Yes, you read that right. The point I’m trying to make is that evolution and Christianity are incompatible. Now obviously, your standard evolution-denying creationist (whether young-earth or old-earth) also see science and religion as incompatible on this issue, and they choose religion. People like myself who have failed to find any use for religion as an explanatory device also see the two subjects as incompatible, but we choose science (I must say that results do more for me any day over wishful thinking). So far, so good, just two sides of the whole reality vs. magic debate. (Note: as you may have already noticed, I often use the term “religion” as if it solely means “Christianity”: get used to it, I’m a former Christian living in the Bible Belt of America and Christianity is by far the most dominant religious paradigm in my society, so it’s the one I address.)
Christians who believe in evolution want to have their cake and eat it too by believing in both science and religion. And let’s get one thing straight, such Christian evolutionsts are, by definition, creationists, though they probably wouldn’t like that title applied to themselves. They believe, right along with the evolution denying fundies, that God still created everything, they simply diagree on the method: evolution vs. magic words. But why not?–why can’t a person who doesn’t take the Bible literally (a Biblical Figurativist, so to speak) simply interpret evolution as being God’s method of creation? After all, the largest Christian denomination on the planet, the pedophile Catholic church, doesn’t have any particular issues with evolution; so what’s te big problem? The answer is parsimony.
What is parsimony? The use of parsimony in science is often referred to as Occam’s Razor: in short in means that if two explanations work equally well for a phenomenon, the simplest one is usually the right one. It’s a logical rule that helps to eliminate the explanatory equivalents of Rube Goldberg machines. From a scientific standpoint, evolution is the more parsimonious explanation than that of either creationists or religious evolutionist because it does not presuppose untestable supernatural elements like a god or miracles. This much is pretty obvious, but what about from a religious standpoint?
Let’s set science aside for a moment (we’ll call it an exercise in masochism) and apply the Law of Parsimony strictly to competing Christian explanations. A standard, evolution-denying creationist believes that God created everything in a short series of miracles. It’s not hard to understand; God basically give a few divine commands which magically occur and bada-boom, everything exists. An Christian evolutionist, however, is stuck with three competing possibilities (that I can see).
1) Over the eons, as organisms evolved, God repeatedly intervened to make sure that the right organisms survived/reproduced to eventually create humanity. This would require not a few big creation miracles but millions of smaller “direction” miracles. Unfortunately, millions of miracles is less parsimonious than a handful of them.
2) God had an initial set of creation miracles in which he set the process of evolution in progress, but he had deterministically set it up so that evolution had no choice but to create humanity. In other words, all evolutionary changes, all reproductive events, all survivals, and all extinctions were destined to happen in order to create people. This might be considered as parsimonious as anti-evolutionism, though it does offer a eons-long miracle in place of an instant one. It also offers some other problems. If everything in the universe is predetermined by God then so are all the lives and actions of the people in it; why then are these people eternally rewarded/punished for actions they can’t control? (This actually may not be much of an issue for Christians that believe in predestination, like Calvinists, but most sane people (and also most Christians) would agree that eternal torture for something you had no choice or control over is evil.) Also, if evolution is nothing else, it is a remarkably unfriendly (at least to the organisms within it) system; everything pretty much struggles, fights, kills, and dies; none of this doesmuch for the idea of God as “good” (again unless you’re a sadistic puritan or something). If on the other hand, God suddenly changed the universe once humans evolved to allow for free-will (non-determination), this would be be an additional miracle on top of the initial one, killing its parsimonious value.
3) God sets evolution in progess and humans just happen to eventually evolve and God reveals himself to them. This is actually just as parsimonious as the anti-evolution account of creation: it has an initial creation miracle/s and leaves it at that. This then is the one viewpoint left to evolutionistic creationists. The problem then is that God did NOT create man in his image but instead did a half-assed adoption of humankind after they evolved on their own. If we assume that God altered people to be “in his image” then additional miracles were performed killing the parsimony of the explanation. We are then left with an explanation in which God rewards/punishes a bunch of bipedal hairless apes just for shits and giggles.
As can be seen, anti-evolution Biblical literalism is a more parsimonious explanation (and thus more likely to be correct) than pro-evolution Biblical figurativism. And since literalism has dust-men, rib-women, and talking snakes, that’s pretty damn fucked up.
TL;DR: Biblical literalists require fewer miracles for creation than evolution-believing Biblical figurativism, thus literalism is more parsimonious and more likely to be correct or at best, the least fucked up of the fucked up religious options.
Tags: Atheism, Bible, Christianity, Evolution, Religion, Science
April 30, 2010 at 8:11 pm |
Hmm. Most theistic evolutionists I know like being called creationists, and we don’t like young earthers having sole access to the term. Of course, the ones I know are very committed, radical Christians.
There’s an underlying assumption here I don’t agree with. I believe in God and Jesus because of a miraculous encounter with him that I was not seeking, and 28 years of experience has only propped up that belief. I didn’t choose to believe this way because of how I was raised. I had been a New Ager and atheist before I became a Christian.
I believe in evolution because there’s excellent scientific evidence for it.
To me, I think, “What’s that got to do with the Bible? Why even bring the Bible into it?”
The problem is that a lot of Christianity in the world is powerless and intellectual, based on tradition and nothing else. Those that are part of it don’t care that much about what the Bible says about how they live (where’s the giving up their possessions, denying worldly pleasures, and being as one with one another as the Father is with Jesus?). Thus, if they ignore God’s commands for their tradition, why should they expect God to answer their prayers?
Those that do live the way Christ taught have a very hard time not believing in Christ because so much happens for them. I was listening to a friend–a friend, someone I know, not rumor passed around–telling me about some of the healings they’ve seen when they were baptizing people in Mexico. He lives with the Indians, in a hand-built house without electricity, taking in single mothers and orphans, and sharing his life as well as his Gospel with the Indians.
I believe the stories because I’ve seen some of them myself. My nephew was healed of a year-long infection that had blinded one eye after prayer. The military had moved my sister to the Washington DC area so my nephew could be treated at the military hospital there. They didn’t know what to do, and my sister finally called us for prayer. We prayed, and his sight returned and the infection went away in less than a week.
