Randal Rauser's Blog, page 149

Faith is Irrational: Reflections on the Worst Arguments Against Christianity (Part 5)

Let’s get back to our list of the worst arguments against Christianity as suggested by my readers. Tim offered a long list of suggestions including this doozy:

“Religious belief is a matter of ‘faith,’ hence irrational since faith is ‘Believing what you know ain’t [sic] so,’ or some such.”

I have rebutted this ridiculous canard too many times to count. One of my more recent contributions is “Irrational? Faith from Ignatius of Loyola to Carl Sagan.” And then there is “Do you have enough faith to be a theist? Or an atheist?” And “’I just have faith?’ How atheists go wrong in understanding the concept of faith.” And many others besides.

What strikes me is the irony with which an individual like Peter Boghossian brazenly creates his own definitions of faith and then knocks them down like so many strawmen. See, for example, my critique here: “Peter Boghossian’s Manual for Wasting Paper (Part 4): Faith.” And also my review of the Boghossian/McGrew debate: “Tim McGrew gives Peter Boghossian an unbelievable public drubbing.”

Perhaps even worse than the initial proffering of such shameful strawmen is the persistence in retaining them even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited.

This situation brings me back to last September when I provided a rejoinder to the following tweet from Justin Schieber:

“For many, ‘faith’ is a pride in one’s refusal to update epistemically.”

Whatever the problems with this tweet may be, it must be said that by this criterion folks like Boghossian exhibit enormous faith as they persist in regurgitating their discredited critiques of faith in a brain-busting refusal to update epistemically.

Humanism, Christianity, and Human Dignity

Yesterday my friend Andy Bannister tweeted the following:

If tweets are meant to be stimuli for further reflection, this one certainly qualifies. At first I thought Andy was saying Christianity is the only worldview that can provide an adequate account of value and dignity. But that can’t be right since Judaism shares with Christianity an appeal to the concept image and likeness of God which I assume is Andy’s metaphysical basis for value and dignity. Thus, by my reading of this tweet, Andy is contrasting Christianity and humanism specifically and saying that only one of these two worldviews can adequately ground the value and dignity of human persons.

But is Andy correct? To be sure, the humanists may beg to differ! And this thread is the place where they may do so.

In the interim, Andy’s tweet has accomplished what few tweets achieve, i.e. the status of becoming a catalyst for reflective conversation across ideological divides.

75,000 Comments (and then some)

A couple weeks ago I noticed that the tally for approved comments at my blog was approaching 75,000. I thought to myself, “Gee, we should keep on top of that and have an official celebration when a person posts the 75,000th comment.

Well, you can forget about that. When I logged in this morning I realized we’re now at 75,364 comments. Unfortunately, I don’t know who claimed the golden 75,000th comment. But regardless, that’s still a lot of comments over 5 years.

So let’s celebrate!

Religious Fanatics

Today Michael Brown tweeted the following:

“What the world calls fanaticism and much of the Church calls extremism, God calls normal.”

The observation reminded me of a statement that Noam Chomsky once gave about so-called “religious fanaticism”. In the interview Chomsky is asked about religious fundamentalism. He replies,

“There have been a lot of cross-cultural studies of what social sciences call ‘religious fanaticism’ – not people who just believe in God or go to church, but they’re really kind of fanatic about it, it’s the kind of fanatic religious commitment that permeates your whole life.” (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,  ed. Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel (New York: New Press, 2002), 50.)

Since this is an extemporaneous response in the middle of an interview, I don’t want to come down too hard. But take a look at that explanation for “religious fanaticism”, viz. the kind of commitment “that permeates your whole life.” Chomsky seems to think that “sensible” religious commitment is that which is confined to the innocuous role of civil religion, i.e. a loose commitment to community and practice that is relevant on religious holidays and perhaps on a weekly pause from one’s proper secular activities. But the idea that religious commitment should structure your daily life is fanatical.

Why limit this definition of fanaticism to religion? Wouldn’t it make sense to extend it to a political philosophy as well? Chomsky is justly famous for his political anarchism. It has been a driving force of his career and life over the last sixty years as evidenced in dozens of books, countless interviews and public addresses, and a world famous reputation.

Chomsky is really kind of fanatical about his anarchism, it’s the kind of fanatic political commitment that permeates his whole life.

I just believe in one less god than you: Reflections on the Worst Arguments Against Christianity (Part 4)

It is time to return to the repository of bad arguments first shared in the thread for my blog post “Share Your Candidate for the Worst Argument Against Christianity.” In this installment let’s consider a nominee from Tim. His second bad argument reads as follows: “The only difference between you (i.e., the theist) and me (i.e., the atheist) is that I believe in one less god than you.”

