Of hats and horses

It is always amusing to hear some of the language that non-Christians, and especially atheists, use in their assaults on the Christian faith and defenses of their own position.

Thus begins a post by Chris Bolt at Choosing Hats. Interesting to see that “Christianity is a Man-made Religion”— the title of the post — is considered an assault, when it's no more than a statement of belief — an interpretation of reality, based on the available evidence.

Presumably the atheist thinks it is somewhat problematic and perhaps even insulting to the Christian to dismiss his or her position as “man-made.” We can set aside the obvious “problem” with using “man” this way in the current academic climate. We can also set aside that the unbeliever almost always merely asserts without argument that Christianity is man-made. We may then note that the statement as it stands is no insult or argument against Christianity anyway, for there is a sense in which Christianity is man-made. The Bible, for example, was written by men. But it does not follow that it was not also God-breathed.

Presumably? Why presume, when one can ask? I'll save Chris the trouble and state that no, saying Christianity is man-made is not meant as an insult. It is, however, problematic more than somewhat, in that there's a lack of evidence for Christianity being other than man-made. (This is most clearly embodied in the statement, "Man is made in the image and likeness of God," when an impartial observer of Christianity can see that the reverse is obviously the case.) Chris then switches horses to claim that an accusation of being man-made is not, in fact, an insult or an argument anyway, but switches back again to use "man-made" as an argument against atheism. It's all very confusing:

But turn the apparent attempt at an objection around. What is it about unbelief and atheism in particular that is not man-made? Logic is generally considered conventional. It is man-made. Science is one of the greatest tools for advancement that the human race has ever devised. It is, of course, man-made. Morality is often thought to be subjective. It is man-made. And even where different approaches to logic, morality, and science appear in the atheist bag of tricks they are ultimately reducible to the allegedly autonomous subject. Take away autonomy and you do not have atheism anymore. Everything in atheism is made up. By definition.

Most of that could be true, but the last two sentences don't make sense. The definition of atheism I use is "lack of belief in a god or gods". There's nothing to make up there. My atheism does of course imply more than just a lack of god-belief; my worldview, based on lack of such belief, involves founding my beliefs about the real world on what I can reasonably infer to be an accurate representation of that reality. This is the exact opposite of making stuff up.

Of course the immediate response is that the empirical world somehow dictates our logic, science, and morality to us. But the view that the empirical world speaks to us in such a way that our thoroughly theory-laden approaches to knowledge do not come to bear upon our understanding of it is helplessly naïve. Atheists are out to set us back hundreds if not thousands of years with that ridiculous suggestion!

Methinks the godly are too tied up in notions of diktat to appreciate that the empirical world is not in the business of dictating to anyone — in logic, science, morality or anything else. I, on the other hand, do indeed appreciate that I'm a product of my environment, and it behooves me to be mindful of my evolutionary heritage.

Chris's next few paragraphs delve into a series of strained analogies that I can't be bothered to unravel, save to suggest a fable of my own: when Chris and his PA ilk eventually get to Heaven they'll find it's a very small place bounded by an unscalable high wall, which God has built around their particular patch of Paradise to fool them into thinking they're the only ones there.*

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*Not a statement of belief.

The beam in thine eye and dogmatic projection

So Chris Bolt accuses me of dogmatism. Whether I am actually dogmatic, however, cannot be deduced from the blogpost of mine that Chris references. My blogpost is 116 words long, not counting the link to the Unbelievable? audio stream, so Chris must really, really want to believe it contains dogmatism. What I actually wrote about Hell was that I could think of an alternative explanation for believing it was real — alternative, that is, to its actual existence. I did not claim — dogmatically or otherwise — to know that Hell doesn't exist. Chris, on the other hand, does claim to know that Hell exists. He writes:

Hell is incomprehensibly awful. I am deeply troubled by the thought of people going there, but they will, and they do. However, it is the wicked who go to hell, and they deserve the punishment they receive there.

This isn't a suggestion of a possible alternative view, nor is it speculation on different interpretations. It's a claim of knowledge based on nothing but scripture — otherwise known as dogmatism. Go read his piece, then see if this slightly altered version of one of his eight paragraphs (of nearly a thousand words — that's a response ratio approaching ten to one) wouldn't be nearer the truth:

One might question how Chris is so dogmatically certain that hell exists. Of course it does not matter how certain Chris feels he is with regard to the alleged existence of hell if hell doesn't in fact exist. It does not matter how strongly opposed one is to the existence of terminal cancer if one has it. One’s beliefs do not affect such states of affairs. The cancer is going to win out in the end. So also Chris’s opinions about hell do not matter in the end if hell is indeed a fantasy. It would serve Chris well to give more critical thought to how he knows that hell exists.

