little human interpretation as possible. The very fact that there are multiple different interpretations of the Bible within the branches of the Christian church points out that even believers cannot always see eye to eye. Why would god not better equip us to obey him? Where does this leave us with regards to the nature of the absolutist god? The unfortunate conclusion is a grim one. The absolutist god seems to be obsessed over humanity in the same way that a child is obsessed with an ant farm. We are meaningless when compared to god, but he still seems interested in tapping on the glass to watch us scurry around in fear. God appointed himself supreme judge, established rules that human beings would naturally find hard to obey, and then haphazardly revealed those rules to us. This might all be bad in its own right, but we still have to consider the fact that god went WAY out of his way to set this all in motion. All in all, the absolutist god seems rather petty, caring far too much about events that are simply irrelevant to a being of his scope and power.

Before continuing on to the relativistic viewpoint, I wanted to clear up a few potential objections. I realize that I am anthropomorphizing god a bit, but I am doing it only for literary effect. An omnipresent god does not actually have to travel great distances to see us, nor is it possible for him to “go out of his way” to do something. The point I am making there is not the effort involved but the ludicrous nature of the task. There is also the issue of labeling god’s actions with human moral terms. This was done again for the sake of being concise, as my argument was less focused on morality than on reasonability. The Christian definition of god makes him the personification of good. Technically speaking, anything he does is automatically considered good; even if it goes against the moral code he put in place for humanity. I feel that we can push this objection aside for the same reasons we did with the omnipotence problem though. God can choose to act in whatever way he wants, but either he is consistent or he is not. The Bible says that god is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), so he is either perpetually chaotic or consistently good (he can’t be evil by definition). Since a perpetually chaotic god is impossible to understand, we can only reasonably talk about the consistently good god. The last potential objection has to do with the concept of grace. I anticipate the believer using god’s supposed grace as an indicator that he is not tyrannical. The thought goes that god gives believers some sin cushion, allowing them to occasionally break the rules without suffering eternal damnation. Even if we stipulate that god has such mechanisms in place, it is still difficult to call it grace. Remember that god put us in the position to potentially suffer in the first place, so it is hardly gracious to relax his own rules. We do not call the bank robber kind because he let half of his hostages go. If he were really kind, he would not have placed innocent people in harms way in the first place.

Relativism
What are the qualities of a god that only asks for our love? The relativist god is just as uncannily interested in humanity as the absolutist god, so all of my points regarding his somewhat obsessive nature still apply. Why is this god so interested in us? The big difference here is that this god cares less about moral codes and more about having a personal relationship with each and every human. How is such a relationship possible? What purpose can it serve for god? Given the scope differences, any relationship will be invariably one directional. We have nothing to offer god and he has potentially everything to offer us. Although we will never know the truth behind god's motivations, I think it is safe to label his interest in us as benevolent. How can we enter into such a relationship with god? In this case, the answer is less certain. When taken to an extreme, the relativist god has a relationship with us regardless of whether or not we ask for it. We simply live our lives and god accepts us just the way we are. Instead of taking this extreme view though, let us keep our focus on the relativistic god of Christianity and see where that takes us. In this case, we enter into a relationship with god through Jesus. Like the absolutist god, this god has also decided to sit in judgment over humanity. Rather than judge us on adherence to an arbitrary set of moral codes though, we are judged solely on our acceptance of god’s human manifestation. We have the choice to either accept Jesus and receive eternal bliss or reject him and suffer in eternal agony. Without restating them, my objections to the absolutist god appointing himself judge apply to the relativistic Christian god as well. It just seems strange to the point of being unbelievable to think that a being of such greatness would care about us at all. Assuming he does care though, what steps must we take to begin a relationship with Jesus? This is where we turn to the Bible yet again. This particular god is far less interested in the specific details of his revelation than his absolutist counterpart. The primary use that the Bible has in this case is to chronicle the life of Jesus, roughly demonstrating what is needed to form an eventual relationship with him. Since Jesus does not enter the Bible until the New Testament (vague prophecy notwithstanding), it is safe to assume that the relativistic god is not as concerned with nuances. The vast majority of the Bible could be lost forever, and as long as there was enough left to still reveal Jesus, that would be good enough. What strikes me as odd about this is the tremendous amount of “waste” in the Bible. If Jesus is really all that matters, why go through the pretense of the Old Testament? In fact, why let the events of the Old Testament transpire at all? If Jesus is all that matters for humanity, why let humans walk the earth for 100,000 years before revealing him to us? The only possible answers to this are that either god did not care about those pre-Old Testament humans or that Jesus is not the only way. If god cared about these ancient humans, why didn’t he reveal himself to them? If Jesus is the only way, why would god reveal himself in one way in the Old Testament and another in the New Testament? If we are sticking with our assumption that god is benevolent, we can only concluded that Jesus is not the only answer. This is the inevitable peril that moderated relativism falls into. An omnibenevolent god is going to reveal himself to everyone in the most perfect way that fits their worldview. Any attempt to restrict this perfect revelation also restricts his benevolence because it requires god to place the value of his arbitrary rules over the welfare of an individual. A truly benevolent and omnipotent god has the ability to touch each human soul without the need for dogma and rules to define him. While the Christian version of the relativistic god is not tenable in my opinion, we can roll him up as another aspect of the truly relativistic deity. What can we say about the nature of this god? We can say that, although he is very strangely attached to our species, it does not seem to be to our detriment. This god accepts us all as we are and understands that we are entirely imperfect and incapable of ever understanding him. He still chooses to get involved and care about our lives, although it is entirely unclear what specific impact his involvement has (if any). In the end, the relativistic god can be likened to a congenial old grandfather. He loves us deeply, but is too different to truly relate to. We feel comforted by his presence, but in the end, he only plays a peripheral role in our lives. While this is preferable to the tyrannical alternative, the relativistic god seems to too much like a toothless tiger to be worth worshipping.

