Richard Carrier, apparently, has another new book out. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have mixed feelings about Dr. Carrier: those feelings might be described as one part respect, mixed with two parts "affectionate contempt," and three parts dumbfounded awe. John Loftus gives a preview of Carrier's new book on his Debunking Christianity website. Let's listen in, then respond, in a provisional way, to some of the arguments Richard seems to be making:
Carrier gives four reasons as summarized by Confessions of a Doubting Thomas:
Richard Carrier is not a "doubting Thomas," of course: he is a highly committed atheist, who does not at all want to believe in God. Plenty of people in the 1st Century scoffed at Christian claims: Carrier might more accurately identify himself with one of the scoffers, not with Thomas.
God is Silent: that is, if God is as most Christians describe him, he should be able to make his message clear to everybody. And what's more he should be willing to make his message clear to everybody. The reality is, however, that most people are not aware of a clear message from God, and the message that seems to be heard by believers is not a consistent or even a non-contradictory one. Different believers get different messages and these conflict, and these lead (quite literally) to conflict. God appears to be unable to deliver a simple message to his people, let alone to everyone else. Thus, the Christian God is refuted by his silence."
If God is silent, why do billions of human beings today, believe they have heard from him? (Including me?)
I remember inviting an Egyptian Muslim over to our home for Christmas one year in Japan. She shared her reasons for believing in God. They had to do with perceptions of a designer that had come to her through nature, creatures in the Red Sea, pictures of which she showed me, for instance.
The Bible says Nature reveals God. It is legitimate to argue about cosmological arguments, or about design arguments. But even if these arguments fail, Nature itself is read as a language that seems to tell many or most people, "I am here, and I am not silent!"
This is why early scientists spoke of the "Book of Nature."
Suppose you are a prison guard in Hanoi. Suppose you hear some sound, and suspect that the prisoners are communicating with one another. But how? You listen late at night, and hear some scraping. Maybe it's just the rats! Maybe people are striking their cups against the wall at random, as they move in closed quarters. It doesn't sound like a language to you.
Suppose you then find that spontaneously, all around the prison, your American wards are putting up little decorations, and singing songs. You bring some of the prisoners into your office, and interrogate them. "It's Christmas today!" They tell you. But they refuse to say how they found out.
Maybe they have all calculated the days, and independently concluded that it is Christmas. Or maybe they have communicated -- maybe those scrapings, which sound random to you, are in fact a secret language.
If you know the language, you can be sure that you have received a real message. But if you do not know the language, you may suppose it is either a series of random noises, or perhaps a language, but like Jabberwocky, contains no coherent message.
Is that because the language is, in fact, garbled? Or because we are still learning to listen? Maybe it is in part garbled so that those who overhear it with hostility, will dismiss it.
Maybe you don't want it to be a language, because you're like Seargent Shultz, and really just want to get along, without any such complications in your life.
Even new prisoners, who are still learning the code, may be unsure if a given series of scrapings is, indeed, a message, or what it means.
 |
| "I hear NUUTHEENG!" |
There are other languages, too, like the words of Jesus and the prophets, miracles, the conscience, our perceptions of beauty and justice, and our intuitive love of truth. One might be able to explain these things in terms of evolution -- I know many have tried -- but can one justify them, or give them the normative stature we know they deserve?
It is also a fact that peoples in hundreds or thousands of cultures around the world, contrary to skeptical assumptions, have come to a coherent concept of the Supreme God who transcends any one culture. This is a subject I have written a lot on, including in this previous blog.
So Carrier's first premise seems contradicted by a multiplicity of facts.
The fact that people hold some different beliefs about ultimate truth, follows from the fact that God is also hidden, as he must be, if we are to be free. If it were impossible to believe anything but the truth about God, could we be free? Thus even in Star Trek, the "Prime Directive" is to allow otherworldly cultures to develop on their own, without outside interference.
God is Inert: that is, there is no evidence that there is a loving and supremely powerful God at work in the world. Innocent children suffer and die. Good people suffer and die. Innocent children of good Christian people suffer and die. God apparently does nothing to stop this. This is inconsistent with the claimed character of the Christian God, thus, God is refuted by his inactivity.
