An unreliable assessment of the reliability of the Gospels

In Craig L. Blomberg's "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels" — chapter 46 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God — one can almost sense the rose-tinted spectacles through which the author apparently reads his Bible, carries out his research and writes this essay on how he really, really wants the Gospels to be true, and how everything discovered about them confirms that they are indeed true, or are probably true, or more likely true than false, and how any evidence that suggests the Gospels are "unreliable" cannot itself be relied on because it has come up with the wrong answer.

Can the major contours of the portraits of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels be trusted?  Many critics would argue not.  The Jesus Seminar became the best-known collection of such critics during the 1990s as they alleged that only 18 percent of the sayings ascribed to Jesus and 16 percent of his deeds as found in the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, plus the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, bore any close relationship to what he actually said and did.  At the same time, a much more representative cross-section of scholars from about 1980 to the present has inaugurated what has come to be called the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus, in which a greater optimism is emerging about how much we can know, from the Gospels, read in light of other historical cultural developments of the day.

I can't help wondering what this "much more representative cross-section of scholars" is representative of. Most likely it's representative of scholars who believe the Gospels are reliable. The fact that Blomberg states that "a greater optimism is emerging" shows that he's not assessing the evidence from a neutral standpoint. I accept that he has a view on the matter, but his phraseology here indicates he's in the grip of confirmation bias.

He goes on to reiterate a claim that has appeared previously in Evidence for God — that the sheer number of copies of manuscripts counts towards their accuracy, which simply (and obviously) isn't the case. If I have an unreliable document and photocopy it a hundred or even a thousand times, the reliability of that document remains unchanged.

Blomberg also mentions archeological evidence, but this was dealt with in the previous chapter and is similarly unconvincing — or irrelevant — as far as the supernatural claims of the Gospels are concerned. He then discusses the differences between the Gospel accounts, attempting to have his cake and eat it. Where they agree, the Gospels demonstrate their reliability. Where they disagree, that's entirely what he would expect, given their mode of transmission. On the one hand we have variations due to the vagaries of the oral tradition, on the other we have remarkable veracity due to the reliability of the oral tradition.

But first-century Judaism was an oral culture, steeped in the educational practice of memorization.  Some rabbis had the entire Hebrew Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) committed to memory.  Memorizing and preserving intact the amount of information contained in one Gospel would not have been hard for someone raised in this kind of culture who valued the memories of Jesus' life and teaching as sacred.

I dare say a scholar or rabbi could have done this, as I'm sure could Derren Brown today. But the people who are alleged to have performed this feat of recollection were not known to be rabbis or scholars. Matthew, we are told, was a tax-collector, or maybe a publican, Mark was possibly Jesus's half brother. John was a fisherman, and Luke may have been a "compendium" character used for narrative effect and who never actually existed. Not that we even know that the Gospels were authored by the men whose by-lines they bear. Given what little we do know of these characters, therefore, it's stretching a point to suggest that the reliability of the Gospels can be founded on feats of memory the authors were unlikely to be able to perform.

Taking all the above into account, it would appear that the historical reliability of the Bible can be reliably assessed as "not reliable".

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbbible.aspx?pageid=8589952775

Skepticule Extra 23 available for your listening pleasure

Skepticule Extra 24 will be recorded tonight, if all goes to plan. But while you're waiting for that one to go live, listen to our previous show!

Skepticule Extra 23 features a surprise guest (at least, it's a surprise if you can't be bothered to check out the shownotes, or if you skip over the intro).

Lots of meat in this episode: 9/11, ID, dowsing for a million dollars — along with plenty of other delights...

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2012/04/skepextra-023-20120325.html

A Thought for the Day — any day soon, please?

Evan Davis, one of the hosts of Radio 4's morning news radio show, The Today Programme, shared his views about Thought for the Day in a brief profile article in the Independent recently, subsequently picked up by the British Humanist Association, which has long been campaigning for the daily four-minute slot to be opened up to non-religious speakers:

Today programme host: ‘Thought for the Day’ should have secular voices

This is so obvious it should have been done years ago, but the BBC have a blind spot about their religious programming. They even claim that the "faith" content of TftD is balanced by the "non-faith" of the rest of the Today Programme. It's just part of an insidious insistence that morality is the exclusive preserve of religion, which is not only false but profoundly so. An excellent case can be made that religious considerations of moral questions are inherently lacking in morality, and that the only truly "moral" approach to such questions is a secular humanist one.