Revelation
It should be clear now how our view of god impacts our view of scripture. The absolutist, looking to appease their strict and legalistic god, will always err on the side of literal interpretation. Since stepping out of line can potentially mean eternal suffering, the absolutist tends to rely on tradition as a reasonable guide. This invocation of the traditional is what has kept the Church in power for thousands of years. People look to the Church to tell them how to appease god and the Church in turn tries to provide a framework with which to live a holy life. While this can be a very effective way to unite large numbers of people, it also is a recipe for disaster. When the masses stop looking for god on their own and start simply taking the Church’s word at face value, we run the risk of deceivers surreptitiously hijacking the minds of their followers. There are plenty of examples of this deception throughout history, and the absolutist god encourages this by priming believers to unquestioningly obey authority. In the end, the absolutists will be very good at following the dogma of their Church, but they run the risk of blindly following a false revelation. The absolutist will have more answers than questions, and their journey to enlightenment will be hit-or-miss based solely on whether or not they happened to accept the correct belief structure.

Does the situation look any different for the relativist’s interpretation of scripture? Remember now that their god is not as concerned with the nitty-gritty details of his Bible. The major points about Jesus are the only real important parts, and the rest is just supporting information. With so much left open, how can god expect us to know if we are living a proper life? Unfortunately for relativists, this is a tough question to answer. Absolutists have the benefit of their moral code to fall back on, but relativists have to rely on a combination of loosely interpreted scripture, societal pressures, gut feelings, and the ‘holy spirit’. This god gives us his approval by gently guiding our feelings, meeting us all as individuals rather than as a collective group. This emphasis on individual thought and critical thinking is certainly a very strong inoculation against any potential manipulation. The relativists will be more likely to embrace the unknown, accept those who are different, and be kind to others. They will be slow to judge and be far less likely to perpetuate social injustices. As with all things though, this independence comes at the cost of being particularly vulnerable to personal bias and fanciful whims. The relativist cannot look toward tradition with the same certainty that the absolutist can, so remaining anchored requires extensive mental discipline. The relativists will always have more questions than answers, and their journey to enlightenment may never be completed.

So what does all this mean for you? I would be very interested to hear about your own views on the nature of god and how you think that impacts your reading of scripture. If your perspective on god is different than my own - and I have to imagine that it will be for at least a few of you - let me know where my logic breaks down. Wherever you fit on the continuum from absolutism to relativism to agnosticism to atheism, I am interested to see how your logical view of god relates to my postulations above. If I have not properly represented your god, tell me where I need to change things and I will endeavor to explore every facet of your ideas.

As always, I appreciate everyone who reads this blog and look forward to any dialog that is produced as a result.

Can Believers Really Afford to be Subtle?

In response to Amber at http://overflowofheart.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-more-biting-my-tongue.html
--------------------------------------------

Very nice post, Amber, welcome to the discussion! Not to echo 'austin mommy', but I think we are of the same mind with regards to this issue. The evidence is just not conclusive enough for an intellectually honest Christian to be able to universally condemn all homosexuals.

Seeing your, and others, answers to this has raised another interesting question in my mind. As believers, you are called to spread and defend the Bible's teachings. That includes the potential task of calling sinners out (in a presumably loving way) with the intent of helping them see the light. If that is the case, where do you draw the line between what you are comfortable taking a stand on and what you would rather just 'let god judge'? I mean, I would expect that you would have no problem (other than general embarrassment) holding a sign that says 'God Hates Rapists', but you would certainly be uncomfortable sitting with the Westboro Baptist Church congregation with a 'God Hates Fags' sign. If homosexuality is indeed a sin, aren't you commanded to stand against that sin with the same certainty that you would with murders, child molesters, or rapists? The Bible is pretty clear on the fact that all sins are equal, so wouldn’t allowing homosexuality (a potential sin) to go unquestioned leave you open to being potentially complicit in a sin? My point here is that I’m not sure that a believer is afforded the same kind of nuanced thinking of a nonbeliever. I have nothing to lose by being slow to judge, since I do not feel that my decisions will be scrutinized against some absolute standard. For the person living in anticipation of an ultimate reckoning by an all-knowing god, it would seem to be much more important to know exactly where the boundaries are. If that is the case, I’m not sure how you can ever feel comfortable in your salvation if there are still unknown sin-traps waiting to strike without your knowledge. Do you really want to get to heaven and then find out that all of those Levitical laws about eating meat and not speaking on the Sabbath were, for instance, actually meant to be enforced? Do you want to suffer in hell for all eternity because you incorrectly assumed that certain concepts in the Bible were merely cultural artifacts? Bringing this back to the topic of homosexuality, I would suggest that a Christian is obligated to take a stand on the issue one way or the other, as they are obligated to know all actions that are potentially displeasing to god. Unless you have homosexual tendencies, I suspect that the sense of urgency to take a side on this issue is simply not that great. If you never intend on practicing homosexuality, what difference – besides the salvation of potentially homosexual friends and family – does it make what the actual truth is; you are safe from judgment either way. Take this same example to other topics like gossip, white lies, drinking, overeating, or any other number of more mundane moral grey areas, and the need to take a stand becomes a bit more relevant. We both know people who would call any of those items on the list a condemnable sin, and if you have god’s judgment hanging over your head, doesn’t it become critically important to know if they are correct?