Those are the dramatic stories. The fellowship with God, the restoration of relationships, the instant transformation of people’s lives that can be seen in their faces, etc., etc., etc. leaves those of us who are willing to take Christ seriously pretty much unable to disbelieve.
So when we find out there’s good scientific evidence for evolution, many of us think, “Hmm. I guess that’s how God created the world,” and then we go on obeying Christ and living this powerful, glorious life from heaven we live.
We have a real God that does real things today. I don’t need a magic book as well. The Bible was written by people of our spiritual race. God doesn’t miraculously make them scientific phenoms or inerrant story tellers today, so why should I think he did that with Moses or Paul?
On the other hand, following the spiritual teachings of those who have the best relationship with God leads to having a similar relationship with God. God gave the Gospel to the apostles, not the science book, nor a miraculous ability to tell stories without any mental errors.
April 30, 2010 at 9:57 pm |
Paul,
First off, thanks for visiting my site! I must admit that if I observed miracles along the order of what you’re talking about, it would go a long way toward convincing me of the existence of a God of some kind. I do have some questions though. If people can’t take the Bible’s claims on science seriously, why should they take its spiritual claims seriously? Also, all religions claim miracles (even in the current day); does that mean that I should also take seriously their claims that their various Gods exist?
Also, you should know that my writing method is to overstate my case to jumpstart discussion. It’s in the discussion itself however that I find the true value. (You know, I think I’ll add this to my “About Me”.)
May 4, 2010 at 6:36 am |
Sorry for taking so long to answer. We spent the weekend in flooding with tornadoes touching down here and there (west TN).
I don’t mean to seem like I’m sweet talking you, but your questions are great. Challenging, but neither rhetorical nor insulting. I’m used to being brushed off.
A prophet is known by his fruit, said Jesus, not his inclusion in the Bible. I take Paul and Jesus’ spiritual claims seriously because they’re effective. Paul’s argument to the Jews was that his Gospel was “the power of God to salvation,” producing righteousness in hearers (Rom. 1:16-17). It’s results that back up a prophet/teacher.
To me, I’m not taking the Bible’s spiritual claims seriously. I’m taking Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, and Peter seriously.
I believe other religions have miracles. I once knew a man from Suriname named Winston. He was a Christian, studying to be a pastor, but his stories of the power of voodoo were hard to dismiss.
So I take their claims seriously. I believe that there are spirits that can possess people and cause them to do superhuman things.
Nonetheless, I don’t want what voodoo produces in peoples’ lives.
I’ve been to India. Following Jesus can produce in people what Hinduism hopes to produce but does not produce. I’ve not seen any Hindu miracles, so I don’t know if they have any spiritual power, but I’ve been to India. I don’t want what Hinduism produces in peoples’ lives. In fact, I think it’s awful.
If you want an argument for evangelism, seeing the change in a town that becomes mostly Christian (rather than Hindu) is a sufficient one!
May 6, 2010 at 2:38 pm |
Sorry to just pop into this discussion, but I just can’t resist to throwing my 2 cents in on this. First of all, the medical “miracles”: There are millions of diseases that we hardly understand, conditions change all the time, afflictions that baffled all the most competent doctors just vanish the next day. This is hardly proof of divine intervention, it is merely proof of how little we still understand the human condition. You know, the power of prayer has actually been tested in serious medical studies. There was only a slight correlation, and it was a negative one. Of the people who were prayed for, those who knew about that fact did slightly worse than those who weren’t being prayed for.
Doctors eventually put that down to psychological pressure created by the fact that those patients knew that a lot of people spent a lot of time hoping for their recovery.
So that acquaintance of yours was put into a hospital, treated, then recieved further treatment, then you prayed, and then she was healed?
I’m sorry but that doesn’t impress me much.
Also, just about anybody who is sick has somebody who prays for them. The overwhelming majority of prayers aren’t answered. Those who are answered are exactly the percentage that we’d expect by pure chance.
So in LA Stacy prays that she won’t miss her plane, even though she’s pretty late. Her prayer is heard. Meanwhile in Togo, hundreds of young girls are forced into prostitution, all their prayers and tears go unanswered.
Some divine priority.
Further you said:
“If you want an argument for evangelism, seeing the change in a town that becomes mostly Christian (rather than Hindu) is a sufficient one!”
Yes, that’s because those recieve help from Christian Western organizations that are backed by millions and millions of dollars. It has nothing to do with the faith.
Here, too, I recommend a look at statistics: Worldwide there is a strong correlation between the religiosity of a society and the dysfunctionality of a society. Before you ask: Dysfunctionality is determined by a set of numbers such as the divorce rate, crime rate, number of abortions per capita, income disparity, unemployment rate, teen pregnancies, and similar factors.
Turns out that around the world, the more dysfunctional a society is, the more religious it is- While improvement of conditions invariably goes hand in hand with an abolishment of religious belief. Where people live well, they abandon their beliefs. Where people are desperate, where they suffer and live in fear, religion prospers most.
by the way, feel free to look the numbers up yourself. “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies” Published in “Journal of Religion and Society” #7, 2005. Available at moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
There’s a lenghty and very good comment on this study as well as others and the conclusions one can draw from this by Gregory S. Paul: “The Big Religion Questions Solved”, published in “Free Inquiry”, Dec 2008 / Jan 2009. Includes an extensive list of further reading.
May 6, 2010 at 8:09 pm |
@ Ochiudo: WOW! Very nice rebuttal, thanks!
@Paul: There’s only a couple of things I can think to add after Ochiudo’s response.
You stated
“To me, I’m not taking the Bible’s spiritual claims seriously. I’m taking Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, and Peter seriously.” But aren’t the claims of those people known through the Bible? If the Bible isn’t to be taken seriously, then where are you getting the claims of the teachings of the prophets you named?
