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Maybe I’m missing something here.

2012/03/01

“Mommy! John said I like tomatoes!”

“Do you like tomatoes, Tim?”

“No. But he said I did!”

“Well, nobody believes him. Just ignore him – he’s only wasting his own breath.”

“But he keeps saying it!”

“I know, sweetie. And if you ignore him, he will keep wasting his own breath.”

Kids are so strange – I’m sure many parents have had to deal with similarly bizarre claims of injury to one child by another. Fortunately, they tend to grow out of such things as they grow up, and learn a little perspective. Usually …

Several Jewish organizations and individuals are upset that some Mormon individuals continue to perform (remote) baptisms of dead people – including Jews who died in the Holocaust. They seem to see it as an intolerable attack on the religious identity of the dead. (CBC, BBC)

Maybe I’m missing something here. The Jews don’t believe the Mormons have any actual access to the spirits of dead Jews; the Mormons are not doing anything to the physical remains of people; and the historical record remains unchanged. What exactly is the nature of the injury?

The Jews do not believe the Mormons have special access to God’s will or the souls of dead people. (If they did, I would think they’d call themselves “Mormons” rather than “Jews”.) So they don’t think the Mormons are actually stealing their loved ones’ souls for their non-Jewish god. Besides, even if they believed, the Mormon posthumous baptism is an invitation, not an initiation. According to Mormon belief, the soul of the deceased can accept or reject the baptism as they choose. So even if you believe there is something to Mormon posthumous baptism, the deceased is, at worst, voluntarily converting.

The baptisms are performed in absentia – a volunteer from the church stands in for the person being baptized. So no violation of physical remains is taking place.

The only evidence that anything happened is in the LDS records; so there is no chance that the historical records of people’s identity, or of the numbers of Jews that died in the Holocaust, will be distorted by these actions.

So all we’re left with is that the Mormons are performing rites in the privacy of their own homes and temples that express their belief that Joseph Smith’s revelation was a genuine message from God, and that all other religious messages are inferior.

So how is that any worse than, you know, being Mormon? How is it (for example) any more religiously insensitive than the orthodox Jewish prayer thanking their god for not making them a gentile? (Or, to be nice and ecumenical, is it any different from the traditional Catholic prayer for their god to convert the Jews?)

I just don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not surprised at the outrage. After all, I’m accustomed to hearing people complain that atheists are “militant” because they lay out, clearly and without apology, their reasons for not believing in any gods, and because they wish to live in a society where they are not treated as second-class because of their personal beliefs. The Jews are understandably sensitive about their religious identity.

It’s rather insensitive of the Mormons conducting these baptisms to publicize them in such a way that Jews can learn about them. (Yes, if they did them in private without telling anyone, I would see no problem beyond the fact that they’re expending energy on false beliefs.) And it should be remembered that Jews aren’t being singled out. Various others, from Adolf Hitler (and family) to Obama’s mom, have also been named in this ritual. This doesn’t make the practice less offensive, but it does suggest at least that anti-Semitism is not a motive.

So, to sum up my understanding: Nobody – real or imaginary, living or dead – is being coerced into anything by these “baptisms”. Nobody except the Mormons themselves believes that the dead are in any way affected by the baptisms. No physical remains are disturbed. No historical record is being altered.

Why is it that so many Jews think this is worth shouting about?

Please let me know what I’m missing.

Posted in beliefs, Judaism, Mormonism, news, questions/challenges | 1 Comment »

Banned! Minority tyrrany! (Perspective?)

2012/02/13

There’s been a ruling in an English High Court that, instead of praying at the start of council meetings (when everyone must be there), the Bideford town council should instead pray just before the start of council meetings (when attendance is optional). The case was introduced by a local councillor, and supported by the National Secular Society (NSS). Michael Langrish, the Bishop of Exeter, tells us in that story that this is an attack on the religious freedom of Christians. ”I think it’s a great pity that a tiny minority are seeking to ban the majority, many of whom find prayers very, very helpful, from continuing with a process in which no-one actually has to participate.”

It seems to me that there is a whole lot of wrong wrapped up in the Bishop’s words. I’ll take some time to review the two main bits of wrong: the demographics involved, and the injury done.

For the demographics, I’m drawing on a 2011 poll commissioned by the British Humanist Association (BHA), and a 2007 poll conducted by Why Church, a Christian group. I do not know how biased either of these polls might be, so I will also throw in numbers from the recurring British Social Attitudes Survey. The numbers differ, but the overall story is basically the same.

The BHA study found that 53% of people in England and Wales claim to be Christian (7% claim other religions), but only 29% claimed to be religious. For how many of those is the message of their church important? The Why Church study finds that regular attendance is declining steadily – at the time of the report, it was at 15%. That’s how many in the UK attend at least once a month. In particular, compare this section from the executive summary of their report to the bishop’s statement above (my emphasis):

Two thirds of UK adults (66%) or 32.2 million people have no connection with church at present (nor with another religion). These people are evenly divided between those who have been in the past but have since left (16 million) and those who have never been in their lives (16.2 million). This secular majority presents a major challenge to churches. Most of them – 29.3 million – are unreceptive and closed to attending church; churchgoing is simply not on their agenda.

