Outsider Test for Faith: Why Loftus is Wrong.

"The Outsider Test for Faith:" Where John Loftus goes wrong.


John Loftus is a popular atheist writer, a former student of William Lane Craig who edited the book The Christian Delusion. John kindly send me a pre-publication copy of his book. I found myself in strong disagreement with some of the contents, so rather than recommend the book, I bought my own copy and critiqued it. (See my disputes with Hector Avalos and Richard Carrier over the role of Christianity in Nazism and science on the christthetao.com web site, and the ongoing debate with Avalos in earlier blogs here.)

In this blog, I'll challenge John's prize argument, in chapter 4, "The "Outsider Test for Faith Revisited." This is an argument John promotes with all the pride of Thomas Edison showing off his new light bulb; and with some results, apparently. I'll begin by questioning his assumptions about faith. Then I'll examine his "Outsider Test," and explain why it does not work as an argument against Christianity, though it might work as paraphrase of the truism that one should be intellectually fair to beliefs one does not share. Finally I'll critique other assumptions John makes in his essay.

I. Faith? John begins his chapter with a comment about faith that those who have read my books will know I can't pass by in silence:

"The most important question of all when it comes to assessing the truth claims of Christian theism (or religion in general) is whether we should approach the available evidence through the eyes of faith or with skepticism."

In Christian thinking, "faith" is not something that is opposed to reason, as Loftus does here. As far back as Judges, Gideon conducts a rational experiment in faith: "If You are really speaking, God, make the dew rest on this cloth, and everything around it remain dry." As I show in my "Gullible Dweebs?" posts, the first Christians also came to faith in part through skepticism. I have also shown, in "Faith and Reason," that Christian thinkers down through the centuries have usually understood faith and reason as complementary, not locked in some zero-sum battle to the death.

This fundamental misundertanding about "faith" undermines Loftus' chapter, and permeates what skeptics who buy his argument say about the matter. Here, for example, is a recent comment on Loftus' blog:
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"This to me is one more example of how the poor old believer is forced to simply pull up the drawbridge and live in Happyland, content with 'Faith' and all that wonderful pseudoscience . . . "

In reality, Christian faith in the true sense is exactly what created modern science itself.

So what is Loftus' Outsider Test for Faith?

II. An Outline of Loftus' Argument. John summarizes his argument in four points. I'll quote each point, offering preliminary responses to each point as I go along. This is not quite fair, because Loftus expands and defends these points later -- but a blog is a blog, not a journal essay. I'll quote some of Loftus' supporting arguments later, and offer rebuttals or responses. Then I'll offer a general evaluation of the main question here: should Christians adopt an agnostic stance to evaluate their own beliefs? And finally, open the issue up for discussion.

"1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and cultural heritage. This is the religious diversity thesis."

Observations:
(a) People also "adopt and defend" a wide variety of skeptical ideologies because of where they were born and how they were brought up. Most young Chinese, for instance, are taught atheism in school, and millions will parrot those teachings back to you, if you ask them their views. (I've heard some do this!) Most young Danes, presumably, will similarly parrot back secular humanist views.

(b) Religious diversity may not be as great as Loftus assumes. In every culture, for instance, people believe in spirits, and in most cultures, life after death. Not only Christians, Muslims, and Jews (almost half the world's population!), but also many Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese who do not belong to these groups, believe in one Supreme God.
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(c) True, in every culture, only a minority usually converts to some worldview other than what they were brought up in. But usually that is because of social disincentives, not because "intelligent people" have all fairly and honestly considered the evidence for other religions.

In some Muslim countries, for instance, convert out, and the penalty is death. Mohammed himself approved this penalty, and you often hear of it being carried out in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. This has also happened in recent years in Hindu countries, and historically in Buddhist and Christian countries as well. The cruelest retributions against conversion out have occured in some communist countries.

Most social pressure is less extreme, yet remains effective at keeping people "in the fold."

So while "rational people" accept a variety of faiths partly because of geography, the intellectual content of those beliefs may not always be as diverse as people usually assume -- G. K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man is good on this. And uniformity of beliefs can be the product of oppression in some cultures.

(2) "Consequently, it seems very unlikely that adopting one's religious faith is not merely a matter of independent rational judgment but is causally dependent on cultural conditions to an overwhelming degree. This is the religious dependency thesis."

This is similiar to my point (c) above. The word "faith" here is misleading, though, as may be the word "religious." It would be more objective to say, "adopting a worldview is usually not just a matter of independent rational judgment." Otherwise we prejudice the issue against certain kinds of worldviews, and sneak in a misconception of why Christians, at least, are supposed to believe.

Also one must distinguish between free societies and societies in which choice is constrained by government, clan, or family. Most people in non-Christian countries lack freedom and / or opportunity to consider Christianity. In most Christian countries, there is relative freedom and opportunity to consider Marxism, secular humanism, Islam, or Buddhism.

(3) "Hence the odds are highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false."

Here Loftus takes his most blatantly fallacious step. Problems with this step are numerous:
(a) What does "highly likely" mean? The term is ambiguous for a quasi-deductive argument of this sort.

(b) Why is the conclusion supposed to follow from the premises?

(c) A hidden premise that might allow it to follow (and that Loftus defends later, see below) would be, "Culturally derived beliefs are unlikely to be true." But why would one assume that?

My culture has taught me many things that I might not believe in, say, ancient Rome, or among the Yali in Papua New Guinea. My belief that Earth circles the sun is "culturally dependent." I was taught this belief in school, and have never proven it scientifically for myself. I believe it by trust in my teachers. Does that mean it is "highly likely" to be wrong? If not, then (3) does not follow from (1) and (2).

(d) But, you say, someone HAS proven that the Earth revolves around the sun. (If not exactly "circles.") Yes, and are you assuming that no one has rationally demonstrated the truth of the religious belief system in which I was raised? I disagree. Maybe I am wrong, but the analogy derails us from the Outsider Test into conventional apologetics. If there is good reason to believe the Christian faith, then the Outsider Test is invalid as an argument against it. If there is no such reason, then the Outsider Test is unneeded.

(e) Since atheist belief systems are ALSO culturally dependent, does Loftus think it is "highly likely" that they are false, too?

(f) All in all, this is simply a non sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premises. (Even if the premises were clear and plausible.)

"4) So the best way to test one's adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF."

It seems there may be an even bigger problem with Loftus' argument than those mentioned above. This is a failure to understand how religions relate to one another.

This is a topic I've written a lot about. My first book, True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture, and second, Jesus and the Religions of Man, both present a radically different perspective on how Christianity relates to non-Christian religions than the one Loftus seems to take for granted. I'm now finishing a doctorate on the same subject.

How to put this succinctly?

Religion, in the best Christian thinking, is not a zero-sum game.

The religions of the world are not like so many fruits in the market, from which (having only one dollar) you must choose a single item, and leave the rest.

Jesus said, "Don't think I've come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolition, but to fulfill." (Mt. 5: 17) This applies, I have argued, not only to Judaism, but to the deepest truths in other spiritual traditions as well.

In other fields, too, the best test of a new theory is not whether it completely displaces prior theories, but whether it incorporates whatever truth is to be found in them. Kepler didn't refute the idea that the planets revolve around the sun. He built on the discovers of prior astronomers, and refined them. Einstein didn't render Newton's model of gravitation useless. He showed that it was a special case, still useful for everyday observation.

It is a singularly "fundamentalist" way of thinking, that one must choose one religion, and discard the rest. In some cases, one must make choices. Either God is one, many, or not at all. But one doesn't need to choose between Yahweh, Elohim, theos, Allah, and Shang Di: the one only-existing Creator God is recognizable under many aliases.

So much for theism. When it comes to specifically Christian doctrines, Loftus' argument seems to ring even more hollow.

Why should we deny that Jesus died for the sins of the world, because some people in Sichuan Province or Uttar Pradesh never heard about it, or don't immediately recognize its truth when they do? The West took hundreds of years to come around -- why not give the Chinese and Indians time to mull things over, like a mustard seed that grows into a tree and gives shelter to many birds, to which Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven?

Why should we doubt that Jesus rose from the dead, because we first heard about it in Sunday School? We may be told about planets in Monday school. If either belief is untrue, sure, discard it. But in the interum, why should the assumption that our teachers (any day of the week) were ignorant be the default position?

Summary: So is it wise to adopt an agnostic position as we evaluate the religious faith we belong to, and were perhaps raised in?

I admit for me this question is a little academic. Although I grew up in a Christian home, and have never left the faith, all my life I've been surrounded by the writings and ideas of (in particular) atheists, Buddhists, and Taoists. Like Joni Mitchell, I think I do see clouds from both sides, now -- reading atheist books, I often feel like the wrinkled old lady in the first pew who can sing all the hymns by heart.

My wife was raised Buddhist and converted to Christianity in her twenties.

On balance, the act of stepping outside oneself and reconsidering one's beliefs may be helpful at some stages of our journey. I think people of different beliefs will almost always learn a great deal by extending themselves in that way. But when we do, what should we look for?

Look for, not one religion that is as right and rigid as crystal, and all the others totally wrong. Instead, look for something alive. Look for a map of reality that takes into account miracles (sorry, they do happen!) as well as mice. Look for a map that puts God in heaven (as we have known, for thousands of years), and follows a good guru, who loves the poor, feeds the hungry, and loves women in a holy manner. Try to incorporate primitive insights about sacrifice and redeem them.