You also stated
“If you want an argument for evangelism, seeing the change in a town that becomes mostly Christian (rather than Hindu) is a sufficient one!” Even if the acceptance and practice of Christianity always made people’s live change for the better (and you would have to be a serious history denier to say that it does), it would have no bearing as to the factuality of the Christian message. To quote George Bernard Shaw “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. “
May 7, 2010 at 1:14 am |
To Ochiudo: Prayer’s been tested in more than one study. One was positive, though atheists always tell me that one was flawed.
Doesn’t matter to me, though. I know most Christians’ prayers don’t get answered. I don’t attend church buildings because they have nothing to do with any Christianity I read about in the Writings. The only Christianity I know about is the one where Christ says you can’t be his disciple without giving up your own life–that means dreams, aspirations, savings accounts, family, etc. Christ trumps all those things.
That Christianity is unknown to most western Christians. There’s exceptions, and most of those exceptions get their prayers answered.
I’m sorry, but the argument that it was just chance that my nephew got his sight back right when we prayed after a year of treatment doesn’t have much impact on me. My friends and I make jokes about that every now and then after some of the more dramatic answers to prayer. “Oh, well, that’s just chance,” we tell each other. However, no one that’s experienced those things can believe it.
But I think you have my answer to the Most-High Reverend Atheist as an attempt to prove God is real. I wasn’t trying to prove God is real. I was trying to answer a question he asked.
You can answer my prayer stories with a real easy response. Maybe I’m lying. Happens all the time on the internet. Maybe I don’t remember the circumstances right. Who knows? I have no reason to expect you to believe me, and I’m not asking you to.
Instead, my response is this. God is not trying to “prove” himself to anyone. No wise disciple of Christ would subject God to a test like a prayer study. If God wanted to prove himself, he’d write something in the sky for all of you or something like that.
God’s dealing with each person varies. His proof to you is for you, not everyone.
So if God never presents you with anything to make you think he’s real and that you ought to follow him, then ignore all I said. I believe he puts things in front of people, that they’re not “proof,” and that both God and that person know–at least somewhere deep down inside–that God’s calling them. He’s also a lot more likely to reveal himself to someone who obeys his conscience.
If that never happens, then ignore me. Just remember that if I’m right, you don’t have to give excuses to me, but to God, who knows exactly why you should have gone a different route.
Next: concerning evangelism in India. That wasn’t an argument for Christianity. That was a side statement made based on what I’ve seen in India. Christianity has erased class distinctions, reduced violence, and produced a significantly better society where it’s eclipsed Hinduism.
Finally, I don’t know about religion’s effect on society. It wouldn’t be hard to produce a society that was better than the mixture of the Roman government and Christianity that produced the Dark Ages.
I do know, however, about the effect that the Christianity I’m talking about has on a society. I live in a village of about 250 people that has embraced it, and I’d be happy to have someone compare our way of life, our joy, the freedom and creativity of our children, etc. with society at large.
May 6, 2010 at 3:28 pm |
And indeed it was flawed – it is about as reliable as those “scientists” who “proved” the occurance of stigmata in the 60ies, or the chinese christians that “discovered noah’s ark” on mount ararat a couple of weeks ago. But you can check that for yourself if you are really interested – I’m not gonna do your homework for you.
“I know about is the one where Christ says you can’t be his disciple without giving up your own life–that means dreams, aspirations, savings accounts, family, etc. Christ trumps all those things.”
To me, that has always been one of the most contemptible Ideas in the Bible. What kind of person would say such a thing? “Leave your families [wasn't that a specific commandment from Christ unto his disciples?]. Give it all up. Don’t worry about anything, just follow me.”
In other words: “Act in the most selfish and anti-social manner. Why? because my mom never had sex with anyone, which of course proves that I am god. Any more questions?”
As for “proof”: Proof that you cannot show to anyone else is not proof. Period. You’ll be surprised to hear that, but I did witness some highly unlikely events for which I do not have any explaination – yet. And I am perfectly willing to believe that you know somebody who experienced a healing process that nobody has an explaination for, I just say that it is incredibly stupid and arrogant to claim that just because there is no explainaition (yet!) – God done did it.
To claim something is supernatural is to claim absolute knowledge of what IS natural, a perfect knowledge of where nature’s boundaries are, and that what you just experienced is beyond them.
I did witness unlikely events, that many people probably (actually: definitely) would have interpreted as a miracle. But in the history of the world, there has never been even a single supernaturalistic “explaination” that hasn’t been replaced in due time by a natural one. On the other hand, Naturalistic explainations also only ever get replaced by better naturalistic ones, never by supernaturalistic ones.
The trend is strong enough to make me suspect that your god won’t be any different from this. This, by the way, is more or less a version of the classical “god of the gaps” argument.
As commedian Tim Minchin put it:
“Throughout history
every mystery
ever solved –
has turned out to be…
…NOT MAGIC.”
Anyhow, I don’t get your comment about the dark ages. What does that have to do with anything?
You may have noticed that my “religion and society” arguement was not against christianity. It concerns all religions, in all societies. Now unless you’re gonna claim special status by saying something along the lines of “my religion is the only true religion”, your anecdote about 250 happy people in india isn’t an answer to that at all. It is a large statistic, even if the circumstances in your village actually could compete with the modern world, it wouldn’t change the trend much. And I’m sorry, “happiness” doesn’t count – It was about quantifiable societal dysfuntionality. Happiness can easily be a sign of delusion, it doesn’t say anything about actual well-being (see the quote by Bernard Shaw that RevAth postet above)
I still very much doubt that the citizens of your legendary village can compare to the living standarts of the most atheist country in the world, norway.
But yet again that doesn’t even matter – what the study implies is that once your village DOES catch up to a modern standart of living, proper education and so on, people will start to lose interest in religion and abandon personal belief.
Now just two nice quotes to cap it, then I’m off to bed. So far, I’ve enjoyed this exchange, thanks to both of you.
“Fear is the mother of all gods.” – Lucretius, Roman poet (c. 99 – 55 B.C.E.)
“Ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley, British poet (1792 – 1822)
May 7, 2010 at 1:23 am |
To RevAtheist:
1. As I said above. I did not mean my comment about evangelism in India as proof of anything. It was just a comment based on my experience. I was thinking of a specific ministry and specific villages.
