Richard Dawkins was recently challenged to a debate with William Lane Craig. He declined. Craig, he said, was a “deplorable apologist for genocide” with whom he would not share a platform. The genocide in question is that of the Canaanites in the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy (see link).

One of Richards more famous quotes from “The God Delusion” on this issue is:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

One of the biggest problems that many people have with God as detailed in the Bible, which Richard has so clearly demonstrated above, is that of His judgment against nations like the Canaanites. One only has to read Biblical history to find God commanding the slaughter of the Canaanite men, women and children. Not even the livestock are spared. So what are we make of this? Is God a moral monster?

Paul Copan has attempted to answer this challenge in his book “Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God.” His answer to the charge that God commanded the genocide of the Canaanites is that this was not the genocide that it appears to be from a simple at face value reading of the text; that the text is hyperbolic and an exaggeration of what actually happened; that these were more like disabling raids of the military bases/cities and religious centers and not the leave no survivors destructive conquest that one might assume from a face value reading of the text. The passages on the women and children are just sweeping language being used as a disabling metaphor where central structures are undermined so that the Canaanite influence is disabled. For a more thorough explanation you can check out this interview (3rd hour) with Greg Koukl on his radio show at STR or their blog. Otherwise you can get his book.

While Paul Copan’s explanation on the issues of slavery, bigamy, child sacrifice and the treatment of women in the Old testament seems sound to me, I think Clay Jones comes to the correct conclusion on the issue of the “divine genocide” of the Canaanites. He argues in his treatise, “We Don’t Hate Sin. So We Don’t  Understand What Happened to the Canaanites”, that the face value interpretation of the text is the correct interpretation. Clay also appeared on Greg Koukl’s radio show in an interview that can be found here (3rd Hour) which is where I got most of his answers for the rest of this blog post.

The first thing that needs to be examined is the culture and behavior of the Canaanites to see if there could be any justification for their obliteration as described in the Old Testament. Archeologist William Allbright tells of an ancient Canaanite poem where the Canaanite God Baal, rapes his sister while she is in the form of a calf 77 even 88 times. We have here rape, incest and beastiality in the same act. Baal also has sex with his mother and daughter. If this is who the Canaanites worshiped, if this is their God whom they emulate, then according to Jones, this is certainly what they themselves are doing. And these acts are borne out with further study of Canaanite culture. God outlaws these practices in Leviticus and this sin is punished when both the Canaanites and Israel committed them. And that punishment was harsh. Sodom and Gomorrah were examples of Canaanite cities who were judged by God with good moral justification.

So how does Clay Jones answer the complete destruction passages of the Canaanites in the Old Testament? Clay starts off by making an observation of our own culture. We seem to have been inoculated to sin. Average people just does not care anymore about many sins. Our culture does not even recognize them as sin, let alone understand what the term sin actually means. We have become so Canaanite-like in our own culture to the point where, as Clay put it, “Studying these things over the years has led me to wonder if the Canaanites might stand up at the Judgment and condemn this generation”.

Livestock

Why kill all the livestock? You do not want to be around animals that are used to having sex with people. In Clay’s article he gives an example of a female gorilla sexually attacking a psychologist.

Women

If you want to erradicate these practices from a culture, then why would you leave women who were just as guilty and as equally dangerous as the men in participating in these practices.

Children

Yes the children too. Firstly what age do you start separating children from adults? 18? 12? Clay tells of fostering children because he and his wife could not have their own children. They learned that kids coming into your house at from as young as 4 years old were bringing their culture with them. Now, what if you had killed their parents? What would teenage rebellion look like for those children who were spared. Certainly they were exposed to a highly sexualised culture and were very much likely to have been molested by that time.

So how do you stomp out that culture in order to prevent if from affecting the Israelites adversely? If you want to erradicate the sinfullness of the Canaanites, how else can you do it?

But wait, I hear you say, the Bible talks of the continued Canaanite presence in the region after this “divine genocide” occurred. How does Clay answer that? Clay directs our attention to those “divine genocide” texts and points out that Gods command was only for a specific region. There was still a Canaanite presence outside the region that the Israelites were to inhabit and that’s why there were commands still in place not to take wives from outside the Israelite culture etc. But as we read further into the text, the likes of Kings David and Solomon did not uphold these commands perfectly (by taking wives from outside the Israelite community) and thus the Canaanite culture was reintroduced into the Israels culture and corrupted them to the point where God then dealt harshly with the Israelites via the Assyrians and Babylonians.

