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If James Clapper lied in the past, can we trust that he is telling the truth about Trump and Russia?

Yesterday I posted a tweet about James Clapper and Donald Trump. Here is the tweet with Dave GhostBear’s response:

James Clapper committed perjury before Congress with regards to domestic spying.

He is not a trustworthy source, and you should be wary of him also

— Dave GhostBear? (@JediGhostBear) May 24, 2018

The Disagreement

This response prompted some back and forth. I pointed out that Clapper was not convicted of perjury. I further noted this was a single instance in 2013. Dave countered as follows: “Simply put, knowing what we know about the program [of NSA data collection], if you think Clapper is trustworthy after providing this answer to Sen. Wyden I have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.”

Well, that’s one way of putting it.

To summarize our state of disagreement: I believe Clapper offers truthful testimony when he says that in his assessment Russia swayed the election in favor of Donald Trump. (Given Clapper’s role in national intelligence, it is also credibly informed testimony.) By contrast, Dave insists that we cannot reasonably trust Clapper because he lied once in 2013. I believe Dave is being unduly skeptical to reject categorically Clapper’s testimony. He believes I am being unduly credulous to accept it.

Why it Matters

Is there a way we can get beyond this impasse? I sure hope so. Because when people divide about such matters, the only person who benefits is the dangerous, habitual liar (Donald Trump) who is attempting to sow precisely this kind of confusion for his own ends. Indeed, two days ago Leslie Stahl recounted the following exchange she had with Trump after the election about his attacks on the media:

“I said, ‘You know, this is getting tired. Why are you doing it over and over? It’s boring and it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won … why do you keep hammering at this?'” Stahl recalled.

“And he said: ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.'” (source)

Now that’s one occasion on which I’ll believe Trump. He is a genius at sowing discord and then exploiting the ensuing disagreement, and attacks on Clapper’s credibility are just one of many, many examples.

Two Types of Liars

As we proceed, I’ll concede that Clapper did, in fact, perjure himself on one occasion in 2013. The question is whether that instance of lying undermines his current assessment that Russia swayed the election in Trump’s favor.

The first thing we need to do is distinguish between habitual liars and occasional/contextual liars. Trump is the perfect example of a habitual liar: i.e. an individual who lies with utter disregard for the truth. Indeed, it may be more correct to call such a person a bullshitter (I talk about Trump as bullshitter and how that differs from lying in this article). You should not trust this person as a general rule. (Recognizing that Trump told the truth to Stahl is consistent with a general skepticism about his credibility.)

By contrast, the occasional or contextual liar is a person who lies on occasion but generally maintains a fidelity to truthtelling. The vast majority of people are occasional liars. So, for example, we might lie to our boss by calling in sick on a sunny day and we may lie when we tell our spouse their new hairstyle looks just fine, but we are generally reliable.

Needless to say, since the vast majority of the population lies on occasion, to reject utterly any witness who had ever lied would be unduly skeptical and thus irrational. It would also severely incapacitate our knowledge.

This does not mean, however, that the occasional liar automatically gets the benefit of the doubt. What we should do, rather, is consider the past occasion(s) when that person has lied. If particular trends emerge, those may be sufficient to provide an undercutting defeater for that person’s future testimony under the same conditions.

For example, if Fred has a history of calling in sick on sunny days only to be spotted later fishing down at the lake, that would provide a reason to doubt the future instances where Fred calls in sick. But it doesn’t mean we should necessarily be skeptical when Fred makes a testimonial claim in another context.

Clapper’s Lying and Crediblity

So what about James Clapper? Why did he lie under oath in 2013? The answer, presumably, has to do with his office in national intelligence and in particular his desire to protect a surveillance program of dubious legality. The question we need to ask is this:

Are there reasons to think that the catalysts that led Clapper to lie about NSA surveillance in 2013 are likewise leading him to lie in 2018 about his assessment that Russia swayed the 2016 election in Trump’s favor?

I don’t see any reason to think that the same catalysts are present, and thus it is more reasonable — all other things being equal — to accept Clapper’s testimony as his own truthful assessment. Given his former role as one of the most distinguished figures in national intelligence, he is also uniquely equipped to make this informed assessment. And thus, while Clapper did lie in 2013, I believe it is most reasonable to believe his testimony about Trump and the election.

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Tiresome: The Daunting Task of Authorship Today

Last week, The Christian Post published my article “If God wants us to be saved, why isn’t salvation simpler?” In the article, I succinctly summarize three deeply perplexing and highly complex questions about the nature of salvation. I conclude by referencing my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? which offers a three-hundred-page synopsis of my forty year exploration of these topics. I then point out that even if we are unable to find satisfactory answers to our questions, we can rest in the fact that God is infinitely wiser, more powerful, and more loving than we can imagine.