2. As far as the Bible goes, I accept the letters of Paul on their own merit because they’re from Paul, not because they’re included in the Bible. Bibles are included in libraries, but I don’t accept libraries as Scripture because of that. If our church was to collect all the writings we treat as Scripture, our Bible would be larger–not a lot larger, but larger.
Augustine once said that a good Christian scholar will put more weight on the writings accepted by all churches and something less on those accepted by only some churches.
Thus, all I’m saying is that the writings in the Bible are not made authoritative–to me or the church here–by the fact they’re in the Bible. They’re made authoritative by the people who wrote the writings.
The point there is that I treat those people as spiritual authorities, not scientific ones. I put a lot of weight on Clement of Rome’s letter to the Corinthians, since he knew apostles and led an orthodox, godly church. The fact that the thought the Phoenix bird was real and used that as an illustration has no effect on the spiritual authority I assign to his writings.
One last comment. I believe God led him to write much of what he wrote. I don’t think God cared whether the phoenix bird was real. I don’t think God cared whether the historian who wrote 1 Samuel 2:8 knew the earth wasn’t set on pillars. All that mattered was that he knew God was Creator.
May 6, 2010 at 4:01 pm |
Paul,
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that what you accept as scripture may or may not be in the Bible? If this is the case is there any other writings other than the epistles of Paul that you would accept as scripture?
With regard to the epistles of Paul, how do you know that the letters were actually written by anyone named Paul? We have no originals of any of the Biblical documents, and though the origination of some can be traced back to timeframes that would allow them to be written by the persons to which they are attributed, there is no proof or guarantee that those were the actual people who wrote them. For instance, there is general consensus among Biblical scholars that most of the epistles of Paul were likely written by the same person, but there are some exceptions such as 2 Corinthians and 1 & 2 Timothy. For more information on this I recommend “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart Ehrman.
Also, I understand your point that a writing need not be literally true in all respects to have a lesson contained within, if that were so then there would be no morals to be gleaned from such works as Aesop’s Fables. My point is this: just because you can learn a moral lesson from a writing, why then does it need to have been inspired by God?
On A side note, I would like to express my respect for your attitude that you don’t expect those who haven’t had your experiences to agree with your beliefs; it’s a welcome change from most of the Christians I have encountered.
May 6, 2010 at 4:09 pm |
Paul,
I just thought of one other thing: Claiming that most western Christians aren’t real Christians smacks heavily of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. How exactly are you defining what a Christian is?
May 8, 2010 at 4:52 pm |
Revatheist,
Somehow I knew the “no true Scotsman” thing would come up.
I don’t think it applies. I gave a definition of what a Christian is. Jesus said no one can be his disciple who doesn’t give up all his possessions (Luke 14:33). He gave some other qualifications in that same passage.
I’m simply applying those.
Ochiudo is offended with Jesus’ demanding such a thing. Of course, if he’s just a guy, that’s a pretty big demand. If he’s who we say he is, then he has every right.
My argument for who Jesus is can’t be given over the internet, though it can be explained. We preach the Gospel, he confirms it.
He confirms it in many different ways. For me personally, that confirmation came in a series of circumstances and arguments (found in books) that were amazing enough to make me consider that he might really be the Son of God.
When I finally gave in, acknowledged he was the Son of God and thus acknowledged that I was going to have to conform my life to his teachings, I had an experience that was miraculous to me. It was powerful, and it was utterly transforming. I’ve not been the same since.
The only reason I’ve had to doubt him since is the utter lack of regard almost all Christians give to the things he taught. The ones who care about those qualifications I mentioned in Luke 14 are rare–maybe 1% of Christians, maybe less.
Since he appealed to the unity of his disciples as proof of who he was (Jn. 17:20-23), I had to wonder what in the world was going on. The ones who are known as Christians are far from united, and even those trying to obey his commands are not united, either.
I have no answer to that except to try to call those who actually want to obey him to do so together. There’s 250 of us doing that in Selmer, TN, about 50 in Memphis, and another couple dozen in Atlanta. I’m sure there’s others, but they’re very hard to find due to being so rare.
I’m not talking about some complicated doctrine or set of doctrines. I’m just talking about Christians that care about obeying all his commands and who are living as family to one another.
There’s not many of them, but where they exist, they have a lot of power.
As for the Scriptures, I would accept all 66 books of the Protestant Bible as belonging to our Scriptures, with questions about a couple, and I would add–among others–the apocrypha of the Catholics, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and probably Enoch.
Modern Christianity usually bases itself upon the Bible. I don’t think that was ever meant to be. I think Jesus gave the Spirit of God to his apostles, his apostles preached Jesus as alive, and those who believed received his Spirit and committed themselves to obeying him.
There’s a spiritual message for us who believe in the writings of those who came before us. We care what Jesus and his apostles, including Paul, preached. We care what the churches they started say they taught. We learn those things, and we try to conform our lives to those teachings.
But in the end, either our lives are extraordinary, influenced by the Spirit of God we claim to have living inside of us, or our lives are nothing special at all. That’s for those who hear us to decide.
We believe that when we preach, God will provide adequate proof to those who hear. That’s his job, not ours.
I’m not positive how to answer all your questions about Scripture. Obviously, I don’t see them the same way mainstream Christianity does. They practically worship the Bible, but amazingly, most of them don’t care much what it says to do … at least not here in America.
I don’t care what they say about science. Obviously, the earth isn’t set on pillars like 1 Samuel 2:8 says it is. I’ve heard teachers in our village say inaccurate things about science, too. None of them claim to be inspired scientifically. However, when it comes to spiritual things, when we feel so moved, we don’t mind saying, “God wants you to do such and such.”
The Scriptures are to guide a Christian’s life, not provide science information, nor even to provide a systematic theology. Even inspired teachers often disagree on some aspect of Christian doctrine. The Scriptures are given by God to tell us how to live, not to tell us secrets of the universe–scientific or spiritual ones–that we can’t understand anyway.
