Do You Ever Think About Things You Do Think About?

Why I Argue about the Bible

2012-01-24T05:59:00.000-06:00

The fact that I argue with Bible believers doesn't prove that deep down I'm afraid them might be right.

I would probably argue with people who believe in leprechauns too if they showed up at the local school board meeting to demand that the high school economics class include a discussion of rainbows and pots of gold.

Islam v. Christianity: The Debate

2012-01-03T01:30:00.000-06:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Even Stevphen - Islam vs. Christianity

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Why I am Agnostic About HJ (18) An Analogy

2011-12-31T15:12:00.000-06:00

Consider the following scenario:

A man with a charismatic and dynamic personality claims to be a prophet and claims to have had an encounter with a heavenly being who reveals previously unknown spiritual truths. The man claims that the heavenly being confirmed the revelation tangibly and physically. Some people are persuaded that the man is telling the truth while others think he is a crackpot. Even for skeptics it is hard to be certain whether he is a deluded lunatic, a pathological liar, or a charlatan.

The prophet claims that the heavenly being had once been a flesh and blood man who walked the earth and stories are invented about the man's activities. However, the initial focus of the earliest believers is on the new spiritual truths that have been revealed and the way in which these truths fulfill the holy writings that are already widely accepted in the culture. Some of the early believers also claim to have had physical and tangible experiences that corroborate the prophet's claims.

As time goes by, substantial numbers of people are converted to the new beliefs without the slightest bit of evidence to confirm the appearance of the heavenly being, the physical corroboration of the revelation, or the historicity of the stories about the heavenly being's activities when he walked the earth. All they have to rely on is the claims of the prophet and his earliest followers.

Many people in the surrounding community think that the prophet is a charlatan and that his claims are utter hogwash. These people try to persuade the believers of the foolishness of the prophet's claims. Some are convinced and fall away, but those who remain become even more fervent in their beliefs. The prophet tells them that the skeptics are servants of the devil who should be ignored. He tells them that the fate of their everlasting souls depends upon unwavering commitment to the teachings of the new faith.

The believers endure many hardships on behalf of their new faith. They put their reputations, wealth, and at times even their lives at risk. They endure abuse and persecution from outsiders. This causes some to fall away, but those who remain are drawn closer together. They begin to see themselves as a separate people and they shun contact with the rest of society. Anyone who fails to maintain sufficient commitment to the teachings of the prophet is cast out as a heretic.

The new religion continues to spread and within the course of a couple hundred years, it has millions of adherents. Nevertheless, there is never a shred of credible evidence to support any of their supernatural beliefs.

I think that most scholars who believe that Jesus was a historical person would accept that this is a more or less reasonable characterization of the founding and spread of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (The exception would be those historical Jesus scholars who are also Mormons.) Nevertheless, most historicist scholars think it preposterous to suppose that any sort of similar dynamic could have been at work in the origin and early spread of Christianity rendering Jesus of Nazareth as complete a fabrication as Moroni, the Warrior-Prophet of the Nephites. They believe it reasonable to express a high degree of confidence that there was a historical person behind the visions that Paul and others claimed to have.

I will confess that I have purposely used ambiguous language in describing Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism in order to highlight the parallels with Paul and the origins of Christianity while obscuring the differences. I will also acknowledge that some of the differences may be of sufficient weight to justify belief in a historical Jesus while rejecting belief in a historical Moroni. Nevertheless, most of the reasons I usually see given for why Christianity couldn't have grown and spread in the way that it did without a historical Jesus seem to be predicated on the idea that 1st century Christians were markedly less gullible and superstitious than 19th century Mormons.

For example, a historicist might rightly point out that early Christians believed in a heavenly being who had walked the earth as a man within living memory while the first Mormons believed in a heavenly being who had walked the earth as a man fourteen hundred years earlier. The important point to me, however, is that the early Mormons believed in both the heavenly being and the man with absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than the word of Joseph Smith. Is there any way to establish that the earliest Christians had any better evidence than the word of Paul who had claimed to have seen the heavenly being but seemed to know almost nothing about the man who walked the earth?

Historicists can also point out that it would have been possible to investigate claims about an actual human being named Jesus who had walked the earth within living memory and that there would be people around who could debunk false claims. On the other hand, it was been possible to investigate many of Joseph Smith's claims as well and there were plenty of people who tried to expose him as a fraud. However, Smith managed to convince most of his followers that their eternal destinies rested on their willingness to ignore skeptics and unbelievers. As a result, the people who accepted Smith's claims without question were not deterred by the people who investigated them and found them wanting. Is there any reason to think that the earliest Christians wouldn't have been just as willing to ignore evidence that contradicted their beliefs?

Another difference that might be noted is that the experiences that corroborated Joseph Smith's encounter with the Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates took place after Smith's among his followers while the experiences that corroborate Paul's experience are thought to have taken place before Paul's among his predecessors. This might be significant, but the first account of the events that corroborate Paul's experience come from Paul himself some twenty years after they are thought to have occurred, while the accounts that corroborate Smith's experience are much closer in time to the events themselves, and are purportedly verified by the people who experienced them. I am not sure that this difference makes Paul's account the more credible one.

One of the differences that many scholars scholars cite as significant is the incongruity of a crucified Messiah to first century Judaism. Dr. James McGrath describes the argument this way:

The reason that the crucifixion persuades most historians that Jesus was a historical figure is that a crucified messiah was in essence a contradiction in terms. . . . It needs to be emphasized that we are talking about a dying and rising messiah. And the messianic expectations of Judaism around the time of early Christianity are well documented. And the whole notion of messiah is “anointed one” . . . . and this goes back to the practice of anointing kings and priests in ancient Israel. And in the case of Jesus the connection of the terminology of the term messiah with the claim to his having been descended from David shows they were thinking of a kingly figure. And nothing would have disqualified someone from seriously being considered possibly being the messiah as being executed by the foreign rulers over the Jewish people. That wasn’t what people expected from the messiah. And it makes very little sense to claim that the early Christians invented a figure completely from scratch and called him the messiah and said that he didn’t do the same things that the messiah was expected. Not only did he not conquer the Romans, he was executed by them. He did not institute and bring in the kingdom of god the way the people were expecting, and in fact Christians had to explain this in terms of Jesus returning to finish the task of what was expected of the messiah.

All of this makes much more sense if one says that there was a figure whom the early Christians believed was the messiah and that the early Christians were trying somehow to make sense of those things that don’t seem to fit that belief.

According to Dr. McGrath, belief in the resurrection was most likely a result of the cognitive dissonance that Jesus' followers experienced after he was put to death by Romans who he had been expected to conquer.

My problem with this argument is that I an unaware of any objective criteria by which one would assess the probability that any particular supernatural story might be invented by a particular individual in a particular culture and the probability that the story might be believed by large numbers of his peers. Are historians really able to accurately identify the factors that distinguish a supernatural story that might be invented and believed in 19th century upstate New York from one that couldn't have been invented and believed in 1st century Palestine? When evaluating the probability that people of a particular culture might accept a particular story, can any evidence possibly be more significant than the fact that many of them did accept the story? Moreover, if it can be shown that large number of people did accept a story, how does one go about assigning a low probability to the possibility that someone might invent it?

All in all, I still see no reason to conclude that it is more likely than not that Jesus of Nazareth was a complete fabrication. The idea that the resurrection stories were the product of the cognitive dissonance experienced by the followers of a failed apocalyptic prophet seems perfectly plausible to me. Nevertheless, I have yet to see an argument that convinces me that there is any principled basis to assign a significantly higher probability to that than the possibility of invention by a uniquely imaginative personality. Hence, I remain agnostic about a historical Jesus.

Sometimes Things Work Out Well

2011-12-27T18:16:00.001-06:00

Over at Parchment & Pen, C. Michael Patton explained that "there are certain things that I would look for and expect if the resurrection of Christ actually took place." Conveniently, the things he would look for and expect line up quite well with the things that he finds in the New Testament. Who'd a thunk it? Happily, he didn't expect anything inconvenient like independent accounts of the events from secular historians.

I couldn't help but think of Margaret O'Brien's line from Meet Me in St. Louis: "Wasn't I lucky to be born in my favorite city?"

Changes in the Catholic Liturgy

2011-12-25T11:21:00.000-06:00

I attended 7:30 mass this morning with my daughter and it was my first exposure to the latest changes in the Catholic liturgy. The hardest thing to get used to is the new response to "The Lord be with you." After years of saying "And also with you" several times during the mass, the congregation now responds to the priest with "And with your spirit." This is a more direct translation of the old Latin Rite.

In the Nicene Creed, the Lord Jesus Christ is no longer "one in being with the Father." He is now " consubstantial with the Father." This too is thought to go back to the original better.

As long as they are trying to get back to originals, I think that it would be fun to go back to the original ending to the creed that the Council of Nicea came up with in 325 A.D.:

But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Apparently this was never very popular as it was dropped from the creed by the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D.

The Reason for the Season

2011-12-23T05:18:00.002-06:00

Is apparently to make some Christians look small and petty: Sarah Palin Questions Obama White House Holiday Card.

Why Have Women Find the Empty Tomb First?

2011-12-22T06:31:00.002-06:00

Although I am an agnostic, I still put out the Nativity set at Christmas every year because I still love the idea of God manifesting himself in such humble circumstances. I always thought that the way that Jesus reached out to the outcasts in society is what made him such an appealing character and I always figured that it was a large part of the reason why Christianity caught on the way that it did.

As a result, I am puzzled when I hear Christian apologists argue that nobody could have invented the story of the women finding the empty tomb because of their low social status. Here's a typical example:

When you understand the role of women in first-century Jewish society, what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place. Women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first-century Palestine. . . . Women's testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of Law. In light of this, it's absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women... Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb - Peter or John, for example.

William Lane Craig in The Case for Christ.

What the hell is this guy talking about? The gospels have Jesus healing lepers and blind beggars, eating with tax gatherers and sinners, and forgiving prostitutes. When the end of the gospels is reached, does Craig really think that the men who wrote these stories or the first people who read them would be concerned about the rung on the social ladder occupied by the first people to find the empty tomb? Would "My gosh! Women aren't even allowed to testify in court." really enter into anyone's thinking?

It really kind of saddens me that in their desperation to defend the historical accuracy of the gospel stories so many Christians should miss the point that indifference to social status is one of the things that gives the stories their meaning in the first place. It saddens me that it doesn't occur to them that the women's low social standing might be the very reason the evangelists place them first at the empty tomb.

The Smoke and Mirrors of Apologetics

2011-12-17T21:35:00.002-06:00

Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny

The D.A.'s got to build a case. Building a case is like building a house. Each piece of evidence is just another building block. He wants to make a brick bunker of a building. He wants to use serious, solid-looking bricks, like, like these, right? [puts his hand on the wall] Let me show you something. [he holds up a playing card] He's going to show you the bricks. He'll show you they got straight sides. He'll show you how they got the right shape. He'll show them to you in a very special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have. But there's one thing he's not gonna show you. [turns the card flat] When you look at the bricks from the right angle, they're as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illusion, a magic trick.

When discussing the historicity of the resurrection with Christian apologists, I never argue that the supernatural is impossible. Instead I argue that reason and experience dictate that the overwhelming majority of supernatural stories are the product of things like wishful thinking, gullibility, and ignorance. Most apologists are willing to concede this point because they believe that the supernatural claims of every religion but their own are false. I then argue that there are no objective criteria by which to identify those few supernatural claims (assuming there are any) that are in fact the product of legitimate supernatural events rather than the product of wishful thinking, gullibility, and ignorance. As a result, even conceding that there might be a God who could raise a man from the dead if He chose to do so, I still have to assess the probability of that having occurred as very small compared to the probability that the resurrection stories are ancient myths and legends.

If it is the first time that I have discussed the issue with a particular apologist, he will inevitably conclude that I have either not carefully looked at all the evidence or that I have not thought about it in the right way. He will then try to guide me through Habermas and Licona's "minimal facts" approach or Lee Strobel's courtroom analogies or Tim and Lydia McGrew's Bayesian analysis to show me how it really is rational to believe that the resurrection was a historical event. One very pleasant gentleman told me that he was working on a paper which would show that confidence in the resurrection can be achieved by looking at the big picture in the way that an engineer does. However, when I examine these approaches, I invariably find that like Vinny Gambini's hypothetical D.A., they are simply attempts to present the evidence from an angle at which its playing card thinness is harder to see.

The essential and insoluble problem with the historical case for the resurrection is that the evidence that the event occurred consists of ancient supernatural stories which are (1) of indeterminate authorship; (2) based on unknown sources; (3) recorded decades after the events they purport to recount; and (4) written solely from the perspective of fervent religious belief. No matter how pretty a facade the apologist tries to create, those bricks aren't going to carry the historical weight.

It's like the mortgage backed securities that brought the world banking system to the edge of collapse in 2008. Using complex analysis, Wall Street's financial engineers put together piles of no-doc, pick-a-payment, liar loans and sliced and diced them into tranches that looked like AAA bonds to the ratings agency. Unfortunately, they never really solved the inherent problem of garbage-in/garbage-out. All their complex analysis was smoke and mirrors.

Christian apologists love to talk about the "facts" upon which scholars agree, but all these facts are derived from those ancient supernatural stories which are (1) of indeterminate authorship; (2) based on unknown sources; (3) recorded decades after the events they purport to recount; and (4) written solely from the perspective of fervent religious belief. No matter how many scholars look at those stories, trying to determine what actual events occurred decades before they were written can never be more than an educated guess. Even if we can all agree on what the best guess is given the evidence we have, the evidence we have is still highly problematic.

Were 1st Century Christians Smarter than Everyone Else?

2011-11-13T11:05:00.001-06:00

I sometimes run across Christian apologists who deride skeptics for thinking that the supernatural stories in the New Testament were the product of ignorant and superstitious people. They argue that it is elitist or condescending to suppose that 1st century Jews and pagans were incapable of understanding the events they observed and reporting them accurately. The modern skeptic is simply being arrogant.

My response to this argument is that I am not skeptical because I think that 1st century Jews and pagans were any more naive or gullible than modern thinkers. I am skeptical because I don't think that they were any less naive or gullible. I think that 1st century Christians were probably just as credulous as the 19th century Mormons who were taken in by Joseph Smith's tales of golden plates and magic seer stones. I think that they were probably just as credulous as 20th century Scientologists who were taken in by L. Ron Hubbard's fantasies. People have always wanted to believe that their lives have some transcendent meaning and there have always been people willing to accept the most fantastic stories without any evidence whatsoever in the hopes of finding that meaning.

Many of the arguments that Christian apologists make seem to rest on the rather bizarre notion that 1st century Christians were somehow unique among all people throughout recorded history in that they were impervious to supernatural tales where those tales were not supported by convincing empirical proof. Unlike people at all other times and places, they wouldn't have passed along such stories without carefully determining all the facts and they wouldn't have exaggerated the stories and added details as they retold them. Moreover, unlike all other people, they would have promptly abandoned their religious beliefs if challenged with contrary evidence.

HItler Cat

2011-11-10T11:46:00.000-06:00

How Pathetic is Rick Perry?

2011-10-26T11:09:00.000-05:00

It occurred to Rick Perry that if he wanted to be president of the United States, he might need to have a position on taxes. Unfortunately, coherent thought isn't his strong suit. Charles Pierce of Esquire has the skinny in Rick Perry's Tax Plan: A Comical Slow Dance with Confusion:

It is on days like this that I don't envy political economists. They're the ones that are going to have to take this Message from Goobertown seriously. They're going to have to score it. They're going to have to do the math, such as it is, and try to find a coherent formation in this unwieldy parade of hackneyed talking points (Kill the Estate Tax and Save the Family Farm!) and tired applause lines (The Job Creators Are Uncertain!). They're the ones who are going to have to find a way to square the utter abandonment of the progressive income tax, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, a return to explosively inflationary health-care costs, an unchained and undoubtedly newly amok financial-services industry, and the partial privatization of Social Security, all of which Goodhair has managed to wedge into "Cap, Balance, and Grow (!)."

What I Have Learned from the Cheering at the Republican Debates

2011-10-19T14:22:00.001-05:00

Gay? Fuck you!

No job? Fuck you!

No health insurance? Fuck you!

