Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 139

J.P. Moreland on Dualism

In this video, J.P.
Moreland discusses with Robert Lawrence Kuhn (producer and host of the Closer to Truth show on PBS) the movement
among intellectuals away from belief in the existence of a soul:

I think a lot of it’s sociological.
I think we live in a day where scientism is the default position by a lot of
people—that’s the idea that science, and science alone, can give us answers to
our questions about reality. And I think it’s a big mistake to advance that
view….

I don’t think the issue is
scientific. The fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness and
whether there is a soul are just not scientific questions. They’re questions
like, “What exactly is a thought?” “What is a semantic meaning?”… There hasn’t
been a single discovery in neuroscience or any other branch of science that a
dualist (that is, one who believes in the soul and consciousness) could not
easily accommodate within his or her theory…. [See here
for more on that.]

Moreland explains some of the issues behind his belief in
dualism—the definition of consciousness, the interaction between the brain and
the self, objections to substance dualism, etc.—and then sums up the
conversation this way:

The bottom line is this: Consciousness
just isn’t the same thing as physical states of the brain because there are things
true of one that aren’t the other. And the self is not identical to the brain
because the self is a simple substance that isn’t composed of parts. And these
questions are not fundamentally scientific questions, they’re philosophical.

 

(HT: Justin
Taylor – See his post for another video by Moreland on the “Case
for the Existence of the Soul,” and see more Closer to Truth interviews with J.P. Moreland here.)

It's Not About Equality

The term “marriage equality,” if it means “the right to
marry whomever you want,” is simply not an accurate term for what same-sex
marriage supporters are advocating—not if they favor any restrictions
whatsoever (age, number of people, incest, etc.). The truth is that nearly
everyone does favor a definition of
marriage that has boundaries and thereby denies “marriage equality” to some
category of couple (or group).

As you’re likely to hear this term often this week while the
Supreme Court is reviewing Prop 8, below is a reposting of “We’re Arguing Definitions,
Not Rights” that can help you move your conversations past the charge that
you want to deny people equal rights to the real question: What
is marriage?

And for a collection of links to more posts and resources
discussing this issue, see “Three-Judge
Panel Strikes Down Prop 8.”

_______________________

 

We're Arguing Definitions, Not Rights

One common misconception in the same-sex marriage debate is the idea that the traditional legal definition of marriage is a violation of equal rights. Since this is an extremely emotionally charged accusation, it's difficult to get past it into a real discussion of the issue.

Here's the approach I usually take:

1. Nearly everyone who thinks the government ought to issue marriage licenses favors defining marriage in some way. That is, they favor excluding some combinations of people (polygamy, incest, etc.), not individuals, from the definition. Even judges. Even you!

2. You can't consistently argue that by excluding certain combinations of people, traditional marriage violates equal rights—unless you also argue to remove every single boundary from the definition of marriage and say anyone can marry anyone, in whatever combination of numbers they like.

3. If you're not willing to argue this, then you're for having a definition with boundaries, which puts you on equal footing with the traditional marriage supporters.

4. So the question is, which definition should we use? It's fine for you to argue that your definition of "two people who love each other" is better than my definition of "one man, one woman," or someone else's definition of "one man, multiple women," but we need to start off by understanding that we're arguing definitions, not rights.

It's not unconstitutional to adopt either my or your definition, as long as it's applied equally to every individual. Remember that the Constitution doesn't recognize rights for combinations of people; rights only belong to individuals. So one can't say that a man and five women have a right to get married; one can only say that each individual man or woman has the right to enter into marriage (no individual is excluded). This right is then acted upon according to the boundaries set by the state's definition of what marriage is—boundaries which are equally applied to every individual. You would like to equally apply the boundary of "two people who love each other" (excluding some other combinations), and I would like to apply the boundary of "one man, one woman" to each individual equally.

But I agree that the boundaries we place on marriage need to be relevant to the institution of marriage in order to be legitimate, so why don't we sit down and talk about the reasons why we each think the country should use our definition?

This definition-vs.-rights issue needs to be clarified. Otherwise, if you're arguing for the boundaries of traditional marriage, you'll enter the argument having already been unfairly declared an unconstitutional bigot before any of your reasons are explained (despite the fact that your opponent also favors certain boundaries), and anyone would be unlikely to listen to the reasons why you're an unconstitutional bigot. We have to get past this first barrier if we want to be given the chance to make our case.