Within a few minutes, the first comment was posted courtesy of a gentleman named Allen Sipe. Here is that comment:

“Totally not helpful. A marketing ploy to sell a book. Write an article…raise a number of excellent questions…then offer no possible, biblical answers except by suggesting your book. This is an ever increasing sales tool by numerous authors and bloggers. Tiresome.”

Fortunately, Mr. Sipe’s dour comment was soon buried in the discussion thread. Nonetheless, it was helpful in effectively illustrating three daunting challenges to authorship in the 21st century: entitlement, inattention, and reductionism.

Entitlement: Why isn’t Everything Free?

Let’s begin with Mr. Sipe’s complaint that he has noticed “numerous authors and bloggers” increasingly using the “sales tool” of writing articles to promote their books. That sounds nefarious, doesn’t it?

But the fact is that Mr. Sipes is quite incorrect. The notion that authors try to promote books that they spent months or years writing is not new. What is new is Mr. Sipes’ own sense of entitlement to free content. That’s the real trend. It’s the trend toward expecting that everything should be free on the internet. This entitlement has become so deeply ingrained today, so second-nature, that folks actually get offended if you fail to provide your wares for free.

And so, Mr. Sipes can dismiss an author who actually tries to sell the book they spent years researching, writing, and editing as “tiresome”.

Inattention: Why aren’t the answers simple?

Now let’s turn to our second trend: inattention. Once again, we can return to Mr. Sipes: “Write an article…raise a number of excellent questions…then offer no possible, biblical answers except by suggesting your book.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Mr. Sipes is irritated not simply that the 300-page book costs money but that the answer should be a 300-page book at all. Here the offending trend is that of raising a daunting question which cannot be answered in a 1200 word article: If you’re going to raise questions in an article, surely you should the courtesy to answer those questions in the same short article.

This leads to the problem of inattention: the bottom line is that not every answer is so simple that it can be provided in a 1200 word article. Indeed, some questions cannot be answered properly apart from a single sustained argument that spans dozens — or even hundreds — of pages. So then we face the question: should we give up on such questions altogether? Or should we instead shift our expectations as to what a proper answer would look like?

I vote for the latter. But the fact is that it is nearly impossible to sell the extended argument of a 300-page book to folks who are used to answers coming in 1200 words or less.

Reductionism: Just tell me what to think!

Finally, we turn to the last trend that, for want of a better term, I’m calling “reductionism”. Folks like Mr. Sipes assume that the question is raised to the end of getting the right answer. But that is deeply reductionist. One does not simply ask questions to get the “right” answers. As the old saying goes, sometimes the journey is more important than the destination. Or to put it another way, it is more important to learn how to think than to learn what to think.

Alas, lofty musings about personal formation sound like so much gobbledygook to those who simply want to be told what to think about a particular topic.

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A Scientist’s Creation Story

Physicist and theologian Willem Drees begins his book Creation: From Nothing Until Now (London: Routledge, 2002) with this poetic description of the creation of the world. (Note: while I have included the entire poem below, I have not reproduced the exact formatting.)

Drees is a European Christian theologian and his poem is a creation narrative or cosmogony written in the terms of science at the turn of the millennium. Do you think Drees’ poetic account reaches his audience as Genesis 1 reached the ancient Israelites?

There was a time

when there was no time,

when time was not yet.

The time

when there was no time

is a horizon of not knowing

a mist where our questions fade

and no echo returns.

Then,

in the beginning,

perhaps not the beginning,

in the first fraction of a second,

perhaps not the first fraction

of the first second,

our universe began

without us.

After the beginning,

perhaps not the beginning,

after the first fraction of a second,

perhaps not the first fraction

of the first second,

after our universe began,

still without us,

then

the universe was

like seething water

without land and without air,

like a fire

without wood and without cold.

The universe,

as small as it was,

created itself space, matter,

and the cool of the day.

ln billions of galaxies

the universe made itself

from dust stars

from stars dust.

Much later,

from dust from stars

from dust

from stars from dust

swirled our Sun

and from leftovers

the Earth, our home.

Thus,

after ten billion years,

there was evening

and there was morning:

the first day.

Life

a modest beginning,

undirected,

a history of failing

and occasionally

a small success.

A molecule

carried information

from generation to generation,

history bred purpose,

by chance.

Poison

 became a gift,

oxygen

a protective robe.

Billions of years later

cells merge,

sex and aging,

death and deception.

A rare

slow lungfish

slithered through the grass;

thus came amphibians to pass.

Successful life

a disaster,

gone

another tide.

Yesterday

a few million years ago

the East Side Story:

groups of apes groom,

hunt and call.

Sticks, stones, fire

eating from the tree of knowledge

the tree of good and evil,

power, freedom,

responsibility:

Beasts became us

more was delivered than ordered,

more than we can bear?