So in conclusion, I think we can accept the text at face value. The question that remains is what do you think of God for commanding such a thing? Does God have a right to do with His creation as He pleases? If you have a problem with the selective judgment of the Canaanites then how do you feel about the almost complete destruction wrought by God of the whole world during the Flood? And how do you feel about the impending destruction of everything at Armageddon?

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard atheists characterize Christians as “wasting” their lives. Some mean it as a pejorative, others are quite sincere about it, but in every case there is some kind of concern about Christians reaching the end of their lives and discovering it was all such a waste. By and large atheists of this sort have a desire to draw the Christian away from his or her faith and into a perspective that will not waste this supposedly one and only life. So there are two thoughts I have had with respect to this notion that I wish to share. And instead of speaking broadly for Christians everywhere, which obviously I cannot do, I will speak for myself.

On the one hand, presumably as I am lying on my deathbed, exactly how do I come to the realization that it was all such a waste? Suppose I am lying on a hospital bed, perhaps overrun with cancer and death just a matter of hours away. I have lived my life according to my convictions of Christ’s redeeming grace, committed to a local church whom I have been lovingly devoted to and who has surrounded me in a warm community of support, edification, opportunity, and guidance. I have engaged my passions in learning and understanding, from theology to philosophy to science, through both self-reflection and discourse. I have pursued my appetite for reading, from captivating novels to academic textbooks. I have experienced family and friendship; I have experienced love and being loved, forgiving and being forgiven. I have known the rewards of success and the lessons of failure. I have loved those who hate me and served those who love me. And in every circumstance I have seen God’s providential hand and (even if not consistently) praised God for it all. I have known the God of all creation and have been known by him, through which I have had a scope of vision that transcends the limits of my self, humankind, or the place in history that my existence occupied. I have seen with reverential awe the breathtaking beauty and interconnected realities of God’s handiwork.

And yet somehow, as I lay here dying, I am supposed to realize this was a waste?

Exactly what might I have otherwise had or done? If I had not these Christ-centered convictions, would I have had friendships? But I had these. Would I have been able to enjoy great learning? Would I have had a rewarding career in a field I love? Would I have explored the halls of knowledge or the wonders of the cosmos? But I had these, too. Would I have loved and helped my fellow man? Would I have gained an understanding and appreciation for the views of others that differ from mine? But I have had and done all this—and much more. Given the sort of people that this expressed concern comes from, perhaps the waste they speak of is a life that was without an abiding wonder and intellectual curiosity about the natural world around us which we have explored and sought to understand through a web of scientific disciplines. But as someone with a profound appreciation and respect for such things, having consumed countless hours learning about cosmological and biological discoveries, my life was not lived without scientific wonder and curiosity. I could go on but at the end of the day I must confess that it escapes me just how I should realize my life was wasted.

On the other hand, what is it about lying at death’s door that is supposed to clue me in to it all being a waste? Granting the atheist his or her view that this life is the only one I have, that when I die there is nothing left but non-existence as my body decomposes in the ground, how am I supposed to realize this was all a waste? While I am yet alive but dying, there is nothing that would indicate that this life was the only one I had; in other words, I have not crossed the threshold of death yet so there is not anything that indicates those atheists were right. The irony which seems lost on them, however, is that even if they are right I will never know it—because as a dead and decomposing corpse I would not realize anything. On the atheist’s view, a corpse does not engage in acts of cognition.

Indeed, as I lay there dying I would not realize it was all a waste, for by the grace of God I did everything I desired to do. When you live the life that you want to, according to the values and passions you have, how is that a waste? Perhaps the things I value and desire to do is uninteresting or tedious to you, but what has that to do with me? For example, if I love to study God’s word and you do not, just how is that a waste for me? Am I supposed to live my life according to your values and desires? The way I see it, and perhaps even you as an atheist would agree with me, my life could be said to have been wasted if I didn’t do the things I value and desire to do; that is, if someone always wanted to do this or that but never did throughout his whole life, then maybe his life was wasted in at least that respect. But if he did those things which he valued and desired to do, if he lived his life fully—even if not always consistently—according to those commitments, pursuing his ambitions and passions, then exactly how was that all a waste?

