Say Hello to my Little Friend

I know it has been a while since my last podcast episode. I’ve recently started a new job and I’ve been kinda busy, plus I’ve been coming up with subjects to write episodes about. But take heart, there is another episode in preparation now!

I found this on my hard drive. It’s a short piece I wrote back in 2005, shortly after the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

The Pope: Do They Love Him or Hate Him?

Moral Integrity vs Popular Tokenism

On Friday the 8^th of April (New Zealand Time), the city of Rome saw its biggest funeral of all time, the funeral of Karol Jozef Wojtyla, better known to the world as Pope John Paul the second.

I watched with interest as current affairs show Campbell Live interviewed from Rome funeral attendee Catherine Hebblethwaite, co-author of The Next Pope. She explained, as host John Campbell nodded in agreement, that while many millions of people may have disagreed with the Pope’s teaching on moral issues, they nonetheless all looked up to him as a “great moral figure” worthy of respect and admiration. In fact this is not an isolated perspective. From a wide range of people, politicians, celebrities and Hollywood stars, religious figures and so forth, the message is fairly consistent. “While we disagree with his views, we think he is a great moral ‘figure’.” Well actually, that’s half true. People usually don’t say that they disagree with his views now that he’s dead, they just happen to have spent the last decade vilifying them.

Just how much sense does this really make?

What does it take to make somebody a great moral teacher, leader or figure? Presumably, one would think, it has something to do with a person’s take on moral issues. If the stances that a person takes are moral, and if they teach and encourage their admirers to uphold moral virtue and avoid moral vice, then they’re a great moral teacher. Right? If some aging Palestinian went around telling all his followers to go to crowded transport terminals and blow themselves up, or if a writer encouraged all his readers to molest children, or if he preached to the masses and urged them to burn down the homes of black people, we wouldn’t call him a great moral teacher. He would have to preach a message that we really do embrace and consider moral. He would have to be a person who upholds what we consider to be morally virtuous and noble. He could not be somebody who taught against the moral values that we hold dear, or we would not consider him moral.

What is it about the Pope then, that makes leaders like Helen Clark, along with Hollywood celebrities and just about everyone else, say that he was a great moral teacher or leader? What is it about him that appeals to their moral senses?

Could it be the way the Pope shared their commitment to personal sexual autonomy, and how he managed to avoid the shackles of traditional sexual mores when it comes to stuffy old institutions like Christian marriage? Maybe it was the way he said that all relationship choices as equally valid, regardless of whether one comes to embrace heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, or anything else? Perhaps they think his morals were top-notch because of the way he viewed a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy on the grounds of her right to use her body as she sees fit? Or perhaps they were attracted to his stance on sexual safety, how he agreed with them that condoms save lives and provide the answer to avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, rather than prattling on about outdated moral artefacts like abstinence. Yes, it’s just obvious why so many people praise this moral figure. Clearly he spoke their mind!

There is the odd exceptional person who is honest about it all. Some people realize that it’s dishonest to go about moping and mourning the loss of a “great moral teacher” while believing that he was really a moral idiot who got just about everything wrong as far as morality is concerned. Occasionally you’ll hear somebody say, “Why are we sobbing in the streets over the inevitable death of a man who, in reality, didn’t have much time for those of us who didn’t toe his company line?”¹

But where are the Hollywood celebrities who say “The Pope claimed that abortion is morally on par with murder. He condemned the homosexual lifestyle as immoral. He said that women ought not to be priests. He believed that abstinence, rather than condoms, is the way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. He said that people who have sex outside of marriage are sinning. Yes, he really was a great moral teacher.” It’s strange that while we hear all this trendy talk about what a great moral figure he was, we never hear about which aspects of his morality made him so great. It seems Hollywood stars and Helen Clark have one thing in common: They know which side of their bread gets the butter. If they tell the truth about what they think about the Pope’s moral teaching, they’ll end up calling him a bigot, and they’ll be unpopular. So instead they opt for some suitably vague patronising rubbish about what a great moral figure the guy was, in the hopes that people will saw “aww, they really do care!”

Before anybody gets all up-in-arms at me for having a go at a nice old man who has just died, I’m not. I’m having a go at people who say that they are sad at the Pope’s death because he was a great moral figure, when in reality they think he was a morally twisted bigot. I think the pope was a great moral teacher because I think, generally speaking, that he was correct in the moral views he upheld. That’s the difference between having moral integrity when you say that somebody was a good man, and being a hypocrite who bows to popular politically correct token gestures and poseurism. Say what you mean, the public is not so stupid that we don’t know it already.

What? Jonathan Edwards comes to the aid of annihilationism? Why would I say that? We all know Jonathan Edwards didn’t believe that annihilationism is biblical. Yes, we do all know that, but there are ways to help a view that do not involve showing that it is biblical.

