Where is God hiding? (warning: contains sarcasm)

“Atheists often object that God should just make himself clearly obvious if he exists. So why doesn't he?”

The above is how a link on Facebook introduces an article in Premier Christianity magazine entitled “Why is God hidden?” with the strapline “Joshua Parikh tackles the tricky question of why God's existence isn't more obvious to nonbelievers.”

The article begins by exposing the author's bias from the outset, so at least we know where he's coming from:

“The so-called hiddenness of God has been an existential problem for believers and non-believers alike for thousands of years.”

“So-called hiddenness” — so you know, not really hidden.

After a brief introduction to the problem of God's “perceived” absence (so you know, not really absent), Joshua Parikh outlines three arguments:

1. The context of hiddenness

The reason why you think God's hiddenness is a problem is that you've been cherry-picking. You've only looked at places where evidence for God is absent, and ignored places where there is evidence. What is this evidence? Miracles, of course! For example, miracles related by “highly regarded” scholar Craig Keener, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, and an ordained minister. Not that he has any stake in this, naturally.

2. The problem on our end

Non-believers are resistant to the idea of God, so they can't see him, or his works. “...if the argument is that non-resistant non-believers exist, then this is not obvious.”

3. What God's hiddenness brings

Hiddenness is apparently a good thing, for several reasons:

1. Hiddenness builds character.
2. Hiddenness gives Christians opportunities to preach at non-believers.
3. Hiddenness allows God to throw his revelations into sharp relief, which he couldn't do if he was obvious.
   

The author concludes this meagre bowl of unbelievably weak sauce with the following paragraph:

"For more answers, I recommend Blake Giunta’s excellent website BeliefMap.org, but I think these all point to a story by which Christianity can fully answer the difficult question of why God remains apparently hidden, however troubling it may seem."

Probably a good idea, as this article on its own is nowhere near good enough.

Miraculous irrationality

Last Saturday's Unbelievable? was a discussion between Gary Habermas, Christian, and Geoff Campos, atheist, recorded during the Bethinking apologetics conference at Westminster Chapel, as part of William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith Tour. I listened with mixed feelings, as there had been a brief possibility that the three Pauls of Skepticule Extra could have been the ones in conversation with Gary Habermas, rather than Geoff Campos. In the event I think Geoff gave a good account of himself and his position with regard to the question at issue — which was, "Is it rational to believe in miracles?"

Nevertheless I found myself at times disagreeing with everyone in the conversation. A good deal was said about Geoff's stance on the status of the "supernatural", and Justin Brierley — moderating the discussion — made the inevitable point about denial of supernature closing off options, suggesting that perhaps Geoff was being closed-minded if he did not accept that supernatural events were even possible.

This is an invidious position to hold in the face of theistic miracle claims, but I think it's a result of not defining one's terms. Though the definition of "supernatural" was explored, I don't recall anyone clarifying what was meant by "rational". For an event to be rationally believed in, that event must conform to reason and logic. Its causes and effects must be capable of description in rational terms, and those causes and effects must lie entirely in the physical realm — because the physical realm of causes and effects is the only realm in which rationally observed phenomena have been verified to occur.

So the question posed by Justin for this show contained the seeds of its own irrationality. It's not rational to believe in miracles, because by definition miracles are effects without rational causes.

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Streaming audio here:
http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={B9C493B0-276B-492F-82B7-C2C5D5F06EFA}

Download mp3 here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/f4ac58fb-9cf3-4ad7-aa49-1392546b275f.mp3

Incredible miracles require credible evidence

In my previous post in this series I answered the question, "Who do YOU say Jesus was?" with the following:

It seems likely that Jesus was an itinerant preacher who developed a considerable local following, to the extent that he annoyed the established religion of the time, which got rid of him in an effort to preserve the status quo.

It's clear that I don't think Jesus was a supernatural being. But could a non-supernatural being perform supernatural actions?

Chapter 28 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God is "The Credibility of Jesus's Miracles" by Craig L. Blomberg, in which he puts forward the idea that the historical record of Jesus performing miracles is a true account. Unfortunately for his thesis he employs too many assumptions in order to come to this conclusion. For example, here's part of his attempt to establish the existence of God (a necessary precursor to the divinity — and therefore miracle-workings — of Jesus):

One of the most exciting and encouraging developments in recent years in this respect is the intelligent design movement. Pointing to numerous examples of fundamental entities in the natural and biological worlds that display irreducible complexity, even some scientists who are not Christians at all have acknowledged that there must be an intelligent being behind this creation. The entire "big-bang" theory for the beginnings of the universe leads to the question of what or who produced that "bang." (p 147.)

Blomberg's implication here is not just that there must have been a cause for these things, but that the cause was necessarily divine.

For others, philosophical arguments like those of the famous seventeenth-century Scotsman, David Hume, turn out to be more persuasive. While not alleging that miracles are impossible, the claim now is that the probability of a natural explanation will always be greater than that of a supernatural one. Phenomena could mislead, witnesses could be mistaken and, besides, explanations of events must have analogies to what has happened in the past. But it is not at all clear that any of these arguments mean that the evidence could never be unambiguous and the witnesses unassailable. And if every event must have a known analogy, then people in the tropics before modern technology could never have accepted that ice exists! (p 147-8.)

I think he's misappropriating Hume here. Hume stated that reports of miracles could only be accepted as true if the alternative explanation — that the reports are false — would have to be more miraculous than the miracles themselves. That rules out most of Jesus's miracles right at the start. And arguments by analogy carry little weight. Analogies are useful in explaining the general nature of things, but eventually all analogies break down because they are only "like" the things they are analogous to, not identical to them.