So can Christians be so subtle in their evaluation of sin? I am not asking for you to judge any one individual, as you are commanded to specifically avoid that, but I am asking about the sinfulness of these morally grey areas. Can you really be a comfortable Christian and have any moral ambiguity? If you are, in fact, forced to make these decisions, what criterion do you use? How do you resolve questions in the Bible that are poorly explained, especially when they are issues of salvation?

Also...

As a side note, you read the story of Lot correctly, and it is one of the more despicable stories in the Bible that people simply gloss over. The two men that Lot was protecting were angels, so he thought it better to let his daughters get raped than two messengers from heaven. Why he is commended for protecting two supernaturally powerful beings with the degrading of his helpless daughters is beyond me. There is no cultural ambiguity in that story, except for the fact that women were basically treated like property in most of the Bible. This practice is never questioned in the Bible, just like slavery. You can even make an argument that the Bible, by creating laws to govern the slave trade, is complicit in such a heinous act.

The Morality of Homosexuality

This is in response to the series of Blog entries by Matt Chewning on the topic of the morality of homosexuality at http://chewningjourney.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-last-blog-on-homosexuality.html

I apologize in advance for the format I used here, this was originally written as a direct response to Matt (hence the ‘I’s and ‘You’s), and I was being very informal in my writing style as a result. I also wrote it in a single plane ride to Buffalo as a total stream of consciousness, so I get a little herky-jerky with my points. Rather than go through and make it more refined though, I opted to keep the original feel, warts and all.
--------------------------------------------

Matt,

I generally shy away from the weakly moderated world of blogs, but the temptation to respond to your homosexuality posts was just too strong to resist. I don't know any of the commentators, so I apologize in advance for sticking my nose in where it might not be particularly welcome. With all that said, I’ll stick it in anyways :-)

First off, I appreciate your willingness to admit that you are potentially wrong here, as that is not a quality I see a lot in true believers. Honest inquiry should be a part of all of our lives, even those who purport to have a direct pipeline to god. I suspect that some of this skeptical rigor breaks down as we approach what is being referred to in the comments as ‘core beliefs’, but that is a topic for another day. Let me move on to my main points…

To make this easier, I would like to restate the beginning of your line of reasoning in a bit more of a condensed format:

1. Practiced (not repressed) Homosexuality is a type of Sexual Immorality
2. Sexual immorality hinders sanctification
3. God desires for us all to be sanctified
4. Practicing Homosexuality works against god, and in-so-doing runs the risk of being a condemnable sin (I do not want to overstate this one, as you already said that homosexuals are not all necessarily hell bound)

I hope I have it close enough, feel free to point out where I may have misstated things.

My first comment has to do with the presumption that Homosexuality is immoral. I realize that you weren’t necessarily trying to get into details on every point, but this seems too important to put out there as simply a brute fact. The article you referenced did bring up some of those points, but I guess I was more interested in what you personally found compelling. In what feels like a sort of half justification, you did hint around at the fact that homosexuals are performing sexual acts outside of marriage. The logic follows that even if homosexual sex itself was permissible, it is happening in a ‘non-sanctioned’ manner, so it is still immoral. This is a rather sinister catch-22. Conservative Christianity makes marriage a requirement for sexual intimacy, denies homosexuals the right to marry, and then condemns them for not being celibate. The game has clearly been rigged, and it isn’t a surprise that many homosexuals simply choose not to play by the Church’s rules. If the reasoning behind this view was as clearly stated in the Bible as say idolatry, I could understand the hard-line stance. After all, if someone was born to be more prone to idol worship than average, the Church would still condemn the practice. The case just isn’t that compelling for Homosexuality though. All of the supposed pro/anti homosexuality scriptures that I have ever read are ambiguous at best. My personal opinion is that this has far less to do with Biblical authority and more to do with the Church’s historical resistance to modernity. The Church has embraced Nazism, denied the heliocentric model of the solar system, burned progressive women as witches, and slaughtered whole nations on similarly speculative claims. While the Church does change eventually, it is a tiresome process to behold. This point has already been made by others, so I won’t belabor it. From the standpoint of logical consistency though, it is important to demonstrate the truth of foundational facts before erecting a rational edifice on top of them.

