I spotted Richard Dawkins’ DVD for sale at richarddawkins.net yesterday. I can’t believe they let such a whopping typo make it all the way through the production process.

I fixed it.

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It seems that some online unbelievers have trouble staying up to date with the fields in which they take themselves to be experts. Take Keith Augustine over at the Internet Infidels for example. He believes that he has the divine command theory of ethics (DCT) all sewn up.

For some reason, divine command ethics is a real stumbling block for its detractors. Mr Augustine, for example, trips up right at the outset when he is merely trying to tell his readers what the theory is. “On DCT the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, and all that it means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits torture.” In fact, one of the very first thing that one learns when becoming acquainted with a divine command theory of ethics is that it is not the view that “X is wrong” has the same meaning (i.e. is semantically equivalent to) “God prohibits X.” To boldly describe a theory like this while telling everyone how silly it is would be a bit like a young earth creationist saying something like “evolution is the theory that humans descended from chimps.” You would immediately be laughed out of town, with the expectation that you will never return.
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As I noted recently, Richard Dawkins has been at his fairy tale telling best, claiming that when Pat Robertson blamed Haiti’s poverty and earthquake on a nonexistent pact with Satan, in spite of what Christians say and have said for centuries and in spite of what the Bible actually teaches, it is Robertson who is the true Christian here, representing genuine Christian teaching. You know, the stuff that Christians don’t teach.

Since Dawkins is a fair and even handed person who would never single out a religious crank as representative of Christians and not apply the same standard elsewhere, I now wait with bated breath for him to start claiming that all people of a politically left wing persuasion believe that the United States of America is behind all human suffering. After all, a famous leftist crank said it.

I’m waiting. Sick him, Dawkins.

Hat tip to halfdone for the clip!

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As many readers will know, shortly after the earthquake in Haiti that did so much damage and claimed so many lives, Pat Robertson (a somewhat notorious televangelist involved in what has been dubbed “Word of Faith” theology) said something (I suppose I should say that he said yet another thing) that Christians in general didn’t think much of. His claim is that in history, the Haitians of the time made a pact with the devil to obtain freedom from servitude to the French, and that because of this, they have suffered numerous travesties since then, including this earthquake. Here he is in action:

Unsurprisingly, the response to this from the Christian community has been fairly negative. Christian theology just doesn’t teach this. The idea that whenever something bad happens to a person or to a group it is the result of a wicked thing previously done by that person or group is not one that you can find in the work of any major Christian theologian in history, as far as I am aware (I am setting aside for now the obvious fact that in this case the people who suffered and died were not even the same people who allegedly swore this pact – a pact for which there’s really no evidence anyway). For that matter, it is not taught in the Bible either. In fact there are passages in the Bible that directly deny this view.
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Francis Collins’ reputation is as is the brilliant scientist who cracked the human genome. Because of his outstanding qualifications, not too long ago he was appointed as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It’s also no secret – because Dr Collins makes it no secret – that he is a Christian. It is the latter fact that has rubbed Stephen Pinker the wrong way.

It’s not, Pinker wants us to rest assured, the mere fact that Dr Collins is a Christian that’s a problem. “But in Collins’s case,” Pinker tells us, “it is not a matter of private belief, but public advocacy.” What Pinker would have preferred is a policy of don’t ask – don’t tell. What we really can’t have, you see, is for people to know that a public advocate of science is a Christian (my comment here is – “too late!”). And why is that?

The major concern for Pinker is here:

Collins, in his book, eggs on fellow evangelical Christians in their anti-scientific beliefs. He tells them that they are “right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible” and to “the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.” Granted, he is not a young-earth or intelligent-design creationist. But he has stated that God interacts with creation, in particular, that he designed the evolutionary process to ensure that human intelligence, morality, and Judaeo-Christian religious belief would evolve. That is far more than just expressing an opinion. That is advocacy, which gives incalculable encouragement the forces that have been hostile to science for the past eight years.

