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What did Jesus believe about Noah and Lot’s wife? A response to Justin Schieber

Yesterday Justin Schieber tweeted some questions regarding Jesus, Noah, and Lot and his wife and he tagged me requesting a reply:

Christian bloggers,
If you have a moment, I'd love a post addressing these two questions:
Thanks! pic.twitter.com/HhVqHRf51O

— Real Atheology Pod (@RealAtheology) May 22, 2017

Being the obliging chap that I am, I briefly tweeted a reply which I promised to expand tomorrow. And since that promise was made yesterday, it comes due today which was tomorrow relative to yesterday.

Got it?

Regarding Justin’s first question on the historicity of the Noahic flood and Lot’s wife, it is worth noting that the question is vague. Which statements in the texts would need to have historical referents for the narratives to count as historical? (See Karl Barth’s use of the term “saga” to delineate a third term between “myth” and “history.”)

I avoided the problem of parsing Justin’s question by answering that there may be a historical correlate. The question of historical reference concerns hermeneutics: what kind of texts are we dealing with here? Is their purpose at least partially to relay correct information about past events? Exegetes disagree. For example, many view Genesis 1-11 especially as “prehistory” or “primeval history”. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen writes:

“Scholars use the term primeval or prehistory because the realities portrayed here predate writing. They are inaccessible to normal historical research, and the genres used are more ‘mythic’ than historical. (Mythic here does not mean ‘false,’ but a way of portraying reality.) These chapters describe pre-historical divine actions (the creation) that set the conditions for nature and history. The human actions depicted are also of a foundational, archetypal sort, condensing long historical and cultural developments into genealogies and parable or myth-like genres (compare Gen 11:1-9 with Isa. 14:4-20; Gen 3 with Ezek 28).

“Today these chapters cause confusion, even for preachers, largely because we bring modern expectations to texts whose issues and means of communication are different than ours. In particular, both ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ have brought scientific issues to the Prehistory. The former conclude that the texts are scientifically and historically deficient, while the latter strive to defend the Bible’s ‘literal truth’ in the face of scientific evidence for the processes of cosmic development, and the great antiquity of creation and humanity. Both approaches disrespect the text and fail to hear its message.” (“Prehistory,” 98.)

Of course, only one of our two narratival references (i.e. Noah) is located in this primeval history. Nonetheless, similar questions, qualifications, and challenges pertain to reading and interpreting Genesis 12-50 as history. Indeed, one could reasonably interpret these later chapters as extended prehistory qua the status of Israel as a people culminating in the creation of twelve tribes and exile in Egypt.

Just to be clear, neither the Christian doctrine of inspiration nor any of the major Christian creeds provide guidance as to whether these narratives should be interpreted as some form of myth/prehistory or whether they might have a historical referent. So we can set that question to one side and move on.

My second point was that Jesus’ reference to Noah and Lot’s wife (and Jonah too, by the way) underdetermines historical vs. narratival reference. In other words the fact that Jesus refers to Noah or Lot’s wife to make a point does not entail that Jesus accepted Noah or Lot’s wife as historical figures. He could simply be referring to them as well recognized literary figures.

Justin replied to this point as follows:

“I’m not sure about the underdetermine point. Each part is preceded by ‘Just as it was in the days of Noah’, ‘days of Lot.'”

The point, presumably, is that Jesus refers to the persons and events about them as being in the past, so the reference cannot be merely to these persons/events from within a narrative.

While Justin’s reasoning is understandable, it is nonetheless incorrect. Consider that the stock opening of the fairy tale — “Once upon a time…” — means at some past time. To be sure, I’m not claiming that the phrase “the days of …” was the Semitic equivalent of “Once upon a time.” Clearly it wasn’t. Rather, my point here is simply that referring to an event or person as past does not commit the speaker to the actual, past existence of the individual. And that was as true in Jesus’ day as it is in ours.

No doubt many in Jesus’ audience assumed the historical existence of Noah and Lot’s wife. Can that provide illumination as to Jesus’ own beliefs? Not really. At this point we need to say a word about accommodation. This refers to the good pedagogical practice of making adjustments in one’s presentation to meet an audience where they are at.

Consider the missionary Bruce Olson. When he went to live with the Motilone people in the 1960s he sought to bring good hygiene along with the Gospel. And that included promoting the use of a particular antibacterial agent within the tribe. Knowing that they attributed deaths in the tribe to demons, Olson invited his audience to look at the squiggling bacteria under a microscope. “Those are the demons that are killing your people!” he said. Then he applied the antibacterial agent and they watched the “demons” being killed.