We Can Corroborate the Gospels without Verifying Every Detail

When jurors evaluate witnesses in criminal cases, they examine evidence in an effort to corroborate the statements offered by these witnesses. Jurors are looking for some limited confirmation of the facts offered on the stand. Imagine, for example, a witness testifies that the robbery suspect approached the bank teller, pointed a gun at her (using his right hand), began to climb up onto the counter (using his left hand), screamed at the teller, and demanded that she give him the money from the cash drawer. Jurors who hear this testimony may want some additional evidence to confirm that the witness statement is accurate. As a result, prosecutors may introduce fingerprint (or shoeprint) evidence from the counter in an effort to corroborate the witness. If the fingerprints on the counter match the fingerprints from the suspect’s left hand and the shoeprint matches the suspect’s shoe, the statement of the witness would be considered reliable and corroborated by the evidence.

But did you notice that print evidence from the counter did nothing to confirm the specific actions of the suspect, beyond his contact with the surface? This corroborative evidence told us nothing about why he climbed the counter, nothing about his possession of a firearm, and nothing about his demand for money. While the fingerprints and shoeprint corroborate the statement of the eyewitness, they do so without establishing every possible detail. This is the nature of corroborative evidence; each piece addresses and verifies a “touchpoint”, a small aspect of the testimony that is sufficient to corroborate the larger account. Even if the prosecution had a video tape of the entire robbery, many aspects of the witness’ testimony would still be missing (like the audio portion of the crime, most likely). At some point, jurors have to trust what the witness has to say about the event. Corroborative evidence always verifies a limited range of witness claims.

This is also the case with the evidence that corroborates the witness testimony of the Gospel accounts. Skeptics often argue that corroboration of the Gospels is too limited, but the nature of the corroborative evidence shouldn’t surprise us. We should expect to find “touchpoint” corroboration; partial details that tend to corroborate the larger account. So when archaeology confirms some limited percentage of the geographic claims of the Gospels, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. When a first century non-Christian author mentions some limited aspect of the Christian narrative, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. When internal evidence (the correct description of proper names, government structure and cultural setting) substantiates some limited aspect of the Christian accounts, this should be seen as a significant step toward corroboration. And when all these corroborative evidences are considered in unison, this should be acknowledged as reasonable verification of the ancient accounts contained in the Gospels.

Corroborative evidence is always limited; it always addresses some small aspect of the event under consideration. Jurors then extrapolate from this corroboration to determine if the broader testimony is reliable. They do this after they assess the testimony with the three other questions I described in Cold Case Christianity (“Were the witnesses present?” “Were the witnesses accurate?” and “Were the witnesses biased?”). We can’t expect the corroborative evidence to establish every claim made by the witness. Instead, the corroborative evidence provides us with another important piece of the puzzle related to reliability. At some point, we then have to trust what the witnesses say about the event.

Challenge: How Is Christianity Different from a Hoax Religion?

There are many ways you could go about responding to this week's challenge. You could choose to respond to one or more of the specific objections raised (explaining how it's not representative of Christianity), or you could go for a more general response about how one ought to go about finding out if a religion is true, or you could simply point out the failings of the challenge itself. Take a look at the picture, then respond in the comments below. Then we'll see you back here on Thursday when Brett posts a video response.

Does Variation in Cultural Morality Prove Moral Relativism? (Video)

Does the variation of morality between cultures and over time prove that morality is relative?

Study with Greg in France

Time is running short if you're considering studying with Greg in France this summer.  Greg will be speaking ths summer at the International Academy
of Apologetics, Evangelism, and Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. 
It's a unique opportunity to study in beautiful and inspiring
surroundings with some of the best teachers.  Consider this unique study
opportunity. The Academy has some scholarships available.  Check with
them for more information.

The Extraordinary Nature of Murder and the Evidence for God

In 1981, there were approximately 24,159,000 people living in the state of California. That year, 3,143 people committed the crime of murder. Most people were law abiding, peace loving citizens; very few (only .01% of the population) were murderers. That’s an extraordinarily low number if you stop and think about it. One of these 1981 California murderers (representing only .000004 % of the population) killed his wife and claimed that she ran away from home, leaving her young children and abandoning her family. This killer was a beloved member of the victim’s family and they refused to believe he was responsible for her death, even as I prepared to take the case to trial. I can understand why they would feel this way. It was an extraordinary claim really: a gentle and friendly man, representing only .000004% of the entire population, without any history of violence and without any apparent motive, accused of committing the worst possible crime. The victim’s family repeatedly told me this was an extraordinary claim they simply could not accept, and even after showing them the evidence I gathered prior to trial, they refused to believe it.

The jury trial lasted about a month. Dateline (the NBC news program) was in the courtroom with us during the course of the trial and the correspondent for this show later interviewed me on camera. He was incredulous about the suspect’s involvement. The evidence was entirely circumstantial. That’s not unusual for my cases (all of them have been built on circumstantial evidence), but this one was particularly extraordinary. There wasn’t a single piece of physical evidence. In fact, we didn’t even have the victim’s body. There wasn’t even a crime scene; the case was worked as a “missing person” investigation back in 1981 and no one examined the home where the victim was killed. Of all my circumstantial cases, this was one was definitely the most difficult and “thin”. It was extraordinary on many levels: the unlikely nature of the crime in 1981, the unlikely nature of the suspect and the unlikely nature of the evidence available to us.

After weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for only 4 ½ hours. They found the defendant guilty. The family was still unconvinced. The media was equally unmoved. They wanted direct evidence before they would be willing to accept that this kind and gentle man could do something this horrific. Many of them wanted direct evidence before they would even accept the victim was truly dead! As we were preparing to tape the Dateline episode (and prior to the sentencing hearing), skepticism reigned supreme. I was peppered with questions from the interviewer casting doubt on the verdict of the jury. The nature of our evidential case was under fire from every direction. This is an extraordinary charge after all; shouldn’t there be some extraordinary evidence before we lock someone up for the rest of his life? Well, that’s the nature of homicide cases. Thankfully, they are extraordinary and rare. In spite of this reality, jurors draw reasonable conclusions from evidence that is both ordinary and nominal. As a result, I’ve learned that extraordinary claims don’t actually require extraordinary evidence. When the ordinary evidence points to an extraordinary conclusion, jurors are within their right to make a reasonable decision. They do it every day.

Claims about the origin of the universe are also extraordinary. Did everything come from nothing through some natural process involving the laws of physics? Did life emerge from non-life in some similar way? If naturalists eventually form a case for such claims, they’ll do it with rather ordinary calculations and evidences scratched on a chalkboard. They’ll assemble a theory derived from circumstantial evidence (remember that direct evidence involves eyewitness testimony) and they’ll expect all of us to embrace their circumstantial case. I actually think that’s a fair approach to the issue, but I also think it’s a fair approach to use ordinary evidence to come to an extraordinary conclusion about God’s existence. It’s reasonable to build a case for an extraordinary claim (the existence of God) with rather ordinary circumstantial evidence (particularly when this cosmological, axiological, teleological, transcendent, ontological and anthropic evidence is cumulative in nature). In the end, all of us make a case for something extraordinary and incomprehensible from very ordinary evidence. By the way, the suspect in our case, the man no one (aside from the jury) believed was guilty, confessed to the crime at the sentencing hearing. That, in itself, was also extraordinary.

Ancient Myths vs. the Bible

In Tom Gilson’s review
of John N. Oswalt’s The
Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?, he
lists some of the key differences between the God of the Bible and the gods of
the myths:

I have
asked in the past how the ancient Hebrews could have been so far ahead of
their time. The Bible Among the Myths extends the question: how could
they have been so utterly different from every other culture in history? For
the contrasts are great. Oswalt identifies these common (if not universal)
features of myth, contrasted with the Genesis view:

Cyclical
time: there is a lack of definite beginning and no clear direction to reality
(with no one to give it direction). The Bible speaks of history with a
beginning, with progress, and with a destination.
Nature
symbolizing the divine. The Bible specifically rejects this.
The
significance of magic, specifically the use of ritual and/or manipulations of
matter to cause predictable results in the realm of deity. This, too, is
nowhere to be found in biblical religion.
Obsession
with fertility and potency, often expressed in religious (temple-based, even)
prostitution of every base description. God is not sexual, nor is the religion
he revealed.
Polytheism:
obviously not the case for biblical theism.
The
use of images in worship: expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments.
Eternity
of chaotic matter: see above; not so in the Bible.
Low
view of the gods, who are more powerful than humans but no better ethically;
the Bible depicts God as perfectly holy, just, loving, and righteous.

There is considerably more….

The God of the Bible is “serenely supreme,” unable to be
manipulated, and perfectly moral. It’s not hard to see why cultures wouldn’t
make up a God like this. A being who is before all and knows all, and who can’t
be swayed from His righteousness and justice, is a frightening one.
Frightening, that is, without grace.

I think the most amazingly unique thing about the true God
is the way He solved the justice/grace
problem—that is, without compromising His perfect justice, without lowering
His standards, without denying one ounce of the evil of our sin, “because of His great love with which He loved us,” He executed His perfect justice and secured for us the benefits of His
self-giving grace in one action on the cross.

On his own, no man ever came up with the brilliant, game-changing truth that God is both just
and the justifier.

Materialism Can't Explain Our World

In an article titled “The
Heretic,” Andrew Ferguson tells the story of how and why atheist Thomas
Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos: Why the
Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
upset materialists who believe that most of what we experience in life is an
illusion. Colors, sounds, our sense of self, free will, morals—all illusions.
We’re just “molecules in motion,” “nothing but a pack of neurons.”

While there is currently some dissent amongst materialist philosophers
and scientists over whether or not the masses ought to be told this truth about reality
(Daniel Dennett is concerned that popular knowledge of this would destroy civil
order), one thing they can all agree on is that Nagel’s view is outside the
bounds of acceptability.