Some advocates of the claim that the Bible teaches eternal torment make the mistaken claim that just because the Bible uses the phrase “eternal punishment,” it must be taken to teach eternal torment. The falsehood of this assertion is fairly superficially obvious, and it’s not like a lengthy argument is needed to put it in its place. But what’s interesting is that Jonathan Edwards, one of the most memorable preachers on the lurid details of eternal torment and who emphatically rejected annihilationism came to the rescue of annihilationism just at this point in the argument, in a chapter entitled, “Concerning the Endless Punishment of those who Die Impenitent,” paragraph 31.

He noted that some people advanced belief in the final annihilation of the lost, thinking that this scheme provides relief from the specter of eternal punishment (this is Edwards’ characterization of their goal). But, he warned, even if this were true, we would still not have escaped the idea of eternal punishment, since this scheme would itself be eternal punishment. Observe how he dismisses the view:

On this, I would observe that there is nothing got by such a scheme; no relief from the arguments taken from Scripture, for the proper eternity of future punishment.

Although Edwards himself thinks the scheme (annihilationism) is mistaken, this is not his point here. He says here that there is nothing got by the scheme itself (in other words, even within such a scheme, regardless of whether or not it is true) that brings relief from the Scriptural teaching that future punishment is eternal.

He was wrong, in my view, to reject the scheme. But I do applaud his objectivity. There’s a temptation among many (myself included at times, no doubt) to become intellectually slack when it means not considering annoying points in favor of views that we reject. But Edwards will have none of this. While he thought annihilationism to be false, at least he recognized that it is not an alternative to eternal punishment, but rather another version of eternal punishment.

Now, I know that in the past when speaking about the hopeless arguments and frequent mistakes made by traditionalists who critique annihilationism, I’ve used Robert Peterson as an example. I even had a paper published, pointing out the mistakes in his case. People are going to think I’m picking on the poor guy. I swear, I didn’t set out in this post to critique him, but in looking up quotes, I discovered an absolutely blatant error, and it’s an error that will, in the mind of the reader who believe Peterson, impugn another believer (Edward Fudge), so what the heck, here goes.

The above observation about Jonathan Edwards was clearly pointed out by Edward Fudge when in dialogue with Robert Peterson. As on so many other occasions, however, Peterson, far from granting the point, did not even understand it. He starts out alright, summing up the argument by saying “Fudge claims that Jonathan Edwards called annihilation eternal punishment.” So far, so good. But that’s where the hope of a good argument died. His reply was to point out by using examples (examples summed up by John Gerstner) that Edwards did not himself believe in annihilationism. Peterson concludes with what is supposed to be a rebuttal: “Plainly Edwards opposes annihilationism.” (Fudge and Peterson, Two View of Hell, p. 89.). But this is not even relevant to the argument.

After saying this, Peterson claims to have a “second reason” for rejecting this reading of Edwards (as though he has just presented one reason already). He rejects it because Edwards uses the word “proper.” Peterson says:

Edwards understands ‘the proper eternity of future punishment’ to consist in everlasting punishment [note: by this, Peterson really means “everlasting torment – GP], which he then demonstrates. He goes to some lengths to show that annihilationism is in error, concluding with the words, “so this scheme overthrows itself.”

This is all wrong, and I am at a loss to charitably imagine how Dr Peterson can say this after actually reading the chapter in question. Check this for yourself at THIS LINK where the work in question can be read online:

Scroll through to Chapter 31, which is the one in question. Read it, and you’ll see that Edwards argues exactly as I have described, only at more length. But then after this, he moves to Chapter 32 and introduces a new scheme, after ending his comments on annihilationism. In this new scheme that Edwards examines:

the torments of the damned in hell are properly penal, and in execution of penal justice, but yet they are neither eternal, nor shall end in annihilation, but shall be continued till justice is satisfied, and they have truly suffered as much as they have deserved, whereby their punishment shall be so long as to be called everlasting, but that then they shall be delivered, and finally be the subjects of everlasting happiness… (etc)

Edwards explicitly states that in the scheme he is now considering, the lost are not annihilated. It is after discussing problems internal to this view, and not annhilationism, that Edwards uses the words that Peterson erroneously quoted, at the end of paragraph 32, “so this scheme overthrows itself.” Oops. Peterson claimed that this statement was the conclusion of an argument for the claim that only eternal torment is properly a punishment that is eternal as a refutation of annihilationism. But not only did Edwards not even present such an argument in chapter 31 when talking about annihilationism, this comment was not even written in reference to annihilationism but rather to a version of Universalism. I can’t imagine getting a rebuttal more badly wrong.

The absolute irony of this obvious error is the way that Peterson sought to soften the blow against Edward Fudge, saying:

I do not accuse Fudge of impure motives here. He errs because of his zeal for annihilationism and his consequent tendency to read that doctrine into the words of historical (as well as biblical!) writers when it isn’t there (Two Views of Hell, 90).