The BHA study supports this, reporting that 63% of respondents had not been to church in more than a year.

It looks like the good bishop’s claim to speak for the majority is, at best, barely true and soon to be outdated. More likely, he’s thinking about a Britain that is several decades in the past.

The BHA poll reports that while 53% claim to be Christian, 65% of people in England and Wales claim to be non-religious. Clearly, some see themselves as “non-religious Christians” – a category which reminds me of “secular Jews”. A Scottish poll gave similar results: 58% claiming some religious affiliation, and 56% saying they were not religious. Even the Why Church survey shows agnostics and atheists at 33% of the population. Langrish’s claim that it is a “tiny minority” imposing these onerous restrictions is therefore ridiculous. It is no stretch to say that, if they don’t already, non-believers are likely to soon outnumber believers in the UK.

The British Social Attitudes Survey shows a drop in Church of England affiliation from 22.50% in 2008 to 19.98% in 2009. Christians overall went from 49.70% to 43.83%, and total religious affiliations from 56.38% to 48.86%. The “no religion” category grew over the same period from 43.19% to 50.67%. Call me crazy, but it looks to me like the bishop’s C of E flock is less than half the size of those whose interests the NSS seeks to protect – Langrish’s “tiny minority”. Probably, he meant all religious people when referring to the “majority” – but even so the numbers are close, and moving in favour of the non-religious.

I’ll let you sift through the statistics yourselves for further insight – there is obviously a lot of scope for picking different numbers, depending what aspect of the issue is important to you. The British Social Attitudes Survey releases their data to registered users; the Why Church people have a number of informative graphics on their website, as well as an in-depth report (PDF). The BHA provides downloadable statistical summaries of their poll on their website.

What wiggle room do we have in interpreting the demographics for this issue?

On the bishop’s side, we could include only regular attenders of the Church of England? That would be somewhere well south of 15%. It’s tempting, but of course other Christians and religious people more generally may also claim an interest in making prayers part of the official council business. That would put the number up as high as 61% – but only, mark you, if the prayers are inclusive of all religious perspectives. And what about people who only attend services rarely or not at all? Is it reasonable to think that they would be upset by a law that allows councillors to opt out of pre-meeting prayers? Counting regular (monthly or more) attenders from all religions, we get something closer to the 15%.

On the secular side, should we only look at members of the NSS, the BHA, and other organizations promoting non-belief? If so, we’ll have a very low number – perhaps appearing to justify Langrish’s “tiny minority”. The BHA has 28000 paying members and supporters; the HSS (Humanist Society of Scotland) has around 6500 members; and the NSS is estimated to have fewer than 10000 paying members. Some individuals will be members of more than one of these groups, and there are many smaller groups that I have left off of this list, but this indicates that something like 40000 people – a fraction of a percent of the UK population, are card-carrying, dues-paying secularists. Should we also include the “de-churched” – the 33% of UK adults who used to attend church, but no longer do? They seem to have made a pretty solid vote for reducing the influence of church in their daily lives. Should we include everyone who claims to be non-religious? Again, it’s tempting, but not all of this group (depending on the survey, somewhere from 33% to 65%) will agree with the secularization of Britain (just as not all religious people agree with the establishment of church power and rituals in government institutions).

Regarding the specific issue at hand – religious prayers before council meetings – a couple of questions about politics on the British Social Attitudes Survey are also relevant. A growing number of people think that churches have too much power in the country (10.58% in 1991, 29.76% in 2008), and people increasingly object to religious leaders influencing government (56.64% in 1991, 67.26% in 2008).

Goodness, what a mess of numbers! Over all, the bishop’s appeal to democratic sensibilities seems to backfire. If the will of the people is important, then the British people seem to be saying that the church should back off. (Of course, an obvious rejoinder from Langrish’s camp would be to bemoan the fact that people are turning their backs on religion – but that becomes more paternalistic and less democratic. Besides, I wouldn’t want to put words in the good reverend’s mouth.)

But let’s back up a little. What did the court rule, exactly? It ruled that prayers are okay in a pre-meeting context, but not as part of the minuted, mandatory-attendance part of council meetings.

So when we hear people complain that their voices are being silenced, their rights trampled on, bear that in mind. They are being pushed perhaps a few minutes earlier, so that people who object to the practice of prayer in council meetings have more freedom to absent themselves while the religious folks carry on thanking and invoking and praising as they always have. That is the great secular imposition which Langrish and others are wailing about.