If the atheist is right, if this life is the one and only life I have and I lived it according to what I value and desire to do, after which nothing but black non-existence awaits me, then my life was neither wasted nor could I realize anything about it. That’s the sheer irony of all this. About the only thing the atheist could say is that I did not live the one and only life I have according to that atheist’s values and desires—but so what? If I did that, then I would be wasting my life.

Although I appreciate the concern that such atheists have, I do have to point out the incoherence of it. Given their view, and especially their disdain for people shoving values down their throats that are not theirs, it quite literally makes no sense for them to suggest that I am wasting my life in any way. Thus their concern is misplaced and unintelligible at any rate. If you want to know whether or not Christians are wasting their lives, then ask them if they are living it according to their values and passions.

And do try being a little more self-consistent; if you are right, then my corpse would be incapable of realizing it.

Despite what he might think, Jim Gardner has a long way to go before he understands presuppositional apologetics. Although I think he is making important strides in grappling with what is being argued, it is clearly evident that he is nowhere near to finding the source of that curious odor under his bed.^[1] While I certainly appreciate the kind words he had to say about me and our recent conversation, I have to expose a fundamental confusion he apparently struggles under.

Gardner admits that he does not understand how I can draw an inference from what science explains about nature to not only the existence of God but also that the proof of his existence is contained in Scripture.^[2] I can explain that for him very succinctly:

“I don’t.”

Despite how clearly I had said it, for some reason it has not yet sunk in. As I had said in that conversation, so will I state very clearly again: the truth of God and his word is a presupposition we reason from, not a conclusion we reason to. Gardner simply must accept what is being argued if he wants to interact with it rationally and honestly. When he describes his opponent’s position in a way that is unrecognizable to his opponent, that is a clear indication that he has not understood the position; and he is not going to understand the position until he is prepared to accept what his opponent is so clearly stating, which is again:

• The truth of God and his word is a presupposition we reason from, not a conclusion we reason to.

All attempts by Gardner and Alex Botten to treat that as if it is a conclusion instead of a presupposition are doomed as straw man failures, insofar as they are arguing against a position that is different from or weaker than the one their opponent actually holds. A person cannot be expected to defend a position they do not hold. What more can one do beyond what I have done here, which is, after digesting Gardner’s 2,000-word post, to simply respond with a two-word rebuttal.

Gardner demonstrates how poorly he understands presuppositional apologetics when he says things like, “Presuppositional apologetics … [says] that everything which stems from God—including Christianity and the Bible—is a statement about the real world but not a statement about God.”^[3] Presuppositionalism is Reformed theology applied to the enterprise of apologetics, and one of the most often cited passages of Scripture in that enterprise is Romans 1:18–21:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened.

In case Gardner has missed it, verse 20 directly contradicts his statement—as does a host of other passages (e.g., Psa 19:1–3). In Reformed theology there are two sources of revelation: general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scripture); it all speaks to the nature and character of God. One must bear in mind, however, that Scripture is ultimate and authoritative, such that general revelation is subordinate to special revelation. As it says in the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (1.1),^[4]

The Holy Scriptures are the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule for saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence give such clear testimony to the goodness, wisdom and power of God that they leave people without excuse, yet they are not sufficient to give the knowledge of God and his will that is necessary for salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord to reveal himself at various times and in different ways, and to declare his will to his church. To ensure the preservation and propagation of the truth, and to establish and support the church against human corruption, the malice of Satan, and the world, he committed his complete revelation to writing. The Holy Scriptures are therefore absolutely indispensable, for God’s former ways of revealing his will to his people have now ceased.

But how poorly he understands presuppositional apologetics is made all the more clear when he portrayed it as being some kind of cosmological argument. He seems to think the argument goes something like this: the universe cannot come from nothing so it must have come from Something, and atheists willfully deny that the nature and character of that Something constitutes proof of God; moreover, atheists are unable to account for their own existence without implicitly acknowledging that Something (which is somehow God).^[5] I have a one-word response to that:

“Lolwut?”