Nelson Jones (aka "The Heresiarch") took up the matter in New Statesman:
New Statesman - God's Morning Monopoly
...giving a comprehensive overview and a reasoned argument that, today, thoughts don't have to be religious.

New Humanist chimed in with the following:
New Humanist Blog: Time for atheists on Thought for the Day?
Not just time. It's long overdue.

Guy Stagg

So far, so unanimous. But then Guy Stagg penned this staggering drivel in the Telegraph:
Secularists on Thought for the Day will expose the loneliness of atheism – Telegraph Blogs
(Via HumanistLife.) 

There’s so much wrong with Guy Stagg’s article one hardly knows where to start. We'll try the beginning:

Evan Davis has called for Thought for the Day to be opened up to secular contributions. The Today programme presenter thinks that the show is discriminating against the non-religious. Davis probably thinks this would strengthen the role of secularism in society, but in fact the opposite is true.

Naked assertions do not an argument make.

Thought for the Day is one of the better things about the Today programme. In comparison with some of the indulgent and irrelevant slots that fill up the three hours, Thought for the Day is consistently focused and intelligent.

Stagg obviously misses the ones I hear, which are mostly woolly and platitudinous.

What is more, as most atheists recognise, faith has plenty of lessons for religious and non-religious alike.

Secularism has plenty of lessons for people of faith (and no faith), so let's hear some of those too.

Finally, Radio 4 gives lots of space to secular contributions – a few minutes of God in the middle of the morning is hardly a victory against the Enlightenment.

But this is exactly the point — where else in the Today Programme's three hours can we hear secular views on ethics and how-we-should-live? Restricting TftD to only God-based views is clearly discrimination.

There are also practical problems with Evan Davis’s idea. Who would be invited onto the new Thought for the Day? Davis suggests “spiritually minded secularists”. I guess that would include philosophers and academics, but presumably poets and lifestyle coaches as well. The question is: who does it exclude?

Why should it exclude anyone?

There is something a bit immature about the idea, like a schoolboy trying to get off chapel. It belongs to the same category of silly proposal as Alain de Botton’s secular temples, or Dawkins's rebranding of atheists as “brights”. It shows that, although secularists have realised that they cannot simply be defined by opposition to religion, nevertheless they have little to offer in its place. Crucially the secular tradition has no successful institutions to preserve and spread its principles.

Stagg hasn't done his homework. "Brights" did not come from Richard Dawkins, though he and Dan Dennett have promoted the soubriquet, which hasn't found much favour among secularists. Secularists, however, have plenty to offer the Today Programme's listeners, if given the chance. As for replacing religion, if one has a cancerous tumour surgically removed, one does not seek to insert something in the body to replace it. And what does Stagg mean by "the secular tradition", if he's claiming secularists have no successful institutions? Is he not aware of the well-established British Humanist Association? The National Secular Society?

This is something that few secularists admit: atheism is quite lonely. Not just existentially, but socially as well. Secularism does not offer the sense of fellowship you find in religion. Watching old Christopher Hitchens debates on YouTube with a like-minded sceptic is entertaining, but I doubt it's as nourishing as Sunday Mass.

There's a reason secularists don't admit that atheism is lonely, at least not in Britain today. Because it isn't, neither existentially or socially. (On the global scale, is Stagg unaware of the Reason Rally? If so, he seems quite unqualified to write this article.) And I've no idea why Stagg thinks a secularist would find Sunday Mass in any sense "nourishing".

This doesn't make the claims of religion true.

He gets that bit right, at least.

For what it’s worth, I doubt them as much as Evan Davis. But I recognise that atheism has a long way to go to provide a complete and compelling alternative to religion. And it will take a lot more than inviting some yoga teachers onto the Today programme.

There's no reason why atheism ("lack of belief in a god or gods") should be an alternative to anything other than god-belief. Secular humanism, however, holds that it is possible to lead an ethical, fulfilling and meaningful life (the only life we have) without religion. I am without religion, and I see no need for anything in its place. And it may well take more than yoga teachers on TftD to convince people of that fact. So let's do it.