The Problem of Pain has been discussed by believers and unbelievers since ancient Greece, if not earlier. Ancient Jews and Christians were of course more familiar with pain than we are, in our anti-septic world. Most babies died. Epidemics swept whole populations out of existence. Warfare was more common. Yet people came to the conclusion that God does care, and does act in the world. This is the strongest argument in the atheist arsenal, but it is curious that its force seems to be strongest just when we have found so many devices to get rid of pain.
Wrong Evidence: basically, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, and the biblical evidence is barely even mundane. The best evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus is four non-eyewitness accounts, which contradict each other on important issues, and a bunch of letters, ostensibly from someone who never met Jesus in the flesh and only had a vision of him. And all these were written a couple of decades after the alleged events, at the earliest. How is all that sufficient evidence for the greatest claim ever made?
Here we come into all sorts of disagreements, which one can only list, and not respond to at length on the spot:
* Is Carrier begging the question with his term "extraordinary claim?" Maybe for him, the idea that God would act in the world is "extraordinary." Maybe for me, the idea that God would NOT act is "extraordinary." Choosing between these options would take quite a bit of discussion; maybe we should return to this question at some point.
* I think the NT evidence IS extraordinary, for reasons I gave in Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could.
* There are, in fact, between three and five eyewitness accounts of the risen Jesus, in the New Testament, along with numerous close second-hand accounts.
* Carrier's description of what the Bible claims about Paul's meeting with Jesus is incorrect, as NT Wright demonstrates. That meeting cannot validly be described as "only had a vision of him." For one thing, visions do not ordinarily render a person blind, then accurately tell him about a stranger who will come and cure him some days hence. We might call this a "smart vision."
* What's wrong with writing about events a couple decades later? I do that all the time, as (I have found) do my seniors. If Dr. Carrier is fortunate enough to reach a similiar or later stage of maturity (may he enjoy good health), he may find himself referring to events he has himself witnessed a couple decades later, and still remembers quite clearly.
Wrong Universe: the Christian claim is that God made the universe and put us, the pinnacle of creation, into it. So why is 99.99999% of all creation hostile to us?
Is it? I can't live in space, but does that make space "hostile" to me? Be careful what writers smuggle in with their anthropomorphisms.
As far as we can tell, if you scaled the entire universe down to the equivalent size of a house, then the tiny zone which is capable of sustaining human life is as small as a single proton! Invisibly and insignificantly small. This is not what we would expect if the universe was intelligently designed for us, but is exactly what you would expect if we are merely an accidental by-product of a chaotic universe.
I know of no suggestion in the Bible that God created all the universe just for us. Maybe He likes lots of stars; if so, who can blame Him?
Aside from which, if we live in three-dimensional space, that space will either be bounded or not. If unbounded, it will either be full of things, or empty. If full of things, those things will either include sentient life, or not. Every possibility will be used by skeptics of this mind-set as an argument against God. Why did God create so much empty space? Why so many dead planets with atmospheres of sulfer-dioxide or carbon dioxide? Why, we know we're just one rational species out of ten trillion! Why should God care anything about us?
All such arguments are as vacuous as most of space itself. There simply seems to be no relationship between premises and conclusion. If nothing else, the astounding discoveries of modern astronomy underline the ancient phrase, "the Heavens declare the glory of God."
Carrier's book sounds pretty wretched, but the 'hostile universe' one takes the cake.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think simply looking at the history of life on earth would give him pause. How many areas are settled now that once upon a time, for a variety of reasons, would have been called inhospitable?
This before questioning whether the fact that, say... humanity's inability to survive in the center of the sun (for example) makes the sun 'hostile to life'.
I saw on Triablogue he bills himself as a World Class atheist. Honestly, if I were an atheist, I'd be freaking out at having this guy representing me. It's a little like having Jim Bakker bill himself as a major representative of Christianity.
Heh. Good point about the sun. Come to think of it, our freezer is pretty hostile to life, too. That's why we put dead animals and plants in it, to eat later. Why did God create the freezer?