Additional problems. Loftus makes some good points in the chapter as a whole, and his tone is generally reasonable. I gave the chapter three stars out of five in my Amazon review. While we're doing the debunking, though, let me offer constructive criticism of some other points later in the chapter:

"We swim in a Christian culture. It's hard to argue Christians out of their faith because they were never argued into it in the first place. Elsewhere, Eller has argued that 'nothing is more destructive to religion than other religions.'" (82)

This is doubtful on three counts. First, many Christians were "argued into" their faith, including many who grew up in Christian homes. (I doubted quite a bit. What important argument for atheism does not occur spontaneously to a thoughtful young person? C. S. Lewis and others in effect argued me into a faith I already held.)

Second, my impression is that those who convert from argument are usually harder rather than easier to deconvert.

Third, Eller is wrong in his sociology. In fact, India, likely the most religious country in the world, is also among its most diverse. Religions have vied with one another there for thousands of years. In Nigeria, Christians and Muslims are about evenly divided, with some animists -- and I am told almost everyone believes in God. In Singapore, large numbers of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Free-Thinkers,and Muslims do not destroy religious faith, but create a "hot-house" atmosphere where a variety of religions thrive. The same seems true of Taiwan and Hong Kong, where I lived for some six years altogether.

In fact, Eller seems exactly wrong: as sociologist of religion Rodney Stark argues, the more competition there is in religion, the healthier for religion the market seems to become.

"When it comes to religious faith, an overwhelming number of believers adopt and defend what they were raised to believe by their parents in their respective cultures." (83)
True, usually, more or less. Religious belief is often tied to tribal identity, and sometimes conversion "out" is harshly punished. But tens of millions of Chinese have converted to new religions in recent years.

Looking at my experience, all four the siblings in my family now identify themselves as Christian. But two of us went through periods of doubt. It's true none of us would consider converting to, say, Islam -- for the obvious reasons. But I've met many western Buddhists who were born into Christian or skeptical households. I've also known hundreds of converts to Christianity -- including my wife, who grew up Buddhist.

And a lot of people convert within religions, from one sect to another. My Grandmother was a Pentacostal, my Dad was a Calvinist; I am neither, though appreciate some of both. So there is more changing of views that Loftus credits, especially in free societies.

"The other method Christians use is on much firmer ground. They use David Hume's evidentiary standards for examining miraculous claims to the faiths they reject. They also deconstruct these other religious texts by assuming human rather than divine authors. They adopt a methodological naturalist viewpoint to test these other extraordinary claims . . . " (86)
One should not "assume" that the Qu'ran or Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired: read them and find out! Loftus also seems to be assuming that a book must EITHER have a "human" OR a "divine" author. This may be his fundamental (ist) mistake. For alternative views, see The Truth Behind the New Atheism, chapter 6: "Is the Good Book Bad?," or (for an in-depth discussion) see Nicholas Wolterstorff's Divine Discourse.

"The Christian theist must now try to make sense of this claim, coming as it does from an ancient superstitious people who didn't have trouble believing Paul and Barnabas were 'gods in human form' (Acts 14:11, 28:6.)
Luke didn't believe Paul and Barnabas were "gods;" rural hicks in Lystra did. (Paul and Barnabas had cured a fellow townsman who had been lame since birth -- one can understand why this impressed the people who knew him!)

The ancient Greco-Roman world also contained many sophisticated, skeptical people, some of whom became Christians. See my recent "Dweeb" blog on the cagy Eusebius, for example.

"The 'many gods' objection to Pascal's Wager destroys the wager's force since we must first decide among the various gods which one to wager on." (87)

Problems:(a) Pascal had already given many reasons to believe in Jesus. The Wager was not made in a vacuum, as skeptics often assume.

(b) God is not comparable to polytheistic gods. Athena or even Zeus do not control one's destiny after death. Anyway, Greek intellectuals had already largely come to recognize that these deities were just masks for a single all-powerful Creator.

(c) Anthropology shows that awareness of the unique Supreme God is common in many cultures around the world. So it is not at all arbitrary which god you believe in.

On William Lane Craig:

"So would Bill have believed in the first place if he knew then what he knows now? . . . I dare say that if he knew what he does now and hadn't already chosen to adopt his faith, he would not have believed in the first place." (88)

Why, then, does Craig regularly defeat atheist opponents in debate? (As neutral, and even atheist, observers often admit?)

If the most learned atheists in the Western world can't convince a non-Christian audience Craig's arguments are wrong in public debate, why shouldn't Craig buy his own winning arguments?

"The one thing we can and should trust is the sciences. Science alone produces consistently excellent results that cannot be denied . . . We can personally do the experiments ourselves." (89)

Questions:(a) Doesn't mathematics produce "consistently excellent results?" Or must we define "science" to include "math?"

(b) Doesn't human testimony, when used carefully, produce good results? Most of what we know about the world comes from what reliable people, like teachers and authors of textbooks, tell us. In some cases, we risk our lives based on a single bit of testimony -- at an intersection, I sometimes ask my wife if a car is coming. On a runway, pilots may ask an air traffic controller if it is safe to land.

(c) Does vision count as science? Go to a football game, and would you rather have eyes, or a good science text in braille?

Science is based on logic, philosophy, mathematics, the sense, and peer interaction. Math and logic and even vision more immediate than biology or physics. Other ways of knowing things -- ask a travel agent, your most honest friend, the teacher -- are also consistently useful, especially when we make use of multiple sources of information, and test its reliability in various ways. Some forms of science are more reliable than some sources of testimony, but few are as reliable as math or simply logic. And there's a tradeoff -- what you gain in reliability, you often lose in breadth. One cannot live by science alone.

(d) What modern experiments can you do personally, as Loftus suggests? Do you have a particle excellerator in your den? Can you check the mass of extrasolar planets on your bathroom scale? In the real world, we are in practice forced to trust the claims scientists make for the same reasons we trust our teachers: they strike us as credible.

Faith Again: On pages 94 and 95, Loftus attempts to justify the bias his OTF seems to give in the direction of atheism, by rebutting the claim Timothy Keller (and others) make that atheist worldviews also require faith. Loftus claims in response to William Lane Craig that he "knows" that there is a material world, "and that I can reasonably trust my senses:"

"For example, when it comes to the possibility that I'm presently living in a virtual, Matrix world, rather than the real world, that scenario cannot be taken seriously by any intelligent person . . . I see no reason why there would be any knowledge of the Matrix by people living in it, since the Matrix determines all of their experiences . . . " (95)

I think Loftus is confusing a particular movie with the scenario it illustrates. It is certainly the case that some intelligent people DO take the scenario that the world is some sort of simulation seriously. One atheist philosopher, another told me, put the odds of the world being unreal at about one in five. (Don't ask me how he calculated this -- taking the rationality of his own brain for granted, still!)

I believe in the reality of the external world -- that's why I'm blogging. But Keller and Craig are right to say we can't prove it -- nor do Loftus' arguments manage the trick.

"The word faith must be reserved to apply in this context (ie, justification for religious beliefs -- DM) to beliefs that cannot be empirically tested and aren't needed to explain anything, like ghosts, angels, demons, and gods."
A Being more intelligent than humans would not be subject to the same empirical tests we use for rocks, rhubarb, and rabbits. "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." This does not mean there is no evidence -- it means that if we are in the driver's seat, we are not seeking God, we must be seeking something less than ourselves.

It does not follow that religious faith cannot be empirically tested, or that no such evidence is provided -- Christians have almost always maintained that there is plenty of such evidence. But in the end, we are the ones tested, not God.

"Finally, atheists do indeed take the OTF. That's why atheists are atheists in the first place." (97)

True, often atheists were raised in religious homes, and came to reject their early beliefs, not infrequently for rational reasons in part. But most atheists in the modern world have lived and been raised in communist countries, where denying religion is the default position.

Many westerners become atheists in their teens, when they were not really in a position to evaluate Christian claims at the highest level. And of course not all of them are in the mood to be fair, either. Judging by my experience, angry, Madeleine Murray O'Hare type atheists, while probably not the majority, are no small minority, either.

It would be highly naive, then, to assume that atheists convert away from faith for purely rational, objective reasons.

"Therefore, anyone, and I mean anyone including myself, who leaves the default agnostic position and affirms and answer, any answer, has the practical burden of proof." (98)

This seems fair enough. Let me translate into the short, clear words like those George Orwell recommended: "If I say I do not know, then I do not need to say why. If I say I know, then I should say why."

The Bible, too, tells us to be "prepared to give a reason" for the hope that is within us. When John Loftus and the Bible agree, it could be one has found truth.

"I'm arguing that the source of most people's religious faith is an unreliable one, coming as it does from the geological accidents of birth. It produces many different and irreconcilable religious faiths that cannot all be true." (99)

And I have argued that Loftus' argument does not work. First, much in different religions can in fact be reconciled. (There is almost nothing n the Analects of Confucius or the Dao Dejing or Epictetus that a Christian has to argue with.) Second, the fact that God transcends cultures is at least weak evidence that He is real. Third, just because people in Muslim countries are not allowed to believe in Jesus as Savior, and most Hindus and Chinese have lacked the opportunity to believe in him, in no way makes the Gospel story unlikely to be true. The conclusion simply does not follow from the premises.

"At best there can only be one true religion in what we observe to be a sea of hundreds of false ones . . . " (99)

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, that is the position an atheist is forced to adopt, but not a Christian. Much about each of the world's great religions can be considered true, in some cases even divinely inspired, by dedicated Christians, as I argue in some of my works. If you're an atheist, though, you have to write off almost all of what the rest of humanity has always believed as one big blunder.