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As mentioned above, the BHA has an ongoing campaign about Thought for the Day, and they are once again urging secularists, humanists and others to write to the BBC trustees. Here's my effort, sent on 2 April:

BBC Trust Unit
180 Great Portland Street
London
W1W 5QZ

Dear Sirs,

In today's Independent, Evan Davies, one of the presenters of Radio 4's Today Programme, is quoted thus:

===
Davis, an atheist, feels strongly about Today's "Thought for the Day" slot. A decade ago he complained that it was "discriminating against the non-religious". Now he says: "I think there's a very serious debate about whether the spot – which I would keep – might give space to what one might call 'serious and spiritually minded secularists'. I don't think "Thought for the Day" has to only be people of the cloth."
===

The BBC has over the years received many calls to restore balance to this slot but has not done so. The calls keep coming.

As a listener to the Today Programme for several decades I would like to add my own strong feelings that "Thought for the Day" should include secular views. The consideration of ethical questions is not the sole purview of the religious, and given that the slot is not called "Religious Thought for the Day" its content remains unbalanced. I urge the trustees to rectify this as soon as possible, in line with what is likely to be the majority view of the programme's audience.

Yours faithfully,

Paul S. Jenkins

---

I sent this via email, to trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk
(...and only now, on pasting this in, do I realise I spelled Evan Davis' name incorrectly.)

Burnee links for Easter Monday

Myra Zepf - Bunnies, chicks and brutal torture | New Humanist
A difficult call, but in this example it appears that children can't be indoctrinated if they don't care.

Three posts on the Reason Rally from Adam Lee:
Reason Rally Wrap-Up, Part 1 | Daylight Atheism | Big Think
Reason Rally Wrap-Up, Part 2 | Daylight Atheism | Big Think
Reason Rally Wrap-Up, Part 3 | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

And a fourth:
Christian Responses to the Reason Rally | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

Pondering a universe without purpose - Los Angeles Times
OK, we know Lawrence Krauss has a book to promote, but it's always refreshing to read his clear prose. (Just don't bother with the comments unless you have a predilection for purposeful misunderstanding.)

Tennessee Goes Monkey Again - Katherine Stewart - RichardDawkins.net
Amazing that supposedly sane, rational people can allow — indeed be in support of — such madness.

In Defense of Dawkins’s Reason Rally Speech | Camels With Hammers
Dawkins was not being unreasonable at the Reason Rally.

As far as the Bible is confirmed as true, it is mundane

"Archaeology and the Bible — How Archaeological Findings Have Enhanced the Credibility of the Bible" is chapter 45 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. John McRay's claims for such "enhancement", however, put too great a strain on the word's meaning. The archeology he cites in this chapter only enhances the Bible's credibility if cherry-picking and confirmation-bias constitute valid reasoning.

The Bible is a collection of many kinds of documents written over a period of about fifteen hundred years. Beginning with the composition of the first five books (the Pentateuch), the sixty-six total documents were completed by the end of the first century A.D. They were composed in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages in various geographical settings and different historical periods. Archaeological discoveries relating to these settings and periods have enlightened the cultural context in which many of the recorded events occurred and enhanced the credibility of the Biblical record, both the Old and New Testament periods. For example, many events recorded in the last one hundred years of this period of biblical history, during which the New Testament documents were written, have been illuminated through significant archaeological discoveries. Following are some of these impressive finds. Space limitations will not allow discussion of the fourteen hundred years of Old Testament sites.

In this first paragraph we can see McRay already narrowing his focus to exclude inconvenient facts. He's not going to discuss the Old Testament, so the absence of any archeological evidence for the Exodus is conveniently glossed over. And note his wording: discoveries have "enlightened the cultural context" and "enhanced the credibility of the Biblical record." He's clearly admitting that these discoveries are not proof that the Bible is true.

The findings he cites are these (using his headings):

Pool of Siloam
Rolling Stones at Tombs
Tomb of Caiaphas
Capernaum Synagogue
Acts 17:6 and Politarchs in Thessalonica
Erastus in Corinth
Romans 13:3 Inscription in Caesarea Maritima
Paul before Gallio at the Tribunal in Corinth

These appear remarkably mundane — some location mentioned in the Bible actually existed; some official mentioned in the Bible appears on ancient inscriptions; some of the events described in the Bible actually occurred. Note, however, that none of these attests to miracles or supernatural beings. The Bible may well contain some "truth", but as far as that truth is confirmed by archeology that truth is ordinary.