Did Olson really believe the bacteria were demons? Clearly not. But he accommodated to his audience in order to make a more important point for the immediate context. That’s what good teachers do. So did Jesus believe Noah and Lot’s wife were historical persons? Perhaps. But it is also possible that he accommodated to his audience’s belief in their historicity in order to drive home the theological points he wanted to make.

My point is not that Jesus did accommodate in this instance. Rather, it is simply that the data presented to us underdetermines the answer: maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.

Now we can turn to the final point: the incarnation does not require that Jesus retained omniscience about all past historical events on earth. Thus, it is possible that the incarnate Jesus could have incorrectly believed that Noah and Lot’s wife were historical personages. This possibility is fully consistent with a full doctrine of incarnation. I won’t say more about that point here because I’ve already addressed it in the article “Why Jesus almost certainly had some errant theological beliefs.”

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Unbelievable: Justin Brierley’s Book is Landing!

Justin Brierley’s book was launched last week at the Unbelievable Conference in London. Justin also spoke last week at the conference to do a book launch and his talk is featured in the latest edition of Unbelievable. The talk is a brief but stimulating flyover of some of the arguments and themes in the book. The show also features a Q&A in which Justin observed: “Where apologetics is lacking is often in the imaginative, creative side.” I couldn’t agree more!

I read Justin’s manuscript over the winter and offered some feedback. In addition, I provided the following endorsement:

“Over the past decade, I’ve come to recognize Unbelievable? with Justin Brierley as a show of unparalleled quality. Week by week, Brierley facilitates in-depth conversational debate across deep ideological divides with just the right balance between rigour and accessibility. The same may be said of Justin’s new book. Fans of Unbelievable? will find here a treasure trove of insights and reflections mined from a decade of hosting debates on life’s biggest questions. But Justin’s book is not simply a backstage pass to his fine radio show; it stands on its own as an eloquent, accessible and winsome apologetic in the grand tradition of C. S. Lewis.”

Unbelievable, the book, is a great introduction to the apologetic discussion in the manner of contemporary popular luminaries like Tim Keller and John Lennox. You can order the book from Amazon here:

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The Devil Made Him Do It? A look at the conservative Christian defense of Trump

Today I came across this article at The Stream titled “Trump is Under Attack, and Not Just by Human Critics.” The author, John Zmirak, senior editor at The Stream, offers a jaw-dropping explanation for Donald Trump’s woes: demonic attack. He writes:

Given the profound evils that Trump has promised to confront, from Islamic terrorism to Planned Parenthood, from the persecution of Christians to the chaos on our country’s borders, we should not be surprised that he is being assaulted. No, I don’t mean by liberals, misguided people whose policies are poorly reasoned or based in raw emotion.

I mean by principalities and powers. By the spirits who (in the words of the prayer to St. Michael the archangel) “roam the earth, seeking the ruin of souls.” If you think (and you’d better) that your soul matters enough to Satan that he will bother to send you a tempter, just imagine the horde he dispatches to batter the president. They goad him to say foolish things, make rash decisions, and most of all to cave on his core principles — then fight like a tiger over trivialities.

Now as an orthodox Christian, I accept the existence of non-human spiritual agencies. That said, I’m going to look for evidence before I start invoking them. In other words, Ockham’s Razor wins the day. For example, if I can explain a seizure by appealing to a natural condition like epilepsy, then I call a medical doctor. But once the patient begins to levitate, emit projectile green vomit, and recite Latin backwards, then I call the exorcist.

So what’s the evidence that demons are “goading” Trump to “say foolish things, make rash decisions, and most of all cave on his core principles…”?

To start off, I need to ask: what core principles did Trump exhibit in the past? The misogynistic principles that brag about grabbing women by the crotch, which state that flat-chested women can’t be “a ten,” that objectify and sexualize one’s own daughter? Or the narcissistic principles that deludes one into thinking he’s always the smartest person in the room (“I know more about ISIS than the generals do!”) and never needs to apologize? Or the …

Let’s not belabor the point. Ever since he was a child, Trump has demonstrated narcissistic, impulsive, and amoral tendencies.  So if you want to attribute his current failings to demons, you’ll need to extend their malevolent actions back to the nursery.

