Jason Lisle doesn't know everything (and neither do I)

Jason Lisle, presup creationist, has a blog. He recently posted an article espousing the "How do you know?" tactic when dealing with unbelievers. His egregious assertions, I felt, deserved similar treatment:

Paul S. Jenkins says:

September 7, 2013 at 6:57 am

The Christian worldview alone makes it possible for us to answer these questions and have genuine knowledge. This is because knowledge stems from the nature of God (Proverbs 1:7, Colossians 2:3).

How do you know this?

[Dr. Lisle: God has revealed it in His Word. Did you not read the verses?]

Paul S. Jenkins says:

September 19, 2013 at 2:12 pm

How do you know the words are true?

[Dr. Lisle: If they were not, it would be impossible to know anything because there could be no justification for those things necessary for knowledge. And it is possible to know some things.]

Paul S. Jenkins says:

September 21, 2013 at 9:22 am

“If they were not, it would be impossible to know anything because there could be no justification for those things necessary for knowledge. And it is possible to know some things.”

It’s possible to know things without justification.

[Dr. Lisle: In logic and philosophy, knowledge is actually defined as "true, justified belief." So it is impossible to have knowledge without justification. You can have beliefs without justification, but not knowledge.]

For example, I know that I am thinking (whatever “I” might be defined as), and I’m certain of that — it’s self evident.

[Dr. Lisle: How do you know that? How do you know that you are the one doing the thinking? If you cannot even define "I" then how can you be certain that "I think?"]

Also, I know that I don’t know everything, and I’m certain of that too.

[Dr. Lisle: How do you know that you don't know everything? Unless you know everything, how can you be certain that what you think you know is actually true, and therefore "known?" By the way, I agree with your belief that you don't know everything. But I maintain that you can't really know even that without relying upon Christian principles.

This is also self evident (that is, the contrary is impossible).

[Dr. Lisle: You are asserting that it is impossible to know everything? How do you know that? How do you know that there cannot be a Being who knows everything?]

In those two examples, my certain knowledge is independent of anything other the existence of the entity referred to as “I”,

[Dr. Lisle: Two problems: (1) You don't have certain knowledge of the two examples you gave - at least you haven't yet explained how you do. (2) You claim that even these examples are dependent on the entity referred to as "I." But how, on your own worldview, do you know that "I" (you) exist?]

therefore it is false to say that it depends on the truth of particular words of scripture (or anything else, for that matter).

[Dr. Lisle: God claims that knowledge begins with Him (Proverbs 1:7). Indeed He is the truth (John 14:6) and all knowledge is hidden in Him (Colossians 2:3). Apart from God, apart from the truth of the Christian worldview, we couldn't know anything at all. We've seen this demonstrated in many conversations on this blog. Unbelievers just cannot rationally justify those things necessary for knowledge, such as the reliability of senses, or the properties of laws of logic.]

I didn't see Lisle's final responses immediately, but when I got around to addressing them he had closed off comments on his blogpost. So I didn't get a chance to counter-respond, and his action in arbitrarily guillotining all comments has resolved me not to comment on anything else he writes on his blog.

Nevertheless, the weakness of his final responses needs pointing out.

[Dr. Lisle: In logic and philosophy, knowledge is actually defined as "true, justified belief." So it is impossible to have knowledge without justification. You can have beliefs without justification, but not knowledge.]

Despite Lisle's comment, it is possible to have knowledge without justification. Here's the definition of axiom: "A self-evident or universally recognized truth." If it's self-evident, I don't need justification, or evidence, to support it.

[Dr. Lisle: How do you know that? How do you know that you are the one doing the thinking? If you cannot even define "I" then how can you be certain that "I think?"]

I didn't claim that I was was the one doing the thinking. I merely claimed that an entity designated by "I" was thinking. It doesn't matter who or what that entity is — it is irrefutably thinking.

[Dr. Lisle: How do you know that you don't know everything? Unless you know everything, how can you be certain that what you think you know is actually true, and therefore "known?" By the way, I agree with your belief that you don't know everything. But I maintain that you can't really know even that without relying upon Christian principles.]