In short, Chris dogmatically claims that Hell exists, while accusing me of dogmatism for merely suggesting an alternative explanation for belief in it.

"Theology is piffle" — a debate worth having?

As part of a recent "Burnee links" I posted this comment:

God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness - You Will Want This Book!
No. You won't. This book-promotion on Choosing Hats comes with a 73-minute video of three blokes (including the author) discussing the book. I watched the first 15 minutes, and I recommend it only as a perfect illustration of why theology isn't about anything that has the slightest relation to what's going on in the real world. These guys appear to be articulate and intelligent, so it's a shame they're devoting so much energy to such piffle.

Here's the video:

http://youtu.be/-davnzphHdc


...and here's a comment from Chris Bolt of Choosing Hats on the Burnee links post:

Thanks for the link Paul...I think.

:)

Any time you are willing to debate, "Theology is Piffle" let me know!

Is it worth debating? Probably not, because in order to "debate" sensibly about something, both sides must be clear that they are discussing the same thing. Theology is "the study of the nature of God" — and as far as that goes it's less useful than the study of Star Trek.

Theology as a subject is no more than literary criticism — as is Trek fandom. Trek fans can get carried away worrying about continuity lapses and such-like, forgetting that Trek is man-made and that the reason some things in Star Trek don't make sense is that it was created by a fallible human being who made mistakes.

Using literary criticism to analyse Star Trek may produce insights into the nature of Roddenberry, because we start with the knowledge that he really existed and he really did create Star Trek. And we also know that Roddenberry did not present Star Trek as factual representation.

Applying literary criticism to scripture, however, will not produce insights into the nature of God, because we don't know that scripture was written by God, or that God even existed in the first place (regardless of whether scripture is factual, mythical or metaphorical). The best that theology might be able to offer is some insight into the cultural milieu of scripture's authors — who were human. Unfortunately theology persists in its claim that it is studying God, so its efforts are doomed from the start.

Until theologians admit that they are engaged in nothing more than literary criticism they can be left to their own insular devices, just like the more extreme end* of Trek fandom, while the rest of us attend to the real world.

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* I have nothing against the more moderate spectrum of Trek fandom. At least they know that Star Trek is fiction.

Presuppositional apologetics — why bother?

Some of my readers may have endured what has become known as The Fourth Debate, in which the three Pauls of the Skepticule Extra podcast were subjected to the presuppositional apologetic argument of Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate. We released it, unedited, as an episode of the Skepticule Record, which is that part of Skepticule intended to archive live events.

I believe I can safely assert that the three Pauls are in agreement that The Fourth Debate was the final word on Presuppositional Apologetics as far as they, personally, are concerned. PA has been shown, increasingly and repetitively, not to work. It doesn't convince atheists, and it doesn't convince those theists (the majority) who claim to have evidence for the existence of God. It appears that PA is only considered valid by those who already hold to it. As an apologetic method, therefore, it's a dismal failure.

For some people, however, this isn't enough. Chris Bolt of the Choosing Hats blog and podcast (though "podcast" is used loosely here, as I can't find an RSS feed that encloses the media files, and have had to download them manually)* has been commenting on the aforementioned episode of the Skepticule Record in obsessive and tedious detail. There are currently four editions of "Praxis Presup" covering The Fourth Debate — numbers 12, 13, 14 and 15. Two-and-a-half hours of commentary (including clips of the "debate" itself) is a lot, and might perhaps be worth it for a "debate" that ran for an hour and nine minutes, but Chris Bolt's commentary in these four editions of Praxis Presup covers only the first half-hour of our podcast. Apparently there's more commentary to come, but based on what's been released so far, I've no incentive to listen further. (An added disincentive is the appalling sound quality of Praxis Presup. I hope Chris Bolt's listeners don't think the podcast we released is of comparable sound quality to the clips he played.)

All of which leaves me with a nagging question: for whom is Praxis Presup intended? Certainly not atheists, who — if they bother to listen — will only be confirmed in their conviction that PA is nonsense. Evidential theists won't be convinced, as PA claims their approach is invalid. The only people who will agree with Chris Bolt's analysis will be presuppositionalists themselves — and why do they need this, if they are already convinced by PA?

It's a mystery.

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*It's been brought to my attention (thanks Fergus!) that there is indeed a working podcast feed for Praxis Presup: http://www.choosinghats.com/category/podcasts/feed/