So no, there isn’t any justification for invoking demons to explain Trump’s horrible performance. The last four months have done nothing but provide ever more evidence that seventy year old narcissistic leopards don’t change their spots.

As for the Christian conservatives like Zmirak, they provide a sobering illustration of the backfire effect. That is, the more the evidence mounts that Trump is fundamentally unfit for office, the more they entrench into their conviction that it is the fault of somebody else: the media, the liberals, even the demons.

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Exercises in Missing the Point: A Response to Counter Apologist’s Scorched Earth Review

I recently preached a sermon on faith and evidence and while it received a warm reception in the comments section of my blog, apparently the feelings were not universal: an absolutely scathing review was posted just today by the generally amiable Counter Apologist (henceforth CA). How scathing? Consider his opening (f-bomb and all). CA says of my sermon:

“It was absolutely infuriating.

“Throughout the entire sermon I kept having the mental image of Joe Pesci yelling ‘Get the fuck outta here!’ as we went from one doozy to another.”

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother to respond to something like this, but I’ve maintained good relations with CA for a few years. Consequently, I find myself compelled to respond to this review, no matter how uncharitable, mean-spirited, vulgar, and misguided it may be. Note, however, that in my response I will assume readers have listened to the sermon (linked above). If you haven’t, I recommend that you take thirty-six minutes to listen. That said, if life is just too busy, you can probably make do.

In response, I’m going to focus on how CA misses three important points. By the way, these points are alliterated. Oh, and my sermon also had three points. Clever, no?

Missing the Point on Mormonism

CA begins by stating his “outrage” that I “make Mormons look bad”.

Mormons?! How so?

In the sermon I note how Mormon missionaries attempting to evangelize me have always failed to defend their evangelistic pitch to me with evidence. This anecdotal example offends CA who immediately surmises that I am making a disparaging general comment about Mormonism simpliciter:

“This isn’t a failing of Mormonism so much as it is the escape hatch of a missionary who is outwitted by a skeptic of their religion.”

In other words, it ain’t a fair fight! What is more, CA observes, Mormons have their own apologetics, and so my broadside of this religion is unfair and thus a cause for “outrage.”

Good grief, I make no general claims about Mormonism at all. The point of the illustration is to underscore the importance of apologetics in evangelism: you can’t expect to win people to your view if you’re unable to respond to their objections. To make the point I cite the example of how Mormon missionaries have failed to respond to my objections. This is how I set up the point:

“A way to see how reasonable it [the importance of evidence] is, is to consider it in a different context. So let me change the situation for a moment and let’s consider my interactions with Mormonism, because in this case I become the skeptic and the Mormon is the one witnessing to me.”

Note again that I make no general claims about Mormonism here. Rather, I frame the point in the terms of my experiences with particular Mormon missionaries. In each of those personal encounters the Mormons made extraordinary claims but could provide no evidence to support the claims. For that reason, I was not willing to consider Mormonism seriously.

Hence the lesson: if Christians want to reach skeptics they should be prepared to respond to objections with evidence. It’s that simple. No ground for outrage here.

To close off this first point, I can’t help but note the sad irony that CA accuses me of making Mormons look bad by distorting their views, and yet that very analysis makes me look bad … by distorting my views.

Missing the Point on Miracles

The Mormon bit is only the opening act. CA’s most egregious instance of missing the point concerns the miracles of Jesus. When I cite miracles in the first point of my sermon I do so to the end of illustrating a simple point: Jesus and early Christians (I cite Paul as an example) regularly appealed to evidence to support their claims. To support my claims I point out that Jesus performed miracles as a witness to his authority and Paul reasoned in the synagogue from the Scriptures.

CA appears to miss this point by a wide margin because his comments focus on the wholly irrelevant fact that he is personally skeptical of the miracle reports recorded in the Gospels. He then goes on to talk about what kind of miracle evidence he would find compelling. While that is an interesting conversation to have, it has precisely nothing to do with the point I’m making in the sermon.

The lesson for the audience is this: just as Jesus and Paul each found relevant evidence for their audience to support their claims, so we should find relevant evidence for our audience to support our claims.

And so we have a second impressive case of missing the point.

Missing the Point on Michael

Finally, let’s turn to the last point I want to focus on: Missing the point on Michael (okay, I admit, this last alliterated point is a stretch). So which Michael is this? Shermer, Michael Shermer. (But if you’d listened to the sermon you’d already know that.)