Lisle is asking me how I know that I don't know everything. Really? He's suggesting that I could be mistaken about not being omniscient? If I were mistaken about not being omniscient, that would mean I was, in fact, omniscient. But how can an omniscient being be mistaken? I don't think Lisle has thought this through. It appears that he's claiming there is only absolute certainty about everything — omniscience — or no certainty about anything. But I have shown that it is indeed possible to be absolutely certain of something, and I gave a couple of examples. His assertion that knowledge is only possible by relying on Christian principles is just that — an assertion, and he has not shown how he can know that his source for that claim is true.

[Dr. Lisle: You are asserting that it is impossible to know everything? How do you know that? How do you know that there cannot be a Being who knows everything?]

I did not make that assertion. I asserted that it is self-evident that I am not omniscient. I made no assertion about the impossibility of omniscience.

[Dr. Lisle: Two problems: (1) You don't have certain knowledge of the two examples you gave - at least you haven't yet explained how you do. (2) You claim that even these examples are dependent on the entity referred to as "I." But how, on your own worldview, do you know that "I" (you) exist?]

(1) Lisle isn't following the argument. I do have certain knowledge that I am not omniscient — see above. (2) There is an entity that is thinking, else the assertion could not have been made (how is something asserted, if not by an entity of some kind?), and if an entity is thinking, it clearly exists — see Descartes.

[Dr. Lisle: God claims that knowledge begins with Him (Proverbs 1:7). Indeed He is the truth (John 14:6) and all knowledge is hidden in Him (Colossians 2:3). Apart from God, apart from the truth of the Christian worldview, we couldn't know anything at all. We've seen this demonstrated in many conversations on this blog. Unbelievers just cannot rationally justify those things necessary for knowledge, such as the reliability of senses, or the properties of laws of logic.]

Lisle quotes scripture without giving any justification for its truth value, and then just repeats what he said before as if he didn't read the argument. As for "Unbelievers just cannot rationally justify those things necessary for knowledge" — I just have.

The meaning of scripture

From a Facebook thread, concerning the mutability of scriptural interpretation:

• 

  Paul Jenkins You're at liberty to interpret the Bible any way you want. There's enormous scope for this: along with different translations and appeal to context, there's also the option to claim that something that is superficially nonsense is actually quite sensible and profound — if only we were party to God's ineffable intentions. It's a bit like when a novelist goofs in the plotting and gets mail from fans asking how can such-and-such be, since it appears to contradict something in the early chapters. The novelist merely replies that it does actually make sense, and all will be revealed in the sequel.

  3 hours ago · Like
• 

  Ian Taylor "Mark 16:17-18 - King James Version (KJV)
  17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
  
  18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
  Come on Paul, reinterpret this for me.

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Ian Taylor Oh yea, "...they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.", clearly means that they'll put gramma's quilt back over her when they're done the 'laying hands' bit!

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Paul Jenkins "Come on Paul, reinterpret this for me."
  
  OK, I'll have a go. But I don't know the original language, so I'll leave that aspect.
  
  "Mark 16:17-18 - King James Version (KJV)
  17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;"
  
  Well, when signs _follow_, it means that these are evident later, not necessarily at the current time (which would explain why believers may not be able to do these things now). Casting out devils could mean anything, but speaking with new tongues simply means they will be inspired to great oratory.
  
  "18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
  
  Anyone may "take up serpents" — the text doesn't actually state that the serpents won't kill them. As for drinking deadly things, this will likely cause them to be poisoned to death, but it will probably be a relatively painless death (without hurt), despite the grimaces on their faces (which God probably makes them do for the sake of discouraging others from following suit).
  
  Laying hands on the sick is merely a symbolic gesture — the recovering refers to the multiple times they do it.
  
  That's just off the top of my head. With some time devoted to it I could probably twist it into something completely unrecognisable. (I shan't be doing this, by the way.)

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Paul Jenkins "...and they shall recover.", clearly means that they'll put gramma's quilt back over her when they're done the 'laying hands' bit!"
  
  I think you're getting the hang of this.

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Ian Taylor Well, we've all heard this kind of apologetics, sure, which amount to caviling. Not really the kind of thing GOD, as Jesus, would bother telling us, and not really the kind of thing a believer would believe Jesus meant to tell us.
  The Gospels really should come with a warning, you know, for the kids and the stupid, maybe even the faithful.