I have no idea where Gardner got this from. Neither Sye nor Dustin have ever argued anything even remotely similar to this, nor can anything like that be found in the writings of Cornelius Van Til, Greg Bahnsen, Gordon Clark, Michael Butler, Vincent Cheung, John Frame, K. Scott Oliphint and so forth—all of them presuppositionalists of one camp or another (q.v. Van Tilian vs. Clarkian presuppositionalism). Gardner so poorly understands what is being argued that we can safely say that he does not understand it at all, much less poorly. His attempt at describing the presuppositional argument is utterly unrecognizable. It might be what a person would get if he threw William Lane Craig’s kalam cosmological argument and presuppositionalist jargon into a blender and hit purée—an epic mess that nobody would recognize. It is not what a presuppositionalist argues, it is not what an evidentialist argues, it is not what Craig would argue, it is not what an atheist would argue; literally nobody would recognize that reconstruction Gardner attempted.

I think Gardner needs to first understand what he is objecting to before he attempts objecting to it. He might detect a curious odor, but he has no idea where it is coming from, much less has he determined that it is a stray sport sock or plucked it out to give it a wash.

~ * ~

There is one thing I would like to know. Gardner said quite frankly, “There is no God to deny or accept.”^[6] That is a very interesting truth claim, and I would really like to see the argument which produces it. I challenge Gardner to provide the premises which lead to that conclusion.

Gardner also said that he struggles to understand how people “who are so clearly capable of researching and understanding all of this for themselves still somehow manage to come to such obviously flawed assumptions about the validity [or even] the intellectual honesty of their own position.”^[7] That is another interesting truth claim, that my presupposition is invalid and intellectually dishonest. Is Gardner up to the challenge of providing the premises which lead to that conclusion?

1. ^[1] Jim Gardner, “I think Jim is getting closer to becoming a Christian,” How Good Is That? [blog] (2011, October 30). ↩
2. ^[2] Gardner, para. 4. ↩
3. ^[3] Ibid., para. 8. ↩
4. ^[4] Andrew Kerkham, 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, 2nd edition (2001). ↩
5. ^[5] Gardner, op cit., para. 11. ↩
6. ^[6] Ibid., para. 6. ↩
7. ^[7] Ibid., para. 7. ↩

—because if there was a prize, Botten would have to award it to me. He recently wrote a surreal account of our exchange from the other day which he closed with the following offer: “There is a prize for anyone who can spot the ‘parting gratuitous invective’,”^[1] referring to my accusation. I am happy to claim that non-existent prize:

Ryft, I’m through with you as well. You’re just as bad as Alan for avoiding direct questions.^[2]

I suppose Botten could respond by saying that was not an insult but a compliment; however, given the record of his opinion of Rhology (who he calls Alan), I think he would find it rather difficult making that stick.

Now I called this recent post of his surreal but perhaps I can add ironic; it was surreal insofar as it spun what actually happened in complete reverse, yet it was also ironic in that his post was accusing me of spinning things around. Readers can draw their own conclusion, of course, but have a look at what he said.

Indeed I believe that the earth is very old and that Genesis is not wrong in its account of creation, and indeed this so mystified Botten that he asked me numerous times and in various ways how this could be—but at no time did I blitz him with requests to prove me wrong. That is an utter reversal of what happened, which can be easily verified by anyone particularly because I provided extensive citations. He said that the earth being old directly contradicts what Genesis says about creation, which he equated with the young-earth interpretation. What I hammered him with were requests to prove himself right; that is to say, I expected him to support his claim. The earth being old contradicts the Bible only if the young-earth interpretation is right, and I was not about to let him beg that question. (Moreover, how could I demand that he prove me wrong when I did not make any claims about what Genesis says?)

He says he did point out “the biblical reasons for thinking that [Genesis] preaches a young-earth creation.”^[3] The only problem is that he actually did not. All he did was assert the young-earth interpretation—that Genesis recounts God bringing the world into material existence, including Adam, and that calculating the genealogies tells us this was not more than 10,000 years ago—but stating a case is not the same thing as making a case. For some reason Botten seems to think that the exegetical burden of proof is met by simply asserting the interpretation.

The earth being old contradicts the Bible only if the young-earth interpretation is right. So if he wants to make that claim—that the earth being old contradicts the Bible (and therefore the Bible is wrong)—then he will need to support that claim without begging the very question.

Or hurl gratuitous invective from the comfort of Reverse World.

(Incidentally, I have no idea why he had trouble commenting on that post; certainly others had no difficulty commenting there.)

