I just had the misfortune to stumble across www.jesus-is.savior.com

With a web address like that, how could I object, right? Think again. THIS is the first page on that site I visited.

To spare you the mental scarring of actually visiting the site, here’s a hint of what that page is about:

Gee guys – tell us what you really think!
I had forgotten about this kind of thing on the web and in so called “Gospel tracts.” The sheer confidence with which such statements are made boggles the mind and moves the bowel simultaneously.

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I know, I said I wouldn’t do it, but I gave in. I changed the code so that the sidebar on the main page of this blog shows up in Internet explorer. I shouldn’t have had to, but there you go. Now everyone can enjoy the page as it was (almost) meant to look.

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In June of this year, my article, “Has Robert Peterson Defeated Annihilationism?” appeared in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. They gave it the title “Fallacies in the Annihilationism Debate.” In that same issue, Dr Peterson was given the opportunity to reply to my article. However, I have only just obtained a copy of that reply, so I had not gotten around to commenting on it until today.

You can see Dr Peterson’s reply here, and I’ve written some thoughts about it, which are here. Basically, I don’t think his reply really fends off the criticisms I made. I’m biased, of course.

I will say two things, however. The first minor point is that at one point I said that Edward Fudge did not cite Edward White when discussing the death of Christ. As Peterson pointed out, and I concede, in an earlier edition of the book in question (The Fire that Consumes), Fudge had cited Edward White, although this citation was removed in the later edition. It made no difference to my overall complaint (since my claim was that Fudge’s theology, along with White’s, was being misrepresented, a claim I still make), but errors should be admitted, and this was an error on my part.

The second thing to say is that at one point I called Dr Peterson’s claim “disingenuous” because he (wrongly) accuses Edward Fudge of using an argument from silence, while in the same work he uses exactly the kind of argument that Fudge was using. I have to apologise for that. Dr Peterson has explained that he was simply mistaken about what an argument from silence was. Fair enough, my apologies.

But as for whether or not Dr Peterson successfully refutes my criticisms of his case, I don’t think so, but the readers will have to decide for themselves.

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One of the more interesting places in the blogosphere, Right Reason, has called it a day. This is the word from editor Max Goss:

Dear friends of Right Reason,

I want to announce that I am retiring Right Reason. At its best, I believe the blog has succeeded in presenting a diversity of philosophically informed conservative opinion and providing a forum for lively, intelligent, civil debate. Many discussions here have been unmatched anywhere in the blogosphere — which is no doubt why Right Reason has had such a strong following, and why it has consistently been recognized by leading web publications on both the right and the left.

Many thanks to the contributors and many readers who have helped make this site a success. Please keep in touch.

It’s a real shame, but the archives will remain online, which is good. There’s some excellent material there to be digested.

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Anybody familiar with the dialogue between biblical translator William Tyndale and Thomas Moore will know that one of the issues they debated was the immortality of the soul and the intermediate state (OK, that’s two issues, but they are closely related).

As a translator of Scripture, Tyndale was at times keenly aware of the mistaken beliefs that were common in the Church simply because believers only knew what they heard on Sunday, not having the means to study the Scripture in depth, and certainly not to delve into the texts in the original language as he had done. We take that ability for granted today.

At the end of his translation of the New Testament he included a final page of text, as there was some spare space. The heading for this page was: “These things I have added to fill up the leaf withal.” Writing materials were expensive, and wasting a whole page seemed like such a shame, you see.

On this final page, Tyndale offered a few helpful notes on various passages, drawing on his insights as a translator. Interestingly enough, the very first thing he wanted the layperson to know here was that they ought to be more discerning about how they understand the word “hell” in their Bibles. He comments on the differences between gehenna and infernus (infernus is the Latin translation of the Greek term hades). Gehenna in the Greek New Testament refers to the place/state of punishment at the last judgement.