One might be tempted to suggest that though there are events in the Bible that have yet to be confirmed, and places in the Bible whose existence has yet to be confirmed, archeological evidence may arise in the future to confirm them. But one should not report all the so-called confirmations, dismissing items still to be confirmed, while actively ignoring positive evidence that contradicts the Bible — such as the the problems mentioned by Daniel B. Wallace in chapter 43:

Which evangelical would not like a clean harmony between the two records of Judas’ demise, uniform parallel accounts of Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus, or an outright excision of the census by Quirinius? And who would not prefer that in Mark 2.26 Jesus did not speak of David’s violation of the temple as occurring during the days of “Abiathar the high priest”? These are significantly larger problems for inerrancy than the few, isolated textual problems—and they are not in passages that are capable of facile text-critical solutions.

Some scholars, it seems, are prepared to admit there are problems. John McRay's approach, however, appears to be a disingenuous attempt to suggest that there is good evidence for the truth of the whole of the Bible. There isn't.

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4truth.net:
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbbible.aspx?pageid=8589952738

Greta Christina has a list of things

Greta Christina is an atheist-writings powerhouse. Her blog — ingeniously named "Greta Christina's Blog" — is always worth reading. She writes about things other than atheism, such as gay rights, feminism, sexism, and indeed sex, but it's probably her atheist writings for which she's best known, and not only on her blog: she also writes for AlterNet, Free Inquiry and other publications.

Her posts are nothing if not comprehensive — she's a take-no-prisoners, leave-no-stone-unturned kind of writer. And now she's written a book.

It started as a blogpost, became a rousing talk at Skepticon 4 and most recently was a speech to 20,000 rain-soaked but nonetheless inspired atheists at the Reason Rally. Greta Christina is an activist, and her activism appears mainly to take the form of writing. Her goal is to persuade and convince, and she is crafting her writing career to do just that.

Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless begins with the Litany of Rage, comprising a list of those 99 things — and there really are that many of them. For unbelievers of an accommodationist persuasion this list should be an eye-opener. Unbelievers should not be tolerating wacky beliefs if those beliefs give rise to the things that Greta Christina is angry about. In the light of those 99 things, this is no time to be making nice with the peddlers of irrationality — if that irrationality leads to harm. Which it does.

The language of this book is simple, straightforward and clear. Greta Christina makes much use of repetition to drive her central point home, and perhaps some readers might tire of this rhetorical device over a whole book. But it's her established style, which readers of her blog will recognise, and it's no doubt effective in hammering her points home.

The book is as yet available only digitally (I have the Kindle version), but it will soon be in print and audio. Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless is an atheist call-to-arms — and all campaigning, activist atheists should themselves be armed with it.

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Here's a promotional video for the book:
http://youtu.be/8E4RbDx3Kvk


Here's Greta Christina's talk at Skepticon 4:
http://youtu.be/GUI_ML1qkQE


And here's her speech at the Reason Rally:
http://youtu.be/-9Up_Beqmq4

Burnee links for Sunday

Mostly the Reason Rally...

Face to faith: Richard Dawkins, rationalism, and religion as a team sport | Comment is free | The Guardian
Lois Lee's piece is refreshingly calm, and apt in the light of the recent Reason Rally. (Some of the comments, however, feature the usual mix of banality and inanity.)

Can the Reason Rally resonate in this most religious of democracies? | Sarah Posner | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Making up for Lois Lee (above) not mentioning the Reason Rally...

The Reason Rally, and Why It’s Good to Keep Hammering On About Diversity | Greta Christina's Blog
Could this be the watershed moment for diversity in the "atheist movement"?

Live Blogging the UK C4ID Lecture 2011
Instant reaction to Stephen C. Meyer's lecture — the same one I recently watched on video and talk about on the next episode (#23) of Skepticule Extra.

Atheist Richard Dawkins Celebrates Reason, Ridicules Faith : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR
Barbara J. King is a mildly hostile interviewer, but Dawkins is well used to her kind of passive-aggressive approach. Audio here:
http://public.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/blog/2012/03/20120326_blog_rd.mp3