What is Nagel’s heretical view? He says materialism fails to
explain the world we actually find ourselves in. From Ferguson’s article:

The neo-Darwinian materialist
account offers a picture of the world that is unrecognizable to us—a world
without color or sound, and also a world without free will or consciousness or
good and evil or selves or, when it comes to that, selflessness. “It flies in
the face of common sense,” [Nagel] says. Materialism is an explanation for a
world we don’t live in….

If the materialist, neo-Darwinian
orthodoxy contradicts common sense, then this is a mark against the orthodoxy,
not against common sense. When a chain of reasoning leads us to deny the
obvious, we should double-check the chain of reasoning before we give up on the
obvious….

[Materialism]
doesn’t plausibly explain the fundamental beliefs we rely on as we go about our
everyday business: the truth of our subjective experience, our ability to
reason, our capacity to recognize that some acts are virtuous and others
aren’t. These failures, Nagel says, aren’t just temporary gaps in our
knowledge, waiting to be filled in by new discoveries in science. On its own
terms, materialism cannot account for
brute facts. Brute facts are irreducible, and materialism, which operates by
breaking things down to their physical components, stands useless before them.
“There is little or no possibility,” he writes, “that these facts depend on
nothing but the laws of physics.”

While it's true that using the scientific method leads to useful discoveries about physical causes and effects, it doesn't follow from this that only physical objects subject to this kind of study are real. Ferguson explains the folly of making this leap in reasoning:

In a dazzling six-part tour de
force rebutting Nagel’s critics, the philosopher Edward Feser provided a good
analogy to describe the basic materialist error—the attempt to stretch
materialism from a working assumption [methodological naturalism] into a comprehensive explanation of the
world [ontological naturalism]. Feser suggests a parody of materialist reasoning: “1. Metal detectors
have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in
more places than any other method has. 2. Therefore we have good reason to
think that metal detectors can reveal to us everything that can be revealed”
about metallic objects.

But of course a metal detector only
detects the metallic content of an object; it tells us nothing about its color,
size, weight, or shape. In the same way, Feser writes, the methods of “mechanistic
science are as successful as they are in predicting and controlling natural
phenomena precisely because they focus on only those aspects of nature susceptible
to prediction and control.”

Meanwhile, they ignore everything
else. But this is a fatal weakness for a theory that aspires to be a
comprehensive picture of the world. With magnetic resonance imaging, science
can tell us which parts of my brain light up when, for example, I glimpse my
daughter’s face in a crowd; the bouncing neurons can be observed and measured.
Science cannot quantify or describe the feelings I experience when I see my
daughter. Yet the feelings are no less real than the neurons.

The point sounds more sentimental
than it is. My bouncing neurons and my feelings of love and obligation are
unquestionably bound together. But the difference between the neurons and the
feelings, the material and the mental, is a qualitative difference, a
difference in kind. And of the two, reductive materialism can capture only
one.

Read the full
article. Alvin Plantinga’s review
of Nagel’s book is worth a read, as well.

The Early “High Christology” of Jesus

As a skeptical non-believer, I was willing to grant that someone named Jesus actually lived in the early first century. I was also willing to grant that he might have been a wise, charismatic teacher. But I firmly believed that the supernatural aspects of Jesus’ character were untrue; a late mythology that reflected the consistent distortions of the early stories. So as I began my investigation, I fully expected to find evidence of this transition. I expected to find early documentation that would describe Jesus simplistically in a manner that was consistent with his true human nature rather than his late exaggerated Divinity. But the earliest Christian documents displayed a “High Christology” related to Jesus. The earliest writers were firmly committed to the Deity of Jesus:

Jesus is God: He Created Us
The apostles John and Paul described Jesus as the creator God who came to us in human form

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-4, 14)

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15)

Jesus is God: He Came to Us
The apostle Paul described Jesus as God Himself, appearing to us in bodily form:

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. (Colossians 2:9-10)

Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16)

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8 )

Jesus is God: He Spoke to Us
The writer of Hebrews described Jesus as God, who revealed Himself to us through His very words:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

Jesus is God: He Reigns Over Us
The writer of Hebrews also described Jesus as sitting on the throne of Heaven, anointed by God the Father:

But about the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” (Hebrews 1:8-9)

I often talk about the New Testament “Chain of Custody”: the sequence of proclamations from the apostles and early church fathers that establishes the evidence trail related to Jesus, from His ministry on earth to the early Church councils that ultimately established the Canon of Scripture. As a skeptic, I was surprised to find that the earliest document evidence we have related to Jesus describes Him as a miracle worker who claimed to be God and rose from the dead. In the earliest documents, Jesus was worshipped as God, displayed the power of God, and spoke as though He were God. The writers of Scripture were quick to describe Jesus as more than a simple, wise teacher; they described Him as the Christ.