One other small comment I wanted to make has to do with the general view of scripture as authoritative. I can understand that, as a believer, you are far more willing than I am to accept the divine origins of the Bible, and it is not my intention to try and disabuse you of this belief (at least not today ;-). Assuming that the Bible can be used to ferret out God’s desires, you still have the problem of interpretation. No matter how much of a literalist you choose to be, the words still have to pass through millions of neural interpreters before they can coalesce into a meaningful concept for you to understand. You may choose to do whatever you want with this concept, but it has already been tainted by the dirty water of your brain long before your conscious mind presents it to you for deliberation. These thoughts were subject to all of the potential biases and misconceptions that come with our somewhat quirky cognitive systems. My point here is that we are all very unreliable interpreters of information, and we rely on preexisting belief to drive a lot of our current understanding (see confirmation bias and motivated reasoning). As our prefrontal cortex – the ‘smart’ part of our brain that differentiates us from other animals – is a very recent evolutionary invention, we are still not really good at using it. More often than not, we unwittingly fall back on our older and more primitive reflexive system that tends to drive us to make similar conclusions over and over again by either ignoring conflicting evidence or rationalizing it away. The scientific method exists for this very reason. Since human beings cannot be trusted to be objective in even simple circumstances and with deliberate effort, elaborate steps such as double-blinding must be taken to force impartiality on us. Anyone claiming to have the way to read the Bible would have to first demonstrate that they have taken great pains to overcome this innate human weakness. The fact that there are countless interpretations of the Bible spanning countless sects speaks to the near impossibility of this feat. If there was truly a correct way to read the Bible, I would expect that the continuous effort poured into Biblical studies would show a convergence of ideas. In reality though, what we see is far closer to the effect typically associated with specious models. Rather than a demonstrable convergence of thought, we see ideas spinning off in all directions at all speeds with continual divergences. Churches split, religions schism, denominations subdivide ad infinitum. The claim that any one of these particular examples of chaos just happens to be the right one is a claim that requires extraordinary evidence to back it up.

From the perspective of a nonbeliever, the Bible is filled with many falsehoods, inconsistencies, and just plain weirdness. The popularity of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam make the obvious point that these problems are not fatal, or at the very least, these problems can be explained away through some clever exegetical jujitsu. Why is all of this important? Well, when you start talking about ‘high views’ and ‘low views’ of scripture, you make it sound like there is a cut and dry way to read and interpret such a document. Even if the Bible was written with true academic dispassion – which is so very far from the truth – the supernatural nature of many of its claims leave huge grey areas for people to insert their own personal and improvable claims. There isn’t even agreement over the so-called ‘core values’ of faith, as I can easily point to groups that run the gambit on every theological idea imaginable. The further they get from your own personal ‘core values’ the more likely you are to brand them as fringe or even cultish in some cases. It is certainly your right to differentiate yourselves from those who you disagree with, but the criterion to make that distinction is wholly your own. Whatever factors brought you to religion (family, friends, community, etc.), were powerful enough to instill a lasting belief structure within you. Now that these beliefs are fully integrated into your thought process, the momentum generated by your reflexive brain will make it extremely difficult to step back and be truly objective.

So, you might be wondering what this has to do with the original point regarding homosexuality. My point is simple. You are making judgments about the morality of individual behavior based off of a book that is inconsistently interpreted at best. I would have the same concerns for your interpretation of ‘core values’, so when we start talking about a morally ambiguous topic like homosexuality, you stretch my credulity. I am not demanding that you toss out the Bible, and I respect the personal reverence you have for its teachings. All I am asking is that you take the same hard skepticism that you have in other aspects of your life and apply it to your understanding of the Bible as well. Even if the Bible is the perfect word of god, we are not perfect interpreters by any stretch of the imagination. More harm will come from jumping to conclusions than from patient deliberation. No hate crimes have ever been committed because someone was slow to judge, and no one has ever been ostracized due to conscientious objectivity.

As always, I have a great respect for your willingness to engage in healthy debate, and I look forward to your response. You can never have too many differing opinions when it comes to topics like this, and I really enjoy the different (for me anyways) perspective you bring to the table.

-Brian

The Dangers of Flawed Arguments (Naturalism, Cosmology, and the Bible)

Amber Shomo asked for my response to http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheismintro.html

--------------------------------

Since Rich Deem (the author) conveniently splits his argument into three components, I will share my views in a similar way.

Section 1: The Philosophy of Skepticism and Naturalism

The very first thing that jumped out at me on this page, was Deems lack of subtlety. He is blurring the lines between many different philosophies, and the result is an easily attacked straw man. I figured it would be best to try and condense his argument into some key statements, rather than just give a general response. This will probably create a longer email though, so we'll see how much stamina I have :)

"Most skeptics take pride in their intellectual ability and like to think that they have no 'beliefs'."

Let me start off by saying that the words belief and faith are NOT interchangeable. Belief is the rather benign act of formulating conclusions based on the available information. These conclusions range from the grand (the theory of relativity) to the mundane (which route to take home from work?). The human brain is continually creating and modifying beliefs to suit the stream of information flowing into it. Since we can never know everything at all times, we are forced to make temporary conclusions based off of what seems most likely. Faith, on the other hand, is explicitly defined as a "belief that is not based on proof" (dictionary.com). Faith is the conscious decision to formulate a conclusion despite the absence of evidence. Unlike traditional beliefs, faith-based beliefs are not subject to continual adjustments and modifications from new information. Since evidence was not required to establish the faith, evidence cannot dethrone it either. A skeptic, on the other hand, holds beliefs only as far as they are necessary to test and refine a viewpoint. These beliefs grow stronger and weaker as new evidence presents itself.

"[for the skeptic] first and foremost is that all beliefs are based upon observational evidence...skeptics must rely completely upon physical evidence. The second principle is that skeptics must be logically consistent at all times. In other words, a skeptic may not believe something to be true if it is contradicted by observational evidence. Most skeptics who are atheists believe that all phenomena have naturalistic causes."