"But I know of no skeptical person in today's world who would ever want to morally justify rape. Believes like the acceptibility of rape (and honour killings) are based on religious faiths and ancient texts . . . " (100)

Rape is, of course, a common activity in the animal kingdom, and is based on biology. The present strictures against rape are the result of a series of cultural influences that were by no means pre-ordained, and that can dissolve. The Yanomamo, after all, do quite a bit of raping without "ancient texts." Might it have something to do with sex?

"Most Christian thinkers from Tertullian to Luther to William Lane Craig have all disparaged reason in favor of faith." (102)

Faith, by my definition (inspired by what Christian thinkers have actually said about the subject for thousands of years, rather than silly modern myths), means "Holding to and acting on what you have good reason to believe is true." By that definition, reason is an intrinsic part of faith.

In any case, it is suspicious that two of Loftus' three examples are the same that Dawkins gives -- Luther and Tertullian. Alister McGrath has shown that the famous Tertullian quote that purports to prove he did this is taken out of context. (Dawkins' God, 99-101)

But perhaps John can cite the exact words William Lane Craig, his old teacher, used to "disparage reason." It would be good to have this claim in context.

Contra Celsus: Were the first Christians Gullible Dweebs?

Did anyone ever warn you, "Point a finger at someone else, and four fingers point back at you?"

There is a subclass of skeptics who delight in pointing fingers at early Christians and calling them fools, knaves, and liars. My book, Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, is in part a response to skeptics who scoff at early Christians in somewhat more sophisticated terms. I also posted an informal rebuttal of Richard Carrier, along with Landon Hedrick and Robert Price, after Carrier portrayed the early Christians as described in the Acts of the Apostles as gullible. (See "Were early Christians gullible dweebs?" )

In both cases, I argued, the charges tend to reverse themselves, revealing early Christians as more reasonable than some modern critics.

A character who calls himself Celsus often posts on Amazon.com, and makes perhaps the most shameless (and ultimately counter-productive) accusations along these lines I have seen. The original Celsus was a critic of Christianity, to whom the brilliant 2nd Century philosopher Origen replied in his book, Contra Celsus.

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Our modern Celsus is the faithful heir of his namesake. His greatest passion is to post quotes from ancient Christians and call them "liars." It usually turns out he has not read his sources carefully (if at all), but his citations are obscure enough, and his claims fit their worldview well enough, that he seems to fool even some well-educated skeptics by this technique.

In this post I will explore Celsus' most recent attack on ancient Christians, and show how it makes one of them, the historian Eusebius, come out looking good -- especially compared to ancient and modern opponents.

The underlying issue here, though, is the historical credibility of the Gospels. What our modern Celsus, his allies, and their ancient forebears, are desperately trying to do, is find some parallel to the Gospels, so they can dismiss them as incredible. Like many other modern skeptics, Celsus tries to use an ancient text called Apollonius of Tyana for this purpose. It is an act of great desperation, that not only fails, as we will see, but helps show why the Gospels remain a byword for truthfullness.


The Challenge

Not long ago, Celsus opened a forum on Amazon entitled "Superstition, gullibility, and Christianity." He wrote, in part, as follows:

"It appears that superstition and gullibility were rampant at the time when Christianity arose, and this may be one of the primary causes of its success. For example, the Bible describe how the inhabitants of Malta thought Paul was a god just because he survived a snake bite (Acts 28:6). Furthermore, Paul and Barnabas had difficulty convincing the inhabitants of Lystra that they were not gods simply because a man with bad feet stood up (14:8-18).

"Miraculous healings were apparently commonplace at that time. Aslepius was a god / man (worshipped before and after Christ) who was reputed to have accomplished a myriad of miraculous healings . . .

"Appolonius of Tyana was a contemporary of Christ who miracles rivaled those of Christ (Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana). His ability to perform miracles was not questioned by early Christians such as Eusebius, but was already attributed to the work of demons (Treatise Against Appolonius) . . . "

Celsus ended his post by citing two leaders of the ancient Alexandrian school: Clement for gullibly believing in the phoenix, a bird that lives 500 years and then regenerates itself, and then his student Origen citing the first Celsus, upbraiding fellow Christians for appealing to the "foolish, dishonorable and the stupid."

Some initial problems

Celsus' post was applauded by several skeptics, itself quite a testimony to gullibility. As I pointed out, even these short comments are riddled with dubious historical claims. Let us warm up with a few tangential examples:

* The inhabitants of Malta didn't suggest Paul was divine "just because" he "survived a snake bite," rather because a viper, probably known to be poisonous, bit him and caused no harm, and also because he had just survived shipwreck in a remarkable way.

* The "man with bad feet" had never walked in his life: he stood up in response to Paul's command. Having probably known the man since childhood, why wouldn't they find this impressive?

*But no doubt this mob was gullible, which is Luke's point, and does not need Celsus to tell us.

* Aslepius was the Greek god of healing. There seems to be little evidence that he lived as an historical figure. Of course people in the era before modern medicine were desperate for healing.

 

* Origen answered Celsus' charge that ancient Christians were ill-educated and gullible well. Let me recommend chapters 9-12 of Contra Celsus, which should take about ten minutes to read. His perspective on faith and reason is balanced, sensible, and still of value.

* It is misleading to call Apollonius a "contemporary" of Jesus. He appears to have died (records are vague) some sixty years after Jesus. The biography Celsus cites was written hundreds of years later, under the sponsorship of an opponent of Christianity. So it is possible that the author, Philostratus, copied some ideas from what he had heard about Jesus, which were widely in circulation by that time.

* No serious person who reads Apollonius of Tyana and the Gospels can however think Apollonius and Jesus were much alike, or that the stories of Apollonius are as credible as those about Jesus. I compare the two in chapter 16 of Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could. Analyzing a variety of ancient writings, I found that Apollonius of Tyana was far less like the Gospels than such historical works as Tacitus' Agricola. I concluded, in part:

"Philostratus would seem to have all the advantages over Mark. He received the best education, and rose into the best society by wit and talent. Yet his story comes off as an entertaining yarn, with weak characters, no moral power, and no link to real-world geography, let alone zoology."

* To support his claim that Apollonius worked miracles like Jesus, Celsus claims later in the forum that Apollonius raised people from the dead. But not even Philostratus believes that story, as we will see.

* Clement used the phoenix as a symbol for the resurrection. He is not claiming to be a biologist. He is just borrowing a popular story about a creature in remote parts to make a theological point.

 

 

But for the rest of this post, I will focus on Celsus' criticism of Eusebius. This is especially interesting, because Eusebius is participating in an ancient debate over the same subject -- whether Christians are guilty of "reckless and facile credulity," as he puts it. Also, to do so, Eusebius responds to an ancient writer, one Hierocles, who, like many modern skeptics, cited Apollonius of Tyana to try to debunk Christianity.

As I will show, Celsus' argument is indeed a remarkable testimony to gullibility -- his own, and other modern skeptics who think Apollonius can serve as a useful weapon against Christ.

Eusebius, the Gullible?

What first strikes one, reading Eusebius, is not his naivite, but his tone of urbane and skeptical sarcasm. That sarcasm is directed precisely at supernatural claims made about Apollonius:

Well, we will not grudge him his natural and self-taught gift of understanding all languages. But if he possessed it, why was he taken to a school-master . . . (and) by the dint of close study and application, he acquired the Attic dialect?

Thus he, who just before, according to Philostratus, had an understanding of all languages, now on the contrary, according to the same witness, is in need of an interpreter.

Eusebius takes sardonic delight in the title of Hierocles' book, Lover of Truth:

Here then at the bidding of one of these sages an elm-tree, we are told, spoke to Apollonius in an articulate but feminine voice, and this is the sort of thing which the Lover of Truth expects us to believe.

In fact, Eusebius thought Philostratus' tales so self-evidently ridiculous -- you find apes that run pepper farms, dragons throwing sparks from their heads, Brahmans levitating two cubits off the ground, a four-footed animal with the head of a man shooting thorns from his tails -- that all he needs to do to make his (supposedly gullible) readers scoff is to repeat them.

Eusebius notes sarcastically:

Such are the stories which Hierocles, who has been entrusted to administer the supreme courts of justice all over the province, finds true and reliable after due enquiry . . . he proceeds to brag about himself and says (I quote his very words): 'Let us anyhow observe how much better and cautiously we accept such things . . . '

In sum, Eusebius makes it plain, to anyone with eyes to read, that he does not in the slightest believe Philostratus' miracle claims:

According to (Hierocles), they were most highly educated, yet never by actual sifting of the facts, established them with any accuracy in the case of Apollonius.

Overleap the bounds of humanity and transcend philosophy . . . in that case his reputation for us as a philosopher will be gone, and we shall have an ass instead concealed in a lion's skin . . . 

True, Eusebius often admits claims about Apollonius for the sake of the argument. But to careful readers, this only makes it clear he does not believe them at all:

But admitting, though it is against all probability, that he is not lying, but telling the truth, we are still at a loss to know, how he can pretend to have acquired this lore from (Pythagoras) . . . inasmuch as the latter deceased some thousand years before him.

