Randal Rauser's Blog, page 108

Does atheism require more faith than Christian theism?

On Christmas Eve Lee Strobel tweeted that he didn’t have enough faith to be an atheist:

To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn't have that much faith.

— Lee Strobel (@LeeStrobel) December 24, 2017

This tweet is a standard rejoinder to the atheist who says she doesn’t have enough faith to be a Christian (or a theist). And Strobel definitely has a point. The popular idea that atheism simply consists of belief in one less claim than does the theist (or several less than the Christian) is misleading at best.

To return to an example I’ve oft used in the past, consider the contrast between the realist and the idealist. The realist believes that there are human minds and also an external world that corresponds to the conscious experiences of those minds. By contrast, the idealist insists that all we need to accept is human minds and their conscious experiences. There is no need to posit an external world of physical stuff (trees, houses, physical human bodies, stars, etc.) that corresponds to that conscious experience.

If I told you that idealism requires less faith than realism because it involves belief in one less thing — the external world — you’d immediately recognize that my claim was false. Granted, idealism subtracts the physical world from the ontological catalogue, but by doing so it adds much more. And for those reasons, idealism has rarely seemed plausible to anyone other than the imaginative philosopher.

Strobel is making a similar point: atheism is not simply a matter of subtracting one thing — God — from the ontological catalogue, for by making that subtraction one adds much else. Just as the realist doesn’t have enough faith to accept the idealist’s world, so Strobel insists he doesn’t have enough faith to accept the atheist’s world.

It seems to me that Strobel’s tweet works as a rhetorical rejoinder to atheist disavowals of faith: if an atheist believes they can subtract God from the ontological catalogue without cost, they are mistaken.

That said, it would seem that Strobel is not simply leveling a rhetorical rejoinder. On the contrary, it would appear he really does mean to insist that it is objectively the case that atheism requires more faith than theism and that he lacks sufficient faith to be an atheist. What should we think about that claim?

First, a side note: As I noted in the article “On not having enough faith to be an atheist,” this way of phrasing the situation is potentially misleading because it suggests that faith could be a disposition to believe in the absence of appropriate evidence. And few Christians would want to accept that definition of faith.

Further, there is something deeply problematic about the underlying assumptions of this rhetorical rejoinder. The call to exercise faith is a common theme in the New Testament. But if we take Strobel seriously, the Christian, in fact, exhibits less faith than does the atheist. Does Strobel really want to say this?

Leaving those problems aside, the main problem is that Strobel’s tweet is completely one-sided. He lists a series of counterintuitive claims that he believes are entailed by atheism and he then says he doesn’t have enough faith to believe them. But surely theism also has its list of counterintuitive claims. (And don’t forget the additional claims of Christianity: Trinity, incarnation, atonement, general resurrection, etc.!) In short, Strobel cannot opine on the epistemologically inferior status of atheism until he has added up all the prima facie counterintuitive claims he accepts as a Christian theist.

To summarize the problem, Strobel is engaged in the fallacy of special pleading. One can only conclude that theism (or Christianity) require less by way of faith than does atheism when they have laid out all the claims for these different views side by side.

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Debating the Virgin Birth: A Christian/Atheist Conversation

For this Christmas Eve, I repost my 2013 Reasonable Doubts debate on the virgin birth with Jonathan Pearce. This debate was prerecorded and as a result, it doesn’t have the same crackle as a live debate (the heated repartee; the gotcha moments; the laughter and applause of a fired-up audience). On the upside, being scripted and prerecorded ensures that not a word is wasted. Merry Christmas!

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Have aliens visited earth? Is the idea worth taking seriously? A response to Sean Carroll

Today I came across this tweet courtesy of Counter Apologist:

Okay there are far too many people here in the 21st century giving nontrivial credence to the idea that there are alien spacecraft flying around in our skies.

— Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) December 23, 2017

I assume by “giving nontrivial credence to x” Carroll is meaning to say that there are far too many people taking the idea of x seriously.

The thing that bothers me about this tweet is that Carroll is suggesting folks who take the idea of alien visitation seriously are being irrational (i.e. overly gullible). And yet, underlying this analysis is a very contentious assumption:

Carroll’s Assumption: All people who take the idea of alien terrestrial visitation seriously are overly gullible.

Unfortunately, Carroll provides no evidence in support of Carroll’s Assumption. He just asserts it. However, it is easy to see that belief in alien visitation varies widely in the degree of gullibility. And that wide variation immediately calls Carroll’s Assumption into serious question.