The System is Broken

2011-10-10T12:41:00.001-05:00

Since [2006], researchers have found that about 90 percent of major U.S. companies expressly set their executive pay targets at or above the median of their peer group. This creates just the kinds of circumstances that drive pay upward.

The Washington Post.

Shouldn't performance have something to do with it?

Krugman on the Reaction to Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-10T07:09:00.000-05:00

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Paul Krugman

Refreshingly Honest

2011-10-06T17:19:00.000-05:00

If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. Herman Cain

Doomed to Repeat

2011-10-05T18:28:00.000-05:00

Infrastructure Banks

2011-10-04T19:44:00.001-05:00

What exactly is an infrastructure bank?

Does it mean that instead of taxing the rich to build roads and bridges that everyone uses for free, the government lends money to the rich so that they can build toll roads and toll bridges that everyone will pay them to use?

Things that Even a Bible Believer Can't Believe

2011-09-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

I am always fascinated by the things that strain the credulity of conservative Bible believers. For example, Christian apologists insist that the reports of Jesus' postmortem appearances couldn't be the result of hallucinations because hallucinations are individual experiences and Jesus is reported to have appeared to groups of people. Apparently the idea that more than one person would claim to have seen the same vision (or that one person would claim that others had seen the same vision he saw) is so far fetched that it is eminently more reasonable to believe in Jesus' body coming back to life with the ability to appear and disappear at will while passing through solid objects.

In the 13th Chapter of Mark, Jesus makes various predictions about the cataclysmic events that will surround the coming of the Son of Man and tells his listeners "Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." Mk 13:30. This passage is troubling for many Christians since Jesus seems to have made a bad call. That generation is long gone and Jesus hasn't returned yet. Many apologists have argued that Jesus must have meant something other than that some of the people who were listening to him at the time would still be around.

Over at Grace and Miracles , one apologist seemed to think that Jesus couldn't have meant that some of his listeners would still be alive because he couldn't have been that foolish.

For under such an assumption Jesus would have had to have in mind such events as the Jews being disbursed to ALL the nations as well as ALL the nations being reached with the gospel. But this is hardly something one would expect of Christ—since it requires us to believe that One who was savvy enough to shame his aggressive and ambitious interrogators until they dared not ask him further questions before the people, would also imagine with the greatest naiveté that such a Dispersion and Spreading of the Gospel to ALL nations could take place within a single generation.

The Bible is filled with incredible and fantastic prophecies and Jesus himself predicts events that are unimaginable and unprecedented. None of these these prophecies will the apologist deem too far fetched not to be fulfilled in exactly the way that the Bible describes. Nonetheless, if a prophecy violates the apologist's common sense notion of how long it will take for a particular set of events to occur, Jesus must have meant something else. It is absurd to think that Jesus would have been so naïve as to think that these unprecedented events could have taken place within an unprecedentedly short time frame. Oh no! Jesus was much too savvy to think that.

Who Cares What Standard and Poor's Thinks?

2011-08-06T08:20:00.000-05:00

One of the most disturbing aspects of the financial crisis is that so many people who couldn't get a job writing the daily horoscopes still have their financial forecasts taken seriously.

QOTD

2011-08-02T09:47:00.000-05:00

I keep saying I am not a Democrat because I have no idea what their economic policy is, and I am not a Republican because I know EXACTLY what their economic policy is. That is our policy choices: Inept cluelessness on one side, and hapless fantasy-based lunacy on the other.

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

My Comments are Banned by an Atheist

2011-07-31T12:22:00.000-05:00

It appears that I have been banned from posting comments by John Loftus at Debunking Christianity. The comments that got me banned concerned John's claim that the quality of any academic program in Christian apologetics could be judged by whether or not it dealt specifically with the books he has written on counter-apologetics. I suggested "that criticizing apologists for not specifically addressing your arguments is the exact same tactic that apologists use to dismiss scholars they don't like."

Apparently, however, it is my agnosticism about the historical Jesus that really ticked John off: "Vinny you are like every other atheist I have met who does not think Jesus existed. You have cookie cutter mentality. If I do not fit the mold you will find something to criticize me for if you can."

My response to that comment was evidently the straw that broke the camel's back:

John,

I do not in fact believe that Jesus did not exist. I am agnostic about the historical Jesus. I don't think it really matters whether the historical Jesus existed or not because I think he has been too thoroughly mythologized to be recovered either way. I think that historicists overestimate the strength of their case and underestimate its vulnerability. However, I think that mythicists generally do the same thing.

I do find the discussions of mythicism interesting and I enjoy participating in them to test my own thinking and understanding. I have generally tried to be polite although I realize I can be a smart ass sometimes.

I think you are completely overreacting to my comment. If it's not too late to vote on whether you should take some time off from counter-apologetics, I think I might vote yes.

The next time I returned to John's blog, I found that I would not be allowed to post any more comments. I have been banned from the blogs of some conservative Christians, however, this is the first time that I have been banned by an atheist.

I regret this because Debunking Christianity has always been one of my favorite blogs, and as far as I can tell, I have not violated any part of John's Comment Policy. However, I guess it is just as well that there is one less internet site that I will have reason to waste time on.

I was gratified to see that John has decided to take some time off from blogging. I don't know whether it had anything to do with my suggestion.

We Are So Screwed

2011-07-29T10:49:00.000-05:00

The economy is barely moving and the Democrats and Republicans are arguing over how hard to push on the brakes.

Evidence Doesn't Matter to Rick Perry

2011-07-22T14:52:00.000-05:00

I don't have any problem with people who believe that the Bible is a supernatural book. I do have a problem with people who believe that objective evidence proves that the Bible is a supernatural book. I have seen the convoluted mental gymnastics that people use to convince themselves the empirical evidence justifies their belief in a magic book. I think that engaging in such distorted reasoning inevitably impairs their ability to deal with empirical data in other areas as well.

Here is a perfect example with Texas governor Rick Perry. Confronted with the fact that Texas has the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the country, Perry insists that Abstinence Only sex education works. He has no idea why Texas has such a high teen pregnancy rate, but that doesn't matter because his personal subjective experience tells him that "abstinence works."

Watch live video from texastribune on Justin.tv

On August 6, Governor Perry will be hosting "a solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country" called The Response at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Here's how he is promoting the event:

Fellow Americans,

Right now, America is in crisis: we have been besieged by financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters. As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.

Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response. Therefore, on August 6, thousands will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country and a renewed sense of moral purpose.

I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.

Some problems might be easier to solve if we tried to figure out what actually works based on empirical evidence rather than our subjective feelings about what we wish would work. I don't know whether there is a God, but if there is, I think he wants us to use the brains he gave us to address our problems.

Apologetics in a Nutshell

2011-07-20T10:40:00.000-05:00

Christian apologists love to make arguments based on the way things normally happen and the way people normally act. For example, they have no trouble asserting that the post-mortem appearances of Jesus couldn't have been hallucinations because we know that hallucinations are not shared. However, when some one points out that we also know that dead people stay dead, they insist that this is evidence of the skeptic's closed-minded anti-supernatural presuppositions.

I saw this phenomenon illustrated recently in a discussion over at Dagoods' blog about dating the composition of the Acts of the Apostles. The book ends with Paul awaiting trial in Rome. Anette Acker, who blogs at Grace and Miracles, argued that Acts was written around 62 A.D. because it doesn't mention important events that occurred after that date. Dagoods and I argued that the author had other reasons for ending the story there. We argued that the book must have been written after the destruction of temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. because the author has Jesus foretell that event in the Gospel of Luke.

Anette insisted that our conclusion was being driven by our presuppositions about the impossibility of the supernatural:

The real question is this: How likely do you think it is that scholars would date Acts after the fall of Jerusalem if Jesus had not predicted it in Luke? Do you think that if it was written several decades later, it’s likely that Acts would have ended a) while Paul was in house arrest in Rome pending appeal, b) without mentioning the death of Paul, c) without mentioning the persecution of Nero, and d) without mentioning the Great Revolt and the fall of Jerusalem?

This is the problem: Biblical criticism is the study of the Bible as a human creation. By itself that is no problem, because the Bible can certainly be studied that way, like any other series of historical documents.

However, this means that everything is presumed to have a natural explanation. In other words, because Jesus “predicted” the fall of Jerusalem, critical Bible scholars have to date the Gospels—and by extension Acts—after 70 AD.

The real problem with this is that if you look to critical Bible scholars to help you decide whether the Bible is the word of God, they will give you only one possible answer: No. Why is that? Because the answer is already assumed in biblical criticism, which is “the treatment of Biblical texts as natural rather than supernatural artifacts” (Wikipedia).

Do you see the circularity in this approach if your question is whether the Bible is the word of God or just a human construct? In biblical criticism the presupposition is that the Bible is an entirely natural text.

So if you're approaching this in a neutral way, then the question is: Apart from the "prediction" of Jesus, what is the most likely explanation for why Acts ends the way it does?

Here’s the problem I see for the apologists who make this argument (and Anette is certainly not alone in doing so): The argument that Acts was written in 62 A.D--i.e., before Paul’s death, the Neronic persecution, and the fall of Jerusalem--depends upon the assumption that it is a human book. Only when a finite human writes a book can we infer from its silence about a particular event that the author doesn't know about the event and was, therefore, writing before the event occurred. God, on the other hand, knows everything that ever happens throughout all eternity. If a supernatural book omits mention of a particular event, we cannot conclude that its author doesn’t know about it or that it hasn’t occurred yet. That argument depends on the natural assumption that human beings cannot see into the future.

However, if we assume that the Acts is a human book, then how can we avoid making the same assumption about the Gospel of Luke? If the assumption that human beings don't see into the future is valid when dating Acts, we have to conclude that that the detailed descriptions of the fall of Jerusalem in Luke are strong evidence that it was written after 70 A.D. It is conceivable that the author of Luke simply recorded the canny predictions of an astute military and political analyst, but I don't think that the historian can assess that as more likely than the much more common phenomenon of someone claiming to have foreseen important events only after the fact.

The real problem is that apologists want to apply the methodology of critical scholarship--i.e., methodological naturalism--only so long as it supports the conclusion that they wish to reach. As soon as it poses a barrier, they deride it as closed-minded and biased.

How Strange are Dr. & Mrs. Bachmann?

2011-07-17T22:08:00.000-05:00

Here's Michelle Bachman explaining how she became a tax lawyer because her husband told her to do so and the Bible tells wives to be submissive to her husband.

Here's Bill Maher noting that the really weird thing is that when Michelle told her husband that she would do anything he wanted, rather than asking for a three-way or asking her to cover herself with whipped cream, he asked he to become a tax lawyer.

That of course leads to Jon Stewart struggling to control the urge to make fun of the contrast between the "pray-the-gay-away" therapy that Dr. Bachmann's less than macho voice and mannerisms.

The Daily Show - Comedy Repression Therapy
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Finally we have South Park's take on reparative therapy with Pastor Phillip.

Cartman Sucks
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Irony

2011-07-04T16:59:00.000-05:00

Motorcyclist Dies On Ride Protesting Helmet Law In New York

Ann Coulter Calls Princess Diana 'Anorexic, Bulimic Narcissist'

Republican Myths

2011-07-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

Happy 4th of July

Consider the mythology that makes up GOP orthodoxy today. Imagine the contortions that cramp the brains and souls of men and women of intelligence and compassion who seek state and national office under the Republican banner.

• They must believe, despite the evidence of the 2008 financial collapse, that unregulated — or at most, lightly regulated — financial markets are good for America and the world.

• They must believe in the brilliantly cast conceit known as the "pro-growth agenda," in which economic growth can be attained only by reducing corporate and individual tax rates, especially among the investor class, and by freeing business from environmental rules that have cleaned up America's air and water and labor regulations that helped create America's middle class.

. . .

• GOP candidates must scoff at scientific consensus about global warming. Blame it on human activity? Bad. Cite Noah's Ark as evidence? Good. They must express at least some doubt about the science of evolution.

. . .

Read the rest at stltoday.com

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2011-06-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

From the Chicago Tribune:

An Arlington Heights man was fined $500 after he turned in $17,000 but lied about how and where he actually found the cash, police said Wednesday.

Robert Adams was cited for filing a false report with the Rolling Meadows Police Department.

On the evening of June 6, Adams found a Chase Bank bag of cash totaling about $17,000 near an ATM at a Walgreen store in south suburban Midlothian, police said.

Instead of turning the cash in at that location, Adams drove to Rolling Meadows and turned in the bag at a Chase Bank. He later told police he found the cash outside a newspaper stand in Rolling Meadows.

After investigators reviewed video surveillance, they discovered Adams, 54, found the money in Midlothian, Rolling Meadows police Sgt. Tony Gaspari said in the news release.

Adams told the Tribune on Wednesday night that he felt more comfortable turning the cash in to Rolling Meadows officials and filing the report with Rolling Meadows police.

"I know now a little better than I knew then," he said. "I feel very badly and understand why I should have told the truth."

Adams said it was a hot day and he just wanted to get home. "I wasn't looking for a reward. I was just doing the right thing," he said. Adams said he did not get a reward for finding the money.

On Wednesday, Adams said he was told he had to pay a $500 fine for filing a false report.

Here's what I think happened: The guy's initial reaction was to keep the money. As he drove the forty miles from Midlothian to his home in Arlington Heights, his conscience got the better of him so he took the money to a Chase branch in nearby Rolling Meadows. He was embarrassed about having thought about keeping the money so he made up the story about finding the money in Rolling Meadows.

All he's guilty of is stupidity. What he should have said when he turned the money in was, "I wasn't sure what do and it was hard to think clearly with that much money in my car. I knew that there was a Chase branch in Rolling Meadows which is near where I live so I decided to bring the money there."

Chase should pick up the $500 fine for the guy.

There Are Some Things the Government Should Run

2011-06-24T14:24:00.000-05:00

Prisons are something that shouldn't be privatized.

Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania judge was convicted of racketeering, of taking bribes from parties of interest in his cases. It was a fairly routine case of bribery, with one significant exception. The party making the payoffs was a builder and operator of youth prisons, and the judge was rewarding him by sending lots of kids to his prisons.

From Who Wants to Keep the War on Drugs AND Put You in Debtor's Prison by Matt Stoller.

Stoller quotes this interesting passage from a recent 10K filing from The Corrections Corporation of America:

The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.

It is hard enough to have a rational debate about drug policy or immigration policy without lobbyists representing corporations whose vested interest in seeing people thrown in prisons has nothing whatsoever to do with the danger that those people pose to society.

Matt Taibbi on Michelle Bachman

2011-06-23T20:32:00.000-05:00

Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.

From Michele Bachmann's Holy War by Matt Taibbi.

If suspect he's right and it scares me. The more that Bachmann, Palin, and Perry show themselves to be buffoons, the more beloved they become.

Tim Pawlenty Wants the Rich to Get Richer

2011-06-08T09:16:00.000-05:00

My father used to say that Ronald Reagan's genius was in convincing so many members of the middle class that they could afford to vote Republican. I wonder how many people will be convinced by Tim Pawlenty.

Appearing on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, Pawlenty proposed cutting top income tax rates and getting rid of taxes on dividends, capital gains, interest income, and estates. According to Pawlenty, these tax cuts would pay for themselves by sparking GDP growth of 5% per year for ten years. Never mind the fact that sustaining that kind of growth for that length of time is a pipe dream.

So wouldn't such policies likely increase wealth inequality in America? Sure but Pawlenty doesn't care:

The measure of a successful economy is not whether some small percentage of people get a little more wealth or a little less wealth. . . . I don't care if we shift the wealth a little this way or that way. . . . Don't measure this by whether of few more people get a little wealthy or not.

Pawlenty made it clear who he is looking out for, "Every business leader across every sector of this economy large or small across the whole country that I meet with says essentially the same thing, 'Get the government off my back'." Like the way that government got off Wall Street's back over the last thirty years? How did that work out?

Pawlenty Counting on Ignorance

2011-06-07T09:23:00.000-05:00

In a speech today in Chicago, Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty is expected to play the class warfare card according to The Huffington Post:

"President Obama is a champion practitioner of class warfare," Pawlenty will say, according to advance excerpts. "He has spent three years dividing our nation, fanning the flames of class envy and resentment to deflect attention from his own failures and the economic hardship they have visited on America."

What pure and utter crap. Any class envy and resentment that exists is the result of Republican economic policies of the last three decades which have made the rich richer while the American middle class stagnates or falls behind.