So instead of Collins’ work serving as an obvious counter-example to the stereotypical and clearly false claim that religious people are enemies of science, instead Pinker only welcomes Christians who stay in the closet, so that the myth can be perpetuated! Unfortunately, Pinker’s failure to voice equal condemnation of the public role of the likes of Richard Dawkins puts the lie to any thought that his concern is a genuinely scientific one. Dawkins holds a position as Oxford’s Professor For The Understanding Of Science, and yet he has gained more fame in recent years for his advocacy of atheism than for anything else.

Pinker’s rationale is clear: We want Science to be positioned in opposition to religion, so nobody who advocates religion should be welcomed into the hallowed halls of science. Those who fly off the handle at God, on the other hand, we welcome with open arms. Dr Pinker, if you want to convince people that there are no gatekeepers, trying to “expel” the openly religious due to a desire to push the view that science is atheism, then – as the kids say online, you’re doing it wrong.

Glenn Peoples

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A true Scot if er' there were one!

The “no true Scotsman” fallacy (as it is called) is illustrated like this:

William: No Scotsman wears underwear under his kilt
Angus: Not true! I’m a bonnie Scotsman, and I wear underwear under me kilt!
William: Ach! Then yer nee a true Scotsman! Away with ye!

One who uses this fallacy makes their position beyond critique by just throwing in ad hoc modifications (like “true”) to their criteria when somebody comes up with a counter example, so that their position really can’t be falsified. A really bad example would be:

Ben: No scientist is religious.
David: Woah, um, have you actually checked? Because I have this whole list of scientists right here who say that they are Christians!
Ben: Psh, Christians? Then they can’t be real scientists.

That’s worded a little more blatantly than you’re likely to hear anyone actually make a claim like that, I just used a really obvious example. What prompted me to write this blog entry, however, is a type of argument that comes up from time to time. It’s basically like this:

Richard: Christianity is evil!
Alister: Evil? How so?
Richard: Well just read this account of a man who was tortured by fellow Christians because he didn’t belong to their church! They killed his family, burned down his house, then tortured him!
Alister: Richard, anyone who would kill a family, burn the house down and then torture a man because of his beliefs really isn’t much of a Christian.
Richard: Ah HA! You just used the no true Scotsman fallacy!

Notice that this isn’t a case of Christians excusing horrid actions done in the past. On the contrary, it involves Christians today condemning those actions. But they do excuse Christianity of being the culprit, on the grounds that someone who carries out these actions is “not a true Christian,” or “not much of a Christian,” or something worded along those lines. This, it is alleged, is fallacious, being just as ad hoc as the no true Scotsman argument.

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I have my share of concerns about the way some Christians view marriage and whether or not those views are really biblical, but that’s not what this blog post is about. Vorjack over at “Unreasonable Faith” has challenged the familiar appeal that Christians sometimes make to “biblical marriage” in their rejection of same-sex unions. He claims that this appeal is defective because marriage doesn’t just mean one thing in the Bible, it means eight different things. He writes,

Here’s a summary:
1.Polygynous Marriage
Probably the most common form of marriage in the bible, it is where a man has more than one wife.
2.Levirate Marriage
When a woman was widowed without a son, it became the responsibility of the brother-in-law or a close male relative to take her in and impregnate her. If the resulting child was a son, he would be considered the heir of her late husband. See Ruth, and the story of Onan (Gen. 38:6-10).
3.A man, a woman and her property — a female slave
The famous “handmaiden” sketch, as preformed by Abraham (Gen. 16:1-6) and Jacob (Gen. 30:4-5).
4.A man, one or more wives, and some concubines
The definition of a concubine varies from culture to culture, but they tended to be live-in mistresses. Concubines were tied to their “husband,” but had a lower status than a wife. Their children were not usually  heirs, so they were safe outlets for sex without risking the line of succession. To see how badly a concubine could be treated, see the famous story of the Levite and his concubine (Judges 19:1-30).
5.A male soldier and a female prisoner of war
Women could be taken as booty from a successful campaign and forced to become wives or concubines. Deuteronomy 21:11-14 describes the process.
6.A male rapist and his victim
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 describes how an unmarried woman who had been raped must marry her attacker.
7.A male and female slave
A female slave could be married to a male slave without consent, presumably to produce more slaves.
and of course …
8.Monogamous, heterosexual marriage
What you might think of as the standard form of marriage, provided you think of arranged marriages as the standard. Also remember that inter-faith or cross-ethnic marriage were forbidden for large chunks of biblical history.
The important thing to realize here is that none of these models are described as better than any other. All appear to have been accepted.
So there you go. The next time someone says that we need to stick with biblical marriage in this country, you can ask them which of the eight kinds they would prefer, and why.