So is it true that Eusebius does "not question" Philostratus' ability to work miracles, as our Celsus claims?  Baloney, he questions it endlessly.  Apparently Celsus has either not read Eusebius, or does not recognize such rhetorical devices as sarcasm and admitting claims for the sake of an argument. Eusebius makes it perfectly clear he does not believe any of Philostratus' supernatural claims:

The tales of Thule, and any other miraculous legends ever invented by any story-tellers, turn out to be by comparison with these quite reliable and perfectly true.


His very insistence on the truth of his earlier tales, I refer to those of lightening and wind kept in jars (etc) . . . fully betrays and exposes the mythical character of everything else which he has to tell us.

Eusebius also tells the story of how Apollonius supposedly saved the city of Ephesus from the plaque by having the people of the city stone a beggar to death. This is a fascinating tale, cited by Rene Girard in one of his works to illustrate scapegoating in the ancient world. I have cited it myself to show how different Jesus, who saved a woman from being stoned, was from his alleged rival.

More to our present point, Eusebius did not buy it:

For if anybody feels the shadow of doubt about the matter, the very manner in which the story is told will convince him that fraud and make-believe was in this case everything . . . For he pretends that the plague was seen in the form of an aged man, a beggard and dressed in rags; who, when Apollonius ordered the mob to stone him, began by shooting fire from his eyes, but afterwards . . . appeared as a dog all crushed and vomitting foam, as mad dogs do . . . Who, I would ask, after reading this would not laugh heartily at the miracle-mongering of this thaumaturge?

Indeed! And who cannot laugh heartily at "scholarship" that reads Eusebius as a gullible naif who accepted Philostratus' stories uncritically?

Nor, pace Celsus, does Eusebius believe the story of resurrection supposedly told about Apollonius:

The fifth and sixth miracles however in this book do not stand in need of much argument and discussion, so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity . . . As for the damsel whom he is said subsequently to have brought back again to life in Rome after she had died, the story clearly impressed Philostratus himself as being extremely incredible, and we may safely reject it.

Nor does Eusebius credit stories about Apollonius' own supposed apotheosis. In chapter 40, he points out that no one even knows where Apollonius died: some say Ephesus, others Crete, though Philostratus suggests (based largely on a hymn) that he was raised into heaven bodily.


Did Eusebius buy any of Apollonius' miracles?

Celsus thinks he did. He gives two quotes from Eusebius to prove this. To bring this post towards a conclusion (the truth of the matter being clear by now, I think), I'll examine the shorter of the two:

From chapter 25: 'And why, too, was he not able to do this by daytime, instead of doing it in the dead of night and alone? . . . I cannot think but that evil demons would have found such and hour seasonable and appropriate for their devilish interviews, rather than the soul of a hero which, having been freed from the crass matter of the body, must necessarily be good and unsullied. In any case the demon conjured up on this occasion is represented as of a malignant and envious disposition, both rancorous and mean in humor.

Celsus takes this with utter literalness, and challenges me to explain it away.

Sober readers should by now recognize Eusebius' sarcasm, and his tendency to make concessions for the sake of an argument.

Eusebius has just told the story of Apollonius and the demon-beggar of Ephesus in the previous paragraphs, and "laughed heartily." He then tells Philostratus' story of how the soul of Achilles appeared to the sage, five cubits high, in response to prayers he learned in India.

Afterwards Eusebius relates the "fifth and sixth miracles," and heaps equal scorn on them, "so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity."

Easy credulity, indeed.


Conclusions

For two thousand years, skeptics have tried to find some parallel to the life of Jesus, so as to render it less unique, and, if possible, dismiss it as "just another tall tale."

Apollonius of Tyana is a dreadful choice for this role. It is about somehow whose career mostly occurred after the life of Jesus, was written up hundreds of years later, perhaps purposely in order to compete with or undermine Christianity. As I show in my Jesus Seminar book, no comparison could be more incongruous. (I compare Apollonius of Tyana to old Saturday Night Live skits, from the classic era of my own youth!) Something obviously much deeper and more remarkable is going on in the Gospels.

This Eusebius also sees. In his introduction, he ticks off several points of contrast between Jesus and Apollonius. Mostly these have to do with a priori probability -- reasons why you might credit the Gospels outside the text itself: that "Hebrew sages" fortold the coming of Jesus, that he founded "a school of sober and chaste living that has survived him," that people of all races rally to him by the tens of thousands, including enemies, that miracles are still worked in his name.

But it says something about the Gospels that a man like Eusebius, while deftly scewering the follies of Apollonius of Tyana, came to believe the canonical stories of Jesus. In Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, I analyze the differences between the texts.

.

It also says something about the Gospels that so many skeptics have spent so much time looking for parallels, yet the best they can come up with is something like Apollonius of Tyana.  This includes not only an amateur like Celsus (update: now doing an MA in classical history, I understand!), but also two of my debate partners during our debates, Robert Price and Richard Carrier!  (And some of the Jesus Seminar crowd.)

 

Celsus, and some scholars with better credentials, delight in trying to hoodwink the gullible by citing obscure texts that they know few people have read, and making dramatic claims. One should be careful one should be about buying arguments at second hand, especially in this day, when it is so easy to read the originals.

Obama: read Moses, wise up, and put it in reverse!

Deuteronomy vs. the National Debt

The names of the last books of the Torah -- Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy -- seem coined to induce somnolescence. For centuries, skeptics have quoted the harsher statutes in these books as evidence that God either did not inspire the Bible, or that He is a "vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogenistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully," to quote Richard Dawkin's anti-encomomium.

I admit I don't always enjoy reading these books, partly because they do indeed not always seem to reflect well on God. What's the point of punishing a nation for sometimes killing children, by killing all their children? Did the list of capital offenses really have to include picking up sticks on Saturday?

On balance, however, reading the Torah and the Chinese Book of History the past month, I think the Hebrew statutes were more just and useful in creating a free, prosperous society, than any other set of laws from antiquity I know of. While I don't advocate any form of "Christian shariah" -- this is really not I think the point of the Sermon on the Mount -- I also think Dawkins is wrong. There is more good here than bad. The New Atheists (here I especially include one of my sparing partners, Hector Avalos, along with Dawkins) are, among other things, dead wrong when they suggest the Torah only told Jews to care for Jews. Furthermore, I find rules in the Torah that would make modern America a better place, were we to listen.

Consider the "Grand Canyon" of debt we have been amassing for our children and grandchildren over the past few decades, and with increasing, frenzied speed lately. (Now over $13 trillion! Now there are some scary "Numbers!" Watch the "Exodus" of dollars from your children's wallets!)

Here's what Moses said about national debt:

"When the Lord your God blesses you as He promised to you, then you shall lend to many nations, but not borrow; you shall rule many nations, but they shall not rule over you." (Deuteronomy 15:6)

Where has the balance of power in the relationship between the US and China gone in the past few years? See this from Saturday Night Live on who is now in a position to tell whom how to act!

Or again:

"The Lord will open for you His rich treasury, the heavens to give rain upon your soil in its season, blessings to rest on all your enterprises. You shall lend to many nations while you yourselves borrow from none." (Deut. 28:12)

It is a remarkable thing. A Bronze Age confederacy of tribes somehow hoped to prosper 3000 years ago without borrowing a dime from neighbors. But the United States of America, which invented cars, airplanes and computers and explored the solar system, now thinks we need to borrow $40,000 per head to pay our government tab -- largely from countries like China and Saudi Arabia, who are not our friends.

This is not only a disgrace, it is a sin against our children.

Alpine Lakes Wilderness

The stated goal of this blog is to "map the universe from a Christian perspective, one blog at a time." I hope to touch on such topics in the coming months as cosmic and biological origins, how the Gospel fits in with world religions and ancient traditions, and the influence of Christianity. (The first three blogs were on this latter subject, and I do plan to get back to my clash over slavery with Dr. Avalos before too long.)

But if we're mapping the universe, why leave out the Alpine Lakes Wilderness?

Most famous Cascades woods stand in the shadow of tall, glacier-covered volcanoes: Mount Rainier, the North Cascades, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic monument, Crater Lake, the lesser-known but brilliant Glacier Peak Wilderness. Closer to home, though, chains of hundreds of lakes high in the Central Cascades beckon. This year I've mostly stayed home and pounded keys -- a yet-unpublished book on origins, and two chapters of my dissertation -- escaping however to the wilderness whenever possible, alone while the family was in Japan, with my brother Peter to Surprise Lake, sometimes with my boys. The dog often tags along.

The pond in Arctic pose is Silver Lake, up a steep mile and a half from the old Monte Cristo mining area, where gold, silver, and copper were among the extractions. This picture was actually taken in July; hard to believe that was last month.

Here John, James & Jake pose by a waterfall in late spring, making our way towards Melakwa Lake. We also hiked to Talapus and Ollalie lakes a bit in towards Seattle.

Our overnight hike for the summer this week was to the Rampart Lakes. This is a series of ponds scoured out by some ancient glacier at an elevation of about 5,000 feet. Within two hundred yards of the campsite to right, four different lakes, cool and clear, waited for us to swim, jump off the rounded rocks, and catch hungry rainbow trout. The little creek above flowed from a lake by our campsite to one just below, where we jumped off a little cliff into a deep chasm, and emerged from the baptism restored.

Here's the view of one of these little lakes from a hill behind it. The moon was bright, and we didn't see more than 7 dozen stars or so, including the Big Dipper shining into the front entry of the tent. The dog frightened about midnight and barked at some animal behind us. All I could find in the morning were human, dog, deer or elk, and mule or horse prints. (Hard so see how a horse could get up the steep trails to this little paradise.)