As the following graph from the Paris School of Economics shows, the richest 1% of Americans earned 8.18% of total income in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected. (H/T The Big Picture) Today the richest 1% of Americans earn 17.67%. Income distributions have been nowhere near as skewed in other major industrialized nations like Japan, France, and Australia. During that time, America has gone from being the world's biggest creditor to its biggest debtor, median incomes have gone nowhere, and America's manufacturing base has deteriorated.

Pawlenty's prescription for the economy is more of the same policies that got us where we are today: tax cuts for the rich, less regulation of business, and further dismantling of the social safety net.

It would be nice to think that voters aren't that stupid, but the signs are not encouraging.

Will the United States Default?

2011-05-19T11:28:00.000-05:00

On Monday the United States hit the debt ceiling which precludes the government from borrowing any more money. However, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner apparently has some tricks up his sleeve that will allow the government to keep paying its bills until August at which point it will be forced to start defaulting on its obligations if the debt ceiling is not raised.

All the pundits seems to agree that a U.S. government default would be catastrophic for the economy and that therefore, it will never happen. The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans and Democrats will reach some last minute deal that saves the day. I hope this is true and I wish I were as confident.

I cannot help but think about the build up to World War I. Almost up until the moment that war was declared, financial markets were convinced that Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm would find some way to avoid a war that promised to wreck such devastation. They were wrong, the two cousins played chicken with each other and drove the world off a cliff.

I also remember September 29, 2008 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 800 points after Congress failed to pass the financial bailout bill. Every market pundit was shocked when the House Republicans sent the bill down to defeat. Although they passed the legislation four days later, many Republicans now insist that it was a mistake. They may not be so quick to cave in to panic in the financial markets this time around.

The Tea Party Republicans are ideologically committed to spending cuts despite the fragility of the economic recovery. If the Democrats happen to develop some spine on the issue, I can easily see this ending badly despite the assurance of financial pundits that it will never happen.

Crying Wolf on Medicare

2011-05-08T17:44:00.000-05:00

As Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune details, conservatives have been proclaiming the eminent bankruptcy of Medicare for forty years.

Why I Am Agnostic About HJ (17): Putting Together the Puzzle

2011-05-07T19:26:00.000-05:00

[E]ven though puzzle pieces can be forced together in countless ways, they should not be arranged in the ill-filling configuration mythicism offers, when other arrangements allow those pieces we have (many must be presumed to be missing) to be fit together without the use of scissors. Dr. James McGrath

Dr. James McGrath of Butler University is blogging about Earl Doherty's Jesus: Neither God Nor Man: The Case for a Mythical Jesus at Exploring Our Matrix. I have never read any of Doherty's books, but he is generally regarded as making made the strongest possible case for Jesus mythicism (however that term is defined). In the past, Dr. McGrath has opined that the strongest possible case for mythicism is still worthy of little more respect than the strongest possible case for creationism and nothing in his first couple posts on Doherty's book suggests that he is going to change his mind about it.

McGrath may be correct about the shortcomings of mythicism, but I think he underestimates the extent to which the same sorts of problems plague historicism. Not only must we presume that many of pieces of the puzzle are missing, I think we can be confident that the overwhelming majority of the pieces are missing. Nor do we know how big the puzzle is so we don't know whether the handful of pieces we have is any sort of meaningful fraction of the total. On top of that, we cannot be sure that all the pieces we have belong to the same picture. Some of them may have been put in our box by mistake.

McGrath may be correct that the historicist's arrangement of the pieces is more plausible than the mythicist's, but I can't help but think that the advantage may be trivial. Sticking with the jigsaw puzzle analogy, we have some pieces that are light blue and some that are dark green. It may be the best guess that the blue pieces are part of the sky and the green pieces are parts of trees, but it is still just a guess. There are lots of other objects that can be blue and lots of other objects that can be green. The person who guesses sky and trees may have better odds of being right than the person who guesses house and car who may have better odds of being right than the one who guesses cat and dog, but that doesn't mean that any of them are justified in thinking that they know what the whole picture looks like.

Of course no historian has all the pieces to any puzzle and the problem only becomes more acute for ancient events, but I believe that some historians of ancient times have things better than historical Jesus scholars. A scholar who wishes to examine how a particular war unfolded has much more to guide him in arranging his pieces. There is archeological data that can be consulted. There are accounts of other ancient battles and wars that can be used for comparison. Things that are known can be used to help form hypothesis about things that are unknown. On the jigsaw puzzle analogy, perhaps it is like having some edge pieces that at least define the boundaries and size of the puzzle.

For the historical Jesus scholar, on the other hand, there seems to very little useful data concerning the origins of ancient religions. We know something about what people believed at various times and places, but very little about how they came to believe it. Dr. McGrath argues that the existence of an actual historical Jesus is a much more likely explanation for the origin and growth of a religion based on a crucified Davidic Messiah than a purely mythical or legendary Jesus could be, however, it is hard to see what the basis might for assessing this probability. We simply don't have a basis for comparison. Indeed, the data we do have suggests that people will believe almost anything regardless of the evidence.

The problem comes when trying to eliminate an alternative hypothesis. If someone proposes a radical reinterpretation of an ancient battle, it may be sufficient to respond that there is no evidence of that kind of thing happening in any other battle. However, it is much less persuasive to say that we have no evidence of a religion being founded on a mythical crucified Messiah because we have so very little evidence on the founding of any religion.

Quote of the Day

2011-05-06T20:09:00.000-05:00

How many more gay people does God have to create before we ask ourselves whether or not God actually wants them around? Minnesota State Representative Steve Simon

Is Osama in Hell?

2011-05-05T03:10:00.000-05:00

I guess it depends on whether or not the Koran is the correct magic book or the Bible is the correct magic book. However, anyone who takes the Old Testament as the literal word of God has to accept the fact that when a desert deity orders his followers to slaughter those with whom he is displeased, no matter how innocent they might appear to the unbeliever's eye, the followers have a duty to carry out those orders to the letter.

Did Torture Play a Role in Finding Bin Laden?

2011-05-04T10:09:00.000-05:00

I don't know.

I have heard that normal interrogation techniques were used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed to obtain the information that contributed to finding Osama bin Laden. However, once a person has been tortured, the threat has to be in the back of his mind every time he is questioned after that. I would like to think that the information could have been obtained without enhanced interrogation, but I don't think the evidence proves that it could have been.

One (of Many) Problems with Believing in Magic Books

2011-04-27T11:30:00.000-05:00

Most historians don't believe that George Washington really said to his father "I cannot tell a lie." They think that it is a pious fiction invented by Parson Weems in the years after Washington died. Happily, such historians are not considered to have an anti-Washington agenda or anti-Weems presuppositions. Nor do such historians risk everlasting torment in a lake of fire should they happen to guess wrong on the authenticity of the story of Washington chopping down the cherry tree.

On the other hand, when New Testament scholars have the audacity to suggest that maybe Jesus didn't really say all the things that are attributed to him in the gospels, they are accused of trying to destroy Christianity. Moreover, if they guess wrong on whether Jesus really claimed to be God, they run the risk that either Allah or Yahweh will consign them to everlasting torture.

The Perils of Economic Inequality

2011-04-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

From Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% by Joseph Stiglitz

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this. . . .

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. . . .

Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. . . .

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. . . .

Twenty-five years ago the top 1% had 12% of the income. Now they have 25% and the Republicans are dedicated to even greater concentration of wealth while the Democrats play along.

Quote of the Day: Fundamentalism

2011-04-05T09:17:00.000-05:00

To be a fundamentalist, you have to have a book. And you have to forget the book has a history.
R. Joseph Hoffmann

Why Is Paul's Honesty Taken for Granted?

2011-03-17T00:28:00.000-05:00

When someone claims to have encounters with supernatural beings and receive revelations from God, it seems to me that one of the possibilities that must be considered is that the claims are the product of an over active imagination. The person making the claims might be perfectly sincere, but he he might be delusional or he might be a pathological liar.

In the 19th century, Joseph Smith managed to convince many literate people that he had encountered a supernatural being and that he had received revelations from God. Some of his followers made similar claims. Most non-Mormons seem to think that Smith was a huckster or a lunatic. In the 1st century, many illiterate peasants became convinced that a supernatural being had made appearance to various people and that God had given revelations to some of the people who had witnessed those appearances. Nevertheless, I have never seen any serious discussion of the possibility that the resurrection was an invention of someone's imagination.

Persecution of Mormons vs. Persecution of Christians

2011-03-11T10:56:00.000-06:00

Apologists like to cite the willingness of early Christians to endure persecution as necessitating some sort of supernatural explanation for the spread of Christianity, but it seems to me that this willingness must be viewed in context. Although the persecution of early Christians was occasionally severe under the Roman Empire, it was sporadic and ad hoc. Many early Christian communities were probably undisturbed. Moreover, life for peasants and slaves within the Roman Empire was no bowl of cherries in the first place. Life expectancies were low, social mobility was unlikely, and the possibility of a brutal death was a fact of life. It is easy to see the attraction of a supportive community that taught that man could transcend a world filled with pain.

In fact, when you compare the choices available to nineteenth century Mormons with those available to first century Christians, I think that the sacrifices of the Mormons look pretty impressive. The people who followed Brigham Young out to Utah could have settled on fertile farmland in either Iowa or Illinois where the Indians had been largely subdued. Instead they chose to make a long trek to a much less promising region where the threat from hostile natives was much greater. Despite having seen their leader murdered, they chose hardship when there were many other attractive opportunities.

Joe Kernen: CNBC Jackass of the Day 3/10/2011

2011-03-10T09:29:00.000-06:00

Since my cable package added Bloomberg, I have been watching CNBC much less. However, I did catch Joe Kernen's interview with Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan today. Naturally, when Ryan cited a recent article by Alan Greenspan, Kernen did not ask why the Republican Congressman was looking for policy guidance from the man most responsible for the financial crisis. And of course, Kernen did not question the logic of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits in order to avoid cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Sticking it to Teachers

2011-02-22T08:30:00.000-06:00

Only five states do not allow collective bargaining rights for teachers. Their ACT/SAT rankings are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th

North Carolina – 49th

Georgia – 48th

Texas – 47th

Virginia – 44th

From Get Schooled with Maureen Downey.

Let's not forget Texas' new social studies curriculum:

Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation between church and state is flatly dismissed. From the earliest grades, students are pressed to uncritically celebrate the “free enterprise system and its benefits.” “Minimal government intrusion” is hailed as key to the early nineteenth-century commercial boom—ignoring the critical role of the state and federal governments in internal improvements and economic expansion. Native peoples are missing until brief references to nineteenth-century events. Slavery, too, is largely missing. Sectionalism and states’ rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories—the actual trigger for the sectional crisis—is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping; the term “Jim Crow” never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is only mentioned in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces.

From The Thomas Fordham Institute.

Lee Strobel and A.N. Sherwin-White

2011-02-03T16:16:00.000-06:00

I was gratified recently to learn that a post I wrote more than three years ago has generated sufficient interest that a conservative Christian named John Fraser thought it worth his while to attempt a refutation. My post was entitled The Apologists' Abuse of A.N.Sherwin and in it I examined the way in which Christian apologists have misquoted and misrepresented a late Oxford professor of Roman history who made some brief and very general comments about the historicity of the New Testament. Sherwin-White thought it likely that at the time the Gospels and Acts were written, the oral tradition concerning Jesus would not have been completely mythologized. Comparing the New Testament to the kind of sources that he dealt with when studying ancient Rome, he said "however strong the myth-forming tendency, the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail." Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament p. 191.

This does not seem like a terribly profound observation. Many New Testament scholars who are routinely vilified as liberals or skeptics, like Bart Ehrman, think that historians can make use of the New Testament in order to draw some historically reliable conclusions about things Jesus was likely to have said or done. I find myself more in sympathy with the scholars who think that the historical Jesus is unrecoverable for all practical purposes, but that is minority position even among liberal scholars. Given Sherwin-White's admission that gospels and Acts may contain "a deal of distortion," it may seem odd that he has been embraced as a champion by conservative Christian apologists like William Lane Craig and Lee Strobel, but that is indeed the case.

What so delights the likes of Craig and Strobel is some comments that Sherwin-White made about the rate at which legends accumulated in the ancient world. "Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition." RLSNT p. 195. These comments have frequently been cited as proof that the Gospels should be accepted as historically accurate accounts. For Strobel, Sherwin-White was the clincher in his unbiased quest to determine whether the gospels were the product of legend.

I had wanted to believe that the deification of Jesus was the result of legendary development in which well-meaning but misguided people slowly turned a wise sage into the mythological Son of God. That seemed safe and reassuring. After all, a roving apocalyptic preacher from the first century could make no demands on me. But while I went into my investigation thinking that this legendary explanation was intuitively obvious, I emerged convinced that it was totally without basis.

What clinched it for me was the famous study by A. N. Sherwin-White, the great classical historian from Oxford University, which William Lane alluded to. Sherwin-White meticulously examined the rate at which legend accrued in the ancient world. His conclusion: not even two full generations was enough time for legend to develop and to wipe out a solid core of historical truth,

Now consider the case of Jesus. Historically speaking, the news of his empty tomb, the eyewitness accounts of his post-Resurrection appearances and the conviction that he was indeed God's unique Son emerged virtually instantaneously.

The Case for Christ p. 264.

Since Sherwin-White said only that "the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail (emphasis added)," it would seem that the Oxford professor believed that falsification might still be partial, considerable, pervasive, or even predominant. Nothing he wrote would seem to justify Strobel's confidence that the stories of the empty tomb and the post-resurrection appearances were part of the historic core rather than falsification.

What I consider most dubious about Strobel's reliance on Sherwin-White is his claim that "Sherwin-White meticulously examined the rate at which legend accrued in the ancient world," which I assume is what Strobel is referring to as a "famous study." In fact, Sherwin-White's meticulous examination consists of a single anecdote that doesn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether the story of the empty tomb and the appearance accounts might be legends or myths.

Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition. A revealing example is provided by the story of the murder of the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus at the hands of Harmodius and Aristogeiton who became the pattern of all tyrannicides. The true story was that they assassinated Hipparchus in 514 B.C., but the tyranny lasted another four years before the establishment of the Athenian democracy. Popular opinion created a myth to the effect that Harmodius and Aristogeiton destroyed the tyranny and freed Athens. This was current in the mid-fifth century. Yet Herodotus, writing at that time, and generally taking the popular view of the establishment of democracy, gives the true version and not the myth about the death of Hipparchus. A generation later the more critical Thucydides was able to uncover a detailed account of exactly what happened on the fatal day in 514 B.C. It would have been natural and easy for Herodotus to give the mythical version. He does not do so because he had a particular interest in a greater figure that Harmodius or Aristogeiton, that is, Cleisthenes, the central person in the establishment of the democracy.

All this suggests that, however strong the myth-forming tendency, the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail even with a writer like Herodotus, who was naturally predisposed in favour of certain political myths, and whose ethical and literary interests were stronger than his critical faculty. The Thucydidean version is a salutary warning that even a century after a major event it is possible in a relatively small or closed community for a determined inquirer to establish a remarkably detailed account of a major event, by inquiry within the inner circle of the descendants of those concerned with the event itself . Not that one imagines that the authors of the Gospels set to work precisely like either Herodotus or Thucydides. But it can be maintained that those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolic and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material. It can also be suggested that it would be no harder for the disciples and their immediate successors to uncover detailed narratives of the actions and sayings of Christ with their closed community, than it was for Herodotus and Thucydides to establish the story of the great events of 520-480 B.C. For this purpose it matters little whether you accept the attribution of the Gospels to eyewitnesses or not.

RLSNT p. 195-96.

If I understand this anecdote correctly, in the mid-fifth century B.C., some Athenians gave Harmodius and Aristogeiton primary credit for the establishment of democracy because they had assassinated the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 B.C. In fact, Hipparchus was not the tyrant. His older brother Hippias was, and the tyranny continued for four more years after the death of Hipparchus until Hippias was overthrown by the Spartan king Cleomenes and the Cleisthenes of Athens. Cleisthenes was instrumental in the establishment of democracy. Herodotus and Thucydides managed to get the story right. According to Thucydides, Harmodius and Aristogiton had originally intended to kill Hippias, but changed targets because they believed he had been warned.