In scenario 1, Jones picks up a worn copy of Whitley Strieber’s Communion (a fanciful alleged account of alien visitation) in a used bookstore and reads it later on that day. Based on Strieber’s testimony, Jones takes alien visitation seriously.

I would agree with Carroll that Jones would be irrational (i.e. overly credulous/gullible) to take alien visitation seriously based on this account. But not all cases are cut from the same cloth as that of Jones.

I take it that Carroll’s tweet was prompted by the flurry of attention given by media this last week to the reporting on the US government’s now-defunct “Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program.” The former head of the program, Luis Elizondo, worked for the program in the Pentagon as a U.S. military intelligence official. Elizondo most definitely takes alien visitation seriously based on his extensive knowledge of current military and civilian aviation capabilities on planet earth coupled with the capabilities of various UFOs that have been observed by US military intelligence. In other words, based on his extensive aviation knowledge, Elizondo can draw inferences to the best explanation of the observed craft, and they aren’t necessarily terrestrial in origin.

Here’s a short CNN story from this past week:

Carroll’s a smart guy, no doubt. But does he know everything that Elizondo knows about (1) current military and civilian aviation capabilities on planet earth and (2) the capabilities of various UFOs that have been observed by US military intelligence?

I’m guessing the answer is no.

Consequently, it is quite improper to lump Elizondo in with Jones whose only evidence is a worn copy of Whitley Striber’s Communion. And that’s the problem with Carroll’s Assumption: it renders a very contentious general opinion about rationality of belief which far outruns any evidence. If there is a spike in people considering alien visitation based on Strieber’s testimony, we have reason to worry. But the situation is quite different if there is a spike in people considering alien visitation based on Elizondo’s far more credible and informed testimony. A spike in that case may be good evidence of rational belief based on credible testimony.

Now you might be thinking: “Okay, but Elizondo doesn’t have all the evidence Carroll has about the enormous technical challenges with visitations across interstellar space.” To that, I would say two things:

First, I happily recognize that Carroll may have access to evidence which is sufficient that he will not take the possibility of alien visitation seriously. My only claim is that Carroll does not have access to evidence which is sufficient to sustain Carroll’s Assumption that no other persons have access to evidence sufficient to take alien visitation seriously.

Second, there is an important difference between Elizondo’s evidence and Carroll’s evidence. Elizondo’s evidence is based on the current aviation technological capabilities of human beings whereas Carroll’s evidence is (presumably) based on the projected technological capabilities and psychological motivations of any possible alien civilization in the universe. From that point of view, I’m siding with Elizondo. In other words, if my choices are to take the possibility of alien visitation seriously based on the witness of military pilots and investigators from the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, or to refuse to take this possibility seriously based on Carroll’s testimony, I’m siding with the former.

(Read my article “On Fermi’s Paradox and the Earth as a Wildlife Preserve,” for one fanciful possibility.)

Keep in mind that I am only saying I take the possibility of alien visitation seriously: I don’t currently believe that aliens have visited earth (though Elizondo apparently does).

So what’s the lesson in all this? To my mind, the point is less about aliens per se, than it is about public intellectuals like Carroll making grand judgments about the rationality of others. Just because you’re a scientist who knows a whole lot about some particular field of inquiry doesn’t ensure that you will provide a nuanced and helpful analysis of evidence and rational belief.

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Is belief in God like belief in Santa Claus?

In this 2014 podcast, now adapted into a new video, I provide the answer, and all in under a minute!

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Pew Sitting as Performance

As a seminary professor I’m very adept at judging church performance: I’m at home formulating detailed critiques of the exegetical and homiletical quality of a preacher’s sermon and the relevance of the service’s liturgical form; I’m even happy to opine on the quality of the music … an area rather distant from my formal education.

And it isn’t just me. These days, it is easy to be the critic. As a case in point, some years ago when I asked a friend why he had stopped going to his church he replied, “I didn’t get anything out of the worship.”

The idea, presumably, is that church is about getting something. We folks in the pew are there to take in a performance. If we like the performance we stick around. Perhaps we bestow a tithe. Maybe we even volunteer to teach Sunday school. But if we don’t like the performance, we move on.

After all, if I find Starbucks’ coffee bitter and the baristas rude, I’ll find a new coffee shop. So why should it be any different for church?