This is the point where I would typically want to extract some broader lesson. Perhaps about people’s tendency to inflate perceived injuries against them. Or I would congratulate myself on my humility by noticing that we also tend to minimize perceived injuries against others when we identify – by creed or otherwise – with those accused of the attack. (It’s true that I think the Bishop is being alarmist. On the other hand, he is right in his statement in the Guardian that “ the agenda of the National Secular Society is inch by inch to drive religion out of the public sphere.”)

But I think I’ll leave it there, and see what you think. Is there an obvious demographic perspective that makes this all clear? Should we be worried about how many of us there are and how many of them, or is secularization about something more than just one side beating another side with brute numbers? What is the significance of the (apparently overlooked) fact that it was the High Court, attempting to interpret the laws of the land, that handed down this ruling (and not the NSS or one disgruntled atheist councillor)?

Posted in atheism, Christianity, democracy, discrimination, law, news, politics, religion, statistics, UK | Leave a Comment »

Definition: “religion”

2011/09/24

I’ve been asked for my definition of “religion”. I’ve blogged for some time now without really offering a definition.

Let me offer the normal preface: I do not offer my definition as a prescription, nor lean on my authority as a trained linguist (can you believe I have a doctorate now?) to suggest that others ought to conform to my opinion here. I’m simply trying to clarify how I tend to use the term, in hopes that this will help people better understand what I write on this blog. See here for a friend’s much more eloquent summary of the linguist’s standard attitude to prescriptivism.

So here goes…

A religion is a system of thought or belief that includes some supernatural, transcendent entity or phenomenon.

Now, what would count as a religion under this definition?

  • Certainly, any belief in a god or gods – orthodox forms Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Paganism – is a religion.
  • And not just organized religions: any belief in a god or gods, even if it’s outside the scope of any particular organized religion, is a religious belief. This includes deism, the belief in an impersonal creator-god.
  • It is possible to believe in an afterlife without believing in a god; for me, this too falls under the umbrella of “religion”.
  • Similarly for belief in karma, fate, etc: they are transcendent and supernatural, and so they are religious.

What doesn’t count as a religion, by my definition?

  • Atheism and humanism are not religious systems; the one specifically excludes the supernatural, the other is simply defined without reference to religious elements.
  • Other systems that exhibit social elements analogous to organized religion – sport fandom, the adulation of celebrities, some flavours of patriotism – are not religions. (Though, of course, I reserve the right to use the term “religious”, as any other term, metaphorically when talking about such phenomena.)
  • Science is not a religion. It saddens me to have to even mention this, but there are those who would lump science in with religions.
  • Ethical systems are not religious, except where they invoke supernatural justifications (God-the-Lawgiver, or supernatural versions of karma, the threefold law etc). It is here that I would say Unitarian Universalism, as an overall movement, is not religious. The organizing principles of Unitarianism are non-religious ethical precepts, not specific supernatural beliefs.
  • Superstition, astrology, and other (non-supernatural) instances of human credulity are not religious. The whole “alternative medicine” scam is not (in general) religious.
I think this definition broadly agrees with the common usage of the term. I also think the term “religion”, and affiliated terms like “religious” or “spiritual”, are messy things.

Posted in atheism, definition, religion | 10 Comments »

Heritage

2011/07/28

The UK government recently reasserted its determination to privilege Christianity over other religions, and especially over unbelief, in public schools.*

There are plenty of rants one could indulge in over this – on the merits of a secular public sphere in general, on the dangers (to religious as well as secular values) of mixing religion and government, on the indoctrination of children.

Today, I’d like to simply reflect on the justification given: that the collective worship assemblies reflect the country’s broadly Christian heritage.

Many replies could be made to this statement. First, I will agree that Christianity has played a long and important role in shaping British history and culture. It would be a disservice to children and society to deny or downplay this fact in teaching kids about British history.

But what is, in fact, suggested, if we really take seriously the claim that British religious heritage should be imparted in school assemblies? You see, as I understand it, the religious heritage of the UK is not one of meekly accepting traditions that have been handed down. A large part of that heritage is a laissez-faire attitude: great numbers of people claiming religious affiliation for but doing nothing about it.

Leaving that very important part of the British character aside, the religious history of the isles is an exhilarating tale of reform, revolution, and advance. England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have all been swept with waves of religious reform, from the Anglican break from Rome, through the Protestant Reformation, down through the Enlightenment and the rise of scientific scepticism.

British religious heritage includes ideals of Catholic universality, of Anglican nationalism, of Protestant individualism, and (very dear to me) of radical dissent from religious belief. The intellectual history of humanism is as indissoluble a part of this heritage as Christian traditions such as the “Lord’s Prayer” – and as necessary to understanding the contemporary character of British society.

To deny this – to privilege Christian beliefs and rituals over the other aspects of British heritage – is to reject the great advances that have been made by some of Britain’s most well-known and respected historical figures – Newton, Hume,Darwin, Huxley, and many others. It is also to reject the growing portion of the population that finds fulfilment in life without any reference to a god or religion.