  2 hours ago · Like
• 

  Paul Jenkins This matter of interpretation reminds me of a story I heard about a group of Plymouth Brethren who needed pews for their Meeting House. Someone alerted them to pews being salvaged from another church, but when the Brethren saw the pews they said they weren't suitable because there was the shape of a cross formed in fretwork in the back of each seat. (Plymouth Brethren eschew crosses).
  
  However, the Brethren were satisfied when it was explained to them that the pews did at one time have crosses carved into the backs, but they'd since been "cut out".

  2 hours ago · Edited · Like
• 

  Ian Taylor how pragmatic of them.

  2 hours ago · Like

It's ongoing, so there may be more...

Textual transubstantiation

"Why All the Translations?" is the question Denny Burk asks in the title of chapter 44 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. It's a good question; it seems likely that we have more translations of the Bible than of any other ancient text (Beowulf, say, or the works of Chaucer, Homer, Plato, Omar Khayyám...). The only reason for this I can come up with is that many people have been dissatisfied with the extant translations and thought they could do better — and believed it was important to do better.

Burk points out that there are three approaches to translating the Bible: formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence, and paraphrase. The King James Version is apparently a formal equivalence or word-for-word translation, while the New International Version is a dynamic equivalence translation, which Burk describes as a thought-for-thought rendering. This gives a clue as to why there are so many ways one can interpret scripture. The version I see cited most often is the New International Version, which according to Burk is not a word-for-word translation but one where the translators have endeavoured to get inside the heads of the original authors. This in itself requires a degree of interpretation, so it's not surprising that when Biblical scholars are engaged in exegesis they feel free to contribute their own interpretations.

The third option — a paraphrase translation — isn't really a translation at all. Burk quotes Paul D. Wegner in The Bible in Translation, describing a paraphrase as a "free rendering or amplification of a passage, expression of its sense in other words."

All this concern over different translations cannot help but raise the suspicion that the real reason there are so many is that no-one knows for sure what the original really said, let alone what it meant.

---

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbbible.aspx?pageid=8589952760

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.

Circular hallucinations are circular

"Were the Resurrection Appearances of Jesus Hallucinations?"

This is the question Michael R. Licona asks in the title of Chapter 36 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. In the second paragraph Licona quotes the apostle Paul: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless." And therein lies a problem.

Christianity places so much stock in the resurrection, Christians arguing for the truth of Christianity seem to go a bit crazy about it, clutching at the flimsiest straws to show that Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore Christianity is true. So it is with this chapter — Licona tries to show that the disciples could not all have been suffering from a common hallucination, because, he says, hallucinations don't work like that: just as people don't share the same dreams, they don't hallucinate the same events. But this isn't necessarily the case — there's such a thing as mass hysteria, for example.

Licona attempts a statistical approach:

About 15 percent of the population experience one or more hallucinations during their lifetime. Research has shown that some personality types are more prone to experiencing them. Women are more likely to experience them than men. And the older we get, the more likely we are to experience a hallucination. So, it should come as no surprise to discover that senior adults who are in the midst of bereaving the loss of a loved one belong to a group that experiences one of the highest percentage of hallucinations; a whopping 50 percent! (See Aleman and Larøi, Hallucinations: The Science of Idiosyncratic Perception, American Psychological Association, 2008.)

With these things in mind, let’s consider the possibility that Jesus’ disciples, the Church persecutor Paul, and Jesus’ skeptical half-brother James experienced hallucinations of the risen Jesus. All of the twelve disciples, Paul, and James were men, who were probably of different age groups and probably of different personalities. That the Twelve were grieving is certain. Yet proposals that the disciples were hallucinating must argue that more than 15 percent of them had the experience. In fact, more than the whopping 50 percent we find among bereaving senior adults would have experienced them. Indeed, it would have been a mind-blowing 100 percent! Moreover, it must likewise be proposed that when these hallucinations occurred, they just happened to do so simultaneously. And it just so happened that they must have experienced their hallucinations in the same mode for them to believe that they had seen the same Jesus. In other words, if a group hallucination had actually occurred, it would have been more likely that the disciples would have experienced their hallucinations in different modes and of at least slightly differing content. Perhaps one would have said, “I see Jesus over by the door,” while another said, “No. I see him floating by the ceiling,” while still another said, “No. I only hear him speaking to me,” while still another said, “I only sense that he’s in the room with us.” Instead, what we have are the reports that the disciples saw Jesus.