May 10, 2010 at 6:04 am |
“Somehow I knew the “no true Scotsman” thing would come up.
I don’t think it applies. I gave a definition of what a Christian is.”
No, you gave YOUR definition of what a Christian is, and that is exactly why the “no true scotsman” applies here.
May 10, 2010 at 8:54 am |
I have arguments for why it doesn’t apply, but I thought I’d better read the link. I’m going to assume that since RevAtheist provided the link, that’s the definition of the “no true Scotsman” argument we’re using.
According to the link, the argument goes like this:
Teacher: All Scotsmen enjoy haggis.
Student: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn’t like haggis!
Teacher: Well, all true Scotsmen like haggis.
The problem with this argument is that the definition given for a true Scotsman is “a true Scotsman likes haggis.” Thus, the statement that all Scotsmen like haggis becomes self-fulfilling.
I didn’t do this. I said, “A true Christian is one that meets the criteria Christ gave in Luke 14:26-33.”
If I had said, “All true Christians get their prayers answered, and the way you recognize a true Christians is by whether their prayers are answered,” then and only then would I be guilty of the “no true Scotsmen” fallacy.
My argument is logically coherent. It follows from what Jesus Christ and his apostles taught:
“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you wish, and it shall be done for you” (Jn. 15:7).
“The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (Jam. 5:14).
“Whatever we ask of him we receive because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 Jn. 3:22).
I simply said that since most Christians don’t even consider following the requirements given by Jesus Christ himself to be his disciple in Luke 14, then to test them for whether they’re prayers are answered says nothing about whether Christ’s claims are true.
The study does say something about whether becoming a Christian by the American definition (believe in Jesus, keep your stuff, avoid a few vices, and otherwise live your own life) has any spiritual power. However, I would have already agreed with you that doing that provides no spiritual power.
I’ve spent 28 years interacting with people like that on a daily basis. There’s a huge difference between the people who take Christ’s demands seriously and those who simply believe he died for their sins. Two completely different religions that produce two completely different results.
May 8, 2010 at 5:10 pm |
Ochiudo,
1. My comment about the Dark Ages was a concession that joining Christianity to government doesn’t produce a good society. I’m not claiming that society ought to be governed by Christians, a religion, or any church.
2. Jesus did teach, “Leave your families, give it all up, don’t worry about anything, and come follow me.” I’m not sure what to do about the fact you think that’s terrible. I think it’s the only powerful Christianity there is, and I’m impressed with God’s ability to back up those who embrace it.
3. You said, “Proof that you cannot show to anyone else is not proof. Period.” I’m not surprised by that. Why would I be? When God confronts you, however, he expects a response. He judges those who do not respond whether they can prove anything to anyone else or not.
If God doesn’t exist, as you claim, you have nothing to worry about.
I believe he does exist, that he does reveal himself to people, that he won’t let you forget you talked to me–even if it’s by internet–and that he has no intentions of letting you or me prove anything to anyone else because he intends to confront them, too.
4. You wrote, “To claim something is supernatural is to claim absolute knowledge of what IS natural, a perfect knowledge of where nature’s boundaries are, and that what you just experienced is beyond them.”
Okay, fine. When God answered our prayer for my nephew, it wasn’t necessarily supernatural. He could well have used some perfectly explainable natural phenomena to heal my nephew.
On the other hand, I am claiming that God answered our prayers in two ways. He let us know inwardly that he was going to heal our nephew, and then he ensured that my nephew got better–rapidly and without anyone knowing why.
5. Our village of 250 people is in the US. Our standard of living is pretty low by American standards, average by McNairy County, Tennessee standards, and incredibly wealthy by the standards of our sister church in Nakuru, Kenya.
6. Of course I think that my religion is the only true religion. I believe Jesus is who he said he is, and I believe that only those who leave their families, give it all up, don’t worry about anything, and follow him are true Christians. I believe that because that’s what he said. No one else can be his disciple (Luk. 14:26-33).
7. Our standard of living, as I said, is typical for McNairy County, TN. Our level of education is pretty high, and I highly suspect the average intelligence of the people in our village is significantly above normal. I qualify for Mensa, though I’ve never joined, yet I’m not the smartest or most educated person in our village.
The point of #7 is to say that I doubt seriously that a “proper education” is going to make us stop believing, since most of us have one.
I should note that by western standards, I’m a little scared to call the US school system a proper education. On the other hand, since I graduated in 1979, I suspect the school system was better in my days, though I am constantly amazed by how out of date my science education (public school only, no college science) has become.
May 9, 2010 at 4:40 am |
Okay, questions answered. I still disagree with you, but I can see where you’re coming from, even though I will never truly understand how somebody can truly believe something due to a mere belly-feeling.
By the way, I’d like to say that I very much appreciate your tone. I’ve met very few christians on the net that believe as strongly as you do without being overly preachy. I very much enjoy this discussion.
“If God doesn’t exist, as you claim, you have nothing to worry about.”
Why of course I do. God is not my problem. Believers are. In Iran the head of the state is a maniac who is about to acquire nuclear weapons, and believes it is gods will that he uses them to exterminate first the jews, and then the infidels. That is my problem. So is sarah palin, who thinks that “god wants oil pipe lines in alaska”, or Bush who thought god wanted him to invade iraq. Or Mother Teresa, who thought that suffering in itself was beautiful, as it was a great thing to “share the pain that jesus endured”. She was a pathological sadist, and she got a nobel peace prize for that. Which she used to proclaim that “the greatest destroyer of peace on earth is abortion.”
You see? Believers. People. Very real problems, right here in the real world. Of course I don’t think you do such things. You seem like a perfectly likable person who leads a good life. If all believers were like you, I would indeed have “nothing to worry about”.
But I do blame you for one thing: By calling yourself “christian”, you associate yourselfs with those maniacs. You voluntarily share the same label with homophobic racist bigots like Fred Phelps from the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. You may lead a good life, but by calling yourself a christian you provide shelter and excuse to paedophile child abusing priests, all the sexism, racism and xenophobia that is also deeply rooted in religion. There is such thing as guilt by association.