If the government really wants to impart British heritage to schoolchildren, to give them a real experiential connection to the grand themes of British religious identity and heritage, then it should open up the scope of the religious assemblies to explore all of that heritage, rather than only one corner. How were things in Britain different before and after Henry VIII’s break with Rome? How have different religious groups, when in power, persecuted or protected other religious groups? Perhaps children could watch (or, even better, participate in) re-enactments of the encounters between John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots, or between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce.

Having grown up mostly oblivious of religion in Canada, I rather like the British idea of openly discussing and learning about religion in the classroom. Too many of the ills of religion are due to (or exacerbated by) ignorance of other beliefs. It is a shame that the UK government undermines their basically positive principle by cravenly catering to sectarian influences, as in the case of collective worship.

I have to agree with this statement by Lord Avebury at the end of this piece that,  “this is going to happen in the end” … “whether they like it or not, it is going to come. Sooner or later we shall get rid of the act of compulsory worship in schools, and the sooner the better.” Britain is becoming more secular, and secularists are gaining a stronger voice. But sooner would be better, for the children’s sake.

Footnotes:

* The media at large doesn’t seem to have picked up on this, so I can only link to the BHA’s summary. See also this report by the Accord Coalition, a group of religious and non-religious organizations working to improve education and religious rights in the UK.

Posted in beliefs, Christianity, education, politics, values | 2 Comments »

Contending with the multiverse

2011/07/25

This is a review of the second essay in the book Contending with Christianity’s Critics.

At home in the multiverse? by James Daniel Sinclair

Sinclair sets his sights on the multiverse, one of the leading contenders for a sound naturalistic explanation of apparent fine-tuning. I will pick out some highlights.

First, let me say that the fine-tuning argument – the latest and least ambitious incarnation of the ancient argument from design - has always seemed to me to be the strongest argument for the existence of a god. But, having read accounts of it from both sides, I’ve come to feel that its strength lies mainly in our anthropocentric biases rather than any logical superiority it possesses. (See Luke Muehlhauser’s discussion of Fine Tuning at Common Sense Atheism.)

Sinclair also commits some curious blunders. For example, he says that science flatly rejects gods as impossible. Certainly, few modern scientists consider gods as possible explanations. But that is largely because they’ve learned the lessons of history. Early scientists (such as the ancient Greeks, Newton, and Darwin in his youth) did believe – at least in some deistic lawgiver, if not a full-on personal god. But those beliefs got them nowhere in terms of explanation, so modern science tends to skepticism about the usefulness of gods as explanations. Also, look at Dawkins. Sure, he rejects the god hypothesis, but he does so only after evaluating it within a scientific framework. There are scientists, even atheistic ones, who assert that god is outside their purview, but that is not a universal belief among scientists.

As another example, I will share an interesting passage that presents a multiverse version of the ontological argument.

Jay Richards asks us to consider another refutation of an atheist Many Worlds: Christian Alvin Plantinga’s modal version of the ontological argument. In the strong version of the SAP, all possible worlds are considered actual. But if this is so, then if it is even remotely possible that God (the necessary being) has reality (i.e., He is in one possible world), then this necessity implies He must be present in all possible worlds. In essence, an atheistic attempt to produce a necessary universe produces God-as-computer-virus which propagates to “infect” every world! As Richards states, “Such can be the penalty for toying with notions such as possibility, necessity, and infinite sets.” (pages 22-23)*

This argument suffers not only from the linguistic defect of Anselm’s original ontological argument; it also commits a fatal equivocation. Anselm’s key error was to treat “existence” as the same sort of property as “redness”. That error is repeated here. The equivocation in the multiverse version above has to do with whether the god exists separately for separate universes, or exists transcendently, a single presence spanning them all. On the one hand, if the god’s existence in universe A is a different question from the god’s existence in universe B, then it is true that the probability of the god existing in some universe increases as the number of universes increases. On the other hand, if the god is equally present across all the universes by definition, then the probability of its existing is unaffected by contingent details like the number of universes. The above argument switches definitions at a crucial point. In a more valid form, the argument can give you either a probably-existing contingent god in a small subset of universes, or a very unlikely god that is present across all universes.

In truth, I don’t know if a multiverse approach is worth pursuing. I don’t know if it solves the apparent problem of fine-tuning. But then, after reading Luke Muehlhauser’s thoughts on the issue, I’m not convinced that fine tuning is a legitimate “problem” for naturalism that requires a solution.

At any rate, I don’t see that this essay gives any reason to shift my beliefs.


Footnote:

* Sinclair references this online paper by Richards as the source of this argument.

Posted in atheism, books, religion, Richard Dawkins, William Lane Craig | 2 Comments »

Contending with Dawkins (1)

2011/07/18

This is a review of the first essay in the book Contending with Christianity’s Critics.