James caught a couple trout, and fried one in blueberries that were coming ripe, for want of other seasoning.

Next time, we'll have to bring some salt and pepper, if not barbecue sauce. No doubt the fish Jesus prepared for the disciples was seasoned: if his wine was the best (John 2:10), why not his barbecue (John 6:12, 21:13)?

Did All Greeks Deny Human Equality? A response to Avalos' claim that I dissed the ancients.

In his latest sallies in our on-going dispute over slavery, Hector Avalos seems to have mellowed a bit, if I'm not deluding myself. Perhaps he recognizes now that he is not going to win this debate purely on the beauty of fine footnotes. Or perhaps he is satisfied with having savaged me on a popular web site, where any response (if posted) is likely to be lost in the thicket of miscellaneous post-script.

It is a bit rich, though, of Avalos to describe my first response as a "personal attack." It was in part a defense against Avalos' personal attacks, as anyone who reads them will, I think, see was necessary.

True, I also criticized Avalos. I think my critique was judicious: Avalos is an intelligent, accomplished scholar and talented teacher. He is also grossly unfair towards Christianity and those who believe it. He is often remarkably sloppy in how he represents other scholars and historical facts. His arguments are undermined by logic that strikes me as atrocious.

The main purpose of that article, though, was neither to defend myself, nor dismiss Dr. Avalos, but to put his attacks on me, other Christian scholars, and the Christian record, in proper contexts. This needed to be done, because Avalos left way too much context out: our history, the nature of the books I was responding to, the nature of The Christian Delusion, indeed the nature of man and human exploitation.

Dr. Avalos owed it to me, but even more to his readers, to put his arguments into their proper contexts -- an even more important aspect of good scholarship, perhaps, than accurately listing publishing dates of books cites.

That was my main point. In his responses, however, Avalos not only neglects it, but is again grossly negligent with context.

I'll respond to his first post here (reproduced in the previous blog, also on the "Debunking Christianity" website) then to his other posts later.

(1) First, it is untrue that I have "no personal knowledge whatsoever" about the Craig-Avalos debate, and just "repeat material found on the internet."

In fact, I watched the thing. I cited Craig and Gonzalez on it, in part because I found their analysis on the money.

Nor am I sure it is fair to describe comments by the principals in Avalos' prior disputes merely as "material found on the internet." This description is literally true -- I found Gonzalez' comments in my "In-Box" after sending him an e-mail asking about his experiences with Avalos, for instance -- but rather misleading.

(2) Why should I care if Dr. Craig mistakenly described Dr. Avalos' position at Iowa State University? For the record, having watched a few of Craig's debates, it seems to me he usually goes out of his way in them to properly credit debate partners for their accomplishments. (Unlike, say, Bart Ehrman, who seemed to think he could win his debate by disparaging Craig's academic associations.) But that has little to do with our debate, or even with Craig's evaluation of Dr. Avalos' methods.

(3) Avalos admits he mistakenly added the word "the" to a quotation from me about how common it was in the ancient world to dismiss the humanity of other people. He avers that his error did not much change the meaning of my original comment, however, and that the original was still misleading somehow.

Here again, context makes a big difference. Here are the three paragraphs to the citation in question (which I'll put in bold):

"Jesus Frees Slaves
"The outlawing of the slave trade was a huge milestone in history. Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens all pin their criticism of the Bible on its failure to condemn this institution. For Harris, this is inexplicable. Isn't it obvious that a slave is a human being who suffers and enjoys like all of us? Every reasonable person understands that treating people 'like farm equipment' is 'patently evil.' Harris argues, 'It is remarkably easy for a person to arrive at this epiphany.' Yet it had to be spread 'at the point of a bayonet' in the pious American South.

"Only a historically sheltered child of the West and the product of a politically correct public school system could achieve such breathtaking and uncritical naivite.

"Slavery was obviously not wrong to Aristotle. The equality of humanity was denied by by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless smaller tribes . . . " (The Truth Behind the New Atheism, 144)

I am, clearly, arguing that the teachings of Jesus led to the liberation of slaves. I am also arguing against Harris' naive and anachronistic view that since slaves are obviously human, it is "remarkably easy" for civilizations to arrive at the "epiphany" that slavery is "patently evil."

I return to both points again in the next paragraph, on page 145, which begins, "No great civilization arrived at the 'epiphany' Harris thinks so obvious until the rise of Christian Europe."

To support this point, that civilizations do not spontanteously recognize the evil of slavery, it is not necessary that I show that no one other than Christians ever decried it. Indeed, in that following paragraph, I point out that "a few voices" in India were raised against caste, but "the system shook them off." Analogously, as evidence warrants, I have no problem granting that such voices might perhaps have also been heard against slavery -- few and far between though they seem to have been.

All I need to support my argument is to show is that Harris' 21st Century Bay Area perspective was not the norm in the pre-modern world. Does Avalos really want to ally himself with Harris on this point? I offer examples from Greece, Islam, India, and the European Enlightenment to show that slavery and / or human inequality were often taken for granted.

The sentence Avalos objects to claims that "the equality of humanity" was denied by "Greeks, Gnostics, Indians," etc. The function of this sentence is not to show that no non-Christian ever spoke out against inequality -- I admit in the next paragraph that some Indians (at least) did. Its function, rather, is to show that what Harris describes as "remarkably easy" -- our modern dislike of unpaid exploitation -- in fact came with great difficulty, and a lot of leafing of Scripture.

That the sentence should be read as referring to individuals should be clear from sentences immediately before and after it, in which I give examples of influential people who denied what Harris saw as self-evident: Aristotle, Hume, Voltaire, Ernst Haeckel.

True, I might have made THAT sentence more clear by adding the word "many:" "The equality of humanity was denied by MANY Greeks . . . " My books are not sacred scripture, and one wants to keep even determined opponents from misunderstanding what one writes, if at all possible. But in context -- again -- it is hard to read this page as meaning ALL Greeks, Gnostics, Indians, etc, denied the equality of humanity -- which I neither believe to be the case, nor wish others to believe.

Avalos' other remarks are mostly focused on the meat of the issue, and it should be possible to answer them in a single, later post.

(Pirates of Caribbean photo copyright Disney 2003)

Dr. Avalos' Response I

Hector Avalos recently responded to my first two blogs on John Loftus' Debunking Christianity site. This blog will give his response, and I will respond then in a separate blog. (Are there copyright objections to quoting his full response? If so, I'll adjust. And some readers may wonder when I'm going to get on to other subjects! But our debate is scattered all over cyberspace; I'll try to consolidate things here and at christthetao.com, before launching into happier topics.)

Avalos' response came in 6 posts, which I'll identify with letters of the alphabet. I'll begin with his first post. (I'm having trouble importing the others, and will try to add them later.) The rest of the blog will be his unedited words.

******************************************************************

A. I won't spend much time on Marshall's responses because he repeats the same sorts of techniques, arguments, and methods that I already criticized.

I will respond on this thread in case Marshall decides to edit or delete my posts on his threads, which may be found at:

http: //christthetao.blogspot.com/2010/08/i-why-hectoring-dr.html

http: //christthetao.blogspot.com/2010/08/ii-slave-to-cherry-picked-footnotes-19.html

His Part I is mostly a personal attack that has little bearing on my arguments on slavery. Marshall repeats material found on the internet about my debate with Craig, and other issues of which he has no first-hand knowledge whatsoever (e.g., the Gonzalez case).

For example, he cites a critique of my debate with William Lane Craig at Common Sense Atheism, but then does not cite my subsequent interview with Luke Muehlhauser about this debate.

See http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p_7046. He also oassumes those criticisms are correct.

For the record, I have answered many of Dr. Craig's allegations, including some of Craig's factual errors, and so why didn't Marshall note that fact? Craig never has retracted even the clearest of factual errors (e.g., Craig misidentifies my position at my university), but Marshall does not seem to mind. I list some of them here:

http: debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/07/dr-w-l-craig-caught-telling-more.html

I've answered some of Dr. Gonzalez's claims here:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/DISmokingGun.cfm

In the interest of fairness, I do grant that I mistakenly added a "the" in manually typing (versus cut and pasting, which I prefer to do for accuracy) one of Marshall's quotes (see below). Though inadvertant, that should never happen. That is my responsibility.

Marshall is, however, wrong to say that it really changed the meaning of his claim. Compare the two statements at issue as he summarizes them:

A. "The equality of human was denied by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Marshall classic version, p. 144.)

B. "The equality of humanity was denied by THE Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asian and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Avalos redacted version, emphasis added.)

If, as he claims, he did not mean to overgeneralize in the way that adding "the" appears to have made it, then he seems inconsistent with other statements he makes.

The whole context of his discussion is that Christians were different from other cultures in regard to slavery.

So, how would that make his point if some Greeks denied the equality of human beings, but then some Christians did, too?

In any case, Marshall's premise seems to be that a cultural / national word such as "Greeks" without the article is fine as long as "SOME Greeks believe X." An expressions such as "THE Greeks" applies only if "ALL Greeks believe X." Fine.

If this is the case, then I surmise that the following statements would also satisfy Marshall's rules for the presence or omission of the definite article.

A. "Greeks affirmed the equality of humanity" (since all I need is for some Greeks to affirm this equality to use "Greeks" instead of "the Greeks").