My point is: At its very best, religion is as you examplify it: harmless. At its worst, children get raped, the criminals are protected, women are denied the reight to decide what happens to their own body, Homosexuals are drivin to suicide, and the list just goes on and on. But you get my point. Do you really believe the lives of the people in your village would be any worse if they stopped believing in god?
I don’t think so. For a happy live, religion is completely optional. For good deeds, it is just as optional.
Genocide and xenophobia, on the other hand, are much harder to justify without divine warrant.
One more thing: I said you examplify religion at its best – You certainly seem that way. But I would still like to know one thing: what status do women enjoy in your village? After all, gender equality was something jesus never even suggested. In the new testament there are countless passages like this one:
(Ephesians)
5:22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
What is your take on that?
May 10, 2010 at 9:03 am |
On the topic of wives submitting to husbands …
Unfortunately, when I say that we believe wives should submit to husbands, that is going to indicate all sorts of things I don’t mean.
We do believe that, but we have seen plenty of idiots who order their wives around and are tyrants over their own little kingdom. That’s cruel and foolish.
Fortunately, due to the fact that we’re a village, where everyone knows one another, we get plenty of opportunity to rescue families from that sort of dictatorship.
What we do mean is that someone has to have final say in decisions in a family. We believe that where husbands and wives can’t get agreement, whether by discussion or by input from others, that the husband ought to take responsibility for his family and make the final decision, and that the wife ought to let him.
The same is true for the church. We have many women in what would be considered leadership roles and who carry a lot of responsibility. In the end, though, the elders of the village are men, and they bear the final burden of responsibility for all the village does.
One note … there’s a sense in which we violate a command of Scripture. In 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Tim. 2, Paul says that women ought not to teach, nor in fact even to speak in meetings. Women speak in pretty much every one of our gatherings.
We don’t talk about that much. I guess we just sort of hope Paul only said that for cultural reasons. There’s not much doubt he let women be included in the work of the church (Php. 4:2-3). One was even a deaconness (Rom. 16:2).
May 12, 2010 at 10:09 am |
Paul,
This is why I mentioned Bart Ehrman’s Book earlier. In it he talks about how most of the misogynistic passages in the epistles of Paul were almost certainly added in by later scribes and that the real workings of the early church were probably much more like Paul’s account in Acts or Romans (sorry, I don’t remember which) where Paul talks about both women and men being disciples and saints and that before Christ there was no gender. FYI
May 12, 2010 at 10:32 am |
I don’t much trust Bart Ehrman. I think he lives in wishful thinking, not in real scholarship.
I’m pretty sure he is partly to blame for the imaginary idea that the Council of Nicea sorted through books and threw out gnostic books that otherwise were read by the church. The story’s simply made up.
While I don’t know Ehrman produced that story, I have seen plenty of references from him that start with “it’s possible” and end with “therefore.” Lots of wishful thinking.
It makes more sense to simply acknowledge that letting women teach publicly would have been a problem in Paul’s churches. The Jewish apostles and the original church in Jerusalem had enough problems with him without adding that in.
People keep forgetting that Paul started churches. There’s not just his letters. Those churches may have fallen or changed, but not completely. Basically they would preserve some of what he taught.
Those churches were not women libbers.
May 10, 2010 at 9:13 am |
On a couple of your other points:
You wrote: >>Do you really believe the lives of the people in your village would be any worse if they stopped believing in god?<<
Of course I do. I think God changes people by his Spirit; I believe helps us find answers together and agree on solutions to problems; I believe he works on people's character, delivering them from fear and helping them become more intimate with one another; and I believe he helps us work things out when we have conflict.
Finally, you mentioned some people who's religion you believe is a problem to others.
1. I don't think Sarah Palin wants oil lines in Alaska because of God, no matter what she says. Yes, Christianity is used as justification for a lot of right wing positions, but she'd want oil lines in Alaska even if she wasn't a Christian. She'd just provide a different justification.
2. I like Mother Theresa. I think she was awesome. She did not promote suffering; she encouraged those who were suffering. Her life was devoted to relieving suffering. Anyone would do well to imitate her.
And Mother Theresa's prayers were powerful! She once prayed for a cease-fire in the Middle East so she could deliver food and medical supplies to a city–I think it was Lebanon. She got it.
She also once talked an entire plane full of people into giving up their airplane meal for the poor in the South American country she was going to visit. She also got the airlines to agree to deliver the container of meals to the front of the airport so she could get them to the poor.
Mother Theresa did everything she could to alleviate suffering in return for pretty much nothing except respect from others that she didn't ask for. That woman deserves that respect.
May 10, 2010 at 3:28 pm |
Ok, I debated whether to mention this in our discussion, but the timing …
This morning my warehouse manager, Dean, came in to tell me that his mom had just called from Sacramento shouting, “I’m healed, I’m healed.”
A few weeks ago, a set of shelves (installed by her and her husband) fell off her bathroom wall onto her. As she lay on the floor, seconds later, her sister called from Florida, not a very common occurrence. She took the call, slurring her words, barely conscious, and her sister yelled at her over the phone, trying to keep her awake.
The sister instructed Dean’s mom to call the next-door neighbor and that she’d call back in 2 minutes. The next door neighbor, fortunately enough, was up and dressed, which was unusual for her at 8 a.m. (I guess she’s an artist or something, Dean said.)
The neighbor called 911, and the EMT team showed up in 2 minutes. They found her unconscious, and they had to hit her with a defibrillator 3 times to get her heart going.
They got it going, but Dean’s mom was left with numerous stroke symptoms: weakness on one side, slurred, slow speech, and she had difficulty reading and writing. She also couldn’t handle light, needing sunglasses outside. She was weak and tired.
Recovery has been very slow for weeks, and two weeks ago I let Dean off for a few days to go visit her.
Apparently, his mom decided yesterday that she needed more prayer, and she went to see a friend at a charismatic, non-denominational church she attends. Her friend prayed for her yesterday, and today she woke up symptomless. No pain, no slurred speech, no weakness, and her reading and writing ability is back to normal.