ReplyDeleteAnd the black hole at the center of our galaxy is super hostile to life. Just try living on, in, or near it. Of course the stars might fly off into random orbits without it . . . But if people ever colonize black holes, will that make the existence of God more likely? That loud scraping sound you hear will be the withdrawal of a bad argument.
Wasted space? Hostile? What a cramped, limited, dare I say woodenly unartistic and practically inhuman view of it! There is beauty and glory in all of it!
ReplyDeleteTom: Thanks for the link. Great article, good points. Guillermo Gonzalez is contributing a chapter to my upcoming anthology, Faith Seeking Understanding, BTW.
ReplyDeleteThanks, David!
ReplyDeleteI see a few problems with your post. First, I find it absurd that you're trying to critique a book you've never read. To all readers: what he is citing are very superficial summaries written by a reader of the book. Carrier goes into much more detail and deals with several counter arguments, a few which are used by Mr. Marshall. Of course no one reading his post would know that since he hasn't even opened the damn book to see what it actually says! Second, your arguments are atrocious. Third, this is not a "new" book. It was published a year ago. You are clearly such a “lazy person's apologist” that you don't even bother with any kind of fact checking or research do you? I suppose that's what we all have come to expect judging from your past work. Nothing ever changes.
ReplyDeleteReading this post, it seems almost as if the writer is purposefully misunderstanding what Carrier's arguments are stating. This is a laughable attempt at a refutation of a summary of a book. When you only listen to people who agree with you, you can never learn.
ReplyDeleteBill: I carefully explained that I was critiquing Carrier's claims as represented by John Loftus on his blog. I underlined this fact and put it in bold. Are you really so obtuse that you could not pick up on this? If Carrier doesn't want Loftus to quote him that way -- and I cited EVERYTHING from Loftus -- they are friends, and Carrier can, I'm sure, dissuade him.
ReplyDeleteYour attacks are sleazy and infantile. I've posted in-depth reviews of hundreds of books on Amazon, including the longest, most in-depth review of one of Carrier's previous books ever posted in that forum, as well as similiarly in-depth reviews of TWO Loftus anthologies, including chapters by Carrier.
Did you know that? Or is it you who is being lazy?
It is entirely appropriate to respond to a blog summary with a blog summary. Get a life.
Eric: You give no specifics, any more than Bill does. Your one concrete claim seems to be that I "only listen to people who agree with me." This is absurd. I've posted hundreds of reviews of serious books on Amazon alone, by atheists, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, along with Christians, carefully evaluating, often praising books I disagree with.
ReplyDeleteLike most skeptics, the two of you seem to have nothing but hot air to blow at those you disagree with. Come back when you have something more solid, please.
David,
ReplyDeleteHello again. We met on the Amazon forums (for Carrier's book Sense and Goodness without God) where I attempted to defend your honor as "not a liar."
If you are going to use the Prime Directive excuse, that implies that we are actually on our own and that this is incompatible with all caring father and shepherding motifs in Christian understanding.
Metaphysics is outside the domain of human expertise and an informal, unqualified, messy and essentially vague, incomplete consensus from humanity doesn’t count in favor of a god especially when we evaluate the specific reasons and find them to be persistently bad. In addition to that there is a rather simple alternative explanation that's well-known, well-evidenced, and well-worn that exists for the persistence and prevalence of belief in a higher being. They want it to be true. This explains both the popularity of the belief and all the dysfunctional and contradictory characters of the vast spectrum of theistic belief.
You point to the idea that when things were even worse than they are now (though in many parts of the world they are still as bad as they ever were), people still found the explanation plausible that a good god was in charge of things, but when people are esentially living an existentially threatened lifestyle they are not in their most dispassionate and impartial mindset to evaluate metaphysical claims and more likely to believe something that gives them hope.
Apparently we're not free to believe god exists on the basis that we actually know it is true since Yahweh prefers to be an existential tease. We would be forced to be intellectually dishonest with this irreducibly complex epistemic framework hinged on a possibly selfish desire to want more out of reality than reality is able to provide. Knowing things are true doesn't violate someone's free will. It respects their free will and their ability to consent on an informed basis.