B. "Christians endorsed slavery" (all I need is for some Christians to endorse slavery to make this statement true).

Yet, the point remains. How does Marshall intend to convince us that Christianity was better or superior in regard to slavery if we can make equivalent statements about Christian and non-Christian cultures without the use of a definite article at the equivalent grammatical junctures?

(II) “Slave to Cherry-picked Footnotes: 19 problems with Hector Avalos on religion and human bondage.”


This is Part II of my response to Dr. Hector Avalos’ criticism of myself, and of the Christian record against slavery, in his article "A Slave to Incompetence: The Truth Behind David Marshall's Research on Slavery" on the “Debunking Christianity” web site. (See here for Part I, which mostly deals with Dr. Avalos' attempts at ad hominen; comments welcome below.)

(Note: Probably the most interesting part of this blog, especially for readers new to the discussion, will be the "Timeline for Christian Abolition" at the end of it. Some readers may like to skip my 19 critical points of response to Dr. Avalos' attack (immediately below) to this timeline beneath it. I especially welcome input, either by adding to the list, or by criticizing any errors or exagerations I may have made.)

No doubt Dr. Avalos chose to criticize the segment on slavery in my book, The Truth Behind the New Atheism for good reasons. In his on-going crusade to show how harmful Christianity has been, slavery is an obviously important front. Avalos is writing a book on the subject, so he has already done a lot of useful research. I explained, in Part I, why Avalos’ attempt to nurse his advantage on this topic into an attack on my scholarly credentials is bogus. But tactically, his choice of topics makes sense.

Hector Avalos is an accomplished and in some ways talented academic. With a doctorate from Harvard, a goodly number of publications, Avalos is recipient of the Professor of the Year award at ISU in 1996. He should be in a position, one would think, to offer formidable challenges to my arguments.

And in a sense, Avalos' critique is at least more detailed and (at first glance) convincing than most "new atheists" who have attacked the book, or than physicist Victor Stenger's critique in his book, The New Atheism.
But it is curious, given all these advantages, how often Avalos stumbles. It is also interesting to note the inconvenient facts he stumbles over.

Again, this is not meant to be a full rebuttal, which might best follow the publication of his book and more in-depth study. But I find nineteen initial problems with Avalos' critique, and with his approach to Christianity and slavery.

(Readers who have not read his critique might either like to read it first, or skip nos. 2-4, 11, and 13, which rebut specific criticisms. These bare less on the issue of Christianity and human bondage, than on the character of Hector Avalos' critique.)

(1) In one paragraph of page 145, I quote Sam Harris’ claim that the wrongness of slavery is “remarkably easy epiphany” and that Christians were especially dense for not arriving at it. I responded in part by saying Christianity DID stop it, twice, though “Not many people know about the first abolition movement.” I then briefly described Christian efforts in Antiquity to free slaves, and similar movements in the Middle Ages. I am not an historian of European history, and one paragraph for a thousand years is obviously a bit glib – though (as shown in Part I) much more than Harris or his allies offer. My main source for that paragraph was Rodney Stark, who does admittedly spread himself thin sometimes. (See my Amazon review of Carrier’s critique in The Christian Delusion.)

Avalos spends many pages rebutting that paragraph.

I took Avalos’ criticism seriously, and looked into the issue in more depth. Admittedly, some of what I found was depressing – Christian councils that saw it as a duty to return escapees, slave collars found with Christian symbols on them, slave-trading popes.

But after looking more deeply into the facts, I conclude that Stark was essentially right, as were my criticisms of Harris and Hitchens. A substantial and theologically-motivated movement against slavery did grow up in the ancient and Medieval worlds, among leading Christian thinkers. It ultimately helped liberate tens of thousands of people and make much of Medieval Europe almost free of slavery. It may be anachronistic to call it an “abolition” movement, but abolition was sometimes the effect.

But Avalos also errs by failing to note what I say about the nature of ancient and Medieval Christian reform. Were Avalos to read that whole chapter and the next, he would find that (in my view) what changes things for the better are usually not dramatic and instant revolutions, but incremental improvement:

(a) "Liberation often advances at glacial speed." (149)

(b) "Pluralism grew slowly in Western culture, like a sheltering tree from a small seed." (151)

(c) "Ideas are like Harry Potter's 'any-flavored candy,' or Forrest Gump's chocolates: there is a certain quantum variability to what comes out of the historical selection process at any moment. Influence is hard to pin down. How can we trace the flow of an idea from its intellectual origins through such a complex, ingenious, and devious organ as the mind, and out into human actions?" (158)

And here, on the Bible and slavery, a passage Avalos overlooks:

(d) "Some ideas are explicit. The apostles John and Paul wrote about the divinity of Jesus, which is why Christians have always believed him divine . . . . Other doctrines are implicit, and their logic mixes slowly, like juices in a crockpot. The New Testament has little to say about slavery -- it's taken for granted, but undermined by pervasive calls to love one another, talk about freedom, and the assumption that Christians form a united spiritual family. Still other doctrines or practices grow up in the face of commands against them, which we subvert for our own purposes." (158, emphasis added)

That, I think, accurately describes the process by which Christianity ended slavery. But Dr. Avalos does not seem to have read outside his four-page “strike zone,” and says nothing about these remarks.

(2) It is curious how often Avalos uses the "Yezbut" construction. It is never enough to admit my point: he always finds some complication, which of course history always furnishes, to pretend he is rebutting me, even when he essentially concedes my point. Finding such complexities is not hard to do when you’re responding with 24 pages to 4 pages.

(3) In two curious cases, Avalos quotes me, responds with the word “False!”, then goes on to admit that what I said is actually TRUE.

(a) Marshall: “Queen Bathild worked to free Christian slaves (at least) and stop the slave trade . . .”

Avalos: “False, at least in part. Bathilde did not work to ‘stop the slave trade’ . . . The Latin source . . . actually says that she ‘prohibited the sale of Christian captives . . . ‘”

Well, yes, that’s what I just said. Long before Islam had come to Europe, that’s what most people in her domain were, at least nominally.

And here’s a particular bald misreading:

(b) Marshall: “Hitchens claims that ‘this huge and terrible industry was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. He’s wrong. Many popes protested, beginning in the 15th Century . . . “

Avalos: “False. For ‘a long time’ slavery was blessed by the churches and did not arouse any religious protests. Any protests were isolated instances. Marshall himself seems to concede that it took a pope until the 15th century to protest . . . 1400-1500 years would qualify as a ‘long time’ to many . . . ”

Here the tendentious nature of Avalos’ criticism is revealed by the contradiction of his own words. If there were “isolated instances” of protest, as Avalos seems to concede (in fact there were MANY such instances, and they were not that “isolated,” as we will see), then Hitchens’ claim that there were “absolutely no” such instances is false, just as I said. So as Avalos implicitly admits, even while he explicitly denies, my claim is not “false,” but quite TRUE.

Worse, Dr. Avalos’ criticism is based on badly misreading our discussion. Hitchens is not talking about slavery in general, but, to be precise, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. If Avalos does not have a copy of Hitchen’s book, all he had to do was read the prior sentences of mine to know this: “With slavery an accepted institution, and warfare a way of life, as they became more ‘civilized’ themselves, it was natural for the Portuguese and Spanish to go into the trade on a massive scale in Africa and the Americas. The English, French, and Americans followed their lead.”

Thus Avalos’ rebuttal drains into the sand without remainder. The Transatlantic Slave Trade BEGAN in the 15th Century: it is hardly surprising that popes only started protesting it then! (Even if Hitchens’ assertion were about slavery in general, then his claim would still be wrong – see the timeline at end.)

(4) Avalos accuses me of a "gross and misleading overgeneralization." Actually he MISQUOTES me again, then goes on a twelve-paragraph panegyric that depends for its barb on his misreading! Note carefully the two versions, Marshall (A) and Avalos (B):

A: "The equality of humanity was denied by Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asians and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Marshall classic version, p. 144.)

B: "The equality of humanity was denied by THE Greeks, Gnostics, Indians (Asians and American), Africans, Chinese, and countless similar tribes." (Avalos redacted version, emphasis added.)

What difference does Avalos' addition of the word "the" make to my sentence? It creates precisely what he accuses me of making, a "gross and misleading overgeneralization!" I left the word "the" out just because I didn't WANT to generalize about ALL Greeks, Chinese, etc!

Consider a similar example:

A. "A windstorm blew down trees in Mount Rainier National Park."

B. "A windstorm blew down THE trees in Mount Rainier National Park."

In which case are there probably still trees left in the park? In case A, of course. A is not a "gross and misleading overgeneralization;" B might well be.

This is not the first time Dr. Avalos, who makes so much of the importance of careful scholarship, and so often derides his opponents for failing at it, misquotes opponents. Nor is it the first time his misquotes give advantage to his arguments.

*In our debate, he tried to refute claims he ascribed to me about Stalin and Hitler that I had in fact not made.

*In Christian Delusion, Avalos claimed that Dinesh D'Souza admitted that Europeans had killed 100,000 people as witches – only D’Souza didn’t say that.

*Avalos falsely claimed that historian Richard Weikart blamed the Holocaust on atheism – but Weikart said no such thing, and when I asked him, he repudiated Avalos’ misreading. (See our Amazon debate for details on all these.)

* Later in this article, Avalos again quotes me as saying "slavery didn't die in Greece or Iberia," then responds, . . . "The fact is that it is in areas, such as Iberia and Italy, where the greatest Christian populations were concentrated in the Middle Ages." (sic) Aside from the confusing punctuation, it almost appears that Dr. Avalos is suggesting his "Italy" as a synonym for my "Greece!"