Religion

cement of the tribe

response to power

of mountains,

the storm, the sea,

birth and death,

power as large as gods.

Yesterday

ten thousand years ago

Abel was killed by his brother,

we farmers eat ashamed our bread,

the earth cries, forever red?

A new age,

a prophet wars

king and people,

a carpenter tells

‘a man

who fell among robbers,

was cared for

by an enemy’.

Look,

measure

and count,

challenge knowledge

and authority!

Enlightenment

way out of immaturity.

In us

our heritage,

matter,

information,

and a box

full of stories.

Between

hope and fear

our neighbours

life

here on Earth,

between hope and fear

the great project

of thought and compassion

on a road

of freedom.

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The Conservative Echo Chamber at The Stream

Today Michael Brown posted an article complaining that CNN is being unfair in its coverage of Donald Trump. Of course, I had to reply. As if this writing, my response elicited replies from three individuals, all clearly Trump supporters and presumably conservative Christians. Each of my replies was clear, concise, and professional. In one of my comments, I responded by asking one of these individuals to define the term “MSM” (i.e. “Mainstream Media”). This is the first part of his response:

Sure.

Minimal Standards Media .

More Salacious Media.

Most Slanderous Media.

Mistaken Suggestive Media.

Myopic Shameful Media.

Multiple Scams Media.

Malodorous Stinky Media.

Misguided Shallow Media.

Misdirected Sentiment Media.

Mean Spirited Media .

Initially, I was inclined to give up at this point. But instead, I decided to take the first of his “definitions” and challenge him on it. To be sure, at this point I had little hope of persuading this individual of anything. But perhaps, just perhaps, my interaction with this individual and in particular my insistence on clear definitions and evidential defenses would plant a seed in somebody. So I wrote the following:

Let’s take your first acronym: “Minimal standards media.”

Please provide objective evidence that the standard institutional exemplars of the “MSM” label (i.e. CNN; New York Times; Washington Post; Pro Publica) exemplify inferior journalistic standards to the journalists at Fox News.

I’ll get you started. Here’s the New York Times statement on Journalistic Standards and Ethics:

https://www.nytco.com/who-w…

Other major organizations have similar public statements. Please provide evidence that their standards are inferior to Fox’s and/or that they are less successful at maintaining their standards than is Fox News.

But then, when I tried to post the comment this disclaimer came up:

Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by The Stream.

I thought, perhaps the inclusion of any link is sufficient to require webmaster approval. However, within ten minutes, the comment was deleted.

I tried posting an additional post (with no embedded link) but it too was placed in a queue for approval. Apparently, all my comments now require approval. It has now been 1 1/2 hours and my comment is still not posted.

It appears that I have been silenced simply because I challenged Donald Trump and asked his supporters to provide evidence for their sweeping indictments of “mainstream media”.

The Stream states on its “About Us” section the following: “In an age when people of faith are isolated in silos and marginalized from the public square, The Stream breaks down the false divides between the sacred and profane, between faith and reason.” (source)

Wait, The Stream claims to believe silos are a bad thing?!

Needless to say, the hypocrisy is glaring when a website that exists to oppose alleged bias in the mainstream media then silences dissenting voices on its own platform simply for expressing that dissent.

In closing, I want to stress that I have absolutely no reason to think Michael Brown has any involvement in silencing my voice. (No doubt he has better things to do on a Saturday night!) But this modus operandi does reflect very poorly on The Stream.

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Putting “Laurel or Yanny” into Divine Service

Unless you’ve been backpacking in the Himalayas for the last few days, you have been confronted with the latest internet meme: Laurel or Yanny?

First, I’ll let my avatar handle this:

All kidding aside, the lesson is that there are lower frequencies in the audio clip that sound like “Laurel” and higher frequencies that sound like “Yanny” and depending on your auditory ability, you end up hearing one or the other.

But what relevance does this have to God?

In his book Perceiving God, William Alston observes:

“We are familiar with many areas in which only a small percentage of the population has developed the perceptual sensitivity to certain features of the world, –  for example, the distinctive qualities of wines and the inner voices of a complex orchestral performance.”

Or, one might add, the higher frequencies of “Yanny”.

So imagine that you hear “Laurel”. You might be tempted to dismiss those who insist that they hear “Yanny” as obviously wrong. But given the high variation in perceptual sensitivity/capacity, you should grant the possibility that they are hearing frequencies you cannot hear.

Alston’s point is that there is a legitimate analogy between perception in these other areas and a perceptual grasp of God. We can summarize his argument succinctly as follows:

(1) Many people report experiences of a spiritual reality.

(2) The best explanation of these varied reports is that there is a spiritual reality which is their source of origin.