Dawkins’s Delusion by William Lane Craig.

In the first essay, William Lane Craig outlines what appears to be Dawkins’ main argument against belief in god from The God Delusion. Here is the structure, as Craig presents it:

  1. There is an appearance of design in the universe.
  2. A designer is one way to try to explain the appearance of design.
  3. Positing a designer raises the question of who designed the designer.
  4. The best explanation we have for the emergence of complex things is evolution by natural selection.
  5. We have no equivalent explanation for physics.
  6. We should maintain hope that such an explanation may turn up.
  7. Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist.

Craig correctly points out that this is a crashingly bad argument. The conclusion does not follow from the premises, and point 3 in particular seems to raise the spectre of an infinite regress of explanations. But is this a fair assessment of Dawkins’ argument?

No. It ignores the very important aspect of explanations that they be simplifying. That is, you have a simpler account of things after adopting the explanation than you had before. Dawkins harps on about this rather a lot in his book. Craig may not agree that simplicity is a key virtue of a successful explanation, or that a creator god fails the simplicity test; but he really should acknowledge that this is part of Dawkins’ argument. This answers, I think, the problem of the infinite regress of explanations. What I read Dawkins as meaning is that, if your explanation fails to simplify things, then the only reason we would have to adopt your explanation if, behind it, there isanother explanation that does simplify things.

Now, I realize that this may be me projecting rather than successfully reading Dawkins’ original intent. But that doesn’t really matter. The point here is not an atheist apologetic (“What is the true meaning of the text?”) but an attempt to get the best understanding of reality. So here is my reformulation of Craig’s version of the argument.

  1. The universe exhibits the appearance of design.
  2. A designer is one purported explanation of the appearance of design.
  3. Generally speaking, appeals to a designer fail as explanations because:
    1. they fail to systematically predict actual observed phenomena and rule out phenomena we do not observe, and
    2. they fail the test of simplicity, relative to naturalistic alternative explanations.
  4. In the past, comparable design arguments have been countered by the very powerful and well-evidenced theory of evolution by natural selection.
  5. Although not yet as evidentially-supported as evolution, naturalistic explanations of the appearance of fine-tuning – such as the multiverse – are available and being explored.
  6. We therefore have good grounds for optimism that naturalistic explanations will prove more empirically successful than theistic explanations for the appearance of fine-tuning.
  7. Therefore, we should prefer the more parsimonious no-god hypothesis until substantial contrary evidence arises.

I know, it is not watertight. Nor is it a deductive argument. Like any scientific argument, it is inductive – seeking the most likely explanation of the observations available.

And despite my disclaimer, I do think that it is closer than Craig’s version to the actual arguments presented by Dawkins. (But again, I don’t want to pretend that my goal is to faithfully parrot Dawkins; please don’t attribute any of my errors to Dawkins. If you want to know what Dawkins says, read Dawkins.)

So much for the first essay in the series.

Posted in atheism, books, religion, Richard Dawkins, William Lane Craig | 1 Comment »

Contending with Christianity’s Critics

2011/07/18

This post introduces the fourth book in the philosophy challenge that Deena and I began last year.

Contending with Christianity's Critics

Contending with Christianity’s Critics.

  • ISBN: 978-0805449365; ISBN10: ; B&H Academic; Pages: 304; [Amazon]

Edited by Paul Copan and William Lane Craig

This book contains a collection of essays by various apologists, responding to various criticisms of Christian belief.

The previous apologetic book in the series began with high ambitions and a promising premise. In this book, our expectations were set low from the opening paragraph. The editors begin their introduction by pointing out that the recent popular “New Atheist” books are less philosophically and historically solid than much of atheist philosophy, previously and currently. It is these New Atheist books that the current volume aims at.

I can understand the desire to counter the more prominent voices, rather than the stronger ones. And I am sure that, aside from Deena and me (and the others who have accepted Luke’s challenge), very few atheists will be reading this book. It is aimed at other believers and apologists, not at atheists. Nevertheless, the admission that this book aims philosophically low disappointed us.

On the other hand, we looked forward to at least one essay in this volume: Daniel Wallace’s piece critiquing Bart Ehrman on the reliability of the New Testament as a record of historical events. I mentioned in my review of Ehrman’s book that I would like to see what arguments are raised against it, because I am unqualified and not strongly motivated to see for myself any errors he commits. Perhaps this essay would help balance my impression?