Blomberg goes on to challenge the idea that there were lots of reports of miracles in myth and legend that are similar to those allegedly performed by Jesus:

It is curious how often laypeople and even some scholars repeat the charge that the Gospel miracles sound just like the legends of other ancient religions without having carefully studied the competing accounts. For example, it is often alleged that there were virgin births and resurrection stories all over the ancient religious landscape. But, in fact, most of the alleged parallels to special births involve ordinary human sexual relations coupled simply with the belief that one of the persons was actually a god or goddess incognito. Or, as with the conception of Alexander the Great, in one legend almost a millennium later than his lifetime, a giant Python intertwined around Alexander's mother on her honeymoon night, keeping his father at a discrete distance and impregnating the young woman. (p 148.)

He seems to be claiming that the Gospel miracles were of a quite different order from the examples he gives, but I don't see it. Whether a person was actually a god or not has little effect on the credibility of the story when that story is already incredible. Consciously or not, Blomberg is using special pleading to impart undeserved credibility to his preferred account. He does the same with the resurrection story, but here we begin to see a pattern emerging.

If the miracles of Jesus are similar to other miraculous events reported in ancient texts, then that similarity lends the reports credence, because those reporting them knew what they witnessed and wrote about. If the miracles of Jesus were wholly different from those other miracles, they are thereby rescued from the skepticism duly applied to those other, more mundane miracles. Blomberg wants it both ways.

But if that doesn't work, he tells us that most of those other miraculous accounts were based on the miracles of Jesus anyway, in a frenzy of "me too!" copycat miracle-working. I can't help seeing some desperation here. He wants it to be true, but the "evidence" is really thin, and frankly unconvincing.

One might fairly question my own disposition regarding these accounts. I don't think they're true, and I have a bias in my interpretation of them. But we're talking about miracles — extraordinary events that require extraordinary evidence. That evidence is not forthcoming, and until it is, I'll go with the account that fits with my experience of the natural world around me — the world for which there is evidence.

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952909

Miraculous fiction

I've just started watching the new series of Torchwood. I must admit I'm finding it not a little unconvincing, especially after what seemed like the show's final bow-out — the superb Children of Earth, shown on five consecutive evenings in July 2009.

I'm only one episode into Miracle Day, so perhaps it's too early to judge. But with ten episodes in total, it had better improve or I'll be unwilling to invest more time in it.

Notwithstanding my initial reservations, the theme of the story made me think again about miracles. As I see it there are several ways to define a miracle, two of which are:

1. A miracle is something that can't happen.

2. A miracle is a happening that proves the existence of God.

So if religious apologists insist that a miracle might be an extraordinary event that appears to contradict natural law, they can't use it as proof of God's existence if the event is unlikely but not impossible. God's existence could only be proved by the occurrence of an impossible event. But then you have the problem of defining what's possible and what's not. Taking the Torchwood — Miracle Day example, the miracles are described as such, but there are plenty of people in the story who are looking for some kind of natural explanation, and surprisingly few who take them as examples of God's inscrutable ineffableness. Writer Russell T. Davies is an atheist, but he's not above grappling with religious issues, as he did with The Second Coming.

Personally, I go with the first definition of miracles. Which leaves the second definition high and dry.

Science is mocked: the presupposition of supernature

One of the recurring points of disagreement in intelligent atheist/theist debates is the presupposition regarding supernatural occurrences. Theists often say that the atheist is biased against supernatural occurrences because he or she does not believe they can happen, and is therefore ruling out the existence of God a priori - because God, by the most commonly accepted definition, would be a supernatural being capable of performing supernatural actions.

Conversely, the theist who believes in miracles is explicitly including the possibility of supernatural occurrences, and therefore (the argument goes) is actually more open-minded - ready to accept the claims of science and the claims of supernatural action.

But how does this work in practice? Is it reasonable for the atheist to rule out supernature? What if we accept that supernatural effects may, from time to time, occur - are these effects, occurrences, "miracles", bound by any laws, natural or otherwise? They are certainly not bound by the laws of science. If we accept miracles, where do we look to determine when and where they may or may not occur? It seems that miracles could only be bound by the whim of a supernatural being, who may or may not have written down (or caused to have been written down) some holy scripture in which these somewhat arbitrary whims are spelled out.

Personally, I don't believe in miracles. I've not personally seen any compelling evidence for miracles, and my understanding of the world I live in suggests to me that miracles are occurrences that by definition can't happen. Any investigation into what can and can't happen in any given set of circumstances must by definition give due consideration to what is possible, and by implication, what is impossible. If an investigation doesn't rule out supernatural occurrences, then in effect nothing whatever is ruled out. On what basis, therefore, can such an investigation proceed? This is a rhetorical question - I contend that in such circumstances no meaningful investigation can be carried out. For that reason I consider it justifiable to rule out supernatural occurrences, and if as a result I'm accused of making an a priori exclusion, I can only reply "guilty as charged."

In a discussion of the evidence for, say, the Resurrection of Christ, the arguments about who saw the empty tomb, or who conversed with Jesus after his death, become irrelevant, because if the Resurrection is true, all bets are off - anything is possible, and science is mocked. God could have implanted fake memories into people's brains, or performed any number of impossible actions - feats well within the capabilities of a supernatural being whose powers are essentially undefined, but which include the power to raise someone from the dead.