Interestingly, Sherwin-White doesn't say how long it took for the myth to arise, and as far as I can tell, neither Herodotus nor Thucydides specifically addresses how or when the story about Hipparchus being the last tyrant arose. Cleisthenes seems to have contributed to the legend himself by commissioning a statue honoring Harmodius and Aristogeiton as liberators. It is thought that Cleisthenes wanted the overthrow of tyranny to be seen as the work of the Athenian people rather than a product of Sparta's foreign intervention. Regardless of how the legend arose, it is hard to see how one example of an inaccurate story in ancient Athens sheds any light on whether or not the story of the empty tomb is a myth.

In my earlier posts I avoided any criticism of Sherwin-White himself, but I must confess that I am puzzled by the conclusions that he draws from that single incident. He says that "those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolic and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material." However, in the case of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, it seems that there may have been a deliberate attempt to rewrite the facts by some individuals for propaganda purposes. The true story was available to Herodotus and Thucydides because somebody else had their own reasons for seeing Cleisthenes get the credit he deserved or for undermining the legends about Harmodius and Aristotigen. It was not that the historical core somehow resisted the mythologizing tendency as the story was passed down in the oral tradition. It was that different stories were preserved in different lines of transmission by people with differing interests.

According to Sherwin-White, "it would be no harder for the disciples and their immediate successors to uncover detailed narratives of the actions and sayings of Christ within their closed community," but that really doesn't seem to take the differences in the two situations seriously. The overthrow of tyranny and the establishment of democracy in Athens was an event which drew the attention of many groups with divergent interests. Each group would be motivated, politically or otherwise, to preserve their particular version of the events. That is why the true story was available. Who would have preserved an oral tradition about Jesus that omitted the legendary and mythological elements? There is no reason to think that anyone other than those who proclaimed him the supernatural Son of God preserved any version of Jesus' life and teachings. If the inner circle of the closed community was composed of the myth-formers, where was the determined inquirer going to go to get the true story?

In any case, regardless of what one thinks of Sherwin-White's analysis of legendary accumulation in the ancient world, I don't see anything in it that begins to justify Lee Strobel's claim that the legendary explanation for the deification of Jesus is totally without basis. Even Sherwin-White admitted that "a deal of distortion can affect a story that is given literary form a generation or two after the events." John Frazer believes that I have abused poor Lee Strobel along with William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Josh McDowell, Norm Geisler and all the other apologists who have taken Sherwin-White out of context, but I was happy with my post when I wrote it three years ago, and I'm even happier to know that it still generates interest.

20" of Snow

2011-02-02T14:38:00.000-06:00

Quote of the Day: We're Still Screwed

2011-01-27T11:39:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, most of our political elite – both left and right – is still living in a land of illusions. They cannot even seriously discuss what would be required to bring our true fiscal position under control – remember that most of the recent damage to our collective balance sheet was done by big banks blowing themselves up. No one who refuses to confront the power of those banks can be taken seriously as a fiscal conservative.

Simon Johnson, The Baseline Scenario

To Hume is Ehrman

2011-01-16T17:58:00.000-06:00

There are countless blogs and websites (or maybe 46,700) that compare and contrast Bart Ehrman's argument that miracles are inherently the least probable historical explanation for any set of evidence with David Hume's Of Miracles. Amazingly however, no one else ever seems to have come up with the obvious bad pun.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (16): The Problem with the Sources

2011-01-14T07:58:00.000-06:00

Imagine trying to write a history of the first seventy-five years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints based only on the writings of Joseph Smith and his most devoted followers. If you took seriously the possibility that many of these writers were either deluded or dishonest to varying degrees, you might be able to come up with a tentative outline of who the leaders were, what the church believed, and a broad picture of how the church got from upstate New York to Utah. On the other hand, if you decided to take these writings at face value absent some proof that the accounts were less than truthful, you would probably come up with a narrative that was flat out wrong in countless major and minor details.

The problem with studying the origins of Christianity is that we only have a few documents from the first seventy-five years of its existence and those documents are overwhelmingly the product of men who were fanatically devoted to the new religion. Our earliest and most prolific source is a man who claims to have received direct revelations from God, but never met the putative founder of the religion and gives very little indication that he knows what that founder is supposed to have said or done during his life or even when or where that founder lived or died. While it is certainly possible that this man was scrupulously honest in everything he wrote, we would be fools if our analysis didn't incorporate the possibility that he was a lunatic, a pathological liar, or a charlatan.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (15): What Did Paul Know?

2011-01-13T10:56:00.000-06:00

James Hamman of Quodlibeta has posted links to some articles he wrote that were intended to debunk the theory that Jesus never existed. I was very interested in his list of “details about the historical Jesus” which he claims can be found in the undisputed letters of Paul. What strikes me is the degree to which Hamman needed to twist these passages in order to characterize them as statements about the historical Jesus that Paul had to have heard from his followers as opposed to statements about the resurrected and exalted Christ that Paul would have thought he learned by divine revelation. (The numbering has been added.)

1. Jesus was born in human fashion, as a Jew, and had a ministry to the Jews. (Galatians 4:4)

I find this misleading. When I think of Jesus “having a ministry,” I think of him tramping about Galilee with his disciples healing and teaching. Paul doesn’t seem to be talking about anything like that: “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.” Gal. 4:4-5.

2. Jesus was referred to as "Son of God." (1 Corinthians 1:9)

This is just plain wrong. Paul doesn’t say that the historical Jesus was Jesus was referred to as “Son of God.” Paul himself refers to Jesus Christ as the son of God. "God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." 1 Cor. 1:9. This isn’t something that Paul is indicating he knows about a historical person. This is something that Paul knows about the exalted Christ who revealed himself to Paul.

3. Jesus was a direct descendant of King David. (Romans 1:3)

Paul does say this.

4. Jesus prayed to God using the term "Abba." (Galatians 4:6)

I think this one is just plain wrong, too. Paul isn’t talking about anything the historical Jesus did. He is talking about what the spirit does in the heart of the believer. "Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'” Gal. 4:6.

5. Jesus expressly forbade divorce. (1 Corinthians 7:10)
6. Jesus taught that "preachers" should be paid for their preaching. (1 Corinthians 9:14)
7. Jesus taught about the end-time. (1 Thessalonians 4:15)

My problem with all three of these is that Paul doesn't claim that the historical Jesus taught these things during his earthly ministry nor does Paul ever claim to know about anything the historical Jesus said or did during his earthly ministry. On the other hand, Paul does claim to know things by divine revelation. Why should we think that Paul saw the historical Jesus rather than divine revelation as the source of these teachings.

8. Paul refers to Peter by the name Cephas (rock), which was the name Jesus gave to him. (1 Corinthians 3:22)

The truth is being stretched here. Paul refers to a man named Peter, but he never indicates that this man had any connection with the historical Jesus.

9. Jesus had a brother named James. (Galatians 1:19)

I won't quarrel with this although Paul refers to James as “the Lord’s brother” rather than “Jesus’ brother.”

10. Jesus initiated the Lord's Supper and referred to the bread and the cup. (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)

Paul does say this, although he claims to have received this from the Lord as opposed to learning about it from anyone who knew the historical Jesus and attended the meal.

11. Jesus was betrayed on the night of the Lord's Supper. (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)

This may reflect Paul's belief, although some scholars think that “handed over” is a more accurate translation than betrayed. Once again, Paul attributes his knowledge of this to revelation.

12. Jesus' death was related to the Passover Celebration. (1 Corinthians 5:7)

I think this is misleading. Paul says that Jesus is our Passover lamb, but he doesn't link the death of the historical Jesus to the dates on the calendar when the Jews celebrated the Passover.

13. The death of Jesus was at the hands of earthly rulers. (1 Corinthians 2:8)

Paul does say this, although he doesn’t tell us who those rulers were.

14. Jesus underwent abuse and humiliation. (Romans 15:3)

This seems like another long stretch. I don't see anything in this passage to make me think that Paul is referring to anything that happened to the historical Jesus. In fact, it looks to me like he is talking about things that will happen to Christians.

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.” 4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. Romans 15:1-4.

15. Jewish authorities were involved with Jesus' death. (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

More of less. Paul refers to the Jews to generally rather than the Jewish authorities and some scholars think this passage is an interpolation.

16. Jesus died by crucifixion. (2 Corinthians 13:4, et. al.)

Paul does say this.

17. Jesus was physically buried. (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Paul does say this.

According to Hannam, mythicism "is simply a bad hypothesis based on arguments from silence, special pleading, and an awful lot of wishful thinking." I think many mythicists are guilty of all these failings, but I have yet to see an attempted refutation that didn't engage in the same fallacies. I guess historicists believe in debunking fire with fire.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (14): The Earliest Source

2011-01-10T11:14:00.000-06:00

Suppose we came to Paul without any expectations. Suppose we simply tried to put together a picture of earliest Christianity based on our earliest source, i.e., not reading anything in Paul through the lens of later writings.

If all we had to go on were Paul’s writings, I don’t think that it would even occur to us that Christianity was predicated in any way on the teachings of a historical person named Jesus who lived in first century Palestine and who had disciples who passed those teachings along to others. Rather, we would think that Christianity was predicated on the teachings of a small group of men, the primary one of which was Paul, who claimed to have had an encounter with a heavenly being and claimed to have received divine revelations from or concerning that heavenly being. We might not think it all that different from the founding of Mormonism, i.e.,Joseph Smith claimed to encountered the Angel Moroni and received revelations. Like Smith’s Moroni, Paul’s Christ had once been a man who walked the earth, but neither Paul nor his contemporaries had known him personally and what they knew about him when he was a man was only known by revelation.

It is true that Paul talks about knowing other apostles, however, Paul never describes them in terms that would lead us to believe that they had had been disciples of an itinerant apocalyptic preacher named Jesus who had recently tramped about Galilee teaching and healing. If we only had Paul to go on, I think we would assume that these were men who were believers because, like Paul, they had experienced appearances of the risen exalted Christ. Without something else to indicate that Paul knew when and where the man Jesus lived or died or what he said and did during his life, I don’t think we would interpret the reference to James as “the Lord’s brother” as indicating a biological relationship.

Of course Paul is not our only source and it is entirely reasonable to try to make sense of what he wrote in light to what others wrote. Nevertheless, Paul is our earliest source and in many ways our best source so I think it makes sense to think about the picture we get when he is allowed to stand alone. Moreover, many of the early sources other than the gospels seem to paint the same picture that Paul does.

The question that causes me to remain agnostic about the existence of the historical Jesus is this: Do we accept as historical any other person where the earliest and best source seems to point so exclusively to a mythical or legendary figure?

I Like to Think I'm Smart, but . . .

2011-01-09T19:55:00.000-06:00

I took down the Christmas tree today. It is an artificial tree that we have had for many years. I keep it in the basement in two very large boxes. The boxes are not terribly heavy but they are very awkward to maneuver up the stairs and around the corners into the kitchen, the hallway, and then finally to the living room. I invariably knock things off shelves and tables that I pass and the boxes pop open spilling branches on the floor. The same thing happens when I take the tree down and return it to the basement.

Two years ago, as I stood in the basement dreading the prospect of carrying the boxes upstairs and considering whether I should call my son to help me, an amazing thought occurred to me. Why not just take the branches out of the box and carry them upstairs? It only took me five trips, which is just one more than I would make with the boxes since I would return them to the basement until I was ready to take down the tree. The reduction in frustration and aggravation paid for the effort of that extra trip many times over.

As I carried the branches downstairs today and packed them back in the boxes, I was still amazed that I struggled with those boxes for fifteen years before I hit upon such an obvious alternative.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T12:10:00.000-06:00

Many years ago, when my kids were little, we visited my parents in California for Christmas. When we went to mass, my mother complained about how hard it was to find a pew because of all the people who only showed up on Christmas. I did not tell her that I was one of those people. Ever since then, I have attended the earliest available mass on Christmas morning. It is easy to find a seat and the priest doesn't use his sermon as an opportunity to reach those Catholics that he knows he won't see again for another year. Everybody is happy to see anybody who shows up. That is the reason for the season for me.

Does the Resurrection Make Sense of the Facts?

2010-12-19T13:41:00.000-06:00

I ran across the following statement at Victor Reppert's dangerous idea blog:

If you don't believe in the Resurrection, then I think there are a bunch of inconvenient facts out there that are hard to make sense of.

Reppert doesn't list the "inconvenient" facts in this particular post, but I would guess that they are the usual facts cited by Christian apologists, e.g., the story of the women finding the empty tomb, the apostles belief that Jesus had appeared to them, the conversion of Paul, the willingness of the apostles to die for their beliefs, the rapid spread of Christianity.

Assuming arguendo that these are really facts, it is hard to make sense of them to the extent that they violate the normal patterns of cause and effect that we observe in the world around us. For example, people normally don't invent stories for propaganda purposes if the stories don't advance their agenda. Therefore, we should expect the evangelists to invent the story of women finding the empty tomb because making women the primary witnesses would have undercut the story in first century Jewish culture. It is hard to make sense of the appearance stories because Jesus appeared to multiple individuals at the same time and people don't normally share hallucinations. It is hard to make sense of the willingness of the apostles to die for their beliefs because people normally are not willing to die for something that they know not to have happened. In every instance, the reason that it is hard to make sense of these stories is because things happen in them that don't follow the usual patterns.

The resurrection of course does not follow the usual pattern either and most Christian apologists acknowledge this, however, they insist that we must not dismiss the possibility of a supernatural being who can interfere with those natural patterns of cause and effect that we observe. Once we allow for this possibility, the Christian apologist insists that the resurrection makes sense of all the "inconvenient" facts.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that if we allow for the possibility of supernatural interference with the laws of nature that we observe, then we no longer have any basis to say any ancient story is any harder to make sense of then any other ancient story. If we don't think that the patterns we observe act consistently at all times and places, then there is nothing that doesn't make sense in a story that undercuts a storyteller's agenda, in shared hallucinations, or in people willing to die for a lie. We can say that every story makes sense, or perhaps, that the notion of making sense becomes moot.

Christian apologists demand that every possible explanation for the gospel stories be evaluated according to the normal patterns of cause and effect that we observe in the world. That is, every possible explanation but one. They insist that we ignore those patterns when we evaluate the possiblity that Jesus really rose from the dead. I don't see how this makes sense of anything.

FCIC Republicans "We Can't Handle the Truth"

2010-12-17T22:31:00.000-06:00

The Republicans members on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have decided that they can't be bothered with actually figuring out why the global financial system nearly collapsed in 2008 if they might have to acknowledge that the incentives of the free markets might actually lead to perverse results upon occasion. Instead they have decided to stick with blaming the government and liberals for everything that goes wrong anywhere in the world. In this case, the Republican members of the FCIC have issued their own report on the financial crisis that absolves Wall Street and places the blame for the housing bubble on the Community Redevelopment Act, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

The word "deregulation" is not found in the Republican report. There is no mention of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which prevented the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from undertaking any regulation of over-the-counter derivatives like credit default swaps. There is no mention of the SEC's decision in 2004 to exempt Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley from net capitalization rules permitting them to increase their leverage rations to previously unknown levels. There is no mention of the repeal of Glass Steagall. There is no the hands-off philosophy that guided the Federal Reserve Board under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan.

For a nice summary of the issues to which the Republicans closed their eyes in an "exercise in willful ignorance," see 10 Questions for GOP Members of Financial Crisis Inquiry by Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture.

Franken on the Tax Compromise

2010-12-15T10:34:00.000-06:00

If this is the prelude of a permanent extension of the Bush tax breaks for the super-wealthy, we're in big trouble. We'll lose our ability to make the investments we need to grow our way out of long-term budget deficits: education, infrastructure, and research and development. And I am taking the president at his word that he will fight harder to put an end to these wasteful tax breaks in 2012 than he did in 2010.

Al Franken on his decision to vote for Obama's tax compromise.

I think that Franken's heart is in the right place and he seems like a smart guy, but I don't think that there is any "if" about it. Moreover, I cannot imagine any reason why Obama would fight harder in 2012 than he fought in 2010.

My Congressman is a Twit

2010-12-10T11:59:00.000-06:00

On December 6, Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam, along with Michelle Bachmann and other members of The Congressional Prayer Caucus sent a critical letter to President Obama. The problem? Obama doesn't refer to "God" often enough.