Someone who’s unwilling to be a cheerleader for scepticism but who actually a) knows enough to know whether or not the claims being made align with the facts and b) recognises poor reasoning when they see it, isn’t going to be impressed by this. But the reality is, material like this more often than not appears on websites or blogs where the visitors are likely to be vistors to the site because of their hostility to Christianity, and will be gleefully received as ammunition without much effort being taken to check its reliability. I’m sure similar things happen at some Chistian websites too. I should say, too, that it is possible that Vorjack isn’t trying to be dishonest. He is merely reproducing material from another source – albeit with some additions of his own. I doubt that he is deliberately lying. I still say, however, that when you’re in a position to produce material to a large audience and peddle it as fact, you have a responsibility to exercise some care. This certainly wasn’t done in this case.
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Mike Tyson - To know him is to love him?

I came across a pretty bizarre claim today, courtesy of one Mr John Loftus. That claim is that omniscience is incompatible with the idea of a God who would inflict wrath. What inspired this unusual claim? Why, Oprah Winfrey interviewing Mike Tyson – naturally, what else?

Apparently Mr Loftus thought Mike was just a big jerk before watching the interview, but after watching the interview that jerked a few tears (OK I exaggerate), since he now understood where he had come from, John’s tune had been changed. And how exactly does this translate into the somewhat left field theological claim made above? Like so:

Once we understand someone and what made that person who he is, we can love him. If I only understood everything about a person and every experience he has ever had that made him who he is, then I could love him completely. An omniscient God supposedly has that understanding of all of us. Hence an omniscient God can never be angry with us. Q.E.D.

Q.E.D.? Seriously? That’s supposed to be a logical proof? How exactly does JL know that if God knew us completely he would also love us completely? This is only true if we are completely worthy of divine love. Are we? Maybe a proof of a similar form actually disproves the argument as follows: If I knew everything about a person, I would know whether or not they are worthy of complete and unqualified love (since this is something about a person). We have considerable flaws that make us unworthy of completely unqualified love. To borrow JL’s turn of phrase, “an omniscient God supposedly has that understanding of all of us.” Consequently an omniscient God knows whether we are worthy of such love and as such would not give us complete and unqualified love, leaving room for the possibility of divine wrath.

Is turnabout fair play?

Glenn Peoples

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Over the last few years I’ve noticed a pattern. I’ve seen plenty of skeptics present arguments against Christianity or certain aspects of Christianity like its moral code, its metaphysical beliefs and so forth. What I’ve noticed is that when a spokesperson presents an argument (say, against the “horrible” God of the Old Testament) and the fans or fellows gather around and agree loudly, it is seen as not merely mistaken, but actually inappropriate or somehow bad form – ruining the party I guess – to step forward and point out that whatever its logical merits (or lack thereof), the argument actually gets the facts wrong.

I can recall discussions on abortion, for example, where skeptics have regarded me as “pedantic” for explaining the meaning of biblical language in Exodus 21 or Genesis 2:7 (even where the meaning of this language was central to their own argument). I’ve encountered skeptics who try to argue that the Old Testament teaches polytheism, and they’ve gotten literally angry with me when I explain the way the plural elohim is used in Scripture (because that word forms a key part of their argument). Sometimes the facts are just annoying, and to bring them up is just nitpicking and anti-social.