This is the core of his argument, and it is also where his missteps become most obvious. Before jumping in though, it is necessary to define some terms which Deem jumbled together under the banner of 'skeptic' (for the sake of neutrality, these have been pulled these from Wikipedia):

Empiricism - The theory emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

Logical Positivism - A school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions in epistemology.
Methodological Naturalism - The view that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, and repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality.
Metaphysical Naturalism - The belief that the natural world (i.e. the universe) is all that exists and, therefore, nothing supernatural exists.

Since we are clarifying terms, it is best to start off by replacing the fuzzy word skeptic with the much more precise word empiricist. Deem starts by asserting that the empiricist feels that "all beliefs are based upon observable evidence". This is not a bad statement in and of itself, but the absolutism of the word all requires a response. While an empiricist would certainly give much more weight to evidence-based beliefs, that does not come at the cost of ignoring faith-based ones. Deem paints over this group with a rather broad brush, failing to notice the subtlety of thought that this philosophy proposes. I would even argue that many thoughtful religious people are empiricists at heart, preferring to leave as little up to faith as possible.

Deem then states that "skeptics must be logically consistent at all times". Whether or not he is aware of it, Deem just defined an offshoot of Empiricism called Logical Positivism. LP takes empiricism one step further by demanding a rational and logically correlated explanation for everything in existence. While Empiricism allows for the possibility of metaphysical explanations, Logical Positivism does not. LP has the very major problem though of requiring absolute logical consistency, which is almost impossible to achieve with any reasonable certainty. Every time a question is answered, it only brings up the question of the origins of the answer itself. This regression of logic has no end, and it is why LP died out as a mainstream philosophy in the 50s. For Deem to try and represent all Empiricists as Logical Positivists is a gross oversimplification.

Continuing on, Deem switches from skeptics in general to atheists more specifically. Atheists, he argues, "believe that all phenomena have naturalistic causes". Notice that he, once again, lumps naturalists into a single group. There is a major difference between Methodological Naturalism, which is more of an operational form of Empiricism, and Metaphysical Naturalism, which is more of a belief structure. Deem seems to be satisfied with simply leaving this distinction unaddressed.

To summarize, Deem used the general term skeptic to represent Empiricists, which he then misrepresents as Logical Positivists, forces them then to be Naturalists, and then boxes them into Metaphysical Naturalism. What he is really saying is that all Logical Positivists who happen to also be Metaphysical Naturalists have some logical inconsistencies in their belief structure. I agree, but I don't see how this applies to 'skeptics' or 'atheists' in general. To say that his argument lacks subtlety is putting it mildly.

"So despite the lack of observational evidence for a naturalistic cause for the universe, the strong atheist believes that the universe has a naturalistic cause and that there is no god, contradicting the tenet that all beliefs should be based upon observational evidence."

This is Deem's concluding statement on page one, and I'm pretty sure you can see where he goes wrong. Belief is a fundamental human characteristic, much like decision making, observation, memory, and any number of brain activities. The act of belief is not incompatible with ANY human worldview, because holding a worldview at all requires the brain to establish a framework of beliefs with which to differentiate. This is another example of confusing the faith and belief, and I only point it out to illustrate how easy it is to hijack language to falsely bolster an argument.

Now if, once again, we correct Deem and insert the word faith into the quote above, it is still important to notice the term strong atheist. The primary difference between a strong atheist and a weak atheist is one of certainty. A strong atheist will make the declaration "there is no god" with the same certainty that a strong theist will claim that there is one. A weak atheist will state the belief that "there is most likely no god" and leave the door open to the possibility that they are wrong. Strong belief in improvable things always requires faith (non-evidence-based beliefs), and this holds true for both theism and atheism alike. As with all things though, the majority of people on both sides fall into the weak category. Intellectually honest people are open minded enough to recognize the possibility that they might be wrong, even if that possibility shrinks with time and study. Anyone close minded enough to state with certainty that which they cannot prove, is not someone who is likely to have a well developed worldview. Most atheists believe that god does not exist because that is what the culmination of evidence has led them to believe. These are not leaps of faith, but temporary conclusions (beliefs) that have to be made while the deep questions like the origins of the universe remain outside the grasp of humanity. Deem's tendency to gloss over such nuances shines through once again.

In the end, Deem seems to be satisfied with taking an extreme of an extreme and using that to represent all skeptics. This is a classic example of a straw man argument, and he doesn't make an honest attempt to address the realistic differences between believers and non-believers. He did bring up some science in this section, but those were almost off to the side of his main point. Even when stipulating his point of a caused universe, which is far from certain, that does not create any logical inconsistencies in the atheistic worldview. Everyone has to formulate beliefs from a limited amount of knowledge, and atheists are not immune to this. The only difference between an atheist and a theist is the willingness to accept faith-based beliefs, not in the willingness to accept belief itself.

Section 2: The Cosmological Argument

Mixing philosophy and science is always a dangerous proposition. Science values what can be proven via experimentation, while philosophy values what can be rationalized via critical thinking (forgive the oversimplification). While both are required to ponder any of the 'deep questions' of life, combining these two schools should always be handled with care. Deem presents some of the more common arguments that Creationists use to point to a designer, and rather than talk about each of those individually, it seems better to address the approach in general.