1. ^[1] Alex Botten, “Christian blogger Ryft gets spinning,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 14), para. 7. ↩
2. ^[2] Alex Botten, “A question for young earth creationists,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 11, comments section, 21:11; emphasis mine). ↩
3. ^[3] op. cit., “Christian blogger Ryft gets spinning,” para. 7. ↩

An email I received this morning from a source I do not have permission to reveal:

I received the following email this morning from Rhology:

12 October 2011

David,

Well, you made Alex look like a fool. Not hard, but still.  :-)

Grace and peace,

Rhology

Rhology,

Is it that I made Alex Botten look like a fool, or rather that Botten made himself look like a fool? I think if one reflects a moment on that exchange we had, one would have to admit that I actually did very little, and thus deserve very little credit for how he appeared. He simply made two very bold claims which, frankly, I was interested in seeing him support. I mean, is that not what atheists routinely demand of those who make claims? But atheists are fatally allergic to the burden of proof; the moment it becomes clear that they cannot escape shouldering it the conversation is over, and not without gratuitous invective—a pattern to which Botten was apparently only too willing to contribute.

Let us recapitulate what those two interesting claims of his were.

First, he claimed that if young-earth creationism is false, then one must concede that the world was not created at all. This claim was found in the question that he put to those who think the universe and Earth were created in a week 6,000 years ago (emphasis mine): “Why, when he knew it would cause people to believe that the universe was not created (so leading people away from him), would your God make things look older than they are?”^[1] In other words, if people discover that the world is far more than 6,000 years old, then that will cause them to believe that it was not created. And that of course is not only a brutal non-sequitur fallacy (i.e., the latter does not follow from the former) but also defies current and historical reality, wherein there are and were people who accept both creation and a very old earth. The fact of the matter is, Botten made a blind leap that was simply contrary to reason, which I wanted to expose by having him attempt supporting that claim.

Second, he also claimed that “one cannot square biblical creationism with an old earth,” ^[2] wherein “biblical creationism” is equated with the young-earth view,^[3] such that positing an old earth view “directly contradicts the Bible.” ^[4] If I understood his point here correctly, then he was trying to support his original non-sequitur; that is, since the world being old directly contradicts what Scripture says about creation, given the young-earth interpretation, discovering its great age would cause people to believe that it was not created. That is still a brutal non-sequitur but the response I opted for was to have him support that claim, which I pursued by forcing him to provide the exegesis for the young-earth interpretation. In other words, I was not going to permit that as a given, because it would beg the very question. Obviously I disagree that the earth being old directly contradicts the Bible so I insisted that he shoulder his burden of proof.

Well, of course we cannot have that so with a parting gratuitous invective he disabled the commenting feature on the article.^[5] Thus we have Botten losing his cool—although not a Jim Gardner meltdown—because some Christian had the audacity to call him out on his claims and require that he support them, exhibiting that allergic reaction I mentioned and perhaps nowhere more clearly than by his transparent attempt at shifting the burden on to me.^[6]

So I cannot really take credit for what Botten did mostly by himself.

1. ^[1] Alex Botten, “A question for young earth creationists,” An Atheist Viewpoint (2011, October 11), para. 2. ↩
2. ^[2] Ibid., comments section, 11 Oct. 2011, 14:43. ↩
3. ^[3] Ibid., 18:12. ↩
4. ^[4] Ibid., 18:49. ↩
5. ^[5] Although I noticed this afternoon that he reenabled it at some point today. ↩
6. ^[6] “Do you claim that the Bible doesn’t give genealogies from Adam onwards, and that it doesn’t claim the Earth was created in a literal six day period, with Adam created on the sixth day?” (Ibid., 18:59); “Do you claim that the genealogies and the creation account are incorrect? If not, how can you claim the Earth to be old?” (Ibid., 19:15); “Please explain to me how the Bible can be inerrant yet simultaneously wrong. Tell me what other interpretation you would draw from the creation account and the genealogies” (Ibid., 19:52); [Describes the young-earth interpretation and then asks] “How would you interpret it differently?” (Ibid., 20:10); “Are you claiming the text of Genesis doesn’t say that the Earth and all that’s in it was created in six 24-hour days? If so, please support this claim with evidence from Genesis” (Ibid., 20:34). ↩

There is this older lady on the Dalnet IRC network who for many years has exhibited a seething antipathy for Reformed theology, and has somewhat more recently been trying to understand the presuppositionalism by which those who are Reformed tend to argue their worldview. Although I often do not bother engaging her on such subjects (given certain reasons that experience has produced), tonight I acquiesced. Since who she is on IRC is not relevant, I have chosen to give her the name “Lisa” in the following conversation.