The problem is that church is less about getting than it is about giving. (Yes, by giving you also get, but that’s another story.) And that giving begins by recognizing that when we sit in the pew, we are not simply taking in a performance. Rather, we are part of the performance. As Philip Yancey observes,

“I used to approach church with the spirit of a discriminating consumer. I viewed the worship service as a performance. Give me something I like. Entertain me. Speaking of folks like me, Soren Kierkegaard said that we tend to think of church as a kind of theater: we sit in the audience, attentively watching the actor on stage, who draws every eye to himself. If sufficiently entertained, we show our gratitude with applause and cheers. Church, though, should be the opposite of the theater. In church God is the audience for our worship. Far from playing the role of the leading actor, the minister should function as something like a prompter, the inconspicuous helper who sits beside the stage and prompts by whispering. What matters most takes place within the hearts of the congregation, not among the actors on stage. We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not ‘What did I get out of it?’ but rather ‘Was God pleased with what happened?’” (Church: Why Bother?, 24-25)

I think Yancey’s exactly right. So when I go to church I always begin my critical reflections by asking, how was my performance?

For further discussion see my articles “Why you shouldn’t clap in church?” and “Is the church supposed to be ‘a place for you’?“

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How to argue without seeming like a crazy person

Check out my interview on Matt Fradd’s great podcast Pints with Aquinas:

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No true Christian would subjugate and oppress other faiths

Christianity subjugates & oppresses other faiths when it is NOT true to its principles; Islam does it when it IS true to its principles.

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) June 22, 2017

Is this true? More specifically, what kind of evidence could be brought to bear to sustain or falsify Brown’s assertion?

Let’s begin with two important facts.

Fact One: there are versions of Christianity that do subjugate and oppress other faiths.

Fact Two: there are versions of Islam that do not subjugate and oppress other faiths.

So what basis does Brown provide to say that all the versions of Christianity that oppress other faiths are not true to Christian principles while all versions of Islam that oppress other faiths are true to Islamic principles?

Put another way, how does Brown avoid the true Scotsman fallacy?

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Is the virgin birth an essential doctrine?

Since we’re in the midst of Advent, it would seem to be a good time to pose a question about the relative importance of the doctrine of the virgin birth. (By the way, the term is infelicitous since the doctrine in question is really about whether Jesus was virginally conceived. Be that as it may, the term “virgin birth” is well established.)

With that in mind, yesterday I posted the following survey which poses the question of whether the virgin birth should be considered an essential doctrine (i.e. a dogma). The result was undeniable: most respondents said yes:

Is the virgin birth (i.e. the virgin conception) of Jesus an essential doctrine for orthodox Christian belief?

— Randal Rauser (@RandalRauser) December 17, 2017

No doubt, it will be a surprise to many to learn that some of the leading theologians of the twentieth century including Emil Brunner and Wolfhart Pannenberg rejected the doctrine. Regardless, this does press the question: what reason would there be to assume that the virgin birth is an essential dogma of Christian faith on the level of the Trinity, incarnation, and atonement, rather than an important but nonetheless secondary doctrine like baptismal regeneration, biblical inerrancy, or the real presence?

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Best of Enemies: A Review

As the old wisdom goes, there are two topics not fit for polite conversation: religion and politics. If you ever need an illustration of why, you might return to the famous live televised debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal which unfolded during the 1968 Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

It would be hard to envision a more polarizing pair: Buckley the faithful Catholic political conservative squaring off against Vidal, the atheist libertine novelist. And that very polarization, it turns out, was the secret sauce of success.

Throughout the month of August, these ten debates unfolded before an audience of millions: two brilliant pundits, eloquent defenders of their respective views, and yet each barely able to suppress his deep loathing, his utter contempt, for the other.

Finally, any pretense of good will and civility evaporated as Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi”. Enraged, Buckley snapped back in his inimitable mid-Atlantic accent that Vidal was a “queer”. To cap it off, Buckley then leaned in his seat and threatened to punch Vidal in the face.

The infamous exchange may have verified the common wisdom: if you don’t want to risk a punch in the face, then for goodness sake, avoid religion and politics. But it also verified a new bit of wisdom: if you want great TV, then let polarized pundits have at it while the cameras roll.

Fast-forward to the present and it becomes clear that this series of exchanges which unfolded live on TV fifty years ago provided the basic format for so much contemporary cable news. Great TV, perhaps, but rather less helpful for cultivating healthy, civil society.