One of the big differences between science and religion is in how each approaches truth. Science starts with a blank slate and tries to explain the natural world through an iterative process of gradual observation and testing (the Scientific Method). Religion, on the other hand, assumes it already knows the truth and works backwards to reconcile observation into that truth. This is called a priori reasoning, of which Deem's cosmological argument is just another example. There are certainly things about our universe that modern science cannot explain. Science takes this as an opportunity to hypnotize (the multiverse theory, for instance) and test with the ultimate goal of learning the real truth. A priori arguments seize on this opportunity to insinuate their own particular truth into the mix. The argument goes, "if science cannot provide a good explanation (i.e. the origins of existence), then god MUST be the only answer". This is sometimes referred to as the 'god of the gaps' fallacy, and it simply isn't a logical way to demonstrate truth.

The 'god of the gaps' fallacy was seized upon by middle-brow Creationists looking to hijack science to further their agenda. Most intellectually honest apologists recognize the futility of such an argument, and reject this kind of reasoning outright. John Lennox, an Oxford mathematician and Christian author, called these the bad gaps. These are gaps that science will most likely find answers to in the future, therefore it is foolish to base a belief structure off of them. He goes on to point out that the real gaps come from the philosophical questions of purpose, consciousness, morality, and the spirit. He is wise to deflect the arguments away from science and toward schools of thought less bound to empiricism. While observation can reveal the nature of god, only these kinds of philosophical questions can give any sort of meaning to it all. The trick is, as mentioned before, figuring out how to mix the two together to reveal what is genuine.

Section 3: Why Christianity?

Hoo boy, this section is going to take some unraveling. Deem entitled section 3 as 'Why Christianity?', but it seems that only a small portion of the points are directed at differentiating Christianity from other religions. In an effort to organize this jumble of concepts, my response will be broken out into three subsections.

Can Religious Claims be Tested?

In this initial section, Deem quotes the late Carl Sagan in a 1985 lecture. Sagan is someone I admire quite a bit, so it is somewhat irksome to see his quote used in such an improper way.

"what happened before that [Big-Bang]? There are two views. One is 'Don’t ask that question,' which is very close to saying that God did it...[the other] is an experimental question...and I stress that this is very different from the usual theological approach, where there is never an experiment that can be performed to test out any contentious issue. Here there is one. So we don’t have to make judgments now. All we have to do is maintain some tolerance for ambiguity until the data are in, which may happen in a decade or less." -Carl Sagan


Deem goes on to argue that since the theory of an oscillating infinite universe is debunked (not totally true, but true enough for this context), that the ONLY other explanation is god. If there is a more starkly stated example of the 'god of the gaps' fallacy, I haven't seen it. Deem's own words play this out:

"Therefore, it makes absolutely no sense that the universe is eternal with the characteristics that we observe. We are left with Sagan's first alternative - God did it"

Notice the either/or absolutism here? Deem states that if the one singular explanation that Sagan proposed is not proven to be true, then god is the only other possible alternative. Forgetting the fact that Sagan likened god to not even ask the question in the first place, Deem is missing the much larger point. He goes to great lengths in the previous section to demonstrate the massive improbability and complexity of the natural world. With all of this complexity and all of these unknowns, how can Deem possibility reduce such a sophisticated question like the origins of existence down to a simple either/or scenario? Real life isn't that simple, and the wonders of nature are even less simple than that.

All of this was to try and point out that religious claims are testable by science. Nothing in his previous arguments really pushed this argument forward, but the concept is not a bad one. Regardless of what claims are being made, empirical observation and testing should always be brought to bear. Religion is notorious for being immune to reason though, so this noble effort often proves useless.


The Bible Makes Valid Scientific Predictions


This subsection really should have been left off of Deem's site, as it weakens his general credibility. The proposition that the myths and legends of the Bible make actual scientific claims is laughable. This is an example of cherry-picking a very small number of passages and combining them with the benefit of hindsight. If the Bible is going to be held up as some sort of scientific oracle, then it must be taken as an entire book. I doubt that Deem is ready to argue the scientific validity of staffs turning into snakes, the sun standing still in the sky, virgin birth, walking on water, or any countless numbers of absurd Biblical notions. Most believers will call these miracles and accept them as a matter of faith. Whatever the belief though, these claims cannot be referred to as scientifically valid.

Why Atheism (Naturalism) is not an Adequate Worldview

I feel conflicted as to whether or not it is worth my time to refute his claims here. Unlike the previous sections, which dealt with science and philosophy somewhat dispassionately, Deem apparently wants to end this paper with an irrational and biased attack on naturalism. He continually harps on the purposeless and pointless nature of the atheistic worldview. He moans about how we are not special, we do not have a higher purpose, and that we only exist for one lifetime. How any of these weigh on the truth value of naturalism as a philosophy is completely beyond me. Truth is truth regardless of how it makes us feel, and not liking something isn't a valid argument against its validity. Is his Christian moral viewpoint based off of similarly (but opposite) weak arguments? Does he believe in god simply because it feels good to do so? This is an incredibly fickle means with which to judge, and is subject to far more influences than the moral relativism that he accused natrualism of. There are many more biased statements he makes in this section that are simply not true, but my previous point was the only one worth making. If you want to have a real conversation about the naturalistic foundations of morality, we can have that in parallel.