Read the rest of this entry

“If you had to choose between truth and comfort, which would you choose?”

So the question is posed by Matt Oxley rhetorically to the readers of his blog as a way of introducing his thoughts on the existential tension between truth on the one hand and comfort on the other, a tension he experienced as he progressively expunged his former charismatic Christian faith, a painful process of replacing what was comfortable with what is true. Oxley is a self-proclaimed atheist who is sharing with others the dimensions and contours of his journey away from the charismatic faith that he once held dear, an itinerarium mentis in a direction opposite of mine toward an ostensibly godless view of the world and life.

“When I began recognizing this truth,” he writes regarding the deception in charismatic churches, “it was anything but comfortable.” And this former comfort he describes as a sort of uneasy truce between how he wanted the world to be and how it actually is, a cognitive dissonance maintained by a promissory note of a celestial afterlife. Now if that accurately characterizes the intellectual life of the charismatic, well then, I could hardly fault his journey away from it. In addition to the moralist burden he describes having to shoulder (i.e., “denying your carnal desires and working to please [God] all of your life”), the intellectual anorexia would surely leave me desperate for something more authentic and honest. For some of us, a group I suspect Oxley would count himself among, such intellectual curiosity is inexorable and insatiable. But just here marks a notable difference between someone like Oxley and someone like myself; we both came to a point where we lost faith in a childish understanding of God, but I did not confuse that with losing faith in God whereas Oxley did. Having said that, there is a more important observation that I should like to make about his post.

He places such a high value on truth that often he capitalizes it, almost as though the word Truth were just as good as the word God (although on his view it is better). I should think that as a former Christian he could probably define to some extent what ‘God’ means, and he certainly defined what ‘comfort’ means, but notice the odd fact that he never bothers to define what ‘truth’ means. “The way I determine what is true,” he said, “has changed dramatically,” but then notice that he never bothers to give that account. How is it that someone who esteems truth above comfort can provide an account of the latter but offer nothing on the former? He described what his perspective on truth used to be: “I used to believe that if the Bible said it [then] it must be Truth. I didn’t even have to question that conclusion; my faith allowed for that to be so.” Yes but that was when he firmly staked his yellow Gadsden flag in the soil of comfort. “It was comfortable to me and I had no reason to question it.” Things are different now, he would have us believe. Comfort was swallowed up in truth, that principle he esteems enough to capitalize but not enough to provide an account of. He surrendered comfort to pursue truth, but was that before or after determining what is true? And this issue is made all the more salient by his comment about embracing the “standard of evidence” he knew existed but ignored most of his life, which represents a potential confusion of the metaphysical (what is true) with the epistemological (how we know it).

I can appreciate Oxley’s disdain for the way he viewed the world and life in his charismatic faith, but I find myself concerned by the echoes of Eden reverberating through his equally naive approach to this new journey. Has he exchanged comfort for truth, or just one type of comfort for another? While he says that he has a very different way of determining what is true, he does not give any sort of account of that except by means of what that way used to be and no longer is. Moreover, even his description of the way he used to determine what is true is not entirely meaningful. “If the Bible said it, then it must be truth.” For that to be meaningful there must be some way of determining what the Bible said (i.e., rules and principles of interpretation). I could go on but the point has been made. I should like to offer a challenge to Oxley for an upcoming blog post:

• “Please explain the way you now determine what is true.”

I am not sure I can entirely relate to Oxley’s experience of existential tension between truth and comfort. I am a critical skeptic by nature, an intellectual attitude that I had not only prior to my conversion to the Christian faith but one that has been deeply cultivated by that faith; that is to say, I have always pursued that which shakes me up from intellectual comfort, constantly seeking out things that challenge my beliefs. I am not sure why someone would prefer comfort over truth the way Oxley did; it is a foreign concept to me. But that just goes to underscore the point I had implicitly made earlier, that one does not need to lose faith in God in order to abandon a childish understanding of faith in God. Truth, logic, reason, knowledge, science, etc.; such things thrive under Christian theology, notwithstanding some weak charismatic faith that cowers with a contrary opinion. I applaud Oxley for turning his back on an intellectual wasteland, but I do not understand his choice of embracing another one.