I told that story about my nephew’s healing. That happened in 1986. Other than stories from friends in Surinam, India, and Kenya, I haven’t seen a healing that dramatic in the 24 years since.
Then, of all things, I hear about this today. I’ve met his mom. She visits here occasionally. Her doctor had just told her that she was too weak to come visit again, and he has been worrying that she’s going to have a (another?) stroke.
I don’t know if you believe any of that. I could tell a hundred less dramatic stories. I remember, for example, getting up one morning during a drought here convinced God wanted us to pray for an end to the drought. At our gathering that morning, I asked everyone to pray, and one of the ladies said, “Can we pray the rain starts Tuesday? We’re taking my students to the zoo on Tuesday.”
The rain began as they were in the parking lot leaving the zoo. That was in the late Spring of 2007 or 2008, I don’t remember which.
I’m not asking you to believe because those things happened. I’m just telling you that it’s not some obscure one-time occurrence that keeps me believing.
One of the things that convinces me the most is how often I know, before I ever pray, whether there’s power in our prayers. It’s not that we simply prayed for a drought to end. I’m sure we did, and it didn’t happen. But when we were led to pray, and we prayed, it happened. It’s that occurrence which is so regular as to arouse my trust.
May 10, 2010 at 7:10 pm |
Well, telling more such anekdotes is not of any use really. Just doesn’t make any difference if they are dramatic or less so, how often they occur – they’re still nothing but anecdotes. Ever played “silent post”? One person in a circle whistpers something in his neighbor’s ear, that neighbor passes the message on as heard, and so on. What happens is that the last person in the circle passes on a message back to person one, which doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with what was said originally anymore. Yet, each person will swear they repeated EXACTLY what they heard.
Which they did. Our perception of the world is extremely limited, our brain is constantly filling in huge gaps without us being aware of it. Our own perception is the least trustworthy source of information that we can access. The point is, I do not doubt that you percieved these miracles exactly as you just told them. I just don’t think that this accurately describes reality, nor does it lead to the conclusion of a higher power interveining on your behalf. The gaps in your perception and memory (!) are necessarily quite enorm (assuming you are human^^) and your brain is constantly filling in. What exactly is filled in depends a lot on the mindset of the person, especially someone with a strong confirmation bias, which I don’t suspect even you would deny you have. Just think about the timing of the “pray for X —> X happens” events. Was it really that perfect? might it be that you were praying at a lot of times, and that prayer-session that immediately preceeded the event kinda stuck out in your memory as being exceptional? You say you can feel when you’re prayers are going to be answered. Honestly: from a psychological point of view it is way more likely that you convinced yourself of having that feeling AFTER the event occurred.
These are processes that undeniably take place in every single human being.
As I said before, I *have* experienced events of similar unlikelyhood, but so what? Life is too complex for there not to be huge amounts of really, REALLY unlikely coincidences. What’s the chance of the occurence of a healing as miraculous and sudden as you described them? Let’s just assume something like that happens one in 50 million times. That means that around the world, there’s probably about 400 such healing-”miracles” every day. To assume that something is a miracle just because it is extremely unlikely is to significantly underestimate the number of things there are.
A real sign of devine intervention were if there were no wiered coincidences. As I said, life is just too complex. “Miracles” happening is nothing special. It’s a statistical certainty. Absolutely no reason to get worked up about it. Have you ever looked at a smiley? —>
just consider what you just looked at: it’s two dots and a line. It doesn’t even resemble a face remotely. Yet you’re seeing one. This alone should be a hint at just how little you can actually trust your perception. You think ears are any different? Or your memory? Don’t think that patterns more complex than a smiley are more reliable input, either. The Human brain can be extremely easily fooled, which makes perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Detecting a pattern too much doesn’t have any negative side effects, while missing just one pattern can cost your life. Humans are hard-wired to anthropomorphize, to detect patterns of human emotion, behaviour and intention almost everywhere.
Add just a little wishful thinking to this, and you can convince yourself of absolutely anything. Be it bigfoot, flying saucers or God interveining in your life.
It’s not the facts that support your belief. It is you belief that make the facts nicely fall into the right place.
May 10, 2010 at 7:37 pm |
I understand the odds argument, though the 400 miraculous healings every day don’t apply unless there’s 20 billion noticeably sick people every day.
Sorry, just doing the math.
I don’t think the odds argument works because it’s too easy to get past 6 billion when a lot of things happen.
I’m not disagreeing with your skepticism. We get visitors all the time here at our village. Some of them, even on the phone, seem like such wonderful people. Then we meet them. Yikes!
For all you know, not only do I have the typical problems human eye-witnesses have, but I could be completely delusional, or maybe even somewhat dense. (Qualifying for mensa does not make a person immune to immense stupidity in a lot of areas of life.)
I only told that story because it happened today of all days, right at the end of a discussion with a couple atheists on the internet. I couldn’t resist telling it.
And anecdotes do mean something. I know y’all hate that, but something that has a lot of anecdotes is more likely to be true that something with no anecdotes. Most eye-witness stories my friends relate to me do turn out to be true. (“The tornado tore down the sign at the gas station, and the owner says it’ll be closed for a week” almost always turns out to be accurate.)
Oh, and the telephone game, which is the name I know your “silent post” game as, doesn’t really apply here. There’s no doubt that his mom was very, very ill, nor that doctors verified that she has stroke symptoms. I’m not that far removed from the situation. Even in silent post, if you ask the 2nd person you’ll usually get a pretty accurate story, especially if the 1st person is allowed to repeat his message.
I’ll have to wait a couple weeks to verify that she’s as well as described. She’s coming to visit, Dean says.
May 11, 2010 at 8:36 am |
lol, I apologize for not doing the maths myself. I just made up random numbers, as I have no way of actually calculating the odds of extraoridary healing processes. That’s why i wrote “let’s just assume”. Anyhow, sorry for that.
The point remains the same. It is not about exceeding 6 billion – Of the six billion people on earth, most get sick more than once. Also, the odds of suprising healing process are probably significantly higher. My point is that unlikelyhood is easily overestimated.