Well that about wraps up my first thoughts on those three articles. I apologize if I sounded overly critical of Deem, but I really don't like people who try to argue by twisting language and hiding behind misconceptions. I'm not accusing him of doing this overtly, but his broad generalizations confuse what would otherwise be a productive conversation.

So tell me what you think! I was kind of writing this without any context as to what you personally found compelling, so I'm interested to read your thoughts.

The Chewning Conversations: Jesus, Scripture, Creation, etc.

This is the archive of a series of email conversations that Matt Chewning and I had over the span of a few weeks. In this particular exchange, he made the first points and then I responded. For the sake of balance, I would recommend reading his post first, and then my reponse afterwards.

In response to

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 1 Creator

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 2 Revelation
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 3 Historical Evidence
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 4 Prophecy
Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 5 Jesus

Conversation w/ an Agnostic: Part 6 It's Personal (A Relationship, not a Religion)
---------------------------

Matt,

Now onto my general thoughts...Given that you already broke your thoughts out into categories, I will try to group my own responses in a similar manner. I will also ask for a bit of latitude when it comes to some of the assumptions I will make about your viewpoints. I haven't had enough exposure to you to always speak with certainty, so I might be forced to draw an inference or two. Please do not view me as presumptuous and certainly point out those areas where I misconstrue your true beliefs.

Creator:

I have read Lee Strobal's book (The Case for a Creator), so I am familiar with the arguments he lays out there. From the information you provided below, I think it is safe to say that Strobal has had a significant influence over your cosmological viewpoint. Without turning this one point into a review of the book, I would like to start by saying that I was a little disappointed with it's lack of depth. He jumps from topic to topic so quickly that I never felt like I was getting the whole story. Once I actually started researching the science of his claims, I found that there was much more going on than Strobal ever lets on. Rather than pursue real science, The Case for a Creator seems to be happy with simply creating a sense of awe and amazement in the reader. I certainly felt this myself, and it was clear from your "it blows my mind" comment that you felt similarly. In the light of this feeling, existence seems so fantastic and improbable that it is difficult to imagine any answer other than god. This is where it is so very important to keep your critical thinking skills sharp. The argument above can only flourish in an environment of ignorance simply because it is the lack of understanding that produces the feeling of affirmation. A caveman would "have his mind blown" by observing any number of mundane objects we take for granted everyday. A cigarette lighter, for instance, might be imparted some divine qualities (perhaps from a fire god) simply because the primitive does not understand the simple natural and mechanical properties that produce the fire. There are still plenty of things that remain beyond the reach of scientific understanding, and it is in these gaps that modern humans continue to impart divine explanations. Rather than providing evidence to construct a the positive case for god, this logical fallacy simply asserts that god is the de facto answer to everything.

Now I did want to take a bit of a breath there and quickly address the very real number of scientists who hold both a scientific and theistic worldview. Many will point to this as evidence that Steven Jay Gould's NOMA philosophy (Non-Overlapping Magisteria, the theory that science and religion occupy two mutually exclusive spheres of knowledge) is not true. They say that these scientists have reconciled two worldviews such that their science encourages their religious beliefs. I think your quote from Allan Sandage sums up this particular philosophy quite nicely. My personal view is that faith and reason are fundamentally incompatible simply because faith requires belief without evidence. You can still form some of your spiritual beliefs through rational thought, but you will eventually have to yield to the unforgiving force of irrational (non-evidence based) faith. I believe that these scientists who say they can be both are simply not attempting to reconcile the leaps that their faith makes them take.

Of course the entire sum of my cognitive faculties cannot find fault with the beer argument. Perhaps that is because it only takes a few of them to make all arguments sound alike :-)

Revelation:

With regards to my view of the Bible as a book, I have no problem accepting most of what you put forward. The Bible is certainly an important document and it has flourished over many thousands of years and been used by many different societies to setup many different cultures. The Bible does not have to be divine, mystical, or anything else for me to confidently say that it is a book of significance. To take your line of questioning to it's logical next step, I have deliberately tried to avoid drawing any conclusions about the Bible's message. Since you need to believe in the existence of the god of Abraham for the Bible's message to have any real meaning, it seems that my energies are best focused on answering more basic questions. I have dabbled in some studies around things like the historical accuracy of the Bible and the historical likelihood of the Jesus story (the supernatural claims, not his existence as a person), but I wouldn't say that I've plumbed the depths of the subject by any stretch of the imagination.

Since you brought it up, I did want to voice a small complaint that I have when it comes to historical arguments for the literal accuracy of the Bible. I have no problem with the four premises to prove historicity presented in the link you provided although I can imagine more criterion that didn't make his list. Stipulating that those four points (eyewitnesses, corroboration, hostile testimony, maintained through death) are enough to go on, I still feel that the evidence presented is simply not enough. The key thing that is continually overlooked with regards to the authors of the Bible is that they are biased sources. I am not implying that they sought out to mislead people, but I do feel that the message they were trying to communicate was paramount and the hard historical facts were not. The Bible is full of stories that are not meant to be taken literally, and I think that people are all over the map when it comes to where they personally draw this line. The fictional parts of the Bible have many different names like parables, poetry, psalms, but whatever you choose to call them, you do not call them historical. It would be like reading Harry Potter 2000 years from now and claiming that it provides an accurate depiction of life in London. While certain aspects of it are based in reality, the story as a whole is entirely fictitious. It is not reasonable to think that Jesus had no father (how was his lineage traced to David, by the way, if he had no father?), that he walked on water, or that he rose from the dead. These are fantastical claims that require more than a two thousand year old document to prove. If a 2100 year old document claimed that Cesar crossed the Rubicon on a flaming T-Rex, you would demand much more convincing evidence before accepting that as fact. The Bible makes far more improbable claims, and highly improbable things are extraordinarily difficult to prove without direct evidence.