Anyway, this is a book of essays, so I will review them individually (for the most part). I will maintain a list of links here pointing forward to the reviews as they go up:

Part 1: The Existence of God

1. Dawkins’s Delusion, by William Lane Craig

2. At Home in the Multiverse? by James Daniel Sinclair

3. Confronting Naturalism: The Argument from Reason, by Victor Reppert

4. Belief in God: A Trick of Our Brain? by Michael J. Murray

5. The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism, by Mark D. Linville

6. Dawkins’s Best Argument Against God’s Existence, by Gregory E. Ganssle

Part 2: The Jesus of History

7. Criteria for the Gospels’ Authenticity, by Robert H. Stein

8. Jesus the Seer, by Ben Witherington III

9. The Resurrection of Jesus Time Line, by Gary R. Habermas

10. How Scholars Fabricate Jesus, by Craig A. Evans

11. How Badly Did the Early Scribes Corrupt the New Testament? by Daniel B. Wallace

12. Who Did Jesus Think He Was? by Michael J. Wilkins

Part 3: The Coherence of Christian Doctrine

13. The Coherence of Theism, by Charles Taliaferro and Elsa J. Marty

14. Is the Trinity a Logical Blunder? God as Three and One, by Paul Copan

15. Did God Become a Jew? A Defense of the Incarnation, by Paul Copan

16. Dostoyevsky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution, by Steve L. Porter

17. Hell: Getting What’s Good My Own Way, by Stewart Goetz

18. What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism, by David P. Hunt

(I will also provide a summary of the volume at the end.)

Posted in atheism, books, Christianity, philosophy | 3 Comments »

50 reasons people give for believing in a god

2011/07/11

50 reasons people give for believing in a godThis post introduces the third book in the philosophy challenge that Deena and I undertook last year.

50 reasons people give for believing in a god. ISBN: 978-1-59102-567-2; Prometheus Books; Pages: 330; [Amazon]

by Guy P. Harrison

In the introduction, Harrison says, “This book is not an attempt to prove the nonexistence of gods.” So believers are free to simply read his responses as “Here’s why I don’t find your reasons for belief persuasive,” rather than, “Here’s why you have no justification for your beliefs!” By the same token, non-believers cannot pretend that Harrison’s responses to the 50 reasons are anything close to disproofs of gods’ existence.

So, as an entry in this Truth-Seeker’s challenge, this book may seem a little irrelevant. I can imagine a believer reading it with the same impatience I had reading Letters to Doubting Thomas. Many of the points it puts forward for atheism are answerable by more sophisticated apologetics.

But I think such a response may fail to see the value (and purpose) of the book. Remember Harrison’s disclaimer. He’s not out to soundly disprove the best philosophical defenses of theism. He’s interested in responding, as a regular atheist, to the reasons regular believers give for their belief.

Harrison draws on extensive travel, not only to spice his book with interesting anecdotes from around the world, but to demonstrate that he’s not just setting up convenient straw men to tackle. He really is responding to the reasons most people give for believing. If I, as an atheist, do not understand these reasons and have a quick reply ready, I am unlikely to influence anyone’s belief. And if you, a believer, have not seen the casual atheist reply to some of these claims, you are unlikely to influence atheists’ beliefs. For both of us, seeing these in-the-trenches arguments, presented respectfully and succinctly, may help avoid a certain amount of talking past each other. They may help us see more clearly where the points of difference lie.

I think that, for a challenge that is aimed at non-philosophers, this book maps out some of the important philosophical foothills that we’d need to navigate before we try to tackle the more rarefied heights addressed (I hope) in the remaining books (all of which are written or contain contributions by professional philosophers).

To sum up, this book does not directly tackle the question at the heart of the challenge: “Which belief is most reasonable?”

But to the question “Do people generally believe in gods for good reasons?” then this book makes a good case for the answer “No”. This seems to be Harrison’s project – he is not pretending to be a philosopher. For that reason, and because of the entertaining presentation and many anecdotes from Harrison’s extensive travels, I’m glad we’ve read this book, and glad to have it on my shelf for future reference.

 

Posted in books, Christianity | 2 Comments »

Letters to Doubting Thomas

2011/07/04

This post introduces the secondLetters to Doubting Thomas book in the philosophy challenge that Deena and I undertook last year.

Letters to Doubting Thomas. ISBN13: 9780195308150 ISBN10: 0195308158; [Amazon]

by C. Stephen Layman

It is difficult to sum up my very mixed reactions to this book in the space of a single blog post.

Layman’s book claims two excellent ideas as its organizing principles: it is written as a dialogue; and it is an argument to the best explanation.

Dialogues have a long and distinguished history in philosophy, and I looked forward to seeing this format applied to such an interesting topic. And, to the extent that an argument to the best explanation adheres to the rules of its big brother, probability theory, it represents one of the most reliable ways of deriving new beliefs from existing knowledge.

So I dared to hope that here, at last, was a book that might embody that ideal of an accessible, balanced approach to the perennially muddy question of the existence of a god.

Alas, no.