[D]uring three separate events this fall, you mentioned that we have inalienable rights, but consistently failed to mention the source of our rights. The Declaration of Independence definitively recognizes God, our Creator, as the source of our rights. Omitting the word 'Creator' once was a mistake; but twice establishes a pattern.

According to the Prayer Caucus, Obama is "doing a disservice to the people [he] represent[s]" and is "casting aside an integral part of society.

I suppose this means that the Framers of the Constitution also did a disservice to the American people since they didn't mention "God" or "the Creator" even once. I wonder what this gaggle of twits would say if Obama started making references to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," which is after all, where the Declaration of Independence grounds those "unalienable rights." No doubt they would howl like banshees.

The Caucus was particularly upset that Obama referred to "e pluribus unum" as our national motto. No matter that "e pluribus unum" is in fact a motto and it appears on the Seal of the United States that was adopted by Act of Congress in 1782. Apparently, we can throw out the will and sentiment of the Founding Fathers in favor of a Congress filled with reactionary Republicans that declared "In God We Trust" to be our national motto in 1956.

Of course the Caucus was eager to appeal to the Founders when they could quote mine something useful.

John Adams said, "It is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand." If Adams was right, by making these kinds of statements, you are removing one of the cornerstones of our secure freedom. We unravel the tapestry of freedom that birthed America.

That's right! By citing a motto that served the country perfectly well for 174 years, Obama is unraveling "the tapestry of freedom."

It is always interesting to track down the source of the Religious Right's favorite quotes. One might think that the Adams quote comes from his Inauguration Address or a speech to Congress. In fact it comes from a personal letter to his cousin Zabdiel Adams who was a minister and the context is quite interesting.

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies. You cannot, therefore, be more pleasantly or usefully employed than in the way of your profession, pulling down the strong-holds of Satan. (emphasis added)

So it is Obama's failure to heed a letter in which Adams was buttering up his cousin that is going to destroy our country.

The Caucus claims that in his statements, Obama "does not accurately reflect America and serves to undercut an important part of of our history." An ironic accusation from group that is throwing American history down the memory hole as fast as it can.

Tax Cuts and the War on Christmas

2010-12-07T12:17:00.000-06:00

The annual distraction has begun: conservatives screaming about the War on Christmas. Anything to distract the base from the fact that the Republican who campaigned as deficit hawks have extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans.

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Did the Disciples Hallucinate?

2010-11-22T13:58:00.000-06:00

According to Christian apologists, it is unreasonable to think that the post resurrections appearances of Christ to the disciples were hallucinations because the relevant scientific literature contains no examples of shared hallucinations. Of course the relevant scientific literature also contains no examples of people rising from the dead, but if the skeptic points this out he is accused of anti-supernatural bias.

Mormonism and Christian Apologetics

2010-11-18T03:54:00.000-06:00

I just finished Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven which tells the true story of a fundamentalist Mormon in 1984 who believed that he had received a revelation from God instructing him to kill his brother’s wife and baby daughter. Apparently, the fundamentalist’s wife had not responded favorably when he decided that he should start practicing polygamy and his sister-in-law had encouraged his wife to take the children and leave him. The fundamentalist was assisted by another brother who was convinced of the validity of the revelation. The story is set against the backdrop of the strange history of the Mormon church going back to Joseph Smith’s first encounter with the Angel Moroni in Palmyra, New York in the 1820’s.

The history of the Mormon church provides an interesting test case for many of the arguments that Christian apologists make.

If Jesus hadn’t actually been raised from the dead, the Romans or the Jews would have produced his body and that would have nipped Christianity in the bud.

There has never been any shortage of people to point out the absurdity of the Joseph Smith’s claim that the American Indians are descended from tribes of Israelites who migrated to the New World hundreds of years prior to the birth of Christ. Nevertheless, there has never been any shortage of Mormons who would happily dismiss such criticisms as deceptions of the devil. The notion that religious enthusiasms are subject to logical refutation is not supported by the evidence.

The rapid spread of Christianity couldn't have happened if it's historical claims had simply been invented.

It has taken less than two centuries for Mormonism to grow to almost 14,000,000 adherents. Although we do not have accurate figures for Christianity's growth its first 200 years, it is hard to believe that Mormonism compares unfavorably.

Nobody knowingly dies for a lie. Early Christians would not have willingly endured persecution if the resurrection was a hoax.

Early Mormons followed Joseph Smith from New York to Ohio to Missouri. In Missouri, the governor called out the militia to exterminate the Mormons or drive them from the state. Vigilantes killed many Mormons and the Mormons moved to Navoo, Illinois where Smith was arrested and lynched. Nevertheless, many Mormons willingly endured great hardships to follow Brigham Young. If willingness to endure hardship and risk persecution is proof of a religion's claims, then it is reasonable to believe that the Garden of Eden really was somewhere in Missouri.

We have no record of any of Christianity's early critics disputing that Jesus was a real person or that his tomb was empty.

If we only had the records preserved by the Mormons, we would have a much different picture of the Church's history than we have today. For example, when the Mormons slaughtered 120 settlers in the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, the official LDS position was that the Paiute Indians were responsible. If not for independent investigations establishing Mormon responsibility, the church would have continued to deny it. If we only had Mormon sources, we would believe that the LDS had abandoned polygamy completely in 1890 when in fact its leaders continued to take multiple wives for many years thereafter. Since the earliest records of Christianity are the ones that the Catholic Church chose to preserve, we cannot take much comfort from the fact that we lack records of people who challenged orthodox beliefs.

How Stories Grow

2010-11-17T11:20:00.000-06:00

In Galatians 1:15-19, Paul describes what he did after his conversion:

But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus. Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother.

Paul doesn't say what he and Cephas talked about, but many Christian apologists think that Cephas gave Paul the creed that is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

I do not personally find this argument persuasive. When Paul says that he delivered what he received, I think he is talking about the message of salvation that he received by revelation from God, not a particular creedal formulation of that message that he received from Cephas. I think this is consistent with the way Paul uses the word "received" in other places. I think that Paul would have known the elements of the creed before he went to Jerusalem since he had already been preaching for three years, but I don't think we have any evidence of when or where those elements were put into the particular creed found in 1 Corinthians 15.

Many people do not share my reservations about the apologists arguments. I frequently come across people who assert that Paul got the creed when he visited Jerusalem as if it was an incontrovertible fact. When I point out the fact that Paul never says this, they will cite apologists like William Lane Craig or Gary Habermas or they will simply assert that it is the consensus position of biblical scholars. I think that mostly they accept it because it "makes sense" that Paul learned the creed on his first visit to Jerusalem.

I think this is probably a very good illustration of the way that the stories in the gospels may have grown over time. When people pass along stories, they add details that make sense and those details are accepted as part of the story. In our literate culture, it is possible to look at what Paul actually wrote, but that doesn't prevent people from accepting added details as facts. In an oral culture, there would be no way to determine which details in a story were original and which had been added in the retelling because they made sense.

It is very easy to imagine how details could be added incrementally to create a story. For example, Paul never says anything about the empty tomb or how Jesus was buried in any of his letters. For all we know, Paul might have believed that the Romans had thrown Jesus' body into a common grave for executed criminals. However, it would have made sense that Jesus' body was no longer in the grave because Paul said that Jesus was physically resurrected. Someone who was retelling the story of the appearances that he heard from Paul might simply have added the empty tomb. Once you've got the empty tomb in the story, it would have made sense that someone had seen it empty. In order for someone to find the tomb empty, it must have been a specific tomb rather than a common grave. In order for a crucified criminal to receive an honorable burial, it makes sense that there would have been a prominent person who had some political pull but was nonetheless sympathetic to Jesus. Before you know it, you have the story of Joseph of Arimathea.

It fascinates me that Bible believers can so easily accept as fact the content of Paul's conversations on his visit to Jerusalem when it fits the narrative that they want to believe, but they recoil in such horror at the notion that the stories recorded in the gospels might be the product of a similar series of embellishments.

Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Crappy Little Plastic Toys

2010-11-07T20:04:00.000-06:00

America has the highest obesity rate in the world, but Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman seems to think that there is a constitutional prohibition on any government action that would infringe upon the right of corporations to exploit the poor decisions that human beings make.

Now, there are many places where the government ought to be: between a citizen and a mugger, between the polluter and the sky, between us all and al Qaida. But the space between a diner's hand and a diner's mouth is not one of them.

Chapman is up in arms over a San Francisco regulation that would prohibit McDonald’s from providing free toys with Happy Meals that are loaded with fat, sugar and calories.

I don’t know whether the San Francisco rule is a good idea or not, but I don’t understand why McDonald’s right to exploit poor parenting decisions which are harmful to the health of children trumps all other concerns.

Can Evidence Ever Prove a Miracle?

2010-11-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

The reason we think that fingerprints on a gun might tell us who used that gun to commit a murder is that we think that we understand the natural processes by which the unique patterns in the skin on the human finger might come to appear on another object and, just as importantly, we think that those natural process are unvarying. If we thought that those patterns just appeared randomly on objects or if we thought they appeared by divine fiat, we could not say that fingerprints on murder weapon constituted evidence of anything.

Unfortunately, miracles don't follow natural processes and they do not occur uniformly. We cannot claim that the Shroud of Turin constitutes evidence of the resurrection of Christ because we have no idea what happens when a human being is supernaturally raised from the dead. We have no basis to assert that any particular piece of evidence is more likely the result of a miracle than a natural cause because we have no idea what kind of evidence a miracle is likely to produce.

Christian apologists will claim that this is simply an anti-supernatural presupposition that skeptics bring to the table, but that is not where the problem lies. The problem lies in the logic of the "inference" tool that we use to draw conclusions from evidence. We infer anything from any particular piece of evidence without some knowledge of the way in which particular causes produce such evidence.

We Are So Screwed

2010-11-05T08:17:00.000-05:00

I would just go back to the way in which the market was muscled under the GSE’s [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] to do zero down payment loans because the presumption was that we wanted to get everyone into a house.

Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California who is hoping to become Chairman of the Financial Services Committee on the grounds of his knowledge and experience.

Those poor bankers. They're the real victims. They didn't want to generate huge fees and bonuses by securitizing crap mortgages. They were "muscled" by the government.

Republican candidates may have ranted and raved about bank bailouts, but anyone who thinks that the new congress won't be as big a lackey for Wall Street as the Democrats is delusional.

Reflections on the Election

2010-11-04T08:13:00.000-05:00

A great day for the Republicans, but I am not so sure that it was such a great day for the Tea Party. A couple of very vulnerable Democrats, Nevada Senator Harry Reid and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, managed to keep their positions because voters were scared off by Tea Party opponents Sharon Angle and Bill Brady (although the Illinois race is still in doubt). The Democrats managed to hold on to Colorado where I would have expected the Tea Party to do well. Rand Paul won in Kentucky but he did it by playing ball with the establishment Republicans. Even in Caribou Barbie's backyard, Tea Party favorite Joe Miller is still in battle with a write-in establishment Republican.

Cutting Other People's Benefits

2010-11-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

The Big Picture has an interesting post that notes that the above average growth in the use of food stamps in some of the states where the Tea Party is strongest and individual counties that voted decisively for Bush in 2004 and McCain in 2008.

Misanthropic Quote of the Day

2010-10-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

"Obviously I don't have any knowledge of what motivated his postings, none of us do."

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick on why student Declan Sullivan tweeted "Holy f*** holy f*** this is terrifying" before he was killed when high winds knocked over the lift from which he was filming football practice.

Really? I tend to think that there are many, many people who have no doubt whatsoever why Sullivan tweeted that. Perhaps Swarbrick has no knowledge of why he was sent up there in those conditions and perhaps he doesn't know whether the conditions were different at the time the decision to send him up was made, but it strikes me as shockingly callous to suggest that there is anything puzzling about the terror Sullivan felt before his life ended.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (14): Paul's Silence

2010-10-25T12:23:00.000-05:00

Upon what did the Galatians, Romans, Corinthians, and Thessalonians believe their faith was founded. Did they think (1) that the gospel message was based on the teachings of a first century itinerant Rabbi that had been passed along by the original disciples who had been taught by that Rabbi, or did they think (2) that the gospel message was something that had been directly revealed to Paul by a divine being?   If we only had Paul's writings to go on, we would have to conclude that Paul's revelation were the source of his followers' beliefs.

I have raised this point numerous times with both liberal and conservative Christian who have offered various reason why Paul's letters never disclose the fact that the source of the gospel he preached was the teachings of the historical Jesus rather than the revelations of the divine Christ. The most common explanation boils down to "It just never came up." According to this line of thinking, the epistles Paul wrote were directed towards issues that never required him to say anything to indicate when or where Jesus lived or what he said or did during his life. Another explanation lies in the competitive tension between Paul and Peter. Paul was trying to establish his authority in various theological disputes with Peter and acknowledging that Peter and others had been taught directly by Jesus would have diminished Paul's standing. I don't find either explanation terribly convincing, but even if I did, they would still leave a basic problem unaddressed.

These explanations leave open the possibility that Paul and his followers did believe that Jesus was a recently deceased miracle working teacher, but they don't give us any reason to think they did. Paul letters are the earliest Christian writings and our best source for understanding the early church.   They tell us the kind of questions that were in dispute in the early church, and the kind of arguments that were considered dispositive of those questions. We shouldn't expect these letters to include absolutely everything that Paul and his followers believed about Jesus, but for those beliefs not reflected in the letters, we need some reason to think they were a part of the early faith.

One reason to think that Paul and his followers believed something would be to show it to be a generally held belief during their time. After all, Paul acknowledges that there were others preaching the gospel at the same time he was. If a belief can be shown to held by Paul's contemporaries within the Christian community, it would seem likely that it was part of Paul's faith, too.

When we look at the other early epistles, we don't find much evidence of others thinking that Jesus was a first century teacher whose message was spread by his original disciples. Like the Pauline epistles, the pseudo-Pauline and the Johannine epistles, along with Hebrews and James are focused on the supernatural risen Christ to the almost complete exclusion of a human Jesus who actually walked the earth. Only when we get to later epistles like 1 Timothy and 2 Peter do we get any indication that people known to the authors had personal knowledge of the things Jesus did prior to his crucifixion.

The gospels of course do describe the human Jesus as someone who initiate the proclamation of the gospel, worked signs and wonders, and taught his original disciples the meaning of his life, and coming death and resurrection, but they are nonetheless problematic. The date of their composition cannot be established with any confidence. Their authors are unknown. The place of their composition and their intended audiences are unknown. The specific questions that they were intended to resolve are much less certain than those addressed by the epistles. The extent to which they were meant to be understood historically rather than theologically is not clear.   Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the lack of unambiguous external references to the gospels until well into the 2nd century. Even if we accept dates for their composition that are nearer to Paul's time, we cannot establish that they were generally accepted or in general circulation until much later.

Even if we conclude that Paul believed that Jesus had been a flesh and blood human who walked the earth prior to his crucifixion, there does not seem to be any way to establish that Paul or his followers thought of him as the 1st century preacher described in the gospels. Paul could have thought of Jesus as someone who had lived at a indeterminate time and place like Job in the Old Testament.   Paul does tell us that he knew others to whom the risen Christ had earlier appeared, so it might be reasonable to think that he believed others had received earlier revelations, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Paul thought that anyone he knew had received any teachings from the human Jesus during an earthly ministry.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (13): James the Brother of the Lord

2010-10-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

I have been having another interesting discussion with Dr. James McGrath of Butler University on the question of whether our earliest Christian sources support the idea that Jesus was a recently deceased authoritative teacher. I don't think they do for the following reasons:

The earliest epistles don't indicate when or where Jesus lived or died.
The earliest epistles don't indicate that any members of the believing community knew Jesus personally.
The earliest epistles never refer to any teachings that Jesus delivered during his earthly ministry.
The earliest epistles never discuss the meaning of anything Jesus did during his earthly ministry.

The only reference that would seem to establish that Paul thought that his own contemporaries in the community had known Jesus personally is found in Galatians 1:19-20. "Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother." Obviously, if Paul thought that James was Jesus' biological brother, he must have thought that Jesus had lived recently and been known to people within the community. Dr. McGrath seems to rely heavily on this point.

Dr. McGrath also cites two other passages in our discussion. In Romans 1:3, Paul writes "concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh," and in Galatians 4:4 he writes "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law." These verses indicate that Paul thought of Jesus as a human being who walked the earth, but give no indication of when or where that might have happened. They don't provide us any evidence that Jesus was any less mythical or legendary than Adam and Eve.