Just as the existence of people who cannot hear “Yanny” is not a reason to think they do not hear Yanny, so the existence of people who do not grasp that spiritual reality is not a reason to think they do not experience that spiritual reality.

Finally, let me anticipate a couple rebuttals with two additional points.

First, note that some perceptual sensitivities (e.g. soundwave frequencies) are more open to third-party validation than others (e.g. the distinctive qualities of wine). So the fact that a spiritual perception is more like the latter than the former is not an argument against its existence.

Second, one need not define precisely what a spiritual perception is or how it functions to accept its deliverances. In this case, it would be no different than other cognitive senses like vision, proprioception or an intuitive sense of danger. So we are not exercising a double standard by granting prima facie authority to these deliverances. Indeed, the contrary is true: it is the skeptic who challenges the very existence of these cognitive faculties based on our inability to define their nature and function precisely who exercises a double standard.

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On Atheists Who Want Atheism to be True

The following article is adapted from a section of my book Is the Atheist My Neighbor? If you appreciate this article, please spread the word!

The existence of God is a topic that tends to elicit strong passions. People have their beliefs about whether God exists or not, but they also have their hopes. Many people hope God does exist, but some prominent voices express a hope quite to the contrary.

This idea that one might hope God doesn’t exist appears deeply perplexing from a Christian perspective, so it is perhaps understandable why a Christian might be inclined to assume such a hope is automatically indicative of sinful rebellion. But is that necessarily the case? Or might there be other reasons why a person might hope God doesn’t exist?

Before going any further, we should take a moment to define the topic under debate. As the saying goes, tell me about the god you don’t believe in because I probably don’t believe in that god either. The same point applies to hope: if you hope God doesn’t exist, there is a good chance that I  also hope God (as defined) doesn’t exist. So it is critically important that we start by defining God so as not to talk past one another.

With that in mind, we can define God as a necessary being who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good and who created everything other than God. If that is what we mean by God, is it possible that a person might reasonably hope God doesn’t exist?

You might think that the place to begin is with the new atheists, for they have surely been among the most vocal in expressing their opposition to the very idea of God. But I will turn instead to a much-discussed passage from Thomas Nagel’s 1997 book The Last Word. Nagel’s testimony is particularly relevant here because while the new atheists are populists with an iconoclastic ax to grind, Nagel is a deeply respected and sober philosopher, a professor at New York University and the author of such critically acclaimed books as The View From Nowhere and Mortal Questions. What is more, while the new atheists are unabashedly partisan in their critiques of God and religion, Nagel is measured and very fair. One can find evidence of Nagel’s objectivity in the fact that he has occasionally angered many in the broader atheist community, and endured substantial derision as a result, by endorsing positions or making arguments at odds with majority atheist opinion.

With that in mind, Nagel’s candid observations about atheism in The Last Word have attracted a lot of attention from theists. He wrote:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.

It’s not surprising that this quote should have caught the attention of Christians committed to the Rebellion Thesis. After all, as already noted, Nagel is a leading philosopher and an independent thinker so his testimony immediately carries far more weight than your typical new atheist polemicist, Nagel speaks the truth as he sees it without lens-distorting party-line commitments. Moreover, after beginning with a reflection on his own state of unbelief, he then opines that many atheists share the same “cosmic authority problem.” Now that’s starting to sound promising. In the accompanying footnote, Nagel refuses to speculate on which sources, Oedipal or otherwise, might explain the genesis of this aversion. This, in turn, leaves it open for the Christian to attribute that opposition to sin, just as the Rebellion Thesis supposes.

Given the aura of this quote, it shouldn’t surprise us that several Christians have appealed to it as support for the Rebellion Thesis. Steven Cowan and James S. Spiegel draw attention to the passage in their book The Love of Wisdom: “Nagel, like others, has a problem with ‘cosmic authority.’ He doesn’t want there to be an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good deity to hold him accountable.” Even more significant, in his commentary on the quote, Douglas Groothuis opines that Nagel’s words harken back to Paul’s description of cosmic rebellion: “Nagel’s visceral disclosure resembles the apostle Paul’s description of those who, in opposition to the divine knowledge of which they have access, suppress the truth of God’s existence, fail to give God thanks, and thus become darkened in their understanding (see Rom 1:18-21).”

Perhaps Cowan, Spiegel and Groothuis are on to something. It is true that the Rebellion Thesis doesn’t look quite as outrageous after considering Nagel’s quote. Add to this the self-described antitheist Hitchens as he gripes about “the prospect of serfdom” under God and you just might see a pattern emerging. So could it be that Nagel is demonstrating that this cosmic authority problem really does bring us to the heart of atheism? To put it another way, did Nagel inadvertently produce his own “47 percent” quote, one which lays bare the intransigent spirit of atheism?