The most recent case is that of John Loftus. Loftus has complained in the past about the fact that the Old Testament endorses slavery. He describes the brutality of slavery in the southern states (when people were kidnapped in Africa and sold to slave traders traveling to the New World ) including the vicious beating and mistreatment of slaves, and connects this to the Old Testament, saying “Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?”

One response that has been available to this challenge for a very long time is that offered by John Locke and by a whole range of Christian thinkers as well. For a good summary of these argument check out a recent blog by Matt over at M and M. The thrust of the reply is to point out certain facts about “slavery” as described in the Torah. The word `eved refers to anyone who works (or worships, actually), and is related to the verb for “work,” so that a farmer who “works the soil” slaves away at the soil. The actual description of Old Testament slavery is revealing. As Matt notes, 1) Kidnapping is a capital offence in the Torah (Ex 21:16), and slave trading appears to be condemned in a couple of New Testament texts as well, 2) an `eved is stated to be a person with the same value as other people, 3) harming or killing an `eved was prohibited and subject to punishment, 4) being an `eved was a temporary arrangement and did not last indefinitely, and 4) it was against the law to return a fleeing `eved to a master.

Given what the Bible actually prohibits and condemns in these requirements, the Old Testament actually condemns what we call “slavery” as it was practiced in the southern states. Check out Matt’s post and the comments for a fuller explanation. In short, if the facts presented by Locke and others are indeed facts, then the Old testament does not endorse “slavery” but clearly condemns it. But what I noticed in particular is that Loftus has now replied with a post of his own – not a post about how Matt has the facts wrong. No, nothing of the sort, but instead a complaint that what Matt is doing is “nit picking”! In his post, “Nit pickers have started to attack,” he replies:

What I find interesting, Matt, is that you have not addressed my main question in my book: “Why didn’t the Christian God ever explicitly and clearly condemn slavery?…why didn’t God tell his people, “Thou shalt not own, buy, sell, or trade slaves,” and say it as often as he needed to?

Apparently it’s just in poor taste and really just skirts around the edges to point out that contrary to the claims that some skeptics love to make, the Old Testament does not endorse what we call slavery. But I daresay that annoyance has clouded John’s vision, for what has been shown is that in fact God did condemn kidnapping and/or mistreating people, the very things that Loftus is concerned about and which he is calling “slavery.” it may be irritating to have the rug ripped out from under your argument, but getting annoyed and demanding that people deal with the “main” argument by pretending that the rug is still there (for the sake of your argument and nothing else) is a bit of an ask, don’t you think? Why not just graciously thank the other person for their helpful explanation and remove the argument from your repertoire? Does skepticism really need this argument to work that much? Are the facts really that annoying that when they are brought up you dismiss them as side issues or distractions?

But as if this isn’t enough, look at the emphasis given to the false claim about a “side issue”:

Was your God as clear on this issue as he was about murder? Oh, that’s not a good analogy because, well, you know, genocide, the witch hunts, heresy trials and the crusades. Hmmmm. Okay, let’s try this one: Was your God as clear about this as he was that we should love our neighbors? Oh, that’s not a good analogy because, well, you know, the question was “who is my neighbor?” right? But once you get my point you’ll have no good answers to this problem and you know it, so instead you side-step it as you did here. That’s what it takes to believe, Matt, side stepping problems because you cannot reasonably explain them.

Notice two things: Firstly, virtually everything in the above quote is in fact a case of “side stepping.” It makes literally no attempt to engage the facts that the Christian reply raises, instead it leaps away to other “bogeymen” type argument full of rhetorical flourish. But secondly, Loftus repeats the claim that the facts that Christians bring up here (namely, the fact that biblical servitude was very different from the case of southern slavery that Loftus describes, and that God actually condemns those practices explicitly and on more than one occasion) are side steps, and that to even mention them at all is just an attempt to get away from the challenge altogether because the Christian has “no answers.”

That’s right. To actually reply by saying that the skeptic has the facts wrong is just not the thing to do, because it distracts from the fun of, well, skepticism! What a bunch of party poopers those Christians are.