CA describes the point in my sermon where I recount the time that Michael Shermer appeared on Unbelievable and was asked what kind of event would persuade him a miracle had occurred. He replied that if a limb regrew immediately following a petitionary prayer, that would convince him that a miracle had occurred. However, later in the show he retracted that statement and suggested rather that even in this case he actually wouldn’t conclude a miracle had occurred. Rather, he’d assume there must be some natural capacity in the body to regrow limbs.

This is how CA introduces my use of this anecdote in the sermon:

“Randal moves on to one of his favorite stories about Michael Shermer being a closed minded fool on an apologetics podcast.”

To begin with, prefacing the discussion by labeling the case as “one of his favorite stories” rings a sour note of condescension. (Yawn, not that story again!) But at least we can say this much: CA is definitely consistent in maintaining his utterly withering tone.

More importantly, I don’t suggest in the sermon that Shermer is a “close minded fool.” On the contrary, this is how I immediately follow up the story:

“Let me add I do think that the process of transferring from one worldview to another is complicated and people don’t typically change their entire worldview over one piece of evidence. But nonetheless I have to say that  it seems to me that at this point he was dogmatically closed to the consideration of this kind of evidence.”

Note two things about my disclaimer. First, it’s clear that I’m not trying to score any cheap shots here. Rather, I emphasize to my audience that we ought not be too quick to judge Shermer because worldview conversion happens slowly, and as I suggest, folks are typically reluctant to accept evidence that disconfirms their worldview. Having said that, I do opine that it seems to me Shermer is so closed off to disconfirming evidence that he is in danger of irrationality. Needless to say, this nuanced and tentative judgment is very different from CA’s suggestion that I cast Shermer merely as a “close minded fool.”

This brings me to yet more irony, for if anyone is uncharitable in their treatment of Shermer, it is CA for he brusquely states that Shermer is simply “being stupid.” Note the contrast here: I exercised charitable nuance while speaking extemporaneously about an atheist to a Christian audience. By contrast, CA lacked charitable nuance while writing about that same atheist to his readership.

One more thing: I can’t help but flag yet more irony. If CA is correct in his analysis of miracles then Shermer is not, in fact, “stupid” to disbelieve in miracles even if a limb regrows after a prayer. Why is that? Well, consider first CA’s analysis. As he writes: “on my proposed miracle framework, where we have repeatable, verifiable miracles only happening with one religion – we get enough background knowledge to trust historical miracle claims and believe that a god exists.”

Note that the scenario Shermer describes is a single instance of a limb regrowing. Since this is not yet part of a repeated sequence of events, by CA’s own definition it is not yet adequate to invoke the miraculous. And thus, by CA’s definition, Shermer is being smart, not “stupid.”

An Addendum: Swearing a Lot

I could have left my rebuttal to those three points but as I conclude I find myself compelled to comment on the vulgarity of CA’s review. Here’s another sample. He writes indignantly:

“Start giving me some specific, unique, repeatable Christian miracles that I can fucking witness and I’ll start believing!”

Yes, another f-bomb. Indeed, CA swears with a frequency that rivals the Goodfellas screenplay.

Now of course bloggers are free to use whatever language they want. (And I’m a big Goodfellas fan. Indeed, twenty years ago I had the VHS tape!) But if bloggers are free to cuss gratuitously, then I’m free to point out that doing so never makes you sound more intelligent, self-controlled, or deserving of respect. On the contrary, to a reader like me it smacks of a juvenile enfant terrible rebellion.

Just sayin’…

Conclusion

This is how CA begins his conclusion:

“The actual handling of evidence and trust that Randal engages in is largely on point, my ‘Get the fuck outta here!’ reactions are based on the idea that we have anything remotely like the kind of evidence Randal refers to.”

This is a revealing statement for two reasons.

To begin with, the stuff CA appreciated is the stuff the sermon was about. The sermon was concerned with defining faith as trust and explaining its relationship to evidence. And on that topic CA admits that it was “largely on point.”

Meanwhile, the stuff that was the subject of CA’s rage and vitriol — particularly the evidential strength of New Testament miracle reports for the contemporary self-styled skeptic — has precisely nothing to do with the sermon. Thus, the entire review is an exercise in missing the point.