As we consider whether Nagel’s quote supports the Rebellion Thesis, let’s start by noting that Nagel himself nowhere suggests that all atheism can be attributed to a “cosmic authority problem.” He merely speculates that many instances could be. He also suggests that there is nobody neutral about the existence of God. But one simply can’t support the Rebellion Thesis based on those comparatively meager results.

What is more, a careful reading of The Last Word suggests that Nagel provides at least one explanation for this aversion toward God which is not, in fact, driven by antitheistic hostility. In the following passage, Nagel offers a fascinating speculation on the ultimate source of this aversion and this source is not tied to any problem with cosmic authority per se:

there is really no reason to assume that the only alternative to an evolutionary explanation of everything is a religious one. However, this may not be comforting enough, because the feeling that I have called the fear of religion may extend far beyond the existence of a personal god, to include any cosmic order of which mind is an irreducible and nonaccidental part. I suspect that there is a deep-seated aversion in the modern ‘disenchanted’ Weltanschauung to any ultimate principles that are not dead—that is, devoid of any reference to the possibility of life or consciousness.

Note that in this passage Nagel suggests that the aversion to God may, in fact, be sourced in a more fundamental aversion to, or even fear of, ultimate explanatory principles that are personal in nature. If Nagel is right about this then his problem, and that of other atheists like him, may not be that they are against God but rather that they have an aversion to unknowable or mysterious personal explanations.

Perhaps you’re not exactly clear about what Nagel is referring to here, so let me try an illustration to unpack his speculation a bit further. Imagine that there is an indigenous tribe living beside some sweeping sand dunes. Day after day there is a low, mysterious hum emitting from the sand dunes and the indigenous people attribute that hum to a supernatural cause, i.e., mysterious spirits that live in the dunes. Many western visitors to this community would not only be inclined to think there is a natural explanation, but they also might prefer there to be a natural explanation. Why? This could be for at least two reasons. To begin with, the westerners would prefer the parsimony (that is, the simplicity) and familiarity of a picture of the world in which novel phenomena can ultimately be attributable to natural causes. In addition, those westerners might simply find the notion of spiritual agencies wandering the dunes to be unsettling.

And why exactly is this unsettling? Well, consider another illustration closer to home. Indeed, it could be in your home. When I hear a strange bump in the night, I could attribute it to a ghost, but I’d certainly prefer to think it was the dog! The prospect of unknown (and perhaps unknowable) nonphysical personal agencies interacting in our world is indeed unsettling. It isn’t that the westerners are necessarily hostile to spirit beings humming in the dunes. But they hope such beings don’t exist just the same. In a very interesting passage in The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis locates this fear, this aversion with respect to Rudolf Otto’s conception of the numinous:

Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told “There is a ghost in the next room,” and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is “uncanny” rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words “Under it my genius is rebuked.” This feeling may be described as awe and the object which excites it as the Numinous.

As Lewis points out, the fear of the ghost is quite different from the fear of the tiger. It is a fear that appears to overlap significantly with Nagel’s aversion to “ultimate principles that are not dead.” The key to recognize is that this aversion (which, in its purest form, Otto referred to as the mysterium tremendum) is not necessarily indicative of hatred or hostility. Instead, it is closer to that uncanny fear of the unknown, like Lewis’ ghost in the next room, or mysterious entities wandering the sand dunes.

Speaking of those entities in the sand dunes, let’s return to that illustration for a moment. The indigenous people in the illustration represent a perspective that we can call the “enchanters” while the westerners represent the “disenchanters” position. Enchanters tend to be drawn to magic and mystery and mental agencies. Consequently, they seem to find ultimate personal explanations and the numinous to be appealing. By contrast, the disenchanters prefer natural and scientific explanations that appeal to matter, energy and forces. In their sociological study of atheism in America, sociologists Williamson and Yancey effectively contrast the two perspectives:

For many believers [i.e., enchanters], this may seem a dismal thought — that there is no mystery, that there is no “other,” and that there is no eternal father to protect and comfort them. For many nonbelievers [i.e., disenchanters], though, the idea is liberating: no fear of death and no fear of judgment, just a marvelous universe to experience and explore — empirically.

To be sure, the disenchanter’s perspective is consistent with some degree of active rebellion against God. The desire to avoid divine judgment, for example, could reinforce a predisposition to the disenchanter’s position. But the key for us is that we simply don’t know to what extent Nagel’s aversion toward God is generated by antitheistic impulses versus a more general aversion to the Uncanny side of life. It could be that Nagel maintains a preference for a simpler, predictable and familiar world which is reducible to certain fundamental material principles. And thus it is for that reason that he hopes atheism is true. Consequently, we simply don’t have enough information to count Nagel’s comment as evidence for the Rebellion Thesis.