Licona appears to be claiming that because all of the Twelve saw Jesus risen, then it must be statistically true. But we don't have twelve gospels, so we don't have twelve independently attested eyewitness accounts. We don't know what the disciples saw, we only have relatively few second-hand reports of what they allegedly saw. The gospel accounts were written some decades after the events recorded, and those involved may well have built up a favourable picture in their minds — a picture that tended to converge on common aspects of what they all remember, despite possibly comprising wildly divergent elements. It's not something we can know with any degree of certainty, even if believers want it so very much to be true. Given the fantastical nature of the claims, the lack of correspondingly strong evidence leaves the balance of probabilities firmly on the side of skepticism.

Finally, as if his readers have already forgotten his own Chapter 33 in this book, Licona tries once more to use circular reasoning to prove his case:

There is at least one more difficult problem for those claiming that the appearances of Jesus were only hallucinations: Jesus’ tomb was empty. If Jesus had not, in fact, been raised from the dead and the appearances were hallucinations, once must still account for how Jesus’ tomb had become empty. Aside from the fact that hallucinations are horribly inadequate at explaining the appearances as we observed above, even if that were not the case they cannot account for Jesus’ empty tomb.

It's legitimate to claim that hallucinations cannot account for the empty tomb, as long as you don't try to use the empty tomb to account for the resurrection — as Licona has already implicitly done by co-editing a whole chapter devoted to just that.

---

4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbjesus.aspx?pageid=8589952863

A Facebook exchange on hellish religious language

Here's a Facebook conversation from a few days before Christmas. The thread (of which this is a part) is now buried deep down in the Unbelievable group and therefore probably not worth reviving, but I wanted to record my final comments for the sake of completeness, and to clarify my own thoughts:

Daniel Smith Sam, some Christians argue that language of hell and eternal torment is figurative for cessation of existence; it does not refer to literal conscious torment for eternity. This view is called annihilationism.

Other Christians, like myself, take the imagery of hell (fire and brimstone, etc....) to be symbolic. After all, it is difficult to see how there could be "outer darkness" in a literal furnace, so one of these texts at least must be understood non-literally. if humans were made for relationship with God, then to be separated from God for eternity would be a type of torment, albeit self-inflicted.

And as you guessed others, perhaps most, think that a literal furnace exists where the damned suffer eternally.

Point being, there is a range of views, and the issue is not at all settled, especially between the second and third conceptions of hell.
19 December at 05:07 · Like

Paul Jenkins ‎@Daniel, this is why I find religious language unhelpful. If someone threatens to beat me to a pulp, and I interpret that "figuratively" as nothing more than a threat to scowl disapprovingly at me, at the very least this indicates a failure of communication.
19 December at 09:42 · Like

Daniel Smith Paul,

I think your language is just as unhelpful. Figurative language is not "religious language." It's jut the way humans communicate. I don't say that I find scientific language unhelpful because "the sun rose at 6:53 A.M." is not literally true. Or at the end of a long day of work, "I am dead tired" is not literally true. Or "sometimes my wife has to whip me into shape," is (usually) not literally true. The fact that religious texts use language which all of us use every day is neither a defect in religion nor in religious language.

If someone threatens to beat you to a pulp, you take them literally in that you think they literally will beat you, but not literally "to a pulp." So even this implies a bit of figurative speech which needs to be interpreted. Easy to point the finger at religion, though. Maybe you should acknowledge that things just aren't always as clear as you want them to be.
19 December at 19:24 · Like

Paul Jenkins Daniel,

I acknowledge that things aren't always as clear as I'd like, and that there is a difference between being "beaten to a pulp" in the figurative sense and being beaten to a pulp in an electric blender. Both the figurative sense and the literal sense, however, would involve blood and mangled flesh rather than, say, superficial bruising. Therefore I maintain that my figurative use of "beaten to a pulp" is a legitimate use of language that conveys my intended meaning with a degree of accuracy.