Slippery citations seem to be an unfortunate habit with Dr. Avalos. Given how usefully sloppy he can be working in English, it might be reasonable a fortiori to take his translations from Latin and Aramaic with a small grain of sal.

(5) Context again: as I emphasized, slavery was almost universal in advanced civilizations, because it was profitable. Even some ants enslave other ants. The wonder is not that anyone participated, but that any society ever stopped doing it for moral reasons. This is the point of some arguments I make that Avalos misreads as meaning something else.

(6) Avalos claims that "Qualitatively, nothing in the NT compares to the extensive and thoughtful advocacy of fairness of slaves in Seneca's forty-seventh epistle . . ."

Avalos would be right if he said "quantitatively." There is no passage on slavery in the NT as LONG as that in Seneca's letter.

But note two points. First, Seneca is keenly conscious of spitting against the wind here:

"Associate with your slave on kindly, even on affable, terms; let him talk with you, plan with you, live with you. I know that at this point all the exquisites will cry out against me in a body; they will say: 'There is nothing more debasing, more disgraceful, than this.'"

I never claimed no pagan ever suggested it would be a nice thing to treat slaves nicely. In fact, some pagans freed slaves, possibly including the great Buddhist king of India, Ashoka, and the founder of the Late Han Dynasty in China, Liu Xiu.

Second, when it comes to QUALITY, while Seneca urges us to treat slaves as "friends," Paul tells Philemon to receive Onesius "no longer as a slave, but as more than a slave, a beloved brother." (αδελφον αγαπητον) Paul may or may not have been asking Philemon to manumit the young man (there is long debate over the point), but certainly the term of endearment he prescribed at least matches that of Seneca. (To say nothing against Seneca or Stoicism in general, for which I have profound respect.)

(7) There is no exegetical reason not to apply the hundreds of demands in Scripture that we "love" both other Christians and people in general to slaves. Slaves are human, and therefore fitting objects of all the imprecations along those lines in the New Testament. Of course slave owners can choose to ignore those demands, but that does not render them void.

(8) Avalos scoffs at the relevance of my pointing out that Jesus was a carpenter. Apparently he does not understand this point. Slave societies create a mindset in which owners think physical labor is beneath them. The example of Jesus forever renders this attitude heretical to Christians: how can the work Jesus did be too good for his followers? Of course people can again ignore the Gospel example, but that is their fault.

(9) “There is no evidence cited that loving one’s neighbor eventually led to abolition. As Harry M. Orlinsky, the prominent scholar of Hebrew, has deftly noted, the Hebrew term (re’eka) translated as ‘your neighbor’ is best understood as ‘your fellow Israelite’ in Leviticus 19:18 . . . ‘”

All one has to do is read what abolitionists like John Wesley, Francis Pastorius and his fellows, and William Wilberforce said about slavery, to see that “loving one’s neighbor” was the heart and soul of the abolition movement. They consciously drew on Jesus’ teaching and example here.

As for what “your neighbor” meant, let me suggest that Dr. Orlinsky, and Avalos again, “deftly” fail when it comes to reading context. Note just 15 verses later in the same chapter, 19:33: “When a stranger lives among you in your land, do not mistreat him; the foreigner who lives among you shall be like a native among you. You shall love him as your own . . . “

Is that not sufficiently clear?

If it isn’t, similar commands elsewhere in the book should make it so:

23: 22: “When you harvest the crop of your land neither mow to the very edges of your field nor glean what has been dropped in harvesting; leave it for the poor and for the foreigner. I am the Lord.”

25: 35: “If your brother becomes poor and unable to meet his obligations to you, then you shall sustain him, foreigner or neighbor, so he may keep alive with you. Charge no interest . . . “

There are numerous similiar regulations in Numbers, which immediately follows Leviticus, and throughout much of the OT.

(10) Avalos wants to ascribe the origins of racism to Christianity. I wait with interest to read his argument proving this point, contravening the plain meaning of Scripture.

(11) In regard to Darwin, I did not, in fact, "resort to guilt by association," as Avalos alleges. My point was that Haeckel was a prominent Darwinist, not that Darwin (as a person) was responsible for his views. As I’ve said elsewhere (in fact earlier in the same book from which Avalos read 4 pages, see subtopic on page 53, “Darwin was a Great Scientist!”), I have much respect for Charles Darwin.

(12) No, Pharaoh was not an "abolitionist," as Avalos claims. Nor, in the Exodus story, did he "manumit" anyone -- after all the trials God sent him, he allowed the Hebrews to go into the desert to sacrifice, then went after them with an army when they tried to stretch their holiday to a lifetime. I suggest Avalos re-read Exodus; it in NO way supports an abolitionist interpretation of his actions.

(13) No, I did not "excuse the Spaniards and the Portuguese because slavery was 'an accepted institution.'" I didn't even root for Spain in the World Cup.

(14) Avalos asks how the Bible could have had anything to do with getting rid of slavery in northern or western Europe, if it didn't serve the same function in southern Europe, "even though the Bible was known in both areas."

What a view of historical causation this seems to betray! Yet his fellow CD contributor, the historian Richard Carrier, makes the same mistake in trying to deny Christianity had anything to do with the rise of science, by offering this remarkable view of historical causation:

“One of the most basic principles of causality: when the cause is in place, its effect is seen.”

But history is not a machine in a pizza parlor that, when you hit the blue button, a the green alien pops out. It is multivariable chronology of events involving complex, obstinate creatures (human beings) who act out of a wide variety of often opaque and usually self-serving motivations.

Sure, there were Bibles in Spain. But few people owned them. There were also other books. Most people could not read any of them. Those few who read Bibles, were also acted on (like all of us) by lust, greed, pride, hunger, cowardice, stupidity, vanity, and social inertia. In addition it is, as I conceded in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, possible to rationalize slavery from the Bible, if you really want to. And of course, Sam Harris aside, human beings take a lot of motivating to give up power and wealth. To reduce a fantastically complex causal pathway to “when the cause is in place, the effect is seen” mocks modern post-determinative physics, still less any realistic understanding of how human history works.

(15) I argue, “A second and more radical abolition movement began among the Quakers,” then describe one of the antics of Benjamin Lay, the eccentric Quaker activist who agitated against slavery in the Philadelphia area until his death in 1759, to illustrate the point.

Dr. Avalos spills much ink arguing that, despite Lay, many Quakers in Philadelphia were and for some time remained slave-owners. He admits that the number of slaves there fell by 60% in just 8 years, from 1767 to 1775, but claims, “A better explanation for the decline of slaves is the inability of a slave population to reproduce itself after slave importations had virtually stopped.” On this basis he derides the idea that Quakers can “be counted as the second time ‘the Bible’ ended slavery.”

This response is questionable on several counts.

First, I didn’t say Quakers, or the Bible by means of one particular Quaker living in Philadelphia in the 1750s, “ended slavery.” I said a radical abolition movement BEGAN among Quakers. So it did. Nor did it begin or end with Lay, as anyone who reads the history of abolition should know. Misreading my real claim, not for the first time, Avalos simply fails to respond to it.

The first recorded protest against slavery in North America seems to have come from four Quakers in 1688. Half a century later, Benjamin Lay, Anthony Benezet, and John Woolman followed their lead. Woolman wrote, “my heart was enlarged in the love of Jesus Christ, and the favor of the Most High was extended to us in that and the ensuing meeting,” which gives a feel for his motivation.

Aside from their influence in the colonies, in England, “Friends taking the initiative against the slave trade in the 1780s drew on the colonial American Quakers Benezet and Woolman. The groundwork of a powerful testimony and action against the trade in slaves was laid by their writings.”

Second, is it really likely that the slave population of Philadelphia fell 60% in eight years through natural attrition? The slave trade to the US was outlawed in 1808. The 1810 Census counted 1.2 million slaves, while the 1860 census counted 4 million! (Not counting free blacks.) So even without slaves being imported, the number more than tripled over 52 years. So why should it have plunged so precipitously in Philadelphia? There is, then, something in need of explanation about the demographic claims Dr. Avalos draws from, here.

Third, why did Pennsylvania ban the import of slaves? Wasn’t that itself the fruit of agitation against slavery?

(16) No, I did not use the movie Amazing Grace as "evidence," as Avalos infers. Here's what I said:

"But as the movie Amazing Grace beautifully shows, Wilberforce's 'delusion' that God has raised him to make slavery 'vanish away' changed the course of history."

As should be clear, I mentioned the movie because I LIKED it, and wanted to encourage readers to see it. It is an illustration, nor an argument, thus the words "beautifully shows."

Having run up the flag of True Scholarship again, Avalos then tries to distract attention from the clear fact that Wilberforce DID play the leading role in banning slavery, by an historiographic aside questioning the "Great Man Theory of History." But if men like Jesus and Paul do not have a big effect on history, why does Avalos need to worry about something called Christianity? Furthermore, why does he spend so much effort trying to pin blame for the Holocaust on Martin Luther in his chapter in Christian Delusion? Should he add a postlude to that chapter: “But of course recent historiography has shifted away from the Great Man Theory of History, so the heart of my argument is null and void?”