Glenn Peoples

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Julian Baggini is an atheist who’s quite happy for people to know about it. I wish he weren’t, but hey, whatcha gonna do?

Recently Mr Baggini has commented on the embarrassing spectacle that is the “new atheism,” a movement marked by volume and vehemence rather than substance and insight, spearheaded by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, unconcerned by the need to study or understand the target of it’s frothing at the mouth, tub thumping tirades and wide eyed cheering, stomping and whooping from its young zealous audiences at speaking engagements that would easily pass for “God sucks” rallies.

I think that in a relatively short space, Baggini was exactly right and exactly wrong. He’s right about the new atheism. he says:

What [another writer's opinion piece] revealed is the negative perception people have of the godless hordes, and the New Atheism must share responsibility for creating its own caricature. You can’t publish and lionise books and TV series with titles like The God Delusion, God is Not Great and The Root of All Evil? and then complain when people think you are anti-religious zealots.

This can’t be dismissed as “mere perception”. Appearances count, which is why those able to present a more agreeable face have come to dominate the moderate middle ground, even if their arguments are often vapid and shallow.

and:

Perhaps a period of New Atheist exuberance was necessary. At least it got people thinking, although I fear it has confirmed every negative stereotype about it.

Indeed. If ever conservative Christians needed to be encouraged to think that atheism is as much a fanatical sect as any other, the new atheists have given it to them on a silver platter.

Now, along the way, Baggini reveals the odd bit of ignorance of his own here and there. In arguing that historically, religious people have indeed cared about the truth of their beliefs, he asks, “Did doctrinal differences about Christ’s divinity have no role in Rome’s split from the Orthodox church?” Well actually – no they didn’t The divinity of Christ was a dispute primarily associated with the Arian controversy, not the split of Rome from the East. But such errors are excusable coming from someone who doesn’t set himself up as an expert in the subject, unlike the targets of his criticism.

But he manages to go quite wrong in a different way. One of Baggini’s stated goals is to encourage atheists to challenge fluffy liberal religious people to snap out of it and realise that the truth value of a religion really matters. He says:

Liberal believers and agnostics get away with this nonsense because religious belief is much more than a matter of doctrine, and practice can be as important, or more so. So while the atheists destroy simplistic, traditional creeds and dance on the ruins, much of the rest of the religious edifice remains intact. The fluffy brigade are then free to plant their flag on it unchallenged.

Atheists need to challenge these liberal theologians, so that they admit their vision of doctrine-lite faith is not a description of how true religion always was, but a manifesto for how it should be. If they do that and succeed, then good luck to them. I don’t care if people want to retain a sense of being religious, as long as what they believe stands up to intellectual scrutiny. Atheism needs critical friends as well as true non-believers, so that it is subjected to such scrutiny itself.

Perhaps a period of New Atheist exuberance was necessary. At least it got people thinking, although I fear it has confirmed every negative stereotype about it. We now need to turn down the volume and engage in a real conversation about what of value is left of religion once its crude superstitions are swept away.

The impression I get from the article as a whole is that he thinks that truth oriented Christianity with a belief in its own serious intellectual defensibility is really on the wane, and liberal religion has stepped in to fill the void, trying to keep the religious flame burning now that we can’t go around taking it intellectually serious any more due to the fact that astute atheists have torn it down and are dancing on the ruins.

Baggini is the editor of “the Philosopher’s magazine” according to the article I’m quoting from, but I have to think that he spends very little time staying abreast of the literature in analytical philosophy addressing issues in philosophy of religion, and he surely has no exposure to actual intellectual exchanges between Christian scholars and their critics. In those fields in particular, it is precisely the type of religion that Baggini thinks is in ruins that is actually thriving. The top journals on philosophy of religion are no longer dominated by skeptics but by believers. Within academia addressing at least, what the world has witness is a resurgence of religious faith: Conservative, truth oriented religious faith that is prepared to not only defend itself but actually take the intellectual fight to the nay sayers.

But the article was half good.

Glenn Peoples

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