"Maybe for me, the idea that God would NOT act is "extraordinary.""
That's actually Carrier's point about the argument from evil. It is an extraordinary claim that a good god would allow such so much evil in the world to exist. That's a lot easier to figure out than the historical case for the resurrection of Jesus.
"Every possibility will be used by skeptics of this mind-set as an argument against God."
To be fair, every iteration of "we thought there was a divine explanation, but then we lowered our expectations when we found yet another naturalistic explanation" has found generations of believers always willing to see a divine hand behind any level of supposed divine intervention or lack thereof. Carrier elaborates on the primitive universe described by the Bible and the many ways the naturalistic origins of ourselves require (rather than accomodate) what we actually have discovered to be the case. A flat earth with a hard dome sky would still be pretty big and vast to an ancient mind and properly declare the glory of Yahweh. It's all relative. The point is for something like abiogenesis to get off the ground, you *have to have* trillions of galaxies so that at least one lucky contestant wins the molecular lottery and accidentally stumbles into self-replication land from the mere complexities of chemistry.
If you are going to use the Prime Directive excuse,
ReplyDeleteNot really, since the 'prime directive' in this case isn't eternal, and is to a degree optional itself (embracing God, following Christ's teachings.)
That's actually Carrier's point about the argument from evil. It is an extraordinary claim that a good god would allow such so much evil in the world to exist.
That doesn't seem to be the case at all, at least to me. Especially when the 'good god' is omnipotent, doubly so when we're talking about a 'good god' who - in the case of Christianity - was able to take an utterly evil act (Christ's crucifixion) and reveal it to ultimately have been worthwhile (the resurrection, etc.)
In other words, you're dealing with a religion which makes it absolutely clear that the good God in question is willing to permit evil. It's not as if the Bible says, "And God created the universe. It was pure and good and there was no death, decay, or otherwise. The end." and then we find ourselves looking around trying to square what we see with those words.
The point is for something like abiogenesis to get off the ground, you *have to have* trillions of galaxies so that at least one lucky contestant wins the molecular lottery and accidentally stumbles into self-replication land from the mere complexities of chemistry.
There's a few problems there.
First, it assumes we know what the odds of an origin of life coming to pass even are - this is far from clear. Eugene Koonin thinks an origin of life event is so unlikely that one universe is not enough.
At the same time, you don't "have to have" trillions of galaxies - you're dealing with an odds questions there, but A) you can always appeal to luck, and B) if luck doesn't work out, you can always appeal to ignorance. Koonin's example comes up again: he doesn't like luck, so he dives for the multiplicity of universes. (Forgetting, for a moment, that if he multiplies the universes like that, he's also multiplying the possibilities - on naturalistic assumptions - for being capable of of designing/simulating universes, and therefore creating life, to spring up as well.) On the flipside, Monod favored luck - he just said 'freak accident, once in a universe event'.
Likewise, it didn't have to turn out to be the case that an origin of life was extremely hard. What if it were supremely easy? Heck, what if it turns out to be extremely easy? Then - oops - it looks like that would fit the naturalist narrative as well.
That's another part of the problem: this kind of 'naturalism' is as unfalsifiable as any God. Is life extremely common, even intelligent life? Ha! That just proves naturalism - we're nothing special. Is life, even intelligent life, extremely rare? Ha! That just proves naturalism - we're freaks of nature, extreme accidents.
To be fair, every iteration of "we thought there was a divine explanation, but then we lowered our expectations when we found yet another naturalistic explanation"
This is, frankly, a naturalist myth, where the entire universe was assumed to be explained by a billion 'supernatural' theories, and then natural theories kept popping up as possible explanations. With Christianity, God was viewed as the author of nature - exactly how the authoring was done was rarely speculated on, and when it was (creationism) it was in a grand package sense rather than a billion free-standing theories. And that package isn't and wasn't essential to maintain God as the author of nature.