And now, if I may close on a note of weary candor: reviews like this provide a prime example of why I increasingly find work in apologetics to be depressingly futile and unrewarding.

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Let’s Talk About Sex … and Porn

The latest edition of Unbelievable delves into the topic “Is porn harmful to society?” The conversation featured pro-porn advocates Charlotte Rose, a “sexual freedom campaigner,” and Adam Scarborough from “the Campaign Against Censorship.” And speaking against porn we have my friend Matt Fradd, author of the new book The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography.

(As an aside, I’ve read The Porn Myth and I have posted the following review at Amazon: “Expertly balanced with up-to-date scientific research, riveting anecdotes, accessible prose, and a savvy awareness of the cultural Zeitgeist, Matt Fradd’s The Porn Myth unmasks the pornographic lies of our age while leading the reader on to true sexual and relational wholeness. A tour de force.” So get the book!)

Unfortunately, the conversation took a while to get going due to some confusion about the topic of debate. While Matt was clear that his argument was concerned solely with evidence for the negative psychological and social effects of pornography, Charlotte and Adam repeatedly wandered into other topics like censorship, religion, and child sex ed. The confusion was probably exacerbated by the lack of any clear definition of pornography being provided at the outset of the show.

Regardless, Matt did a great job presenting scientific evidence based on peer-reviewed studies for the negative personal and societal effects of pornography. By contrast, Charlotte and Adam had little by way of reply. For example, Matt referred to more than thirty scientific studies which supported his claims. But Charlotte and Adam could not cite a single study to support their libertine view (though Adam said he remembered reading a study once which supported the health of masturbation).

While the conversation remained friendly, Charlotte and Adam repeatedly attempted to present Matt as imposing his particular ethic on society. For example, Charlotte suggested that Matt’s citation of peer-reviewed studies amounted to “dictating” his vision of right behavior to others. The fact is, however, that Charlotte, Adam, and Matt all have a vision of the good society and each of them is advocating for their particular view. And so, for example, Charlotte and Adam made consent, privacy, and libertinism central to their social and sexual ethic. Fair enough, but then don’t pretend that Matt is the only one advocating for an exclusive vision of the good society.

At the close of the show Charlotte attempted to cast a general skeptical pall on scientific studies. Her evidence? Scientific studies have differed on the health benefits of wine. The implied conclusion is that we can disregard the scientific consensus on the negative effects of pornography because future studies might suggest otherwise. But this is nothing more than a bald instance of selection bias in which one disregards all scientific studies until one finds a study agreeing with their view.

As Matt pointed out, the real lesson from the wine example is that science is always open to revision. Regardless, the reasonable person still makes decisions based on the best available evidence at any given time. And in this case Matt made a powerful case that the presently available evidence supports the broadly negative effects of pornography.

Having said all that, it seems to me there is another alcohol analogy nearby which is more challenging to Matt’s case. Rather than attempt to argue that pornography does not have all these negative personal and social effects, Charlotte and Adam would be wiser to try arguing that despite all these negative effects, pornography can still be beneficial. (Of course, this isn’t my view. Rather, this is me being the devil’s advocate.)

And that brings me to what I think is a more effective alcohol argument. Imagine that Matt’s book was titled The Alcohol Myth and in the book he presented evidence that alcohol has negative physiological, psychological, and social effects. Anybody who tried to argue with Matt would be engaged in a fool’s errand. The data unequivocally supports that conclusion.

Nonetheless, if that was all The Alcohol Myth had to offer it would still come up desperately short as an argument for teetotalism. Why? Because of the great joy of having a rum and coke after a hard day’s work, or drinking a couple pints with friends on the patio. In short, despite all the negative effects of alcohol ranging from cancer to cirrohosis to spousal abuse to drunk driving to obesity, many of us still eschew teetotalism because we perceive the social and personal pleasures of alcohol outweigh the negative effects, at least they do for us.

By the same token, the objector to The Porn Myth could concede the overwhelming weight of evidence Matt provides (at least that referenced in the program) and still insist that the perceived benefits of porn outweigh the negative effects, at least they do for them.

Matt provided a response to this gambit throughout the show, but it was subtle. At a few key points he contrasted fidelity to a spouse in covenantal union over-against the base loneliness and selfishness of masturbating to pornographic images. As he put it at one point, the problem with pornography is not that it shows to much but rather that it shows too little by reducing persons to mere images as a means to personal gratification.