Given the lack of any other reference that would establish that Jesus was a contemporary of others in the early church, it seems to me that we must consider the possibility that Paul was referring to a spirtual relationship between Jesus and James rather than a biological one. For example, when Paul lists Christ's appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:6-7, he mentions one appearance to "brothers" and another appearance to "apostles." Perhaps these were two different groups within the early church. Perhaps what Paul meant in Galatians 1:5 is that he met with Peter who was one of the apostles and James who was one of the brothers.

Dr. McGrath criticized me for "working hard" to find alternative meanings for the text, but I don't think his criticism holds water. Biblical scholars regularly consider the possibility that a less obvious interpretation may be the better one if the more obvious interpretation does not fit with the rest of the author's writings. Given the fact that nothing else in Paul indicates that he thought that anyone he knew had personally known Jesus, and the fact that Paul routinely uses the word "brother" to indicate a spiritual relationship, it doesn't seem like any great stretch to conclude that maybe Paul wasn't referring to a biological relationship here. The church itself began doing so before too long when many of the Apostolic fathers concluded that Mary must have been a virgin for her entire life.

I also raised the possibility that the text of Galatians had been corrupted. There were 150 years of copying between the time Paul wrote it and our earliest manuscript. For all we know some well-meaning scribe copying a manuscript of Galatians in 150 A.D. added "the Lord's brother" in order to clarify which James Paul was talking about.

Raising the issue of interpolations with a biblical scholar can be like waving a red cape in front of bull and Dr. McGrath's response did not surprise me.

But if you want to play the unrestrained emendation game, I can grant your emendations and simply posit earlier excisions of verses that seemed to make Jesus seem too human.

If we had different evidence, we'd draw different conclusions. But mainstream scholarship is about making sense of the evidence we have, not emending it so that it doesn't inconveniently provide evidence, however minimal, that runs counter to the beliefs we already hold.

I understand that we have to make sense of the evidence we have, but we also have to acknowledge its limitations. Some very eminent textual critics think that it doesn't even make sense to talk about what the original manuscripts contained because we don't have them. The best we can do is talk about the understanding of the communities that produced the manuscripts that we do have. We have to be circumspect in asserting certainty about what the "original" meaning of any passage was.

Moreover, I don't think that I am suggesting "unrestrained" emendations. Given the length of time between the composition of the originals and our earliest manuscripts, the probability that any specific verse was altered can't be trivial even if it may be small. Because it is small any interpretation that depends on hypothesizing multiple emendations must necessarily be speculative. However, if positing a single emendation radically changes the evidence for a particular interpretation, I would think it must be taken seriously.

More importantly, I don't need to rely on the possibility that the text was corrupted. I merely have to posit that a less obvious reading rather than a more obvious reading is correct. When I do, the case for a recently deceased Jesus who had been known personally to the earliest community gets very shaky, very quickly. The possibility of corruption simply adds an additional level of uncertainty. Surely my agnosticism is not completely unwarranted.

The Effects of Fact Free Education

2010-10-21T13:10:00.000-05:00

The Hill reports that the Center for Disease Control, found that the lowest rate of teen pregnancies are found in states that have not gone in for "abstinence education," while the highest rates are found in those that do.

Why I am Agnostic About HJ (12): The Banned Mormon Cartoon

2010-10-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

Dr. James McGrath of Butler University claims that the origin of Christianity is better explained by the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth was an actual historical person rather than the hypothesis that Jesus was a purely mythical creature.    He often cites mythicist's inability to explain how first century Jews came to believe that the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament had been fulfilled in the person of a crucified criminal if in fact there were not an actual crucified person who was believed to be the Messiah.

Conservative Christian apologists make a similar argument to defend not just the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, but the historicity of all the events described in the gospels including the actually physical resurrection of Jesus. They claim that a literal intepretation of the gospels is necessary to adequately explain the conversion of Paul, the willingness of the first Christians to die for their believe in the resurrection, the empty tomb, and various other elements of the gospels which they claim are "facts."

These arguments came to my mind as I watched a video known as "The Banned Mormon Cartoon" which purports to describe the beliefs of the Latter Day Saints. H/T to Ken Pulliam at Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity.

(I say "purports" because the cartoon was produced by an ex-Mormon Christian in order to discredit Mormonism. As such, it exaggerates and distorts many Mormon beliefs. For example, from what I can gather, it was never official LDS doctrine that Jesus had three wives or that Elohim physically had sex with Jesus' mother Mary. Nevertheless, it seems that most of the stuff in the cartoon has been believed or taught by at least some Mormons at one time or another even if it is not presently LDS doctrine.)

What is the explanation for a church based on such beliefs growing to more than twelve million members in less that two centuries?   There is some evidence that upstate New York in the early nineteenth century was particularly fertile ground for innovative religious beliefs. Perhaps sociologists and psychologists could tell us something about the strength of Mormon communities today and the hold they exert upon adherents. Perhaps as one commenter on Pulliam's blog suggested, Rational Choice Theory provides the best framework to understand the phenomenon.

One place I do not think I would look for an answer is in the actual historical reality of anything that Joseph Smith believed or taught.   I don't think that the origin of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints is in any way explained by the historicity of Jesus' appearance in America shortly after his resurrection, or by Moroni burying golden plates in the fifth century A.D. which described the history of Jesus' followers in America, or by Joseph Smith actually finding those plates and translating them by sticking his head in a hat and reading them with seer stones.

By the same token, I wonder whether positing some historical reality behind the gospel stories actually adds anything to our understanding of the origins and growth of Christianity in the first two centuries. The example of Mormonism demonstrates that a religion can enjoy phenomenal growth among reasonably advanced people regardless of the plausibility of any of its historical claims. I cannot help but think that the best explanation for the origin of Christianity lies in the sociological and psychological susceptibilities of its first century adherents, not in the historicity of the things they believed.

Quote of the Day

2010-10-04T09:39:00.000-05:00

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

Matt Taibi in The Rolling Stone

I Think We Are Screwed.

2010-09-30T13:14:00.000-05:00

Barry Ritholtz wrote a post at the Big Picture on Monday titled The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations which resonated with me as I read an article in The Economist concerning the banking industry's opposition to Elizabeth Warren as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Ms Warren faces two main criticisms: that she lacks experience of how the financial industry works, and that she is predisposed to seeing the big banks as devious. She has talked of “tricks and traps” in the fine print of contracts, of Wall Street as an “old boys’ club”, and of the middle class as having been served up to financial firms “as the turkey at the Thanksgiving dinner”.

Has it really come to this? Are Wall Street lobbyists so powerful that they can veto the appointment of a regulator simply because she is not inclined to take its assertions at face value? We are in this mess because the prevailing regulatory policy for the last thirty years has been to the financial industry's judgment. Unfortunately, the industry has become so powerful that it will not be possible to appoint regulators who will do anything about it.

I cannot help but wonder where the Tea Party is? Everyday I hear some wingnut on the right railing about the debt that the government has incurred in bailing out the banks. How about a little outrage at the banks that have completely captured the regulators?

Fannie and Freddie Didn't Do It

2010-09-22T11:08:00.000-05:00

Free market ideologues refuse to acknowledge that it was a lack of government regulation rather than too much government regulation that caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Instead, they claim that government policy forced banks to make loans to borrowers who were not creditworthy. Their primary boogie men are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored enterprises that facilitated mortgage lending to low and middle income Americans. However, any rational analysis of the evidence will lead to the conclusion that Fannie and Freddie, however poorly they might have been run as businesses, were casualties of the crisis rather than its perpetrators.

As Professor Karl Smith of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte writes, "The proper question is not: What story is consistent with my general philosophy or worldview? The proper questions is: What story is consistent with the facts?"

The wave of housing price increases was kicked off by changes in private label securitization. These changes left Fannie and Freddie with a smaller market share and lower absolute level of securitizations. Fannie and Freddie attempted to adjust their basic business practices to stay competitive in bubble markets and among aggressive borrowers.

These adjustment left Fannie and Freddie exposed to a large decline in housing prices. This is exactly what happened and Fannie and Freddie reaped enormous losses because of their exposure.

Had Fannie and Freddie stuck to their traditional role of guaranteeing low value traditional loans rather than trying to stay competitive in bubble areas their losses would have been substantially less.

In short, attempting to subsidize the American dream for low and moderate income families may be a fundamentally bad policy. However, it does not appear to be either the origin of the housing bubble or the source of Fannie and Freddie’s trouble.

Reprinted at The Big Picture.

Quote of the Day

2010-09-21T13:31:00.000-05:00

From my favorite financial blog, Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture:

I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are.

Ritholtz's blog consistently provides objective analysis of how the economy got where it is and the prospects for getting somewhere else. Anyone interested in cutting through partisan bullshit explanations for the financial crisis would be well-served to start with Causation Analysis: What “But Fors” Caused the Crisis?

13 Bankers

2010-09-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday on CNBC, economist Steve Liesman and blowhard Rick Santelli were discussing the current state of the economy and Santelli proclaimed "The question isn't how we got here. The question is the best way to move forward." Just as George Bush never wanted to play "the blame game" by looking at the screw ups that contributed to 911, Katrina, the War in Iraq, and the financial meltdown, Santelli doesn't care to consider why the economy is in the shape it is today. The reason is simple, Santelli is an Ayn Rand loving libertarian who thinks that markets should be left free to work without government and he has no interest in discussing the fact that this ideology is precisely what led to the crisis in the first place.

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson and James Kwak is an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to understand how we got to where we are. Simon Johnson is a former chief economist with the International Monetary Fund. In that role, he had the chance to observe third world oligarchies whose financial systems were looted by government insiders and their cronies. Before the IMF would assist such countries it demanded real reforms in their banking systems and it required that the costs of those reforms fall upon those who had caused the problems, or at least upon some of those who had caused the problems. In the United States, however, the mega-banks that caused the financial crisis have for the most part emerged bigger and more powerful than ever.

Unlike the third world countries where oligarchies control government policy through corruption, the mega-banks built their power in large part by selling the laissez-faire ideology that less regulation is always better and that any financial innovation that succeeds in the market is necessarily good for the economy. Of course the revolving door between Wall Street and the regulators combined with generous campaign contributions didn't hurt, but in large measure, Wall Street was allowed do run wild without government interference because the conventional wisdom on both sides of the aisle among Congressman, Senators, regulators, and Presidential administrations was that what was good for Wall Street was good for America.

Republican Strategist Wants to Push Down the Middle Class

2010-09-19T00:22:00.000-05:00

Is it my imagination or are Republicans giving each other a lot more crap then they usually do? Tea Party candidates Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle have been getting flack from establishment Republicans and last Thursday on the Fox Business Channel, former GOP Senator Al D'Amato ripped into Republican strategist Jack Burkman for being a "nasty racist." The exchange came in a discussion of what to do about the Post Office after Burkman commented that "most of these guys working in the Post Office should be driving cabs, and I think we should stop importing labor from Nigeria and Ethiopia. That's the skill level." D'Amato called this "racist bullshit" and suggested that Burkman have his mouth washed out.

While I agree that Burkman is a racist, I was even more interested in what he had to say when the host offered him the last word on the subject:

If you want to have the debate, the reality is that many in the American quote-unquote middle, like postal workers, are really unskilled labor who should have been pushed down for market reasons but because of union and government pressures, we import labor at the bottom and we keep these people here. That’s a very true statement.

Burkman doesn't think that postal workers or tax drivers belong in the middle class. They shouldn't aspire to jobs with which they can support their families or jobs that offer health care or jobs that offer the potential to retire in anything other than abject poverty. They especially shouldn't expect to find such jobs mooching off the government. The middle class and above should be reserved for people who contribute something valuable to society such as lobbyists like Burkman who petition the government for favors on behalf of wealthy clients.

When I "googled" Burkman after watching this clip, I was mildly surprised not to find an interview in which he discussed the profound effect that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged had on him as a teenager. I suspect that he read the book and loved it. I was interested to find him on a list of "Top Christian Activists" as a result of his lobbying efforts on behalf of The Family Research Council. Apparently pushing people out of the middle class is in no way inconsistent with Christian family values.

God Will Make Some Magic

2010-09-18T13:47:00.000-05:00

During a discussion of the Monica Lewinsky scandal on Politically Incorrect in 1998, current Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell insisted that people should tell the truth at all times and in all circumstances. When asked by Eddie Izzard whether that applied during World War if Nazis were at your door asking whether you were hiding Jews in your house, she said it did.

I believe if I were in that situation, God would provide a way to do the right thing righteously. . . . I believe that! You never have to practice deception. God always provides a way out.

No he doesn't. Bad things happens all the time to people who are trying to do the right thing. That doesn't mean there is no God. Nor does it mean that the person to whom the bad thing happens won't be rewarded in the hereafter. Nor does it mean that doing the right thing wasn't the best choice under the circumstances. What it means is that rational human beings don't make decisions based on the assumption that God is going to come to the rescue if things go badly. I suspect that part of the reason we went to war in Iraq was because George Bush was sure that God would make everything work out alright.

I have no problem with religious people in politics if they have the attitude of the priest who prayed with a high school football team before the game. One of the players asked him whether God would really help them win the game. The priest replied, "He will if you block your man." Religious faith is not a substitute for intelligence and competence.

If you like Sarah Palin, you are going to love Christine O'Donnell. She's prettier and her sentences generally have nouns and verbs in the right places. Unlike Palin who got flustered by softball questions from Katie Couric, O'Donnell regularly went on Bill Maher's show and maintained her composure when bantering with quick-witted intelligent people like Maher, Izzard, and Martin Mull.

The More Things Change

2010-09-16T11:19:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder why Wyoming, Montana, and North and South Dakota get to elect 15% of the U.S. Senate even though they only have about 1% of the United States' population? I suppose there is nothing shocking about the idea that Republicans pushed for the admission of these states to the Union late in the 19th Century as their pro-business policies had managed to dissipate the popular support the party of Lincoln had enjoyed in the years after the Civil War, but it wasn't something I knew until I read Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre by Heather Cox Richardson. Interestingly, while the disproportionate power of these sparsely populated states is most clearly felt in the Senate today, at the time they were admitted, the single Representative each state sent to Congress were even more highly prized by the Republicans. In those days, Senators were not yet popularly elected and Republican control of the Senate was secure. However, the House was much more evenly split and the extra Republican Congressmen made a big difference.

It was also interesting to see 19th Century Republican administration pursuing tax policies that favored the wealthy--in this case tariffs--while attempting to maintain popular support by whipping up fear that Americans were going to be attacked by members of an alien culture that in fact posed little threat. The Sioux Indians had been thoroughly subdued and the only reason there was unrest on the reservations was the governments failure to supply the food it had promised when it forced the Indians to give up their land. At the time of the Wounded Knee in December 1890, the results of the November mid-term election in South Dakota were still in doubt. Thus, President Harrison's administration was eager to show that it was prepared to do whatever it took to protect white settlers in the state. Simply treating the Sioux fairly would have been much more effective, but not nearly as impressive to voters as sending in the army.

The Worst Lie About 9/11

2010-09-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

"The World Changed on 9/11."

The world did not change on 9/11/2001. Everything that was part of the geopolitical landscape on 9/12/2001 had been there on 9/10/2001. What happened on 9/11/2001 was that America's ignorance about the forces and factions at work in the world was exposed.

However, the answer to ignorance is understanding and the neoconservatives didn't want to learn anything that might deter them from their dream of reshaping the world. So they sold the lie that everything had changed so that what was already known could be disregarded.

The Apologetics Study Bible

2010-09-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

The Apologetics Study Bible: Understand Why You Believe

The subtitle to this book strikes me as supremely ironic. This study Bible cannot help anyone to understand why they believe. If they believe because of the information and arguments in this book, then they must already understand them. If they don’t already understand them, then they must have some other reason for believing which this book does not address. The reasons for believing must be antecedent to the beliefs.

This is the logical flaw in all Christian apologetics. Apologists purport to describe the reasons for belief but they can't because the beliefs come before the reasons. A better subtitle might be Understand Why You Would Like to Think that You Believe. Or perhaps Understand Why You Would Like Others to Think that You Believe.