Nagel gives us a bit more on what I’m calling the disenchanter position elsewhere in The Last Word when he ties this drive for disenchantment to the laudable desire to have explanations that we can understand. As he puts it, “the idea of God serves as a placeholder for an explanation where something seems to demand explanation and none is available . . . .” Further, he adds, “I have never been able to understand the idea of God well enough to see such a theory as truly explanatory: It seems rather to stand for a still unspecified purposiveness that itself remains unexplained.” From this perspective Nagel’s aversion to God is an aversion to giving up the quest for further understanding. Once again, we see that we need not attribute his words to any divine rebellion.

When we draw all these points together we find that Nagel’s initial comment offers very little to support a robust Rebellion Thesis. It is true that Nagel speculates that many atheists may have a cosmic authority problem, but he never suggests that all do. Moreover, he also offers another plausible explanation for the desire that God not exist, one which is rooted not in an aversion to divine authority, but rather in the disenchanter’s drive for simplicity, predictability, and explanations that can be grasped by the human mind. And as Lewis illustrates, every one of us can sympathize with this impulse, at least to some degree. (I sure hope that thump in the next room wasn’t caused by a ghost.) To cap it off, Nagel also warns atheists about allowing preferences to color their reasoning. At one point he cautions, “it is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist.”

To sum up, while Nagel’s quote allows for the possibility that an indeterminate number of atheists may be in rebellion against God, it simply does not provide good evidence for the Rebellion Thesis. If I may be blunt, it seems to me that Christians who attempt to play isolated quotes like that of Nagel as a “47 percent trump card” to support of the Rebellion Thesis are engaged in little more than quote-mining. (And yes, quote-mining is as bad as it sounds.)

You can purchase a copy of Is the Atheist My Neighbor? here.

In his book Mind and Cosmos, Nagel argues that the reigning philosophical paradigm among contemporary atheists—a position called naturalism—is a failure and should be replaced with another philosophical theory. This thesis rankled many atheists who believed the attack on naturalism was unjustified. Equally controversial was Nagel’s high profile endorsement in the Times Literary Supplement of Christian intelligent design theorist Stephen Meyer’s monograph Signature in the Cell as one of the best books of 2009. Whether you agree with him or not, Nagel speaks the truth as he sees it without lens-distorting party-line commitments.

Nagel, The Last Word, 130, emphasis added.

Cowan and Spiegel, The Love of Wisdom: A Christian Introduction to Philosophy, 256.

Groothuis, “Why Truth Matters Most: An Apologetic for Truth-Seeking in Postmodern Times,” 444. See also Moreland and Issler, In Search of a Confident Faith: Overcoming Barriers to Trusting in God, 59. Other Christian apologists are more nuanced in their appeal to Nagel’s quote. See, for example, Copan, That’s Just Your Interpretation: Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith, 21.

Nagel, The Last Word, 130, n.

Nagel, The Last Word, 133, emphasis added.

Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 17.

In 1974 Canadian singer Burton Cummings walked into St. Thomas Church in New York and was suddenly overcome with the sense of a presence he could not understand, a presence very much like Lewis’s Uncanny and Otto’s mysterium tremendum. After this unsettling experience Cummings wrote a song about it that became a big hit. He called the song “I’m Scared.”

Williamson and Yancey, There is No God: Atheists in America, 12.

Nagel, The Last Word, 132–3.

Nagel, The Last Word, 75–6.

Nagel, The Last Word, 131.

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What’s the Most Formative Book You Ever Read?

Today, I posed the following question on Twitter: “What is the most formative book you ever read (other than the Bible)? And why was/is it so impactful?” I received many interesting replies from a bewildering diversity of texts. Here are those replies edited only by the addition of italics to book titles:

Stephen J. Graham: “Other than the Bible?!?!! When God writes another book I’ll read one!”

Levi Breederland: “It’s a tough question! Maybe Mere Christianity? That was the first thing I read when I took the initiative to learn more about what I believed… which eventually lead me to become Catholic.”

Darkwing Duck: Little Fuzzy.

Spencer Mead: Confessions by Saint Augustine

Stephanie Fehr: In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen, Prodigal God by Timothy Keller, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero and currently With by Skye Jethani. Each were incredibly impactful when I read them… like I needed that message at that time.

Dale Tuggy: The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. Helped me to see the profundity of Jesus’s teachings and the centrality of the biblical idea of God’s Kingdom.

Frank Strohschein: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out– B. Manning. Because Grace is the Good News, in spite of ourselves!

Stephen Graham (again): “Serious answer: Faith & Rationality (Plantinga, Wolterstorff et al ) It opened my mind to a whole new epistemology of religious beliefs I was formerly blind to and forever changed how I think about the rationality of theism.”

Doug Carpenter: Six Hours One Friday.