Or does this argument, too, only work when employed against Christians?
(17) Avalos quotes Wilberforce as saying the NT undermines slavery, then pretends the man didn't really mean it. Again he plays a kind of verbal shell game, this time by first citing what he takes as a useful quote from Wilberforce, then transitioning with a sentence starting "In other words." Not uncommonly with Avalos, what follows are not just other words, but other meaning:

Wilberforce: “ . . . there certainly cannot be a doubt as to the principle of the Holy Scriptures especially of the New Testament on the subject of the Slave Trade or even that of slavery; tho on the latter point explanation would be required. But I believe it was better not to enter into any such discussion in the House of Commons for many reasons.”

Avalos: “In other words, Wilberforce apparently recognized that arguing on the basis of the Bible was a losing battle in the Commons . . . if anything, it was abandoning the Bible that made the abolitionist argument much easier.”

The implication is that, as Avalos claims earlier, the New Testament does not furnish good arguments against slavery, or that it furnishes better arguments for it, and Wilberforce wisely recognized this. But Wilberforce actually MEANS exactly the opposite: “there can be no doubt” that the NT is AGAINST both the slave trade (obviously) and slavery in general (needs some explanation).

An unspoken premise here is that Wilberforce could have no other reason for not emphasizing the biblical argument, than that the NT is not really against the slave trade and slavery, wink, wink. (Never mind his explicitly stated view that it is!) In any case, this premise is also clearly false. Consider the famous words of William Lamb (aka Lord Melburne):

“Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade public life.”

A reprobate of the old school and friend of Enlightenment figures, Lord Melburne seldom seemed to allow religion to invade his private life much, either. Avalos seems to curiously assume that such orientations were unknown, even in the midst of the Enlightenment.

(18) Avalos' arguments about why Christians enslaved black Africans is something to behold, and seems to have little to do with historical reality. But this paper is growing long; I’ll leave that for another day.

(19) Finally, I write, "Evangelical Christians led the movement against slavery in England and America, and England led the world."

Dr. Avalos responds:

"Not quite. In 1791, Haiti became the first country where slaves successfully overthrew their slavemasters (Christian slavemasters in this case) and founded a new nation. Those slaves were heavily influenced by Voodoo and other African traditions rather than just Christianity."

The topic here is abolition, not slave rebellions. Slaves have always wanted to free themselves, of course, which is why we have so many movies about Roman slave rebellions. (Note: movies are an illustration, not evidence!)

And how did slavery end in Haiti? Perhaps the best and most effective leader of the revolution was Toussaint Louverture, the Father of Haiti, a zealous Catholic and abolitionist who believed God wanted slavery overthrown. This formed no part of my short argument, and I’m not quite sure why Avalos brought Haiti up, other than the need to find someone, somewhere, who was not a zealous Christian, to credit for abolition. No doubt one might well credit practitioners of voodoo in Haiti for some good deeds in that process; we will see what specifics Avalos comes up with.

But the Western movement culminating in abolition had been going on a long time before slaves were liberated in Haiti. Western history is not, as I have admitted, my primary field, and the following events deserve more in-depth research than I am able to give them right now. But with a bit of rummaging around, here’s a partial list of prior abolition-tending highlights, a tree, as I said, growing slowly from a seed:


Timeline for Christian Abolition

50s AD: Paul writes, “In Christ, there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free.” The full implications have been debated ever since; certainly it precludes treating slaves as less than human.

60s: Paul writes a letter to his fellow Christian, Philemon, asking that he take back Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but as a brother.” His meaning has been debated ever since.

300s: Ambrose, bishop of Milan, melts down communion vessels to redeem captives: “The ornament of my sacrament is the redemption of captives; and those alone are precious vessels, that redeem souls from death.”

354-431: Paulinus, bishop of Nola, (whom Avalos criticizes for alleged racism) liberates his own slaves, spends his considerable wealth redeeming citizens of Campania, and then, (allegedly, will need to look into this further), goes into slavery to redeem one captive.

4th Century: Gregory of Nyssa critiques slavery in the light of Christian theology:

"'I obtained servants and maidens.' What are you saying? You condemn man who is free and autonomous to servitude, and you contradict God by perverting the natural law. Man, who was created as lord over the earth, you have put under the yoke of servitude as a transgressor and rebel against the divine precept. You have forgotten the limit of your authority which consists in jurisdiction over brutish animals . . . “

"God has said, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness' [Gen 1.26]. Since we are made according to God's likeness and are appointed to rule over the entire earth, tell me, who is the person who sells and buys? . . . How can we properly estimate the earth in its entirety as well as its contents? If these things are inestimable, tell me, how much greater is man's value who is over them . . . ? "

400-425: Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary historian, tells how Acacius, Bishop of Amida in modern Turkey, talked his priests into melting down holy vessels in order to redeem 7,000 Persian captives and send them home. He explains:

“Our God, my brethren, needs neither dishes nor cups; for he neither eats nor drinks, nor is in want of anything. Since then, by the liberality of its faithful members the church possesses many vessels both of gold and silver, it behooves us to sell them, that by the money thus raised we may be able to redeem the prisoners and also supply them with food.”

400s: St. Patrick rebukes Coroticus for enslaving Christians and threatens him with damnation:

“I do not know what to lament more: those who have been slain, or those whom they have taken captive, or those whom the devil has mightily ensnared. Together with him they will be slaves in Hell in an eternal punishment; for who commits sin is a slave and will be called a son of the devil.”

The assumption here, which has NT precedent, is that slave-trading is a “sin,” and a particularly nasty one, showing that the sinner is “mightily ensnared” by the devil. Patrick’s rant continues:

“Far from the love of God is a man who hands over Christians to the Picts and Scots . . .They have filled their houses with the spoils of dead Christians, they live on plunder . . . This is the custom of the Roman Christians of Gaul: they send holy and able men to the Franks and other heathen with so many thousand solidi to ransom baptized captives. You prefer to kill and sell them to a foreign nation that has no knowledge of God. You betray the members of Christ as it were into a brothel. What hope have you in God, or anyone who thinks as you do, or converses with you in words of flattery? God will judge.”

500s: An anonymous Christian believer in Egypt makes a legal declaration that a woman dependant on his family named Martha is not a slave, as she says, but free. After she certified that she was in fact of slave status, “fearing the judgment of God, and mindful of the Savior’s love of mankind, I groaned aloud.” He warned that anyone who tried to enslave the woman and her children would be subject to God’s judgment.

781: Jing Jing, in Chang An, the Chinese capital, writing an authoritative summary of the history and characteristics of the Church of the East:

“They do not keep slaves, but make the noble and humble equal. (不畜臧獲。均貴賤於人). They do not amass wealth, but put their stock in common.” (Note: the first Chinese phrase here is an unusual classical expression, used similarly by the Han historian Si Maqian, among other places.)
.
972: Counsel of Koblenz

1014: In the "Sermon of the Wolf to the English," Wulfston is said to lambast the English for restricting the rights of slaves. Slaves seem to have constituted either about 2 or 10% of inhabitants of England.

1000-1150 Iceland: ¨Christian influences were also one reason why slavery declined and disappeared in the 11th and early 12th centuries.¨ Jon Hjalmarsson (a history teacher in Iceland and regional administrator of education), History of Iceland, 34
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1102: Under the leadership of Anselm, philosopher and Archbishop of Canterbury, the Council of Westminster condemned the slave trade: “Let no one here after presume to engage in that nefarious trade in which hitherto in England men were usually sold like brute animals.”

As one blogger put it, Anselm “hated slavery.”

1198: Founding of Trinitarians, who are credited with freeing almost a million (Christian) slaves over following centuries, among other acts of charity.

1200s: Founding of Mercedarian Order, also dedicated to freeing Christian slaves.

1300s: Louis X allows slaves to buy their freedom, as Avalos notes, to swell his coffers; actually his rationalization extended beyond that. In any case, France remained mostly slave-free, which did not need to happen.

1335: Magnus IV outlaws slavery (for Christians, anyway) in most of Scandinavia.

1416: The Republic of Ragusa (in modern Croatia) abolishes slavery and slave-trading.

1508: Thomas Hunt, one of John Smith's lieutenants (see Pocahontas for the Disney version!), kidnaps an American Indian named Tisquantum (Squanto) and attempts to sell him as a slave in Europe. Friars educate him, he is freed and returns to North America. While he is gone, everyone in his village died in an epidemic. Settlers at Plymouth are surprised to meet an Indian who speaks English. He teaches them how to fish, fertilize vegetables, and talk with other local tribes, enabling the colony to survive.

1588: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth abolishes slavery.

1772: The Somersett’s case essentially ruled against the (already rare) institution of slavery in England.

1777: The Republic of Vermont adopted a Constitution outlawing slavery: "no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years, unless they are bound by their own consent."

1778: Slavery is outlawed in Scotland.

1780: Pennsylvania passes an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery; other northern states follow with similar laws in 1783, 1784, 1799, and 1804.

1783: Slavery is ruled illegal in Massachusetts.

1780-1803: Other new laws are adopted against slavery in various parts of Europe and the Western Hemisphere.

1804: Haiti declares independence and abolishes slavery.

Given this history, it is puzzling why one should see Haiti as the pivot around which modern abolition moved.

After this point, and with this precedent, it is I think fair to say evangelicals (and Quakers) led what became the moral crusade against slavery, first in the English world, then extending around the world to this day. (I myself was privileged to play a small role in the continuing struggle.)

But not being a slave myself, I think I'll end here. A more proactive argument for the influence Christianity had and continues to have in ameliorating and ending slavery is probably needed to join all these little dots; maybe I’ll find time to write such a paper, or book, later.

Part III will deconstruct Dr. Avalos’ argument that Christianity caused the Holocaust.