I’ve already dealt with this bad piece of rhetoric at some length in The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver, and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails (Grand Rapids, MI: InterVarsity, 2012), chapter 13, which is aptly titled “I just happen to believe in one less God than you.”

Since I’ve already devoted a deeper conceptual critique to this fluffy  piece of rhetoric, in this article I’ll keep things light. Imagine Joseph and Josephine. Joseph believes in a moral absolute that structures all moral value and obligation. According to Joseph, all actions are morally good or evil, right or wrong, in virtue of exemplifying this objective moral good or evil, right or wrong. Meanwhile, Josephine retorts that all actions are morally good or evil, right or wrong in virtue of the subjective personal whim of the individual.

Despite Josephine’s assurances to the contrary, you’d be forgiven for thinking the difference between Joseph and Josephine is chasmic.

And then Josephine replies reassuringly to Joseph, “The only difference between you and me is that I believe in one less objective good and right than you.”

Ahem, you’d still be forgiven for concluding that the divide between the two positions is chasmic.

(Hint: if you think the point of this short article is to link theism to moral objectivism then you’ve misread the article.)

Fetus as Parasite? A disturbing trend in pro-choice rhetoric

Throughout history attempts to justify killing members of outgroups has been carried out by invoking labels for members of the outgroups. David Livingstone Smith chronicles this lamentable aspect of human history in his book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2012). And so, for example, the Nazis called Jews and Gypsies “vermin” and “rats” and the Hutus called the Tutsis “cockroaches”.

And some prochoice advocates label the fetus a “parasite”.

For a recent example of the latter case, see the discussion thread for my article “On the Prolife rationale behind showing aborted fetuses.” In that discussion thread Felixcox writes:

“In the case of abortion, the mother doesn’t want the fetus. It is definitionally both a human fetus and a parasite.”

“And yes, the infant is definitionally a parasite if the mother doesn’t want it.”

When Billy Squibs protested, Felixcox doubled-down:

“Hey, that’s fine if you want to make up your own definition of “parasite” in order to rationalize your inconsistency. Everybody else, however, will continue to use the word as it’s commonly defined.”

And Felixcox later added for good measure:

” I never said unborns are parasites. I said unwanted fetuses are parasites.

But wait, is this true? Is this merely a matter of definition? Here are two definitions of “parasite” from Merriam Webster’s:

an animal or plant that lives in or on another animal or plant and gets food or protection from it

a person or thing that takes something from someone or something else and does not do anything to earn it or deserve it

At first blush, you might think these definitions vindicate Felixcox’s claim that fetuses are parasites. But in fact it doesn’t because Felixcox was emphatic that only unwanted fetuses are parasites. Needless to say, the standard dictionary definitions do not make the parasitic designation contingent upon the will of the host.

Consequently, if Felixcox wants to be consistent, he/she should concede that every fetus is a parasite.

Of course, by this logic it also follows that every infant, toddler, and severely mentally handicapped person is a parasite since they all take something from someone else without having done anything to earn it.

And so this is the dilemma faced by Felixcox and other pro-choice advocates who attempt to bolster their position by attempting to depersonalize and dehumanize the fetus through the use of terms like “parasite”. Either their use of the term is inconsistent and self-serving, or they end of depersonalizing and dehumanizing a far larger segment of the population than was originally intended.

Either way, we see the disturbing terminus of attempts to label an outgroup of our species as less than human.

The Bottom Feeders in Academic Publishing

This morning I received the following email:

Over the years I have regularly received spam like this from pseudo-academic publishing mills. Back in 2010 my friend Stefano Piva received an email much like this to publish his DMin dissertation. Stef accepted the invitation and was appalled at the result. You can read his review and my supporting review at Amazon.

The group that emailed me this morning and which published Stef’s dissertation is VDM. They are the worst offender in this neighborhood of bottom feeders. Journalist Joseph Stromberg sold his thesis to VDM and the fascinating result is chronicled in his article “I Sold My Undergraduate Thesis to a Print Content Farm.” The stats Stromberg recounts are staggering: dozens of imprints and up to 50,000 separate titles published every month (!?!!??). Incredibly, many of their “books” are simply repackaged content pilfered from Wikipedia and sold for up to $100 a book.

But what most bothers me is the way this despicable company preys on thousands of young academics who are looking for a way into the academy through quick publication.

Another reason to be disgusted by politicians

This morning I started reading an article at CNN titled “Is Donald Trump hurting himself?” I’m not sure what piqued my interest. After all, everybody but Donald Trump already knows the answer. (Well, maybe Trump and that fawning sycophant Corey Lewandowski who seriously stated last week that Trump may be the most eloquent orator ever to run for the presidency.)

Be that as it may. I began reading. Author Stephen Collinson begins:

“Twice this month, the presumptive Republican nominee has seemed to act against his own political interests after tumultuous events — the Orlando terror attack and the U.K.’s Brexit vote — that should have offered him political openings.”