In Tyndale’s age, as in ours, a number of Christians thought that hades, or “hell” as it appeared in their Bibles, was a place of consciousness in the intermediate state. As a translator of both Greek and Hebrew (hades is the word used to translate the Hebrew term sheol in the Old Testament, something Tyndale was well aware of), Tyndale knew better. Here’s the first comment he added in this the last page of his Bible:

Infernus and Gehenna differ much in signification, though we have none other interpretation for either of them, than this English word, hell. For Gehenna signifieth a place of punishment: but Infernus is taken for any manner of place beneath in the earth, as a grave, sepulchre or cave.

Tyndale then explained the origin of the term gehenna, a Greek word derived from the Hebrew Geh-Hinnom (meaning “valley of Hinnom,” inexplicably spelt “Hennon” here).

Hell: it is called in Hebrew the valley of Hennon. A place by Jerusalem, where they burnt their children in fire unto the idol Moloch, and is usurped and taken now for a place where the wicked and ungodly shall be tormented both soul and body, after the general judgement.

Of all the issues to clarify for the reader, the first that Tyndale raised was to point out the hades is not a conscious place in the intermediate state, but merely the grave or any sepulchre or cave, and that people don’t go to “Hell” (i.e. gehenna) until after the judgement.

Anyone interested in what the other issues Tyndale raised were can read that final page here.

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I’ve put up a draft version of my latest article: “Hasker at the Bridge of Death.”

Professor Hasker has been kind enough to look over the paper for me, but in the meantime I welcome feedback and criticism from one and all.

Here’s a basic rundown of the paper: William Hasker thinks that physicalism has a major problem accounting for an acceptable doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. He thinks that emergentism has no such problem, since in emergentism the soul can survive the death of the body and then later be (re)incarnated in a new body. I have little to say about the former claim (in this paper, at least), but I raise doubts over the latter claim.

I say that a mind that is emergent upon a body surviving the death of that body does not appear to be any more coherent than Hasker thinks the idea of a resurrected physical person is. Moreover, the analogies he draws on to persuade the reader that it might not be so absurd after all to think of a mind as self sustaining after the death of the body (examples of black holes and magnetic fields) involve important mistakes on Hasker’s part regarding the facts involved in each analogy.

I argue that when not drawing on problematic analogies, Hasker switches between two different dualisms: emergentism prior to the death of the body, and traditional dualism after the death of the body. He turns to the possibility that God steps in, filling the role once filled by the body, enabling the mind to live on (presumably in heaven) with the body that it used to be emergent upon. Emergentism is thus denied by his claims. Were he to consistently apply all the predicates of the emergent mind to the mind that allegedly survives the death of the body, all sorts of problems would arise, not the least of which being that he would have to conceive of the mind traveling through space to get to a place in space until the resurrection, and secondly it is far from clear that we can make sense of a mind that is emergent on one thing becoming emergent on another, even if that thing is God.

Emergentism might be true. But when an emergentist with views on “soul survival” like Hasker’s claims that physicalists have a logical mess on their hands, sayings about pots, kettles, stones and glass houses come to mind.

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According to the Mirriam-Webster Online dictionary, this is what it means to be pathological:

pathological

Main Entry:
path·o·log·i·cal

Pronunciation:
\?pa-th?-?lä-ji-k?l\
Variant(s):
also path·o·log·ic Listen to the pronunciation of pathologic \-jik\
Function:
adjective

1: of or relating to pathology
2: altered or caused by disease; also : indicative of disease
3: being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal <a pathological liar> <pathological fear>

Now, it’s old news that infidels.org is not a place to find reliable information on philosophy of religion. But every once in a while I accidentally stumble across one of their pages in a web search, and I receive a reminder so concentrated that it makes my eyes bleed.

They have a page here on the work of Alvin Plantinga. Under the first heading, in their summary of his “Naturalism vs Evolution: A Religion/Science Conflict?” they begin with an overall claim: “In this chapter, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism entails that our beliefs cannot affect our behavior, but natural selection only selects for beneficial behaviors.”