So in other words, Fudge is reading Edwards with too much haste and too little care because he’s a little too willing to find his conclusions there? The irony is palpable, given the nature of Peterson’s error, which seems to be the result of a failure to adequately grasp Edwards’ point in the first place, and then a mistaken citation made for no other reason than too much haste and too little care.

A bit too much “zeal,” perhaps?

This episode is a sermon/talk that I delivered on Sunday the 27th of July at our church, Grace Bible Church, here in Dunedin, New Zealand.

I was asked to preach on Mark 13, the Olivet Discourse. Yes, the whole thing. In one sermon. That meant I had to be pretty simplistic about it, and I couldn’t go into a huge amount of depth. It was an introductory talk to an audience that had never really looked at the issue before (at least, it had never been spoken about in church). So basically, it’s an introduction to Mark 13, and therefore an introduction to preterism.

 

 Episode 14: Preterism from the pulpit [52:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As I’ve been saying a bit about Plantinga in the podcast recently, it’s fitting to comment on something that I recently found online. Evan Fales, back in 1994, wrote a book review critical of Alvin Plantinga’s Warrant and Proper Function. The review was originally published in the journal Mind, and you can read it here.

For those not already familiar with Plantinga’s epistemology, his idea of warrant (that is, the thing that makes a belief into knowledge, and not just a lucky true belief) involves the further idea of proper function. Fales, like me, takes Plantinga to hold to a variety of what’s known as reliabilism, but as not everyone shares that view (apparently), and since that doesn’t really matter for what I’m going to say about Fales’ attempt, let’s ignore that. For Plantinga, we have warrant for our beliefs if they are formed by a properly functioning set of belief forming faculties, functioning in a truth aimed way, in an enviromnment to which they are well suited, in accordance with a design plan. His argument is aimed at the conclusion that if atheism were true, knowledge would be impossible, since our belief forming faculties - indeed all of our faculties - simply don’t have a proper function, much less a design plan.

But Evan Fales thinks he has demonstrated a flaw in Plantinga’s view of knowledge. Here I will comment on only one such attempt on Fales’ part. He poses the following counter example:

An example: a game of “telephone” in which A is to whisper something he knows in B’s ear, B whispers it to C, and so on to the last person, Z, who accepts what he hears because he takes it to be what A said (and correctly takes A to know whereof he speaks). Everyone’s hearing, speech, and cognitive systems are working sufficiently well, and the environment is sufficiently ideal, to meet Plantinga’s requirements for warrant–warrant so high that, when combined with truth, it yields knowledge. Then given the way warrant is transmitted by testimony, Z’s belief that A said “Plato was Greek”, and hence, Z’s belief that Plato was Greek, both count as knowledge on Plantinga’s account, provided that both these beliefs are true. But now suppose that (improbably), some slippage occurs in the transmission of the message: halfway to Z, it has become “Pluto is green”. By sheer luck, however, the slippage is reversed: by the time Y whispers it in Z’s ear, “Pluto is green” has transmuted into “Plato was Greek”. Surely, here, Z does not know what A said, or know that it is true merely because A said it.

The reply to this seems (to me at least, and perhaps I am missing something) that this misrepresents Plantinga’s view of knowledge, because in fact the scenario described does not meet Plantinga’s actual criteria for warrant after all. Plantinga is quite clear that what is needed is a belief forming faculty/structure/ call it what you will - that is, among other things, functioning properly in a truth aimed way in an envirmoment for which it is well suited and in accordance with a design plan. Here, that belief forming process or structure, it would appear, is a series of people relying on something whispered very quietly to them. The whole point of this “telephone” game is to see if a message can be transmitted in spite of difficult circumstances. A structure consisting of all these people is not at all well suited to preserving the integrity of information in this way. If there is a design plan at all here, it is a design to make things harder rather than easier.

It is quite irrelevant that each individual in the game has hearing, speech and cognitive systems that are functioning properly, unless Fales is willing to say that those systems and senses were designed to function in an environment like this game. Even theists do not say this, let alone atheists! And when the chain of people as a whole is considered as the process of getting information to the last player, any claim that Plantinga’s conditions for warrant and consequently knowledge are met here simply do not seem plausible at all.

Here’s Episode 13, which is part 2 of my coverage of Plantinga and presuppositional apologetics.

In this episode I present Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. I then close by summing up the similarity between Plantinga and Van Til and co., and respond to one objection that is common to them both.

Also, for the first time ever - we have mail! I reply to it at the end of this episode.