Why I am Agnostic About a Historical Jesus (11)

2010-08-25T11:01:00.000-05:00

I frequently point out the fact that Paul doesn't say anything about Jesus being a recently deceased, miracle working rabbi. Conservative Christians usually claim that this is a matter of little consequence. "It's assumed" they will say, or "Paul was writing epistles, not gospels." Despite this feigned indifference, I find that apologists want very badly to use Paul to corroborate the gospels. I recently ran across this from Tim Keller:

Paul's letters, written just fifteen years to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus's, provide an outline of all the events of Jesus's life found in the gospels--his miracles, claims, crucifixion, and resurrection. This means that the Biblical accounts of Jesus's life were circulating within the lifetime of hundreds of who had been present at the events of his ministry.

The Reason for God p. 101.

I guess that Keller gives himself some wiggle room by only claiming that Paul "provides an outline," rather than asserting that Paul corroborates that Jesus was a miracle worker or that he made "claims." Without having Paul on board, the apologist has to deal with the possibility that the Biblical accounts weren't circulating earlier than forty to sixty years after the events. That leaves aside the question of how long it took for the gospels to get into general circulation after they were composes. If we were to go by unambiguous external references to the gospels, we would find it hard to establish that the stories of Jesus as a miracle working rabbi were circulating much earlier than a century after the events.

Why I Am Not a New Atheist

2010-08-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

Most insects are pests, but we know that their eradication would disrupt the eco-systems that sustain us, and ultimately make the world uninhabitable.

Similarly, religion may be noxious, but perhaps, for all we know, a world without religion would be a much worse place than it is today.

A resolution seems to require a prediction about the future that is beyond our powers - we cannot compute all the relevant variables involved in an alteration as dramatic as the final departure of religion from human life.

Would the world really be better without religion? by Tamas Pataki

Why I am Agnostic About a Historical Jesus (10)

2010-08-23T21:00:00.001-05:00

The issue that continues to feed my doubts about the existence of the historical Jesus is the failure of the earliest Christian writings to substantiate any of things that we are supposed to be able to know about him.

Historian E.P. Sanders asserts that the following facts about Jesus' public career are "almost beyond dispute":

He was born around 4 B.C.E.
He spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth;
He was baptized by John the Baptist;
He called disciples;
He taught in the town and villages and countryside of Galilee;
He preached "the kingdom of God";
Around the year 30 C.E. he went to Jerusalem for Passover;
He created a disturbance in the temple area;
He had a final meal with his disciples;
He was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities;
He was executed on the orders of Pontius Pilate.

The Historical Figure of Jesus pp. 10-11.

Of the facts pertaining to Jesus' public career, almost none of them can be confirmed by our earliest sources; mostly the genuine Pauline epistles, but including almost all the epistles other than the Pastorals and 2 Peter.

The early epistles don't indicate where or when Jesus was born;
They say nothing about where he lived;
They never mention John the Baptist;
They say nothing about Jesus having disciples;
They say nothing about Jesus having a teaching ministry;
They do not claim that he said anything during his life about the kingdom of God;
They don't say he went to Jerusalem;
There is nothing about a disturbance in the temple;
Paul says that Jesus instituted a Eucharistic meal, but he doesn't say anything about disciples being in attendance and Paul attributes his knowledge of it to revelation;
There is nothing about an arrest or interrogation;
The earliest writings don't mention Pilate.

All this leaves me wondering whether Paul would have recognized the itinerant preacher described by Mark as the man he preached about being exalted after his death. He might have, but I don't think that there is anything in Paul's writings to compel that conclusion. It seems clear that Paul didn't think there was anything about Jesus' life on earth that was necessary to understand the meaning of his resurrection. Perhaps he thought that Jesus lived his life in such obscurity that nothing could be known about him prior to his crucifixion.

I recently had a chance to raise some of these issues with Dr. James McGrath of Butler University when he returned to one of his favorite topics with a post titled "Why Can't Mythicists Be More Like Creationists?" Normally when he posts on this topic, he draws comments from a swarm of belligerent mythicists and I am lucky if I can get him to address more than one or two of the questions that interest me. For some reason, however, the only one of the usual suspects who showed up was Steven Carr and he was rather subdued. As a result, I was able to engage Dr. McGrath in a fairly extended dialogue. I enjoyed the exchange, however, Dr. McGrath didn't really give me any reason to think that historicists have really engaged the issues.

I was particularly struck by one (or two) of the questions that McGrath put to me:

Vinny, please explain to me why, in your view, it is illegitimate to allow a Gospel and a no longer extant source written within a few decades of Paul's letters to complement the information we have in them. In your view, why is the universal consensus in all early Christian literature that Peter and others were followers of Jesus during his public activity to be excluded from consideration as potentially historically accurate?

I think the legitimacy of allowing the gospels to complement the early writings depends on the question being asked. If the question is, "Do the earliest writings corroborate the gospels?" then we can't simply allow the gospels to complement the epistles because that assumes the answer rather than determining it. The only way to answer the question is by examining the epistles to determine what information in them corroborates information found in the gospels.

Moreover, if it legitimate to allow one source to complement another, why isn't it legitimate to allow them to stand separately? Is it wrong to allow Paul to have his own distinctive voice about the significance of Jesus' sojourn on earth without insisting that his writing be harmonized with someone else's narrative? Should we insist that Paul's Jesus is a recently deceased miracle working Rabbi if Paul never says so?

Abracadabra

2010-08-08T09:29:00.000-05:00

Periodically, I see someone brag about having read the entire Bible cover-to-cover multiple times. I'm never quite sure whether this is really something to brag about, but it is handy thing to throw out in an argument when someone questions your knowledge. Unfortunately, I have never had the discipline to wade through the entire Old Testament and sometimes I run across passages in the New Testament that I had never noticed before.

It can be embarrassing to find that I don't know the New Testament as well as I thought I did, but it can be delightful as well. Finding some new oddity is sort of like running across an episode of Gilligan's Island that you've never seen before. For example, until yesterday, I never realized that Jesus performed coin tricks.

When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two-drachma tax came to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the two-drachma tax?" He said, "Yes." And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?" When Peter said, "From strangers," Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are exempt. "However, so that we do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you and Me." Matthew 17:24-27

I'm surprised this passage isn't cited regularly as proof of the historicity of the gospels. I am hard pressed to answer the standard apologetic question, "Why would anybody make that up?"

On the same theme, here's a little sacrilege from South Park:

No Matter How Cynical You Get . . . .

2010-08-05T21:42:00.000-05:00

. . . it's almost impossible to keep up.

The Democrats are unable to pass a bill to provide health care for 911 first responders because they want to pay for it by closing a tax loophole.

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How Much Theological Consistency Is Too Much?

2010-07-30T14:05:00.000-05:00

Ken Pulliam has an interesting post at Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity discussing the question of infant salvation/damnation. Evangelical Christians believe everyone is born in a state of original sin that can only been erased by being born again. This should mean that an infant who dies is separated from God and condemned to hell for eternity with all other unbelievers. Of course this doesn't sit too well with anyone who has ever lost a child, so most evangelicals also subscribe to some notion of an "age of accountability" prior to which a child who dies gets to go to heaven rather than hell. Under this view, the child starts saved, becomes lost as soon as they figure out what is going out in the world, and the perhaps gets saved again.

The point in Ken's post that generated the most comments was his assertion that he admired the consistency and honesty of evangelical theologian R.C.Sproul who refused to distinguish between infants and any other unbelievers who die without coming to faith in Christs. On the one hand, it is hard to admire someone who who embraces the doctrine that infants who die in the crib spend eternity in the flames of hell. On the other hand, is it any more admirable to fudge the beliefs one doesn't like rather than acknowledging that there is something wrong with a system of theology that requires infant damnation?

I think this kind of question comes up time and again for anyone who wants to treat the Bible as a magic book. Does one acknowledge the ability of science to explain the world around us while clinging to some role for God by advocating "intelligent design" or do you put all your chips on the Bible and embrace young earth creationism? Is it better to admit that the texts of the New Testament were corrupted somewhat in transmission while arguing that the essential doctrines have been preserved or is it better to insist that God worked some sort of miracle of preservation with the King James translation? Some bible-believers argue that the resurrection of Jesus can be established by objective historical methodology while others go in for "presuppositional apologetics" which (as I understand it) argue that only believers are capable of applying logic and reason to the evidence.

In can't say that I really admire someone who embraces ideas like young earth creation or infant damnation, but I suppose I can respect the sense of intellectual integrity that compels them to follow their theological beliefs to their logical conclusions.

Science or Supernatural?

2010-07-18T07:29:00.000-05:00

For all the Bible believing bloggers who insist that belief in miracles can be based on evidence, I would like to suggest the following hypothetical:

Imagine sitting on a jury in a murder case. Three witnesses testify that they saw the defendant shoot the victim three times in the chest. These witnesses testified at great personal risk because the defendant is a powerful man in the community. They also testify that there were twenty other people in the room who saw the shooting. (For this last point we have to assume that the judge doesn't understand the rules of evidence.) On the other side of the coin, an expert testifies that ballistic testing shows that the bullets in the victim's body could not have come from the defendant's gun. The bullets in fact match a gun belonging to another person who was at the scene and gun powder residue from that gun was found on the other person's hand.

If I were sitting on that jury, I would vote to acquit. Ballistics experts are highly confident in the techniques that are used to establish whether a particular bullet came from a particular gun (at least they always are on TV). I might not be able to explain why all three witnesses identified the wrong man as the shooter, but I believe that the witness is much more likely to be wrong than the science.

If, on the other hand, I were a Bible believing Christian, I suppose I would have to vote to convict. As convincing as the science might be there could have been some supernatural agent that altered the bullets so that when they were tested they appeared not to come from the defendant's gun. After all, if I am convinced that the laws of nature were suspended two thousand years ago based on stories recorded decades after the fact just because I believe that the ultimate source of those stories was eyewitness testimony, how can I doubt the testimony of eyewitnesses that I have heard directly? Wouldn't it just be anti-supernatural bias that would cause me to prefer the science of the ballistics test to the testimony of the eye witnesses?

It seems like every week or two I hear some story about a man being released from prison because DNA testing that was not available at the time of his conviction now shows that he could not have committed the crime. Often the man had been convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony. I wonder how many Bible believers read these stories and worry that naturalistic presuppositions which favor science over eyewitness accounts might be putting dangerous criminals back on the street.

"Common Sense" from the WSJ and the AEI

2010-07-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

Today's Wall Street Journal features an article on the history of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) by Sally Satel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing think tank. While Satel concedes that PTSD is a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis, she carefully crafts the impression that there is something fishy going on and that liberals are to blame.

Veterans with unrelenting PTSD can receive disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. As retired Army Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs, said last week, the mental injuries of war "can be as debilitating as any physical battlefield trauma." The occasion for his remark was a new VA rule allowing veterans to receive disability benefits for PTSD if, as non-combatants, they had good reason to fear hostile activity, such as firefights or explosions. In other words, veterans can now file a benefits claim for being traumatized by events they did not actually experience.

The very notion that one can sustain an enduring mental disorder based on anxious anticipation of a traumatic event that never materializes is a radical departure from the clinical—and common-sense—understanding that disabling stress disorders are caused by traumatic events that actually do happen to people. This is not the first time that controversy has swirled around the diagnosis of PTSD.

My common sense would tell me that multiple extended rotations in a high risk environment where every pile of rubble potentially hides an improvised explosive device has the potential to cause harmful levels of stress. However, I would question whether it even makes any sense for a psychiatrist to talk about about "common-sense" understandings of "disabling stress disorders." Would Satel appeal to "common- sense understandings" of autism or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? Sometimes unusual problems defy common sense.

Interestingly, the article seems to concede that common sense got things wrong for a long time. According to Satel, during World War I, the common-sense understanding was that soldiers suffering from "shell shock" had some personal mental shortcoming. "Otherwise well-adjusted individuals were believed to be at small risk of suffering more than a transient stress reaction once they were removed from the front." As time went by, however, psychiatrists came to the conclusion that that every soldier had a breaking point.

By the end of the article, Satel article even seems to concede that the common sense to which she appeals may be wrong: "For some non-combat servicemen and women, anticipatory fear of being in harm's way can turn into a crippling stress reaction." If this is so, why does she characterize this as a "radical departure"? As is usual when you find the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute appealing to common sense, there is some eggheaded liberals to be bashed. In this case it is the opponents of the Vietnam War who pushed the legitimacy of PTSD as a psychiatric diagonsis. Satel doesn't dispute that legitimacy. She just wants us all to know that there is a political agenda at work.

She Just Sounds Like a Nut

2010-07-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

Today's Wall Street Journal features Stephen Moore's interview with the Republican challenger to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle: Writes Moore:

Liberal groups and Mr. Reid are gleeful that a "right wing extremist" has won the GOP nomination. At a recent fund raising dinner for the majority leader in Las Vegas, President Barack Obama labeled her "extreme, even for a Republican." Some Republicans privately grumble that she may be unelectable because of her staunchly conservative stands. And to be sure, some of her positions, such as banning fluoridated water or providing massages to rehabilitate convicts, seem a bit, well, odd.

But is she the kook Mr. Reid portrays her as in his TV ads?

I met with Mrs. Angle twice, first in Washington, D.C., late last month, then again during the Freedomfest conference last week in Las Vegas. In person, she seems anything but a threat to the American way of life. She is petite, has Irish red hair with and a pretty round face. She's friendly, but businesslike, and unlike most politicians, comes across as sincere in her convictions. Her husband, Ted, a 35 year veteran of the Bureau of Land Management (he explains that he's a conservative who worked to protect property rights, not violate them), stands constantly by her side as a confidant and de facto campaign manager.

There never seems to be any shortage of conservative pundits ready assure voters that these candidates from the far right only sound like shrill ignorant nut jobs when they speak in public. If everyone could just sit down for a one-on-one chat with Sarah Palin or Sharon Angle or Michelle Bachman or George Bush as the pundit has, they would see that they ooze common sense and sincerity. Pay no attention to candidate Angle who expects doctors to take a chicken in place of a co-pay, Moore and the WSJ are here to assure us once again that irrationality is no disqualifier when it comes to a candidate who will pursue a pro-business agenda.

Why I am Agnostic About a Historical Jesus (9)

2010-07-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

Dr. James McGrath of Butler University has once again trotted out his mythicist-creationist analogy at Exploring our Matrix, stirring up the usual response from those who doubt and/or deny the existence of the historical Jesus. In a recent comment he wrote the following:

In the case of Jesus, we have someone writing about him as a human being, born of a woman, born as a Jew ("under the Law"), descended from David according to the flesh (one mythicist I spoke to recently resorted to calling that "allegory" in order to avoid Paul's obvious meaning), and crucified. And the last point is crucial, since the idea that someone would invent Jesus and proclaim that he was the Davidic anointed one, expected to restore the kingship to David, but was crucified by the Romans and yet you should believe in him anyway boggles the imagination. Could someone have done it nevertheless. Of course - anything is possible. Is it more likely than not that someone did this, rather than the early Christians engaging in post facto theologizing to try to make sense of why the person they believed was the Messiah was crucified? No, definitely not.

All of this has been discussed here before, hence my tendency to get somewhat frustrated when asked to cover the same ground for the umpteenth time. :)

I can appreciate Dr. McGrath's frustration because I still can't figure out how Paul helps the historicists' case.

Suppose that our earliest source for the Sioux chief Sitting Bull did not know when or where Sitting Bull lived, did not know much of anything that Sitting Bull said or did during his life, claimed that what he did know he learned from Sitting Bull's ghost, and claimed to know others who had encountered this ghost. Suppose that he never claimed that anyone he knew had ever met Sitting Bull during his life, but did refer to certain people as Sitting Bull's brothers. Suppose that this source's interest in Sitting Bull is limited to the activities of his ghost and the only importance he attaches to Sitting Bull is the influence that his ghost has upon the living. Would we consider this source particularly good evidence that Sitting Bull was a historical person rather than merely legendary?

I think this pretty well captures the problems that Paul poses for historicists. His letters don't prove that Jesus didn't exist, but most of what Paul has to say about Jesus sounds much more mythical than historical. When he does describe something about Jesus that can be characterized as historical, Paul does not indicate any source for the information that can be characterized as historical.