This in spite of the fact that they reproduce that same chapter at their website, in which Plantinga clearly says that beliefs do affect our behaviour – even in naturalism. Anyone at all who is familiar with the argument in that chapter – an argument Plantinga is famous for (the “Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”) will recall this. To deny this is like saying “in Locke’s famous work on human understanding, he argues that innate ideas exist….” Read the actual essay by Plantinga that the Infidels are summarising here (as provided on their site), it’s a good piece.

Plantinga’s argument is that beliefs are causal for behaviour, but that given naturalism and evolution, this causal relationship undermines the reliability of those beliefs. There, I summarised it in one sentence!

What’s tragic here is that the appearance of a summary gives the impression that someone from Infidels has actually read the essay, and still thinks that this is what Plantinga said!

Whether intentional or not, it fits the dictionary definition (definition #3) of pathological misrepresentation.

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I’ve spoken to Lindsay Perigo a few times. Just to set the scene a little, while I like him, I don’t agree with him all the time. He’s a homosexual (this will become relevant in the press release below) libertarian who hangs out with a bunch of freaks called “objectivists” who I don’t think are particularly objective. My favourite interaction with Mr Perigo was phoning in to his radio show and making him look silly (he’ll tell the story another way I’m sure, but rest assured, my version is correct – ask anyone who heard it).

But when Lindsay is right, he’s right. This is a recent press release he put out for SOLO (sense of life objectivists… eew):

SOLO Press Release—Friends of Dorothy, Enemies of Liberty

October 19, 2007

Homosexuals, once the victims of Nazism, are now among its foremost advocates, says SOLO (Sense of Life Objectivists) Principal Lindsay Perigo.

This, in the wake of news that the British government is proposing a law to ban “homophobic speech” and make such speech punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Perigo, himself as gay as God, cites British gay commentator Christopher Biggins’ comment on this brazen assault on free speech by Britain’s PC Labour Government on behalf of PC poofs:

“I despair at the mood of edict-issuing, word-censoring dreariness that seems to have overtaken the leaders of the gay rights movement. They, more than anyone, should be on the side of flamboyance, eccentricity, laughter and earthiness. Instead, they are acting like old commissars of some Eastern bloc regime or a bunch of Victorian moral puritans, clamping down on politically incorrect words.”

“Make no mistake,” says Perigo, “these book-burners will soon enough be attempting to have the United Nations require similar laws all over the world, including New Zealand. The gay movement is infested by faggot-maggots with totalitarian intent. All freedom-lovers, gay and straight, should unite in resistance to this 21st Century Hitlerism.”

See what I mean?

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It’s fairly self explanatory – check it out here. Which belief system most closely matches you?

Here are my results, number 1 = the strongest correlation.

1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Eastern Orthodox (93%)
3. Roman Catholic (93%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (85%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (79%)
6. Hinduism (75%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (70%)
8. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (59%)
9. Jehovah’s Witness (59%)
10. Orthodox Judaism (52%)
11. Jainism (48%)
12. Bahá’í Faith (46%)
13. Islam (43%)
14. Sikhism (42%)
15. Mahayana Buddhism (41%)
16. Liberal Quakers (41%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (40%)
18. Unitarian Universalism (38%)
19. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (34%)
20. Neo-Pagan (32%)
21. Scientology (29%)
22. Reform Judaism (26%)
23. New Thought (24%)
24. New Age (23%)
25. Nontheist (18%)
26. Secular Humanism (17%)
27. Taoism (15%)

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I’m sure this has been around for a while, but I’ve only just discovered David Chalmers’ philosophical humour site here.

It has some gems, two of my favourite being:

From the Philosophical Lexicon: alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. “His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners.”

If you’re a Plantinga reader, you get it. If not, too bad.)

And secondly, the page on Nietzsche’s guide to tech support here is fantastic. The advice, “What you’ve done in your function, fool, is the coding equivalent of failing to empty your colostomy bag” seems to flow rather naturally from the late nihilist.

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