Even Carrier should recognize this 'naturalistic triumph' as a myth, since Carrier himself cops to 'naturalism' (and therefore 'natural' and 'naturalistic') as being, essentially, a contentless designation that he himself has tried to put meaning into.
Ben: Thanks for reminding me who you are, and for posting a substantial challenge in a reasonable tone.
ReplyDeleteThe Prime Directive is not meant as an absolute, even in Star Trek, and in this context, is only a limited analogy. In the end, there is a story because Captain Kirk ignores the Prime Directive, sometimes because he loves some girl. So that is very compatible with the Christian view of reality: a Law which is not broken often, but is less than the full story. It's a good analogy, but of course not perfect, because Kirk is not God, even if he forgets that himself, sometimes.
"We" don't find the arguments for God "persistently bad:" you say you do. Most of us find them quite good. Of course you can say, "But you want to believe!" So we can say, "But you don't want to believe!" Having spent years interacting with atheists of various stripes, I am certain that there is such a thing as a "will to not believe," and that it is about as strong, maybe even stronger, than the "will to believe."
Plus, as C. S. Lewis points out, there are also pessimists, who disbelieve because they want to believe, and distrust their own motives, along with pessimists who believe because they want to disbelieve. You really can't make an argument for atheism from this tangle.
Your point about abiogenesis is valid. Yes, our extended universe, in space and time, with the Darwinian mechanism added in, makes it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist," to some extent, and leaving out some facts which seem easy to ignore, anyway. (I'm interested in how you calculate the odds of abiogenesis, BTW -- I mean, sincerely interested.)
But given that our lucky little planet won the lottery and has life, what are the odds that we would also host so many apparent other miracles which life does not require? (Including all those miracles that most NT scholars exclude on principle, so as to be allowed into Le Club Scientifique.) That's my question.
One quick final comment for now.
ReplyDeleteMetaphysics is outside the domain of human expertise and an informal, unqualified, messy and essentially vague, incomplete consensus from humanity doesn’t count in favor of a god especially when we evaluate the specific reasons and find them to be persistently bad. In addition to that there is a rather simple alternative explanation that's well-known, well-evidenced, and well-worn that exists for the persistence and prevalence of belief in a higher being. They want it to be true. This explains both the popularity of the belief and all the dysfunctional and contradictory characters of the vast spectrum of theistic belief.
Regarding metaphysics: people seem to forget that naturalism is a metaphysical position as well.
Regarding the explanation: psychoanalysis is always on the table - but it's also on the table for atheists. Dawkins and company clearly do not want God, certainly not the God of Christianity, to exist. Calvinists can psychoanalyze away why others don't believe in the God they do, despite all the evidence.
Psychoanalysis is a dead end in these topics: if you play that game, everyone loses, atheists included. Really, atheists will get the shortest end of that particular stick.
Looks like David replied at the same time. Heya David.
ReplyDeleteI'd endorse his point as well about the arguments: they strike me as excellent for establishing the existence of God broadly, which in turn provides good reason to entertain claims of God's interaction with and interest in our world.
Crude: Good morning. Everyone in North America is asleep, right now, or singing songs in a late-night bar -- so where are you?
ReplyDeleteDavid - my schedule is just unusual compared to most.
ReplyDeleteCrude,
ReplyDelete"Especially when the 'good god' is omnipotent, doubly so when we're talking about a 'good god' who - in the case of Christianity - was able to take an utterly evil act (Christ's crucifixion) and reveal it to ultimately have been worthwhile (the resurrection, etc.)"
"Doubly" as though this god having a bad weekend once is anything like an appropriate display of compassion for humanity. Perhaps he could do two weekends? And by the time I'm done writing this comment how many horrible things much worse than crucifiction will have happened in the world to innocent people completely unprepared to deal with it?
"In other words, you're dealing with a religion which makes it absolutely clear that the good God in question is willing to permit evil."
The religion makes it "abundantly clear" it is internally incoherent. A morally perfect god could not be with a single blemish since perfection by definition is "without blemish." Allowing evil of any kind for any reason is necessarily a moral blemish especially since it would not have to create anything at all.