Josh Jacobs: The Screwtape Letters because it was the first Lewis book I read. With each letter I remember saying…”That’s exactly how I experience the spiritual battle! How did he know!”

Matthew Bodnarek: “A toss up between Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, and Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ.”

Capturing Christianity: Probably God, Freedom, and Evil. It opened my mind to analytic philosophy and the power it yields in tearing down arguments. I remember reading it on a plane and having my mind blown page after page.

Brent Waggoner: “Probably A More Christlike God, by Brad Jersak or The Bible Tells Me So by Pete Enns. It gave me permission to really question.”

Scott Broussard: “The Myth of Sisyphus. Taught about perseverance, even when you know you can’t win. To find value in the struggle itself, not just the outcome.”

John Shrader: The Power of Myth – the interview with Joseph Campbell. While his conclusions are a tad… wooey sounding, it was helpful to me in seeing connective tissue of story telling around the world. We tell many similar stories.”

Friendly Beard: “In my relatively young reading life I’d have to say The Pursuit of God by A.W Tozer. It opened my eyes and soul to true thirst for God and how that plays out with each moment and every decision.”

Blue Collar Apologist: The Metaphysics, Aristotle.

Crunchy Frog: “Lord of the Rings. Taught me about fear and courage, perseverance and faithfulness, beauty and wisdom. I read it for the first time when I was 11, didn’t understand all of it but immediately felt it had depths I needed to discover…”

Plato’s Cave-Diver: “Maybe Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. Read it as a text for a Phil of Mind course and it broadened my understanding more than any other book I can think of, and drove me to pursue Philosophy as a minor.”

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If God wants to save us, why isn’t salvation simple?

I know what you’re thinking: salvation is simple! After all, just look at John 3:16: God loved the world so much he sent his Son so that whoever believes in him will be saved. Surely that is simple, right?

It might seem so, but the closer you look, the more that initial veneer of simplicity dissolves into an unsettling complexity.

What do you need to believe to be saved?

Let’s start with this question: what does it mean to believe in Jesus?

At first blush, Paul appears to provide a simple answer to that question in Romans 10:9: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (NIV) So believe Jesus is Lord and God raised him back to life: that’s what you need to believe to be saved.

Simple? Actually, no, it isn’t.

Here’s the problem: there are many groups outside of historic, orthodox Christianity that affirm those two claims. Mormons, for example, profess to believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Does that mean that Mormons are saved?

Many Christians believe the answer is no: Mormons aren’t saved. The reason is that while they may accept the claims of Romans 10:9, they also accept many other claims that are incompatible with orthodox Christianity. For example, Mormon theology asserts that God was once a human being who evolved to become God and that human beings can themselves become gods. These claims are directly opposed to Christian theology, and that conflict is considered by many people to be sufficient to overwhelm any benefit the Mormon might gain from affirming Romans 10:9.

However, if that is true then it follows that Romans 10:9 does not provide a full summary of the belief requirements of salvation. It turns out that in addition to believing Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, you also need to disbelieve many other things, including the Mormon claim in evolving deities.

And with that, we find that we are back facing our original dilemma. What exactly is the full list of beliefs you need to accept and what is the full list of beliefs you need to deny in order to be saved? And why isn’t this clearer? Why should we have to debate this at all? Why aren’t the belief requirements of salvation indisputably clear and available to all?

How do you need to live to be saved?

As troubling as the question of belief is, there are other problems when it comes to salvation. For example, consider the question of good works. What do we need to do in order to be saved?

Again, a simple answer suggests itself. In this case, we can find that answer elegantly stated in Ephesians 2:8-9: “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”

And once again, after a closer look that initial simplicity dissolves. To be sure, we can all agree that the basis for salvation is Christ’s atoning work: we are not saved on account of our good works. Nonetheless, that does not change the fact that there are many warnings in Scripture which describe particular behaviors which are expected and even required of those who are saved by Christ.

To note one unsettling example, in Matthew 25 Jesus provides a sobering description of salvation and judgment with respect to two groups: the sheep who are welcomed into eternal life and the goats who receive punishment. Notably, Jesus never describes the sheep as those who believed the right doctrines. Rather, he identifies the sheep in terms of their actions, namely how they treat the poor, sick, imprisoned, and so on. I don’t know about you, but I can say that my track record on embracing the least of these is mixed, at best.

This focus on the ethical dimension of the life of discipleship is not limited to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 Paul provides another angle on moral action, and his treatment is no less unsettling than that of Jesus. He lists several behaviors that he warns will exclude a person from the kingdom of God. The list includes wrongdoers, the sexually immoral, idolaters, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers.