This cannot be said of the difference between "literal conscious torment" in the "fire and brimstone" of a literal furnace on the one hand, and "cessation of existence" on the other. The two are not remotely comparable. The claim that one is a symbolic expression of the other contributes more to obfuscation than clarity.
20 December at 00:31 · Like

Daniel Smith Therefore you maintain that your use of language, while not literally correct, is correct enough in the context you're using it and for the audience you're communicating with.

I agree with you that annihilationism does not seem to be what passages about fire and brimstone teach. That view is based on other passages. Nevertheless you've conceded the most important thing: that figurative language is constantly is use. This makes it difficult to criticize the Bible on the basis that there are debates about what some passages contained therein really mean to say. I mean, we have the same debates in America about the constitution. This must prove that political language is totally worthless and imprecise, right?
20 December at 22:21 · Like

I do concede that figurative language is in constant use — it's part of what makes conversation interesting and expressive, and it certainly doesn't make political language worthless (although it can adversely affect its precision). But if "fire and brimstone" is figurative or symbolic language, and annihilationism is "based on other passages", at least one of these must be wrong, and in either case the language used to justify them is, indeed, unhelpful.

"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.

---

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

Unbelievable?: The Conference — Disc 2

Following my review last month of the first disc of this three-DVD set, here's my assessment of the second, which is the Bible Stream.

First up is David Instone-Brewer with "Can I trust the Bible?" He begins with a reference in John in the King James Version to some aspect of the Trinity, which is omitted in modern translations because it is reckoned to be something a copyist noted in the margin, and which was then erroneously included in the main text by a subsequent copyist. This is the kind of thing Bart Erhman has been pointing out for years and is probably nothing new.

Instone-Brewer goes on to claim that many copies had errors and omissions due entirely to personal whim — such as when someone made a copy for use by his family and censored some passages he considered unsuitable for a family audience.

For me this calls into question the accuracy of even the earliest copies. Even though there are thousands of handwritten copies there are no original manuscripts, but Instone-Brewer claims that the profusion of copies allows scholars to infer the original from the many slight differences between the many copies. That's all very well, assuming that the the copies derive from different levels of the biblical "evolutionary tree". But what if they all derive from a single, early copy that contained significant errors? The closer any early copy is to the original, the fewer examples there will be on which to perform such statistical inference, and the less likely any errors are to be correctable. In fact statistical inference will probably reinforce such errors rather than detect and eliminate them.

Instone-Brewer seems to contradict himself when he says "nothing is lost", only a few minutes after declaring his opinion that the ending of Mark is, in fact, lost. He also claims, "Thousands of copies, thousands of problems, but we've got the original." Except, as he's already explained, we haven't got the original. He claims to be able to derive the original, but I think his confidence is misplaced, especially as in answer to a question he says that original texts are fragile and don't last very long. They could, therefore, have been copied erroneously, perhaps only a few times, before being lost forever. Many of those errors are likely to be undetectable.

He also makes the claim that oral sources are more reliable than written sources. This is a claim I've heard before (from, for example, Michael Licona), but it sounds more like wishful thinking than hard fact. Stories are indeed passed down through the generations, but they are embellished and altered for dramatic and polemical effect — and this is an accepted aspect of the oral tradition. No-one expects these stories to be literally or historically true, especially when those telling them have a specific agenda.

Instone-Brewer mentions a stone inscription (apparently now on display in a Paris museum) that describes a Roman Emperor's edict that moving a body from a Jewish grave is to be punishable by death. Instone-Brewer then hints (I think) that this is some kind of evidence for the resurrection of Christ. To me it seems like evidence that the emperor was aware of a religious cult that had persisted after its deceased leader's body had been stolen from a grave, and was anxious to prevent a repetition.

Not being particularly well-read in the New Testament I must thank David Instone-Brewer for pointing out so many problems within the text that I wasn't previously aware of. It seems to me that every so-called justification of the reliability of scripture merely points up its inconsistencies and unreliability, as well as the lengths to which Bible scholars will go in their attempts to validate its historicity.