Remember folks, if you’re regular listeners, I encourage you to subscribe via itunes (or download the file from this site, rather than listening to it at my site). That way, you download the whole episode just once even if you listen to it more than once, instead of effectively downloading it again every time you listen to it at this site, which really eats up the bandwidth. New listeners, feel free to listen to it at my site to get an idea of whether or not you want to subscribe.

NOTICE: I’ve just learned that the latest podpress (my podcast software that I use on this blog) is not compatible with the latest Wordpress (my blog software). So I cannot yet post my podcast audio file here. In the meantime you can simply download it here. But it won’t be at the iTunes store, nor will the player appear in this post, until the compatibility issue is fixed. Podpress say that this should be done in around 7 days from now.

EDIT: OK, apparently it’s gonna take longer than 7 days.

EDIT: Well, I found a workaround, so all seems to be working fine now.

 

 Episode 13: Plantinga and Presuppositional Apologetics part 2 [48:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After many promises, I’ve finally gotten around to finshing my summary and review of the debate between Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath.

It’s currently only in pdf Format, and you can find it here.

Comments are welcome.

… OK, I didn’t technically forget, but I did let it slide.

My summary and review of the Hitchens/McGrath Debate will be done some time this week.

Here’s Episode 12 of the Berettacast: “Plantinga and Presuppositional Apologetics.” I’ve decided to give Plantinga two episodes, as it ended up filling up a big chunk of time. This is part 1, which looks at Plantinga’s argument for theism from Warrant.

 

 Episode 12: Plantinga and Presuppositional Apologetics [49:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The new version of the Apple iPhone hits New Zealand this week on the 11th of July. The only telco company to provide iPhone plans is Vodafone. They teased the nation recently by advertising that they’d beselling the iPhone from only $199 on a two year plan.

It sounded great, and I was going to buy one. It turned out not to be great at all, and I won’t be. For that price you get the 8Gig iPhone on a two year plane, at TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS PER MONTH, considerably more expensive than the most expensive plan that will be offered in any other nation on earth, with a plan that offers significantly fewer minutes and data.

The price is almost unbelievable. It seemed impossible, but them’s the facts. Needless to say, the excitement has worn off. Here’s John Campbell grilling a rather unfortunate vodafone public relations employee who had the very unenviable task of fronting up to the media.

Not for me, thanks.

This episode is an explanation of “presuppositional apologetics,” one of several approaches to defending the Christian faith.

Episode 12 will be about the anti-naturalistic arguments of Alvin Plantinga, and I will argue there that Plantinga and not Van Til should be the one to whom presuppositionalists look.

 

 Episode 11: What is Presuppositional Apologetics? [49:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hi everyone.

I won’t be able to do any work on the next podcast episode over the next couple of days. I’m flying to Wellington, because I’ve made it through to the final stage of a job application to work in Treasury next year. That would be a fantastic move professionally, plus we really feel like it’s time for a change of scene, so I’d love for that to work out.

However, as soon as I get back I’ll get to work on the next episode, which, by the way, is to be entitled “What is presuppositional apologetics?” It’ll be a presentation of the presuppositional approach to the defense of Christian belief, a comparison with other approaches, and also a critique of some presentations of the approach. I consider myself very friendly to presuppositional apologetics, but as a “movement” (if it is one) I think it needs a lot of improvement.

In the meantime, for anyone interested, here’s a transcript of the presentation on hell that occupied three episodes recently.

Readers may or may not be familiar with Peter Singer, the Australian born philosopher (I use that term very loosely here) who teaches at Princeton, and who thinks that baby cows either do, could or should have more moral rights than baby humans.

I think he’s finally found the perfect avenue (not that it ended up being a very receptive audience). He recently appeared on the Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report.

Here it is, the second installment of my two part series on the moral argument.

Oh, and before anyone gets offended and writes to me about the parody in the blog roundup - stop and ask yourself: Are you a Windows user by choice? If so, then which of us is really worse, hmm?

 

 Episode 010: The Moral Argument 2 [56:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thanks Dee Dee for bringing this story to my attention.

A former board member of the Lakewind Church in Tennessee has sued the church and its pastors, saying that he was injured when he fell after the spirit took him during a church service.

According to the complaint, Matthew Lincoln was participating in the evening service at the church when a visiting minister touched his forehead after Lincoln came to the altar.  “Mr. Lincoln received the spirit and fell backwards striking the carpet-covered cement floor . . ., causing him to sustain severe and permanent injuries.”  Lincoln alleges that the fall aggravated a pre-existing back injury, rendering him unable to work.

I find this to be (apart from hilarious) rather revealing. It wasn’t the pentecostal leaders who made him fell - right? It wasn’t peer pressure, his own silly expectations or the desire to look spiritual in front of his peers. Right? It was the Holy Spirit - Right Mr Lincoln?

So why is he suing the church? They didn’t make the Holy Spirit do this, did they? Why isn’t he suing God for the 2.5 million dollars he is seeking?