Paul’s kingdom exclusion sin list invites many questions. What exactly does it mean to be a wrongdoer? How greedy do you need to be for your greed to exclude you from the kingdom? Have you ever slandered or gossiped about anyone? Is lusting after a person sufficient to qualify you as sexually immoral? Jesus seems to say it is (Matthew 5:28). And just how much of this bad behavior is sufficient to undermine your salvation?

Perhaps the most disturbing fact of all is that we human beings tend to be rather adept at spotting sin in others but rather poor at spotting it in ourselves (Matthew 7:3-5). Given that fact, it seems possible that we might spend our lives deluding ourselves into thinking we’re walking a holy journey on the narrow road when, in fact, we’re sinners on the broad path to destruction.

When do you need to believe to be saved?

Many other questions about salvation arise in my mind but here I’ll consider just one more: when do you need to get your beliefs and actions in order so that you may be saved? This question hit me with renewed force some years ago when my daughter was born.

Evangelicals have long had a ready answer to this question: in short, they say that there is an age of accountability. Prior to this age, children do not need to believe in Jesus in order to be saved, but once they cross that accountability threshold, God expects right belief and holy living.

The fact is, however, that you won’t find a verse in scripture which clearly teaches an age of accountability. And if there is such a threshold of accountability, when is it? Unfortunately, there is absolutely no consensus on this question. As a result, the birth and rearing of children occur in the shadow of possible damnation.

No wonder my parents were insistent that I pray a sinner’s prayer when I was five years old: better to be safe than sorry!

Conclusion

In one sense, salvation is simple. At least, it is simple if we focus on the general fact that God sent his Son to die for our sins so that we might be saved. But once you apply that general truth to the particularities of an individual life, that simplicity begins to dissolve. In its place we are left with a myriad of questions like these: Precisely what do you need to believe (and not believe) in order to be saved? How do you need to live? Are there sins that undermine your salvation altogether? Are there sins that undermine your salvation when they reach a particular level of frequency? And if so, when is that? Finally, when are you morally accountable for your beliefs and actions?

I’ve been wrestling with these questions for forty years. I started the journey as a child. It continued as I grew into a teenager and then went off to university. I’ve now been a seminary professor for sixteen years and while I don’t have it all figured out – far from it! – I recently wrote my own answers to these questions in the book What’s So Confusing About Grace?

Through it all, two things are clear to me. First, God is infinitely more loving, merciful, and wise than I can ever imagine. And second, however it is that the salvation of each individual is to be understood, that understanding must be consistent with God’s infinite love, mercy, and wisdom. And that’s good news, indeed.

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On Defending Apatheism

My paper proposal offering a modest and qualified defense of apatheism has been accepted for the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting this November at the annual AAR/SBL conference in Denver. Here’s the precis:

In the Back Pew:  A Defense of Christian Apatheism

Apatheism can be defined as a lack of interest in so-called existence questions, i.e. questions which pertain to fundamental existential topics such as whether God exists and, if so, what God expects of human beings. Typically, apatheism is associated with religious skepticism. But in this paper I argue that apatheism, as defined, is also surprisingly common within Christian community. Moreover, I will argue that given certain conditions, Christian apatheism is a rationally and morally defensible position. To that end, I will make three points. First, there is no intrinsic virtue in interest in existence questions since such interest may simply be borne by a personal preference for the topics and an interest in intellectual debate. Second, the central concern of Christian discipleship is conformity to Christ, and one can exhibit conformity to Christ in terms of affections and ethical actions whilst lacking interest in the treatment of existence questions. Finally, it is possible that one might view interest in existence questions as a necessity for the community of faith on the whole without the need that such interest be expressed by every member of that community.

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Scientists who get in trouble doing philosophy

The other day I reviewed the new documentary Bill Nye: Science Guy. The documentary begins with the following quote from Carl Sagan:

“Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It’s just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it’s like democracy.”

Carl Sagan was a fantastic popularizer of science, one with the soul of a poet … a rare combination indeed. But the man was no philosopher as this quote well illustrates.

To see the problem, let’s begin with another statement:

“My Dyson vacuum is far from a perfect instrument of cleaning. It’s just the best we have.”

The problem here is clear enough: Dyson vacuum cleaners are great instruments of cleaning where the cleaning we want to do involves sucking up dirt off the floor. But Dyson vacuum cleaners are very poor tools when it comes to other forms of cleaning such as scrubbing bathroom tiles and toilet bowls or brushing and flossing teeth.

So here’s what one should say:

“My Dyson vacuum is far from a perfect instrument for cleaning the floor. It’s just the best we have.”

By the same token, science is a great instrument of knowledge for understanding nature. But it is not particularly helpful at attaining knowledge in countless other areas such as how to write poetry, reason ethically, know where your body is located in space at any given moment, or figure out what your spouse wants for your anniversary.

Oh, and as Sagan’s comment makes clear, science is also a poor instrument for making nuanced and accurate epistemological statements.

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