The point about the telephone-game was also a different one. I know you experienced this second- or third-hand, not twentieth-hand. The point I was trying to make was that each and every one in the chain will swear that he didn’t make a mistake. Although he did miss parts of the message, and he did fill in the gaps, and did make mistakes in the process. He, being unconscious of the whole process, will swear that what he repeated was what was said to him.
About the anecdotes: You’re lumping a lot of different types of story together. I can go to the gas station and have a look at the sign that came down. Also, nobody would have any reason, conscious or unconscious, to lie to me about what happened to the gas station. These are all factors that play a significant role. The story of a miracle plays in a whole different league. As I said, confirmation bias does hugely change our first-hand perception of the world. The mere fact that you want your god to exist makes a huge difference. You have a personal stake in that belief, you (like all believers) are attached to the belief in a way that nobody would ever be attached to the story off a gas station sign coming down in a storm.
)
I don’t doubt his mom exists, or that she was sick, or even that she was healed in a way that is not explainable to modern medicine (well, okay. I am in outright disbelief in regard to the last one.). I do not doubt that you experienced this story as you tell it. What I doubt is that it matches the facts even in detail. His mom probably had hundreds of friends and relatives that heard of her sickness, and prayed for her. One guy starts praying for her yesterday, and today she gets well. He tells this story to everyone he knows, and others who prayed for her yesterday suddenly also remember that their prayer-session yesterday was… different. They prayed harder. They gathered and held hands while praying. They had a feeling that something would happen. Come to think of it, somebody saw a cloud that looked exactly like her face, didn’t it? That sure was a sign.
And so on. Of course I am again exeggerating here. In germany there is a saying that “the devil is in the detail”. It’s just tiny things that change in memory. The timing *was* eerie… and I *did* have a funny feeling, didn’t I?
It is just like the red light on your way to work, that always changes to red just when you drive up to it when having a bad day. How strange it is that whenever you look at the digital clock at night, it’s just at 22:22.
How my girlfriend always calls just when I am thinking of her.
The confirmation bias changes perception. It is important to note that none of this is dishonest, it is just how brains work. That’s why “psychic mediums” have such success with simple cold reading techniques. Suggestion is powerful when there is a deep rooted need to believe. Auto-suggestion works the same way. (Well, without the financial scam
I recommend reading this incredible interesting article:
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1915
by Steven Novella.
May 11, 2010 at 10:47 am |
Okay, perfect answer. I was hoping for something where I could just let you have the last word without feeling like everything I said was lost.
I’m sure I’ll see you around again on this blog.
May 12, 2010 at 11:47 am |
Paul,
I’ve read two of Ehrman’s books so far but didn’t notice any particular issue with his scholarship. I can tell you that he most certainly does not have the view of the Council of Nicea that you attribute to him. In “Lost Christianities” he quite specifically says that the Gnostics were gradually weeded out by early church communities throught the efforts of the apologetics of the early church fathers; by the time of the Council of Nicea, Gnosticism was no longer a real issue. On a side note, I must confess that your own stance on some Biblical issues sounds very Gnostic.
With regard to the church’s view on women, I was only pointing out that Paul’s misogyny may have been an error introduced into the Bible by others; however, if you consider it genuine, consider this:
“As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” (I Corinthians 14:33b-35)
You alluded to this passage earlier. If women were commanded to remain silent for cultural reasons, then Paul is certainly no spiritual example to follow because he allows the prevailing culture to win out over the word of God. Also it makes no sense that women were to remain silent but could also be church leaders (like a deaconess): what good is a silent deaconess? You’ve already admitted that the Bible has errors in it; isn’t it likely that an error was made to make Paul sound misogynistic rather than Paul contradicting himself or choosing culture over God?
May 12, 2010 at 3:19 pm |
Okay, great. I’ll have to look up those passages I saw quoted from him. I remember what book they were in. I’m glad to hear that about the Nicea thing.
It’s true the early church fathers weeded out the gnostics. That happened in the early 2nd century.
My problem with those passages being later additions is not related to my preferences or beliefs. It’s related to a lack of evidence. There’s just no indication that’s so except for guessing that maybe if Paul allowed deaconesses–and allowed women to pray and prophesy–then surely he didn’t ask for silence in the church meetings.
I don’t think that’s a safe or even likely assumption, especially when you read through the writings after the New Testament. It’s men who were leading, and it’s men who were teaching. Those guys were heavily influenced by Paul.
I couldn’t find a reference to 1 Cor. 14:37 before Tertullian around AD 200, but I did find it there.
By the way, I don’t think Paul contradicted himself. Deaconness, like deacon, just means servant. They weren’t teachers, and 1 Cor. 14 makes it clear that Paul is only enjoining silence on the women when they were gathered in a meeting. That doesn’t even contradict the part about praying and prophesying, as most of the Christian life is spent outside the meeting. When you get away from modern Christianity, it appears that most spiritual gifts were for outside, not inside, the meetings.
Anyway, I don’t reject the idea that those were additions out of preference but out of what I see as being historical. I think evidence is strongly for those passages being original especially since there’s nothing saying they’re not.
Contrast that with Matt. 28:19, a controversial passage about the Trinity. The 1st quote with the trinitarian formula is 3rd century, and it’s quoted a couple times before that as “in my name.” I’m not against there being additions; I just want there to be some indication other than modern westerners don’t like the passage much.
May 14, 2010 at 6:05 pm |
I guess we just have to agree to disagree. There’s no truly confident way to decide whether a passage is original or not, so where your assumption is original until proven otherwise, my assumption is unoriginal until proven otherwise.
May 25, 2010 at 10:23 am |
Just a quick note.
This sentence caught my eye:
“People like myself who have failed to find any use for religion as an explanatory device.”
Excellent. For religions have other uses — a number of them social — whether or not they have use to me (they don’t).
May 28, 2010 at 4:51 pm |
Andrew,
You’re absolutely right; in fact, one of my favorite quotes is from the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”