I'm not one of those who doubt the historical existence of Jesus, but nothing Instone-Brewer says suggests that the supernatural claims of the New Testament are true.

---

David Instone-Brewer also delivers the second talk on this disc, "Is God a moral monster?" — which is the title of Paul Copan's recent book (which I've not read).

He begins by quoting Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, where Dawkins describes the God of the Old Testament (he has subsequently stated that he included this over-the-top description largely for comic effect).

Instone-Brewer goes on to describe the morality of the Old Testament, stating that times were different then, but nevertheless the laws of Israel were far more lenient than those of its neighbours. This may have been so, but such an argument skewers the whole idea of objective morality, making it subject to context and prevailing conditions. He confirms this in an answer to a question about the Ten Commandments, claiming that "Thou shalt not kill" doesn't mean you must never kill anybody. In answer to other, harder questions he simply plays the mystery card — apparently morality was different in the past, so much so that we in the modern world cannot understand it.

With regard to sacrifices and slavery he reiterates the claim that the laws of Israel were more lenient than anywhere else. So to modern eyes, it seems, they were relatively less immoral. He answers a question about stoning one's disobedient children to death by going on about drunkards — and I can only assume he didn't properly hear the question. He admits he doesn't understand disproportionate punishment, yet still maintains that God isn't a moral monster.

Inevitably there's a question about the slaughter of the Canaanites, and he gives a good explanation concerning how children are honour-bound to avenge the killing of their parents, and the invading forces knew this, and therefore had to kill them to prevent the grown-up children coming after them years later. Unfortunately this contradicts William Lane Craig's insistence (repeated just this morning on BBC Radio) that the children would be glad to be despatched to Heaven. I think it's safe to say that dishonoured children would not be glad to go to Heaven. This last contradiction is yet another example of the contortions Christians will perform in order to twist their faith into places it will not fit.

---

Some of William Lane Craig's points feature in the final talk on this disc, given by Jay Smith: "Is there evidence for the resurrection?"

Smith states that the resurrection is central to Christian belief, then says he will use Craig's eight points for discussing the resurrection with Muslims and others. I lost count, but the points he raises are the prophecies in the Old and New Testaments, the mentions by Greeks, Romans and Josephus, the empty tomb and the marble inscription already mentioned by David Instone-Brewer.

As in his talk about Islam, Smith soon gets into preacher-mode, which I found a little wearing, but his confident pronouncements seem to rely more on presentation style than logic. He's no more than superficially persuasive, in my view. For instance, I find nothing persuasive about citing Old or New Testament prophecy in support of the actual bodily resurrection of Christ. As has been pointed out, those who wrote the New Testament were intimately familiar with the Old Testament, and they knew what was expected of them. Smith himself hints at this mechanism when he describes the Mithras legends as post-Christ, claiming that the reason such legends are similar to the Gospel accounts of Jesus is that they were copied from them. To me this is applying a double standard.

Smith also states that when a messiah dies, the movement that follows him usually also dies, but this didn't happen in the case of Christ, and this is evidence for the truth of the resurrection. The followers of Christ, however, would have been aware of this tendency, giving them strong motivation for somehow claiming that their messiah was still alive.

Jay Smith has comprehensive arguments with which to knock down the Qur'an and incidentally claims it was not written by Muhammad, but hearing his (understandably) biased approach to Christian scripture I have doubts about his other claims.

---

The final disc is titled Big Questions — I wonder what that will be about.

What do we know?

Actually, not much.

How do we know that we are not brains in vats? That we aren't software simulations in an advanced super-computer? That the entire universe of which we think we are a part wasn't created intact (complete with all our memories) last Thursday?

We don't. We can make a basic Cartesian assumption that "thinking" of some sort is going on somewhere, by the fact that we use thinking to make that assumption. But apart from that, we really don't know.

This is a scary thought. (But it is, at least, a thought.)

So where do we go from here? If we can't know anything, what's the basis of doing anything? Why go on, in the face of such uncertainty?