Historical Evidence:

The only way that the number of authors would be interesting is if some of the ones separated by distance wrote mutually-reinforcing documents at the exact same time. This is almost impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy though. What we are left with is the most likely scenario that the cumulative authors of the Bible shared similar cultural backgrounds and similar historical myths. The Jews are ushered onto main stage of the Bible relatively quickly, so I think it is safe to assume that much of the old testament was written by Jews of similar beliefs and traditions. Since their backgrounds were similar and they were all writing about the current state of affairs for their particular culture, it is not too crazy to think that their stories fit together. I also wouldn't discount the number of potential edits and modifications that some of the older documents went through as well. There are excellent 1900 year old manuscripts that helped refine our modern new testament, but that is still thousands of years after much of the old testament was written. There is also the nasty little list of books that were excluded from the modern Bible because the church did not agree with their message. These were just as old and just as authentic as the canonical books, but they had Jesus doing odd things that didn't fit with the consistent message that the church was trying to present. I'm not crying conspiracy here, I'm just saying that the bible evolved into it's current state based off of many thousands of years of trasnscriptions, translations, additions, subtractions, and corrections. To ignore all of this is to vastly oversimplify the lineage of the Bible we have today.

Prophecy:

The new testament authors were well aware of old testament prophecy, and it would have been a trivial task for them to write the Jesus story to "fulfill" them. This is simply the most reasonable scenario to explain the connections between the old and new testaments. If you choose to believe the unlikely truth that Jesus' life was the literal fulfillment of prophecy, you are doing so based off of faith and not evidence.


Manuscripts:
I think I covered this before, but I have no problem accepting that the Bible is a unique document, and the number of manuscripts is just one of those aspects.

As far as my claims to know the nature of an omniscient deity, I probably should clarify that. If you presume the existence of god, then of course you have to accept that he can arbitrarily do anything he wants whenever he wants. This fact, while unavoidable, is also entirely irrelevant. The god of the Christian Church has a defined and predictable nature. He setup the laws of physics, fine tuned creation, manifested a highly ordered universe, and did so through the unimaginably elegant forces of evolution and the big bang. If god exists, his nature is clearly reflected in the care he used to construct reality (as you argued vis-à-vis cosmology). Doesn't it seem somewhat contradictory that a god capable of such brilliant elegance choose a comparatively ham-hocked vehicle such as the Bible for his revelation? If the only response to this is that we can't understand god's plan, then I can only conclude that god is inconsistent in his nature. If god is not consistent, then how can any religion claim to have an established dogma for communicating, appeasing, and understanding god? It doesn't seem to me that you can have it both ways.


Jesus:
I completely agree with C.S. Lewis on this point. Jesus does indeed demand an absolutist opinion, as he leaves no room for half measures. This is another one of those areas that I have not researched with any degree of detail. There is certainly a good argument to be made that you can work from Jesus up to god's existence, but I'm choosing to go from god-down at the moment. My primary reason for this is because I do not want to make the assumption that the Christian revelation of god is the correct one. If I can be reasonably sure that god exists, I will then start to look at the further likelihood that any particular religion is actually correct.


Q: For you, which changed first, your views, perceptions, and beliefs in God, or your rebellion against your original beliefs?
I don't think I can honestly answer that question, because I'm not sure I ever really had views about god. It was just one of those things I never bothered to reconcile in my mind, and it wasn't until recently that I cared enough to take a position one way or the other. Once I thought about my own beliefs, I came to the realization that I had nothing more than a vestigial loyalty to the religious exposure of my youth.


Etcetera:
I will freely admit that I tend to air on the side of rationalism. There are strengths and weaknesses with this philosophy as there are with all philosophies, but I'm not going to fight my nature. The best I can do is try and recognise where my blind spots are and compensate as best as I can.

I understand the analogy you are using with regards to your personal relationship with god. I'll even take it one step further and say that I can appreciate the power that a relationship can have to make big doubts seem smaller. If your relationship is truly as you say it is, then it is a wonderful thing. If you are in a one-way relationship with an imaginary friend though, the entire edifice of your case falls down around you. This is why evidence, no matter how tough it is to come by, is so valuable in my book. You can't tear down something if it is a brute fact, and a case build on a sound foundation is much more likely to stand.

My ultimate goal is not to prove or disprove god. I am not a philosopher nor am I more capable than the countless others that have come before me seeking to do the exact same thing. What I need to do is surround myself with information from many schools of thought and across many different disciplines. I need to let that information flow through me and round out the edges of my perceptions. As this gradual exploration continues to shape me, it will gently push me in whatever direction I need to go. I can't force it and I can't be in the drivers seat on this one. The worst thing I could try and do is set some sort of artificial criterion to signify a decision point. I'll know when I've arrived at truth and I'm happy taking as long as I need to get there.