———-

Matt Oxley, “Truth over comfort,” RagingRev (2011, August 25).
http://ragingrev.com/2011/08/truth-over-comfort/

It gets worse. In addition, an omnipresent and omniscient (all-observing) God, as bound into his creation as his creation is bound into him, must be able to observe everything. We know from quantum mechanics that observation collapses the wave-function of photons, leading to no superposition. But we know superposition exists, therefore this God with those attributes cannot.

Since I speak English and not mathematics I tend to avoid delving into quantum mechanics. This subject loses its precision when translated into English, and I am simply not fluent in mathematics. But I will indulge your point briefly in order to show how it fails to achieve the ends to which you put it.

First, we do not “know” that the wave-function collapses, much less due to observation. Although that is consistent with the familiar Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, it does not feature in the many-worlds interpretation, for example, nor the de Broglie-Bohm theory (in which the universal wave-function never collapses, only the conditional wave-function of a subsystem and is strictly an epiphenomenon) and so forth. As such, unless you are unfamiliar with epistemology, which is possible, it is disingenuous of you to pretend we “know” something that is theoretical—especially when it does not exist in competing theories.

Second, even granting you the Copenhagen interpretation, the observer effect in quantum mechanics is predicated on the ‘observer’ being constituted by matter—even if it is only a single electron. Thus the God of Scripture necessarily fails to represent the problem your point attempted to construct, for he is transcendent and immaterial.

Just a quick update from me, very brief. Some emails were sent back and forth among our staff just recently pondering what might be an effective response to the common dialogue over the historical track record of atheism versus Christianity. That is, some Christians point to the atrocities under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., while atheists shoot back with such atrocities as the Crusades, Inquisitions, witch hunts, etc.

“What might be a good response to this?” it was asked. Here was my answer:

When an atheist offers the reply, “What they did was horrendous, but it wasn’t done in the name of atheism; unlike the Crusades and witch hunts, which were done in the name of Christianity,” you can call him out on the False Analogy fallacy; i.e., when comparing apples, it is invalid to introduce oranges. The contrast of atheism is actually theism—not Christianity. Just as communism (e.g., Stalin) was atheistic but it was not atheism, so too Christianity is theistic but it is not theism. Consequently…

Atheist: “Stalin did not act in the name of atheism.”

Christian: “And the popes did not act in the name of theism.”

I wish I could say that Justin at Consider Atheism has posted some more of his thoughts on the Problem of Evil and how to refute my defeater of it, but unfortunately they are the embarrassingly weak responses of Dawson Bethrick. I suppose that is at once both good and bad. On the one hand, it is good that such a train wreck didn’t come from his own brain. But it is bad, on the other hand, that he didn’t approach the problem with critical thinking of his own, despite my hope that he would, choosing instead to publish Bethrick’s response (but mostly in Justin’s own words).

Originally Bethrick tried to save Justin’s argument by using Isaiah 45:7 to prove that evil is indeed something God creates. Justin was rather enlivened by this passage and brought it to my attention in the comments area of my first article. And I proceeded to show him why he should probably not get too excited about arguments that Bethrick uses by showing him what the passage is actually talking about. And as to be expected, Bethrick responded (at Justin’s site). I was going to send Justin a private email about this and tell him that he would score critical thinking points if he could identify what was wrong with Bethrick’s response. But it seems I didn’t get off work soon enough, for by the time I got home Justin had uncritically regurgitated the train wreck in a new blog post, so now this gets to be done in public instead. Readers of the Aristophrenium know that I don’t mind dismantling logically bankrupt arguments from atheists who pretend to esteem reason—to put it kindly—but I was really hoping to save Justin the embarrassment because I like him. “Before you invest yourself in Bethrick’s response,” I was going to write him, “evaluate it critically for logical flaws.” Anybody can teach people what to think, but I want to teach people how to think, and few things achieve that goal quite like learning how to critically evaluate an argument.

But if he wishes to do this publically, I’m willing to oblige him. Let’s have a look.

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