"That's another part of the problem: this kind of 'naturalism' is as unfalsifiable as any God."
So we don't quite know the exact probabilities it would take to generate a self-replicating molecule. It's a trivial epistemic problem on balance in comparison to Christian theism. I don't have a personal relationship with abiogenesis so I'm not really worried about how difficult it is to appraise the reality of it. Abiogenesis isn't outside time and space and expected to still "think" like a coherent divine mind. Abiogenesis has no absolute moral obligations to create and maintain morally perfect worlds. Abiogenesis isn't expected to be an immaterial entity that lacks height, length, width, and depth and yet it still expected to be considered something that "exists" in some relevant sense.
No one expects abiogenesis to be an easy problem to solve given the technical nature of the problem. However we do have this ginormous universe beyond our comprehension (and perhaps even more than that) that could plausibly have served to let it win the molecular lottery to the other side of that where there's a scientific consensus on common ancestory. This is a chalk outline of abiogenesis and a reasonable grounds to think that chemistry might defy our intuitions to the contrary as we are not well versed in the molecular world or good at crunching big numbers.
ReplyDelete"This is, frankly, a naturalist myth, where the entire universe was assumed to be explained by a billion 'supernatural' theories"
This is just a convenient caricture to escape the fact many magical explanations have been prevalent in human thought, and many endorsed in the Bible, and that not a single one has been vindicated by any scientific consensus, yet natural explanations have prevailed over many of them. That's just how it is.
"Regarding metaphysics: people seem to forget that naturalism is a metaphysical position as well."
I suppose metaphysical agnosticism is a relevant metaphysical position as well (like bald is a hair color)? So, there's that. Also, it being possible for humans to come to reasonable metaphysical conclusions doesn't do anything to hurt my claim that the vast majority of uncritical people do not fit that description. So a really weak convoluted consensus on deity questions is unimpressive.
"Psychoanalysis is a dead end in these topics: if you play that game, everyone loses, atheists included. Really, atheists will get the shortest end of that particular stick."
My provisional conclusions about theists in general (in other words, my best estimate) doesn't tell me much about you personally or imply that many theists don't do their very best to come to rigorous intellectually honest conclusions from their perspective based on what they think they know. It is possible to be merely wrong and I'm not obligated by my worldview to misrepresent your presentation of self. Every new person is an open file.
David,
ReplyDelete"It's a good analogy, but of course not perfect"
Okay. Well the Prime Directive is mainly about one group of people (well, technically the Federation is many groups of people) deciding they are not qualified to impose their values and culture on every new race they come across. The Biblical god as an explicit shepherd, creator of our nature, Lord of all, and fatherly figure does not fit that description (in fact, it's the exact opposite) and so you're using the wrong standards in any event.
"Most of us find them quite good."
I'm sure they'll turn up eventually and in context of my evaluation of the consensus of humanity on divinity, most theists don't have arguments for their belief, because most humans (whether theist or not) just don't think that much about their worldview.
"Of course you can say, "But you want to believe!" So we can say, "But you don't want to believe!""
No doubt. However, I know I want to believe if in fact this worldview is actually true. I went for years as a Christian desperate for any kind of divine validation. Even the heavens opening up and convicting me definitively of some kind of sin would have been a huge relief from that emotional strain. And in my apostacy, even if evidence means there's an evil deity out there, I'd like to know it. Regardless, as I'm sure you know, even many Christians struggle with fundamental belief in the basic propositions of the worldview. On the other hand Satan doesn't seem to have a problem with being a maltheist, does he? It's probably because of the evidence differential.
There's simply nothing implausible about a person with my kind of motivation and it would take extraordinary evidence to overturn that kind of mundane testimony. The only thing you have at your back is the ancient holy hearsay that arbitrarily decides the motivations of unbelievers for all time without ever having met them (and the Christian enculturalization rooted in that which may have primed your intuitions accordingly). I'm certainly not going to overturn the testimony of millions of unbelievers on their own genuine unbelief for the sake of the testimony of handful of Jews from thousands of years ago through the fog of history on the historical claims that supposedly justify all Christian doctrine about those nonbelievers. Doing otherwise would not exactly be the paragon of impartiality when it comes to human testimony.