I suspect that it is here, in the contrasting of two visions of sexual and relational wholeness, that we find the argument finally resides. But this is a matter that cannot be settled by scientific studies alone.

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Can divine wrath explain divinely commanded genocide?

In his 2005 book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace theologian Miroslav Volf provides a penetrating reflection on the extraordinary challenge and inestimable rewards of acquiring a robust understanding of grace and forgiveness.

I first became aware of Volf’s book some years ago when I was critiquing evangelical apologetic readings of the Yahweh wars described in biblical passages like Deuteronomy 20, Joshua 6, and 1 Samuel 15. At the time I encountered a passage from Volf discussing the divine wrath cited in Christopher Wright’s The God I Don’t Understand and Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster? In this article I want to critique Copan’s citation of Volf on divine wrath as a way to defend Canaanite genocide. We can set the scene by considering a couple excerpts from Copan:

“We sensitized Westerners wonder why God gets so angry with Israel. Why all the judgment and wrath? Why does the Old Testament seem so undemocratic? … Perhaps we need to be more open to the fact that some of our moral intuitions aren’t as finely tuned as they ought to be. The same may apply to our thoughts about what God should or shouldn’t have done in Canaan.” (192)

Here’s the essence of Copan’s claim: the moral problem created by the divine command to eradicate the entire Canaanite population (what we today call genocide) can be greatly ameliorated if not removed altogether if we reconsider the moral intuitions that underlie the objection. How so? To make the point, Copan quotes Volf’s reflection on divine wrath:

“I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandparently fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.” (Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Zondervan, 2005), 138-139, cited in Copan Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God, Baker, 2011), 192.)

Next, Copan unpacks Volf’s evocative challenge to our notions of God:

“Maybe the ideal ‘God’ in the Westerner’s mind is just too nice. We’ve lost sight of good and just while focusing on nice, tame, and manageable. We’ve ignored sternness and severity (which make us squirm), latching on to our own ideals of comfort and convenience. We’ve gotten rid of the God who presents a cosmic authority problem and substituted controllable gods of our own devising. We’ve focused on divine love at the expense of God’s anger at what ultimately destroys us or undermines our fundamental well-being.” (192-3)

Countless Christian authors have made the same general point that we often attempt to “tame” God based on fallible and self-serving intuitions. (See, for example, Mark Buchanan, Your God is Too Safe: Rediscovering the Wonder of a God You Can’t Control (Multnomah, 2001).) Fair enough. I have no problem with the general point. Our intuitions are fallible. And they are also often self-serving. The tendency to remake God in our image is a perennial danger.

But here’s the problem: the observation that our intuitions are fallible and often self-serving also has obvious limits. That point does not offer carte blanche to justify any behavior which violates those moral intuitions. As a case in point, when avowedly Christian Hutus were massacring the Tutsi population of Rwanda, who among us would ever consider a defense offered in the terms presented by Paul Copan? Imagine the apologist of the Rwandan genocide reasoning like this:

“You have a problem with Hutu villagers massacring their Tutsi neighbors with machetes? Well maybe the ideal ‘God’ in the Westerner’s mind is just too nice. We’ve lost sight of good and just while focusing on nice, tame, and manageable. We’ve ignored sternness and severity (which make us squirm), latching on to our own ideals of comfort and convenience…”

Would such reasoning cause us to reconsider our moral condemnation? On the contrary, we would repudiate such an apologetic defense categorically not only as absurd but as an affront to our most deeply held moral intuitions. If we know anything morally we know that it is wrong to slaughter an entire civilian population from newborns to the aged. And to suggest, as Copan clearly does, that our aversion to the butchering of infants and the elderly is a manifestation of our sinful and self-serving dispositions to recreate God in our image is nothing short of absurd.

In conclusion, one should note the striking irony: Copan cites a passage in which Volf describes God’s rage at the indiscriminate genocide of a civilian population as the grounds to justify God’s commanding the indiscriminate genocide of a civilian population. Needless to say, this makes no sense. It is akin to an environmentalist organization retaliating against the environmental impact of an oil spill by sinking a loaded oil tanker.

I know Paul Copan and I respect him as one of the most thoughtful and pastoral Christian apologists working today. Nonetheless, I find the kind of defense he presents of Yahweh warfare and genocide to be utterly implausible and unhelpful. Far from addressing the problem of biblical violence and Yahweh warfare, such apologetic strategies only multiple moral difficulties.