And that’s where I stopped reading. I was jolted by the sheer crassness of the frank observation that mass shootings and devastating social and economic tumult offer “political openings” for the politician savvy enough (or psychopathic enough?) to take advantage of them. But the reality is undeniable. The politician who can wisely navigate the carnage of a blood-spattered club and the social crisis of a nation in upheaval can readily build his political brand, craftily using the tears of others to water his garden of self-aggrandizing opportunism.

Ugh. What a way to begin a Monday morning.

Divine Violence and the Church: Is Joshua Ryan Butler’s answer sufficient?

This week “Unbelievable” with Justin Brierley featured an engaging discussion on God and wrath between Brian Zahnd and Joshua Ryan Butler. I think highly of both Zahnd and Butler. They are both learned, articulate, and irenic. (By the way, you might want to pick up Butler’s new book The Pursuing God. It’s getting rave reviews. And Zahnd mentioned that he has a new book coming out next year under the title Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.)

If there was a problem in the discussion, it was that at several points it was hard to find the daylight between Zahnd and Butler. And when the format of the show is based on reasoned disagreement, that’s a bit of a problem.

One of the points where Zahnd and Butler did appear to disagree is over the question of whether God uses divine violence. Zahnd repudiated the divine use of violence, and with it the human use of violence in God’s name. Along the way he referenced the genocidal eradication of the American First Nations people under the textual justification of Joshua as well as the infamous Nazi belt buckle: Gott mit uns.

So how does Butler reassure us that his views don’t allow for Christians appealing to the divine will to carry out acts of violence in the future? Here’s how he responded to Brierley’s question (at about 45 minutes into the show):

http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Divine-Violence-Clip.mp3

Butler’s key phrase is that the proper motto of the Old Testament Israelites is not “We will fight for God” but rather “God will fight for us.”

The problem is that the Israelites did fight. Indeed, according to the standards of international law, the narrative of Joshua describes military acts that would today qualify as both a genocide and an ethnic cleansing. (On this point see part 2 of my review of Copan and Flannagan’s Did God Really Command Genocide?) So the stakes are high and Zahnd’s question remains unaddressed. If Butler believes God operated in the past by commanding his human agents into battle, how do we know he won’t do so again? And if we don’t know that, then what is to prevent a particular Christian group from believing they have been called to just this task, as so many groups have throughout history?

Near the end of the section, Butler seems to suggest (via a quote from Miroslav Volf) that the Christian should wait for God to act in the future through divine violence to establish his kingdom. But once again, how does Butler know that God will not “fight for us” in the future in the same way he allegedly did in the past, i.e. by calling his faithful subjects to take up arms in his name and with his divine aid?

On the Prolife rationale behind showing aborted fetuses

Jeff Lowder just posted three tweets questioning the logic behind Prolifers showing aborted fetuses. Here are the tweets:

Now first off, I have my own concerns about the way the Prolife cause has often employed depictions of aborted fetuses for the sake of their cause. So my point here is not to defend the practice. Nor for that matter is my point to censure the practice. Rather, my point is to explain the logic behind it. And the logic most certainly is not “gross=bad, abortion is gross, therefore abortion is bad.”

So what is the logic?

Simple, it is an appeal to moral intuitions based on a fuller understanding of what abortion consists of.

Over the years it has been common practice within the Prochoice community to objectify the fetus through the use of dispassionate, technical descriptions of abortion procedures. And thus, for example, you will find reference to a vacuum aspiration abortion as the “removal of uterine tissue” or the “evacuation of uterine contents”. Of course, in one sense such language is technically correct and can be appropriate. But it is also important to note what is not said when the procedure involves using a high power suction device to rip a developing human being in utero into pieces which can then be removed and disposed of. The reality is that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

In search of a fitting analogue, I think here of the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. As I proceed with this comparison, please keep in mind that the sole point of the analogy is that in both cases one employs a graphic visual depiction of the aftermath of an action as an appeal to moral intuitions so as to shape public opinion and motivate the public to moral action.

Emmett was infamously mutilated and then killed for nothing more than whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that her son’s casket remain open during the funeral so that “all the world can see what they did to my boy.” Till’s mother recognized how important the visual impact of the aftermath of a lynching could be in galvanizing public opinion against the evils of systemic racism. Needless to say, her logic most certainly was not “gross=bad, lynching is gross, therefore lynching is bad.”

One can debate the value of the Prolife practice of depicting aborted fetuses just as one can debate the ethics of abortion itself. But one should at least appreciate that the purpose of the Prolife advocate is to appeal to moral intuitions by “opening the casket” to understand more fully what it means to elect to “remove uterine contents”.