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Spending a Day at Frank’s House: A Review of Letter to Lucy

Frank Schaeffer and EJG2, Letter to Lucy: A Manifesto of Creative Redemption in the Age of Trump, Fascism and Lies, A Multi-Touch Book, 2017. (E-book)

When I started reading Letter to Lucy  I assumed it was a book. I was quickly  — and very pleasantly — disabused of that assumption. It turns out that it is something far better: an open invitation to come over to Frank Schaeffer’s house for an expansive and meandering exploration of art, life, and love. The format is an extended address to one of Schaeffer’s granddaughters, Lucy. Fortunately, we are invited along for the ride.

The reference in the subtitle to “Trump, Fascism and Lies,” had me worrying that the bloviating huckster-in-chief would occupy a disproportionate share of the conversation. Fortunately, that is not the case. Very soon our tortured political milieu moves to the background as Frank reminisces about growing up at L’Abri in Switzerland and being co-opted (along with his famous father Francis) by the religious right in the 1970s. We are invited to listen in as he recalls the tender intimacies of his relationships with his mother and his wife. And we are appalled to learn that footage Frank filmed of Michelangelo’s “David” for the documentary How Should We Then Live? was left on the cutting room floor for fear that the statue’s marble genitalia would offend puritanical Christian sensibilities.

Along the way, those personal reminiscences are punctuated by countless fascinating excursions into art, music, and the noble pursuit of the aesthetic. Frank invites us to listen to music — the format supports both audio and video clips — ranging from Camilla Tilling’s operatic transcendence to Green Day’s wall of sound.

As we meditate on art both famous and obscure, Frank also takes some well-aimed potshots at the absurdities of the modern art market. (There is no better way to appreciate Frank’s point than to visit London’s National Gallery and the Tate Modern in the same day as I once did. At the end of that long day it was clear — to me at least — which of these collections deserved to be loved a thousand years from now.)

While the book dazzles with the grandiosity of its vision and eclectic sweep of its engagement, my favorite moments are found in the intimate portraits of Frank, a stay-at-home grandfather, and his beloved grandchildren, including the inimitable Lucy. Consider, for example, the moment where Frank recalls sharing some fifty year old sparklers with Lucy on Christmas:

The next night was Christmas Eve. Lucy wanted to burn more sparklers and said, “Let’s go outside and walk around in the dark.” So after supper we walked out to the marsh. By the time we got to the river, we could no longer see our house behind us through a thick fog. The lights on the Newburyport waterfront across the river were making misty halos. We stood on the cold muddy tidal flats by the edge of the water, and I lit a sparkler. As Lucy waved it, the shards of glittering light were reflected on the dark water and her eyes.

“Let’s wish the river a happy Christmas,” I said.

“Happy Christmas, River!” Lucy called out and waved the sparkler. Then in a sleepy voice Lucy whispered, “The lights across the river look like angels.”

When we’d used up our cache of sparklers, I picked Lucy up. She lay back in my arms staring up at the dark sky. As we walked home across the marsh, she held me close and pressed her cheek to mine. I trudged through tall dry grasses with the mud and water squelching underfoot as we passed by our little stand of dying maples. They had barely leafed that year and then dropped their leaves far too early in the autumn. As I walked clutching Lucy I was thinking about the fact that the marsh, our front lawn, the maple and crab apple trees growing on the margin, the porch in front of our house–all of it was sooner than later going to be gone. I knew we were walking through what was to become the watery graveyard of Lucy’s childhood memories. And what cut me to the heart was that unknown to the child in my arms, I’d played a bit part in facilitating the coming deluge that would obliterate this magical realm of her childhood. (337)

So much is woven into this intimate portrait: Frank’s love for his granddaughter; the profundity found in the ephemeral beauty of shared moments like a sparkler sputtering into the misty darkness; and the combination of fundamentalist theology and bloodless corporate interest that is even now spurring the environmental crisis of global warming and sea level rise.

What is it like to read Letter to Lucy? At this point I am reminded of the time I visited another London museum: the famed Victoria and Albert. I arrived in the morning at the V&A. Hours later when I left I was surprised to discover the sun had already set: apparently I had whiled away an entire day wandering among its endless displays.

Reading Letter to Lucy is like that. Wandering among the book’s 435 pages — many of them works of art in their own right thanks to coauthor EJG2 — is an incredibly easy and satisfying way to while away an entire day.

So Frank, thanks for inviting me over.

* * *

You can read a sample chapter of Letter to Lucy here. Even better, you can purchase a copy at iTunes. Note: the book is currently only available for ios devices.  To purchase a copy, click here.

Thanks to Frank Schaeffer for a review copy of the book.

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