Historicists often claim that Paul would have learned about the historical stuff about Jesus from Peter and James or from the cult that he persecuted prior to his conversion. However, this is only true if we have already concluded that Jesus was a real historical person. If Peter and James did not know an actual person, Paul would have learned that. If the cult that he persecuted had worshiped a mythical Messiah, Paul would have learned that. We can't use the assumption that Paul knew whether Jesus was historical as evidence that he was historical.

Perhaps the most frequently cited proof that Paul considered Jesus historical is his reference to James as "the brother of the Lord." In my Sitting Bull example, this probably wouldn't carry any weight at all since the Sioux used "brother" to describe many relationships other than biological ones. Given the rest of the information, we might well conclude that "brother" referred to a relationship with Sitting Bull's ghost. I am not aware of such an expansive use among first century Jews, but Paul does use "brother" frequently enough in referring to spiritual relationships that I think the possibility has to be allowed.

What I think I find most puzzling is the argument that the invention of a crucified Messiah is so mind boggling that a real historical Jesus who was really crucified is definitely more likely. Is their anything more mind boggling than the claims of Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard? History provides plenty of examples of people making mind boggling claims which they attribute to supernatural sources. Sometimes these claims are believed by large numbers of people. In each and every case where it has happened, we would have to assess the likelihood of inventing such a story and having it believed as small a priori, but it happens often enough that I don't see how we can assess the probability that it happened with Paul as definitely less than that of any other scenario. If this is really a crucial point in the case against mythicism, I think Dr. McGrath is going to be frustrated for a long time.

Historians may have perfectly valid reasons for thinking that Jesus was a historical person. I just don't see that Paul helps their case.

The Great Courses

2010-07-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

I am a big fan of The Great Courses from The Teaching Company which I can borrow from my local library. The one I am listening to now may be the best yet. It is Philosophy and Religion in the West taught by Phillip Cary of Eastern University.

I have listened to about half the course so far:

1.	Introduction—Philosophy and Religion as Traditions
2.	Plato's Inquiries—The Gods and the Good
3.	Plato's Spirituality—The Immortal Soul and the Other World
4.	Aristotle and Plato—Cosmos, Contemplation, and Happiness
5.	Plotinus—Neoplatonism and the Ultimate Unity of All
6.	The Jewish Scriptures—Life With the God of Israel
7.	Platonist Philosophy and Scriptural Religion
8.	The New Testament—Life in Christ
9.	Rabbinic Judaism—Israel and the Torah
10.	Church Fathers—The Logos Made Flesh
11.	The Development of Christian Platonism
12.	Jewish Rationalism and Mysticism—Maimonides and Kabbalah
13.	Classical Theism—Proofs and Attributes of God
14.	Medieval Christian Theology—Nature and Grace
15.	Late-Medieval Nominalism and Christian Mysticism
16.	Protestantism—Problems of Grace
17.	Descartes, Locke, and the Crisis of Modernity
18.	Leibniz and Theodicy
19.	Hume's Critique of Religion
20.	Kant—Reason Limited to Experience
21.	Kant—Morality as the Basis of Religion
22.	Schleiermacher—Feeling as the Basis of Religion
23.	Hegel—A Philosophical History of Religion
24.	Marx and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion
25.	Kierkegaard—Existentialism and the Leap of Faith
26.	Nietzsche—Critic of Christian Morality
27.	Neo-orthodoxy—The Subject and Object of Faith
28.	Encountering the Biblical Other—Buber and Levinas
29.	Process Philosophy—God in Time
30.	Logical Empiricism and the Meaning of Religion
31.	Reformed Epistemology and the Rationality of Belief
32.	Conclusion—Philosophy and Religion Today

I have come across most of these topics before, but I have never had the chronology and interaction of the various traditions laid out so well and so clearly.

Does God Make the Resurrection More Likely?

2010-06-21T14:59:00.000-05:00

I agree that the resurrection of Jesus is naturally impossible. But that’s not the question. The question is, is it improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead? William Lane Craig

If I am outside on a pitch black night and I feel water falling on my head from the sky, I will no doubt conclude that it is raining. I would not be inclined to believe that I had been attacked by a CIA predator drone armed with squirt guns even if someone told me that that was what had happened. I would reach this conclusion because I am thoroughly familiar with the phenomenon known as rain. It is well understood and well documented that the overwhelming majority of occurrences of water falling from the sky are rain storms.

One factor that would not effect my conclusion is whether or not I believed that the CIA actually possessed the technology to arm drones with squirt guns that could simulate falling rain. If they did, that would only move the probability of a drone attack from zero to infinitesimal. Whether you call the principle “parsimony” or “Occam’s razor,” logic dictates that a common ordinary explanation is preferable to an extraordinary unprecedented explanation. There is no need to even examine the feasibility of the CIA attack.

Myth and legend may not be quite as common and ordinary as rain; however, I would still deem them to be as common and ordinary when compared to reliable accounts of supernatural events as rain is compared to predator drones armed with squirt guns. I agree with Craig that the resurrection is more probable with God than without God. Nevertheless, the well documented phenomenon of myth and legend is still a more likely explanation than one set of anonymous ancient writings being the only known source of reliable objective accounts of supernatural events.

From Sunday School Teacher to Atheist

2010-06-21T10:46:00.000-05:00

I dropped in yesterday on a gentleman who had been one of the pillars of the parish in which I grew up. He was a lector at both Sunday and daily mass and he served on various committees. His son and I have been friends since kindergarten, but I got to know him better in high school when I was in his religious education class. In those days, I didn't know what I believed, but I enjoyed the discussions and I came to respect him very much.

After we chatted for awhile about his children and grandchildren, and his wife who had passed away last year after sixty-one years of marriage, I asked him whether he was still active in the church. With just the slightest hesitation, he confessed that he could no longer bring himself to recite the creed at mass because he no longer believed that any of those things were so. He did not say exactly how long he had felt that way but he said it was something he and his wife had come come to together.

He said it had started with the sexual abuse scandals in the church. He did not see how those priests could truly believe the things that the church taught and do the things they did without taking their own lives. He told me that he had listened to Bart Ehrman's course from the Teaching Company,
From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity, and he had read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. After that, he could no longer believe the stories he had been told all his life.

I cannot help but admire the intellectual integrity it took to reexamine the beliefs he had held for the better part of eighty years and to abandon them when he found them wanting.

The Money Losing Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Page

2010-06-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

My favorite financial blog is Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture. In Art Laffer Make Up Your Own Facts Here, he eviscerates the Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page and supply side economics shill Arthur Laffer:

In his OpEd, Mr. Laffer confuses causation with correlation, ignores market history, makes spurious argument, and simply make up crap as he goes along.

It is, to any thinking person, an embarrassment.

For example, Laffer pontificates that "It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives."

Ritholtz points out that "This is mostly true, but misleading."

First, 7 states have no income tax; the other two tax — New Hampshire and Tennessee — only tax dividends and interest income.

Many of the states without income taxes — think Texas, and Alaska — are blessed with natural resources. (Nevada’s blessing is Innumeracy). They don’t have income taxes because the lease licenses to the mining and oil industry throw off so much revenue, that these taxes are not needed. Confusing correlation for causation is a Freshman college error, and we should expect better from Laffer.

Note: 5 of the 9 have a corporate business tax: Alaska has a state corporate income tax, Florida has a corporate income tax (5%); New Hampshire has a Business Profits Tax (8.5%); South Dakota has a financial institutions income tax; Washington has a Business and Occupation Tax. Since these are the fastest growing states according to Laffer, is the lesson to other states to add a corporate tax?

Ritholtz also takes Laffer to task for giving tax cuts the entire credit for the economic expansion of the 1980's.

Reagan had the good fortune to take office at the tail end of a 16 year secular bear market, just as Paul Volcker fed the economy its distasteful medicine. Inflation was broken, and interest rates began their 25 year slide towards zero.

To ignore the reality of these factors, and credit tax cuts as the sole cause of the 1980s and 90s expansion is simply to discard reality because it does not fit your neat ideological universe. That is a surefire recipe for losing money as an investor . . .

Ritholtz finishes off by taking a swipe at the Wall Street Journal:

Indeed, I have railed in these pages against the ideological, fact-free OpEd in the WSJ — not because of the politics, but because they have been such consistent money losers. That would not matter so much if it were the NYT or the Podunk Press, but this is the Journal, for crying out loud, It is supposed to be the paper of record for investors.

That the money losing OpEd page of the WSJ produces its most well read articles goes a long way in explaining one thing: Why 80% of money managers underperfom every year. Filling your head with Ideology, becoming a “magical thinker,” ignoring data, making up your own facts — these are a recipe for under-performing asset managers.

If I were to create a list of questions to ask potential managers of my money, one of them would be: “Do you read the WSJ OpEds?”

If the answer were yes, I would not walk but run in the opposite direction.

For an example of Arthur Laffer's forecasting ability, watch his appearance on CNBC in August 2006 where he argues with Peter Schiff. Schiff correctly predicted a severe recession within the next couple years because the U.S. economy didn't manufacture anything anymore, but relied instead on consumer spending that was ultimately fueled by foreign debt. Laffer insisted that Schiff did not understand how the Chinese were actually paying us for maintaining the banking system rather than simply lending us money. According to Laffer, Alan Greenspan's monetary policy was the product that the rest of the world was happy to pay for.

Of course you will never here CNBC's cheerleaders pointing out how badly Laffer missed the boat. Here's Larry Kudlow kissing Laffer's ass yesterday.

The Scopes Legacy

2010-06-04T10:16:00.000-05:00

This clip is from a 1996 British documentary titled Science Friction: Creation. It shows the sad state of biology education in Dayton, Tennessee seventy years after the Scopes Monkey Trial.

The ignorance of the students is disturbing enough, but even more maddening is the fact that someone who purports to be a science teacher could validate their absolute want of critical thinking. I also can't help but think of the proud parents who are pleased with the education their children are getting.

Resurrection: What Would It Take to Convince Me?

2010-06-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

What kind of evidence would it take to convince you that Jesus bodily rose from the dead? Vocab Malone.

This is a question that is frequently asked of skeptics by Christian apologists in the blogosphere. Its purpose (as I understand it) is to expose the skeptic’s bias. The skeptic is very likely to demand very convincing evidence for the resurrection in which case the apologist will accuse him of having a double standard since he accepts other events in history with much less proof.

Even better for the apologist, the skeptic might answer that no evidence could ever convince of the historicity of the resurrection. Then the apologist can argue that the skeptic is unable to honestly evaluate the evidence since he has determined the conclusion he will reach before he starts. My usual answer is that I am unable to imagine an array of evidence that would convince me of the resurrection without denying that such an array might exist. While I believe this to be perfectly true and a perfectly valid answer, I realize that I am sidestepping the question to some extent.

Recently, I came across a skeptic who said that personally witnessing a spectacular supernatural event might be sufficient to convince him that Jesus had been raised from the dead. “This could – as an example – be a miraculous event like the stars suddenly spelling out ‘ACCEPT JESUS AS YOUR PERSONAL LORD AND SAVIOUR AND ESCAPE THE FIRES OF HELL!’ and the gates of Hell and Heaven being opened to touring visitors.” The apologist claimed that the skeptic wasn’t debating in good faith, but I don’t think it is an unreasonable answer.

The reason that I say that I can’t imagine a particular array of evidence is that five decades of observation and learning have persuaded me that resorting to supernatural explanations for the world around me is unnecessary. Christians will accuse me of having an anti-supernatural presupposition, but I don’t believe that it is a presupposition at all. I believe that methodological naturalism is an empirical conclusion. I take this approach because it has proved itself in practice.

In evaluating any supernatural claim, I have to take into account my own experiences and observations which include the following: (1) I have known people who claimed to see supernatural intervention in ordinary events; (2) I have known people who accept the supernatural claims of others and pass them along without thinking critically about them; and (3) I have known people who exaggerate the basis for supernatural claims when they pass them along. On the other hand, my own experience and knowledge do not include any verifiable supernatural miracles.

Since I am quite familiar with spurious miracle claims and I have no familiarity whatsoever with verifiable miracle claims, it is hard for me to imagine how I might be convinced that one of the latter had occurred. In evaluating any new miracle claim, I have no choice but to compare it with my previous experience with the subject. Just as I am always going to assess the likelihood that it is raining when a wet person shows up at my front door as much higher than the likelihood that there is a swimming pool in my front yard, I am always going to assess the probability of a spurious miracle claim higher than a true one.

On the other hand, if I were to witness a spectacular supernatural event myself, I might well decide to apply a different probability distribution to supernatural claims made by others. So if I were to personally witness a miracle of resurrection caliber (along with other witnesses so I can be confident I am not hallucinating), I might conclude that the bodily resurrection of Jesus in first century Palestine was likely.

Libertarians and History

2010-05-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

If free market forces are as powerful and beneficent as libertarians seem to think they are, how come they have not produced more societies that approach the libertarian ideal? I'm no fan of Karl Marx, but at least he seemed to have some theory of history that explained why the world was the way it was and how his Utopian ideal would come to pass. If libertarians were correct, wouldn't libertarian societies be at such a competitive advantage that market forces would have produced more of them?

When asked by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show whether any country had ever approximated his ideal of liberty, Ron Paul said he thought that America did pretty well at its founding, “They recognized property rights, sound money, and contracts, and you didn’t have a right to destroy your neighbor’s property." How could this relatively pure form of libertarian society become so corrupted if free markets and property rights are as powerful as the libertarians believe them to be? Why didn't other societies when throwing off their monarchies or colonial masters grant the same primacy to property rights that the United States had and thereby gain the same blessings of economic liberty? When the Russian people overthrew the Tsar in 1917, why wasn't laissez-faire capitalism even in the mix of ideologies competing for the hearts and minds of the people?

I think it is a fairly obvious why the Russian Revolution wasn't led by libertarians. The protection of private property isn't the kind of thing that is going to inspire propertyless peasants to overthrow a propertied aristocracy. The French Revolution drew much inspiration from the American Revolution but it was also a revolt against the propertied clergy and nobility so it had to offer something more than protection of property rights to inspire the storming of the Bastille. It seems to me that the American Revolution is unique in that the rebellion was largely carried out by property owners and is unique in the role that the protection of property rights played in its theoretical underpinnings.

I think the reason that the American Revolution was unique in its emphasis on property rights is that America was unique in its ability to offer the possibility of property ownership to all citizens without coercing it from the rulers who were being overthrown. In France and Russia, the only way the peasants could hope to be property owners was by taking property away from the nobility and clergy who controlled it. In America at the time of the Revolution, however, there was a virtually limitless supply of land and natural resources there for the taking from savages whose interests could be summarily ignored. The Founding Fathers did not have to concern themselves with equality of opportunity because the seemingly boundless frontier provided it.

Unfortunately, the supply of natural resources in the United States was not inexhaustible. Eventually, the frontier closed and the supply of free land ran out. Moreover, the marginal quality of the last land to be snatched up was eventually exposed by the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. People could no longer simply pull up stakes and move west because there was no more unclaimed land to be occupied. Like every other place in the world where resources are constrained, the only way to provide equality of opportunity is for those who have is to concede something to those who have not.

Even the Wall Street Journal Thinks Rand Paul is a Little Wacky

2010-05-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

What does it say when even the Wall Street Journal objects to Rand Paul take on libertarianism?

Even if Mr. Paul was speaking out of a principled belief in the rights of voluntary association, he was wrong on the Constitutional and historic merits. The Civil Rights Act of 1964—and its companion laws, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965—were designed to address abuses of state and local government power. The Jim Crow laws that sprang up in the South after Reconstruction and prevailed for nearly a century were not merely the result of voluntary association. Discrimination—public and private—was enforced by police power and often by violence.

In parts of the mid-20th-century South, black men were lynched, fire hoses and vicious dogs were turned on children, and churches were bombed with worshippers inside. By some accounts, two-thirds of the Birmingham, Alabama, police force in the early 1960s belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. State and local government officials simply refused to acknowledge the civil rights of blacks and had no intention of doing so unless outside power was brought to bear.

The federal laws of that era were necessary and legal interventions to remedy the unconstitutional infringement on individual rights by state and local governments. On Thursday Mr. Paul finally acknowledged this point when he told CNN, "I think there was an overriding problem in the South so big that it did require federal intervention."

To throw a little more historical perspective on the issue, during the two decades prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the United States was trying to convince nations all around the world to cast their lot with the Western democracies rather than the Soviet Union and Communist China. The plight of Black Americans was a huge propaganda gift to communists everywhere.