"Having spent years interacting with atheists of various stripes, I am certain that there is such a thing as a "will to not believe," and that it is about as strong, maybe even stronger, than the "will to believe.""
I don't have a problem with that, especially since there are many principled reasons to desire the Christian worldview to be false. Even the category of unbelievers with purely selfish desires against Christianity just doesn't eliminate conveniently the whole spectrum that any honest person has to deal with.
"what are the odds that we would also host so many apparent other miracles which life does not require?"
You'll have to be more specific.
Ben: The Prime Directive shows there's a logic behind leaving people (apparently) alone for most the time. Even with sheep, I just spent a few weeks in the UK, and happened to observe several herds -- none of which were accompanied by a shepherd as I watched. Why not? Given a green pasture, most of the time a herd of sheep can look after itself. Given a blue planet, and given our greater need for adventure and story, for pulling ourselves up, the logic of the case is that God would NOT interfer too much. Rather, He seems to work by the subtlety that Lao Zi describes in the Dao Dejing. One Chinese philosopher argues plausibly that the Dao is actually a synonym for God -- read it in that light, and I think the solution to your question will present itself.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, there's plenty of grounds for seeing the biblical God in the same light. But the Bible makes it clearer than Lao Zi does, that sometimes God answers prayers in more overt ways, though still seldom overwhelming us like an alien landing would.
I appreciate your expression of openness to the evidence, and don't have any trouble believing that you are. I think there is enough evidence, not just in the Bible, but in the confirming structure of reality. Though I don't think the "testimony of millions of unbelievers" is all that relevant: if one asks whether something really exists or not, say the city of Quito, one doesn't rely primarily on the testimony of people who admit they've never been there to find out.
To answer your last question, maybe the main reason I reject atheism, is that miracles do, sometimes, seem to happen. I have talked to to many believable people, read too many books by those I found credible, and even seen a few surprising things myself. Keep your eyes open.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteThe religion makes it "abundantly clear" it is internally incoherent. A morally perfect god could not be with a single blemish since perfection by definition is "without blemish." Allowing evil of any kind for any reason is necessarily a moral blemish especially since it would not have to create anything at all.
This is silly. First off, what you mean by 'morally perfect' and what theists generally, and Christians particularly, mean clearly differs. You say allowing evil is a 'moral blemish', but that's nothing more than assertion in the face of the claims that not only can evil sometimes enable even greater good, but - particularly given an omnipotent God - what seems like a blemish now, can be made to be anything but one in the limit. Again, see the crucifixion.
So we don't quite know the exact probabilities it would take to generate a self-replicating molecule.
First of all, we don't know the probabilities, period - so your entire line here goes down the toilet. Even if we knew the probabilities of a "self-replicating molecule", there are other factors we'd have to consider that further weigh against your estimation.
I'm surprised you couldn't just cop to this, but instead go off on some weird non-seq. I already cited one non-theist working in the relevant field suggesting that one universe may not be enough - that should give you pause.
Instead, you reply that you have faith that, no matter what, it all fits given naturalism. Okay, but that's not much.
This is just a convenient caricture to escape the fact many magical explanations
"Magical explanations" are, very often, naturalist explanations. You're engaged in a catch-22 - if science confirms something, it's not a magical explanation because science confirmed it. But if science doesn't confirm something, it automatically becomes what was a magical explanation. And then you insist that magical explanations have 'never been confirmed' by science.
Bad move on your part.
I suppose metaphysical agnosticism is a relevant metaphysical position as well (like bald is a hair color)?
If you want to sacrifice metaphysical naturalism to advance metaphysical agnosticism, you go right ahead. You've just undercut the entire Cult of Gnu, and the single philosophical tradition they gather behind.
My provisional conclusions about theists in general
Your "provisional conclusions about theists in general" was a psychoanalytic argument and an epic fail. Walk it back.