In terms of the dialogue – the back-and-forth between characters on either side of this debate – Layman falls flat. His characters are a theist philosopher (understandably, someone much like Layman himself), and an atheist layman (named Thomas, of course). Sadly, the arguments reflect the characters’ unbalanced backgrounds. The theist character draws on modern scholarship; the atheist cites Freud and Nietzsche. The theist is confident and verbose in defense of his intuitions. The atheist rolls over and accepts the most absurd assertions – such as:

The Principle of Credulity (p45): Accept what experience suggests unless special reasons apply. (p43)

It was not a robust back and forth between equals; it was a teacher-student exchange. I don’t mind that the characters end up agreeing in favour of theism; what bugs me is that only the most superficial straw-man version of naturalism is given time in the book.

In terms of the positive case that Layman tries to build for theism through the book …

Let’s begin with the “principles” that he offers early on – principles which seem custom-made to elevate human bias and wishful thinking above the objective, dispassionate weighing of evidence. In addition to The Principle of Credulity above, he offers these gems:

The Starting Principle (p45): Accept what seems to be so unless special reasons apply.

The Principle of Testimony (p49): Accept what others tell us unless special reasons apply.

Clearly, these principles make life easier. Instead of questioning everything, we can simply accept things at face value. Most of us live by such principles most of the time. But of course, they stand directly in the way of advancing knowledge – of learning new stuff, and correcting old errors.

Or, put another way, centuries of scientific investigation have taught us that special reasons very often apply. Our experiences can be misleading; our intuitions about “what is so” are often crashingly wrong;and the testimony of others is confounded by such a host of conscious and unconscious biases that uncritical acceptance of another’s report can be downright irresponsible.

Let me offer a couple of highlights. One is the theist’s assertion (which receives only token resistance from the naturalist character) that libertarian free will obviously exists. Because Layman offers nothing more than his gut feeling that his is true, I am content for now to counter it with nothing more than my own gut feeling that it is false.

Another is Layman’s suggestion that naturalists have a problem grounding the concept of “evil”. He even has the temerity to claim that this problem negates theism’s disadvantage due to the theistic problem of evil.

It was difficult to finish this book. It became clear early on that Layman wasn’t really interested in pitting the best theistic philosophy against the best naturalist alternative. He was content to conjure up a straw man out of his own imagination, or perhaps from randomly selected Internet chatrooms discussing religion.

Deena and I were left hoping that the next apologetic book in this series will contain a bit more bite.

But I’ve also had the germ of an intriguing idea: maybe I could do some part of what Layman so completely failed to do. Maybe I could construct a probabilistic comparison of the theism and naturalism. A proper comparison. Involving, you know, actual numbers, instead of the vague statements offered by Layman.

Given the subjective nature of many of the concepts involved, anything I came out with would, like the famous Drake equation, certainly not be a definitive or persuasive argument. But it would be an interesting exercise in probability theory. Also like the Drake equation, it might be a useful spur to further refinement and improvement, with the hope of eventually producing a more robust calculation.

I’ll get to work on it, and let you know what I come up with.

In sum, I can’t say this book was a total loss. It has inspired me to learn more about probability. It also gives an interesting, if not terribly impressive, initial idea of what passes for philosophy in religious circles.

Next up, stay tuned for Guy Harrison’s fast-paced romp through popular reasons for believing in gods …

 

Posted in books, Christianity | 3 Comments »

Jesus, Interrupted

2011/06/20

This post introduces the first book in the philosophy challenge that Deena and I began last year.

Jesus, Interrupted

Jesus, Interrupted. ISBN: 9780061173936; ISBN10: 0061173932; HarperOne; Pages: 304; [Amazon]

by Bart D. Ehrman

This book presents an overview of some of the discrepancies and contradictions apparent in the New Testament, and what they tell us about the actual history of early Christianity, from Jesus’ life to the eventual formation of the modern Christian canon.

This is not a book claiming to debunk Christianity or religious belief in general. It’s a book of history, aiming to introduce laypeople to the scholarly consensus – a consensus that has failed to reach not only lifelong heathens like me, but also most people who claim to believe in and follow the Bible as a guide to life.

Jesus, Interrupted makes two main points. The more obvious is that, in communicating their religious messages, the books of the New Testament fail to accurately portray the historical events they talk about. The other point is that acknowledging this fact does not require abandoning the Bible as an inspiring collection of texts, a devotional tool, or even the centrepiece to the Christian religion.

Fallibility

This book is no simple irreverent catalogue. If you want to see atheists exclaiming “How can people believe this garbage?” you will need to look elsewhere – for example, the Skeptics Annotated Bible.