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Three Ways Atheists Try to Rise Above the Hoi Polloi

Most of us have ways that we distinguish ourselves and our in-group from the common herd. Alas, in most instances those points of distinction either (1) do not uniquely obtain in the in-group, (2) cannot be demonstrated to obtain uniquely within the in-group, or (3) are are less significant than is initially suggested. The conclusion: the grounds we use to distinguish ourselves from others are not as strong as we tend to think.

My extensive interactions with atheists over the last decade have illustrated three common ways atheists attempt to distinguish their in-group from the out-group (i.e. the “religious”; the “faithhead”).

Faith. To begin with, the atheist says he does not have “faith.” At the outset this fails to distinguish between two distinct concepts: “faith” as religion and “faith” as a belief accepted by way of trust. It is true that the atheist doesn’t have faith in the first sense because the atheist has no religion. But that borders on being a trivial observation. (More specifically, it is trivial if one assumes that atheism encompasses a commitment to secularism. But of course, it need not since one can be an atheist and a member of a religion like Buddhism or Unitarianism.)

As for the latter concept where faith is belief accepted by trust, in this case the assertion is false. The atheist accepts some beliefs by way of trust (trust in the cognitive context by which the belief is acquired [e.g. through sense perception, memory, or testimonial witness], trust in the truth of the proposition one accepts). And if the atheist happens to be a global skeptic about everything, presumably that skepticism is itself based on intuitions about evidence and knowledge.

Believer. Second, the atheist will often say they are not a “believer.” This term is apparently shorthand for believer in some particular religion or believer in the doctrines of some particular religion. This too appears to be a borderline trivial observation. It also tendentiously limits the ascription of “belief” to religion. But the atheist presumably has her own beliefs about how best to answer various metaphysical and metaethical questions (Where do we come from?; What is the meaning of life?; What is the ultimate nature of reality?; How ought one to live their life?). The atheist may take an agnostic stance toward some of these questions. Or he may believe some of these questions are trivial or nonsensical. Or he may adopt a positive, robust answer to them. But he certainly believes something about these fundamental questions: he does have a worldview. He is a believer too.

Evidence. Finally, I will often find atheists saying that they are open to evidence, their beliefs are falsifiable, and they even welcome others to present evidence to falsify their beliefs. This contrasts with the religious person who is dismissive of — or even hostile to — evidence and who eschews disconfirming evidence to her beliefs. At this point, Antony Flew’s famous story of the invisible gardener has been very influential. In that story, the religious person is like the man who attributes a forest clearing to the actions of a gardener. When no gardener appears, he says the gardener is invisible, so a fence is erected. Then he says the invisible gardener can pass through fences. And so it goes: religious belief — and belief in God in particular — can endlessly be altered to accommodate prima facie disconfirming data.

Here too there isn’t really any grand insight. The fact is that any account of reality can always be adjusted to fit with prima facie disconfirming data. Just look at the tortured history of those who say that “nature is all that exists” and who then proceed to modify the concept of nature, world without end. (The terminus is the open-ended concept that “nature” just is whatever a hypothetically completed natural science settles on as reality, a definition that in principle could include God.)

Practically speaking, I have never found atheists to be more welcoming of counter-arguments to their beliefs than the general population. So far as I can see, they exercise the same cognitive biases as the rest of us.

To sum up, the attempt to distinguish the atheist from the rest of us by denying faith or belief or by affirming evidence is without merit

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My Eyes are Mirrors: A reflection on my dog staring out the window

The other day I took this close up of one of my dogs — Sonny — staring out the window, past the front porch and to the world waiting beyond.

My wife pointed out that the porch and blue sky beyond were mirrored in Sonny’s eye (I apologize for the gross eye closeup):

That in turn reminded me of the lyrics from one of my favorite Elton John songs, “Skyline Pigeon“:

For this dark and lonely room

Projects a shadow cast in gloom

And my eyes are mirrors

Of the world outside

Thinking of the ways

That the wind can turn the tide

And these shadows turn

From purple into grey
For just a Skyline Pigeon

Dreaming of the open

Waiting for the day

That he can spread his wings

And fly away again

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Impervious to Reason? On the rhetoric of atheistic fundamentalism

I haven’t read John Loftus’ most recent book Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End (Pitchstone, 2016). But today I did take a look at what Loftus has to say about me. Here’s the most significant excerpt:

“Randal Rauser is an associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary, Edmonton, Canada. He and I coauthored a debate-style book together titled God or Godless? He is a Christian believer. I cowrote the book to reach any honest believers since I consider him impervious to reason. I could say it of any Christian pseudo-intellectual to some degree, depending on how close he or she is to the truth (liberals are closer than progressive evangelicals who are closer than fundamentalists). I admit Rauser reasons well in other areas of his life unrelated to his faith. He could even teach a critical thinking class. So he’s rational, very much so. But like all believers his brain must basically shut down when it comes to faith. When it comes to faith his brain must disengage. It cannot connect the dots. It refuses to connect them. Faith stops the brain from working properly. Faith is a cognitive bias that causes believers to overestimate any confirming evidence and underestimate any disconfirming evidence. So his brain will not let reason penetrate it, given his faith bias. Some people have even described faith as a virus of the brain (or mind). It makes the brain sick. Maybe Marx said it best though. It’s an opiate, a deadening drug.” (54-55)

This excerpt is a great example of Loftus’ own glaring bias blind spot. He devotes over 200 words to declaring me hopelessly biased, a victim to unconstrained motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. But in all that incendiary verbiage, he provides not a single example of the alleged offense. All smoke, no fire.

But that’s not to say there is no logic to Loftus’ ramblings, for there most assuredly is. When he spends all his time labeling those with whom he disagrees as hopelessly cognitively biased, he creates a testimonial undercutting defeater for their arguments. That is, he need not directly rebut anything I say because he has already established that I exercise “faith” which is apparently “a cognitive bias”, one that “stops the brain from working” like a “virus”. This virus has left my “brain sick”, victim to “an opiate, a deadening drug.”

In contrast to Loftus’ rhetoric, my apologetic method is formed by a dedication to steel-manning my opponents, even to the extent of writing an entire book — Is the Atheist My Neighbor? Rethinking Christian attitudes toward atheism — to defending the intellectual credibility of atheism. What is more, last year I defended atheism in a devil’s advocate debate while atheist Michael Ruse defended Christianity.

No surprise, Loftus is wholly unable to steel-man his Christian interlocutors. His biases prevent him from doing so. Instead, he loves to label the Christians he disagrees with “fundamentalists”. Indeed, at the beginning of Unapologetic he begins by labeling Alvin Plantinga a fundamentalist. The irony with such methods is that they demonstrate Loftus’ own unchecked fundamentalism. He is the one who is invoking the tried and true binary opposition of classic fundamentalism, one which contrasts the enlightened in-group with the deluded out-group. Everybody is vulnerable to cognitive biases to some degree. But it is Loftus himself who, in his dogged determination to marginalize Christians, thereby demonstrates the most glaring, unchecked biases of all.

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Did Stephen Colbert Go Too Far?

This past week Donald Trump had a bizarre interview (one of several) with John Dickerson of Face the Nation in which Trump derided Face the Nation in a sophomoric pun as “Deface the Nation.” (Of all the neofacist attempts to discredit the media this must surely count among the lamest.)

Dickerson is an eminently professional journalist who refused to engage in Trump’s insults. And when Trump reiterated the discredited “surveillance” charge against Obama, Dickerson politely but forcefully asked Trump to explain the charge. Like the big baby he is, Trump huffed and puffed and then ended the interview and walked over to his desk to pout. (That’s no exaggeration. Here’s the transcript.)

Stephen Colbert is friends with Dickerson, and that evening on his opening monologue for The Late Show he responded with an impressive harangue of Trump for his offensive behavior. That harangue included an offensive allusion to Trump performing oral sex on Putin:

“Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer. You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head. In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s (expletive) holster.”

As you may have heard, this final quip was sufficiently offensive that it has earned an investigation from the FCC.

So did Stephen Colbert go too far? Yeah sure, of course.

However, let us not countenance the absurdity that his statement was “homophobic.” Rather, his comment was a provocative metaphor along the lines of “brown-nosing,” one which indicts Trump’s inexplicably servile, obsequious attitude toward the despot of Russia. Even now Trump will still say nothing bad about this wicked man who suppresses the free press even as he cultivates his own corrupt petty fiefdom. Why is that?

And that’s the point. Focusing on the offense of Colbert’s metaphor while ignoring the conditions that precipitated the metaphor is straining gnats and swallowing camels.

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