We have senses that seem to show us the world in a generally consistent way, so in the absence of certainty we can proceed in what appears to be a pragmatic manner. In the absence of certainty we can construct a worldview based on probability. We can live a life of induction, but we must first assume that induction works. Our senses may subsequently tell us that such an assumption appears to be consistent with reality as we perceive it. And so we build. Of such pragmatism is civilisation wrought — in sweat, in toil, in reasoned argument, in compassion. It is, we find, worth striving for.

For some people this isn't enough. They're unhappy with such uncertainty, and demand to be told in no uncertain terms, how things really are.

Such people will search for certainty, and believe they find it in religious scripture. They will seize upon the sacred text that purports to reveal in no uncertain terms the secrets of the universe. They will base their lives upon it, proclaiming its inerrancy. It must be inerrant — it's the truth they've been seeking, and if someone is so crass or unwise to question the inerrancy of scripture they'll explain, at tortuous length, why it contains not a single contradiction, and how it grounds their very existence.

But they're wrong. They're no better off than the rest of us — in fact they're worse off, having deluded themselves into thinking they are certain, in a world where certainty is impossible.

Existence of followers isn't proof of that which is followed

Several months ago on a Christian discussion forum I was asked two questions:

1) Who do YOU say Jesus was?

2) Do you deny the resurrection?

I answered both, but the first question is the one relevant to this post, and my answer to that was:

1) 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.

This still seems to me to be a reasonable interpretation of the story we have of Jesus. There are some who deny Jesus existed at all; others suggest that the popular account is a melding of stories of a number of different preachers who were around at the time.

Chapter 27 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, "Did Jesus Really Exist?" by Paul L. Maier, is addressed to those who claim Jesus didn't exist — a claim he characterizes as "this pathetic denial".

Maier's first foray is to say that the New Testament wouldn't make "an ounce of sense if Jesus had never lived." This presupposes that the books of the New Testament do make sense, which to me seems like putting the cart before the horse. He describes this as "internal evidence", which appears suspiciously like "circular evidence". (Or to put it in simple, direct terms, Jesus existed because it says so in the Bible.)

Then we come to "external evidence" — Christian, Jewish and secular. The Christian evidence Maier lists is from Jesus' disciple John, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was John's student, and Irenaeus of Lyons, who was Polycarp's student. Pardon me for my skeptical view of this chain of hearsay, but I see a problem with calling the writings of Polycarp and Iranaeus "evidence", if they both had it ultimately from John. This is evidence from one man, not three. Maier also counts the writings of Justin Martyr as external evidence that Jesus existed, but as with Polycarp and Iranaeus he does not provide references.

When considering Jewish external evidence Maier quotes writings in the Talmud (though once again without a citation). He acknowledges that references to Jesus in the Talmud are garbled, but claims that one of them is "especially accurate" when it reports on Jesus' arrest notice. By what standard, I'm bound to ask, do you assess whether a report is garbled or accurate? (If you already "know" what happened, such assessment is easy.)

As is usual in these arguments it's not long before Josephus is wheeled out to proclaim the existence of Jesus, as if this impartial chronicler is the last word on the subject. But when you read what Josephus writes, you find he's only reporting what others have said.

For his secular external evidence Maier first cites Tacitus, who mentions the Christians in his Annals. Tacitus is referring to followers of Christ, but such reference is no stronger evidence for Jesus than the existence of Raëlians today is evidence for Raël. Next come Suetonius — who mentions Christians and Christ one time each — and Pliny the Younger, who asks for advice in dealing with those superstitious Christians.

In passing Maier also mentions Theudas and Mara bar Serapion as providing evidence for the existence of Jesus, but again gives no references — an omission he excuses on the basis that he's already made his case that "Jesus of Nazareth was no myth, but a totally historical figure who truly lived."

As I mentioned at the top of this post I'm not one of those who deny that someone of the name of Jesus ever existed, but I don't think the evidence for the existence of the man described in the New Testament is as clear cut as Maier suggests. It's likely that a charismatic preacher or three did make waves — enough to get at least one of them executed — but that's a far cry from categorical proof of the existence of the New Testament Jesus. Nor do I deny that the followers of "Christ" existed — but the existence of Christians isn't automatic proof of the existence of Christ.

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