Ehrman’s attitude is more scholarly. Drawing on his deep familiarity with the New Testament, he lays out numerous examples where the narrative in one part of the New Testament is inconsistent with the narrative in another part. Sometimes it is just a matter of tone. On the way to being crucified, was Jesus the confident son of God, willingly sacrificing himself as part of a greater plan [Luke 23:26-49] or a bewildered human, silent, feeling abandoned by his god [Mark 15:16-39] (pages 64-69 of JI)? Other times, it is a question of differences that are striking, but can be reconciled with sufficiently creative narrative distortions. Did Jesus cleanse the temple of money-changers and other commerce at the beginning of his ministry [Mark 11:15-19] or at the end [John 2:13-16] (p166 of JI)? Apologists may conclude he did both (see also here) – but Ehrman points out that this is an awkward solution that misses the point of the incident in the context of each individual account. And, often enough, there are flat-out contradictions, where no plausible interpretation can rescue the assertion that all of the canonical books are historically accurate. Compare the account of Judas’ demise in Matthew 27:3-10 with that in Acts 1:18-19 (from page 46 of JI).

Throughout the book, Ehrman is also showing us the historical approach taken by mainline biblical scholars. He slowly builds a picture of how we got these various books in their present form. What did Jesus and his followers probably believe? What happened after his death, and how did the early Christian community evolve in those first few decades?

I will not go in to detail – it would take an entire book to do the material justice. This book, I think.

Ehrman’s arguments are very convincing – particularly those that rely mainly on the text of the New Testament. After all, if the evidence is at your fingertips (in print or online), it is very easy to check, to make sure the author isn’t pulling a fast one. But even the rest of it, drawing on non-canonical gospels and on more detailed scholarly research, builds a picture that seems to hang together very comfortably.

Historicity vs faith

The second key point that Ehrman makes – that the fallibility of the New Testament as history doesn’t have to undermine Christian faith – might seem very secondary indeed. It’s not the main content of the book by word count, and it’s certainly not the bit you expect to agitate conservatives and excite skeptics. But it’s clearly important to him. He mentions it prominently in his opening, and devotes his entire last chapter to it.

He is careful to point out that his own agnosticism is not due to the historical inaccuracy of the Biblical texts.

He has given many presentations of these arguments to a lay audience, and notes that often people – religious people who are honestly interested in learning about this book that’s important to them – ask him afterwards why they’ve never learned this before. Not as a challenge; they are genuinely interested. They want to know more – not because they have begun to doubt their faith, but because understanding their scriptures in more depth is an important part of that faith.

I was surprised how much this second theme of Ehrman’s book affected me. After all, as a “cradle atheist”, I have never had a faith in the New Testament’s historicity that could be threatened by Ehrman’s revelations*. But you see, up to now I’ve only ever encountered the Bible in two contexts: believers arguing for its truth, and skeptics arguing for its falsehood. One side has been singularly unpersuasive; the other has carried the day. End of story. What reason do I have to spend more time reaffirming obvious facts? Oh, some people point to the Bible as inspiring literature in its own right. And I’ve had a little taste of that. But generally, whenever I’ve opened up the Bible, my sense that the authors want me to believe (while never offering good arguments for belief) ruins my ability to enjoy the non-belief-related side of the prose.

Reading Ehrman’s book is the first time I’ve been walked through a genuinely interesting alternative: the Bible as an archaeological artifact. It is a set of very old documents. What can they tell us about the people and times that produced them? Just as I don’t have to embrace or reject the British monarchy to enjoy walking through Edinburgh Castle, I should be able to enjoy reading the Bible for what it is without always thinking about whether or not it is the miraculous word of a god.

I don’t know if I’ll actually do this, mind you. It’s a little outside my preferred genres of literature (science fiction and fantasy, with the occasional bit of philosophy). But thanks to Ehrman, I now have a plausible way to enjoy the Bible, if I do decide to pick it up.

Too good to be true?

Okay, so here’s the caveat. First, Jesus, Interrupted is the first exposure I’ve had to biblical scholarship, and second, Ehrman’s conclusions coincide with my expectations. These are two very good reasons to be careful before accepting his conclusions. He seems to make a lot of sense, and he seems to have done careful work. For the moment, I will tentatively take his assertions as true. But I really would like to see if there is another side to New Testament scholarship, and what it has to say.

Fortunately, just such an opportunity will come up later. One of the essays in Contending with Christianity’s Critics, the volume edited by Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, is titled “How Badly Did the Early Scribes Corrupt the New Testament? An Examination of Bart Ehrman’s Claims” (written by Daniel B. Wallace). I’ll let you know how Ehrman stacks up after reading that.

In the meantime, I’ll just say that Jesus, Interrupted was a delightful book to begin this face-off between Christian and atheist philosophies. I learned some interesting facts, and a liberating approach to this terribly influential book I’ve never read. The fact that it wasn’t, in fact, philosophical in nature didn’t bother me. Its subject matter is clearly relevant to the matters at hand, and may come in handy if any later author tries to stand on the Bible as a reliable historical text. But Christians wouldn’t try that, would they?

Footnote:

* Ehrman does not claim to have personally discovered any of these things about the Bible – most have been long-known by biblical scholars. Which makes it all the more scandalous that the stuff Ehrman is talking about is not more widely known.

Posted in Bart Ehrman, books, Christianity | 5 Comments »

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