The assumption that increased industrialization equal decrease in religious belief

the fruits of increased industrialization

I've seen atheists make the assumption that modern industrial society will automatically lead to the decline of religion over time. They point to the situation in Northern Eruope where Germanic societies seem to be a "post Christian" state, while their education levels are the highest in the world. Atheist expositors who proclaim this correlation include, Barber, Zuckerman and Paul. I just got through debunking Barber's work on Atheist Watch, while on Doxa I take Zuckerman and Paul to task. Nevertheless I find atheists arguing from their assumptions quite a bit. There two main assumptions they make that I want to take apart:

(1) That higher education levels precipitate the decline or religoius faith.

(2) That religous belief is predicated upon economic insecurity, thus rise in economic security will mean a decline in religious belief.

The initial assumption is just plain wrong a priori. A rise in education levels has not meant a decline in religious belief, the situation in northern Eruope is greatly exaggerated. First of all Northern Europe is not nearly as hard core atheist as atheists hope. Using their own research Greely and Jagodzenski find that Northern Europe is more agnostic ("soft atheist") than has been realized.

The Demand for Religion
Hard Core atheism and "Supply Side" theory

The "Softest Core" Atheists in the third column include those in the first two and those who can fairly be called agnostics (the second response to the God question) because they do not completely reject the possibility of the existence of God. They might be considered as hovering a little closer to the religious market place.

Note that

1. The proportion of Hard Core atheists is relatively small in all the countries except East Germany (42.7%)
2. The proportion is above 10% only in former socialist countries (12.4% in Russia, 13.9% in Slovenia, and 11.3% in Hungary) and in the Netherlands (11.4%) and in Israel (12.1%).
3. In the other eleven countries, the highest rates of Hard Core atheism are in Norway (6.7%) and Britain (6.3%). Thus if latent demand for religion is excluded only from the Hard Core atheists, there is still the possibility of a large clientele for those firms which might venture into the religious market place in such supposedly "secularized" countries as Norway and Britain.
4. There are not all that many Hard Core atheists in the countries studied, nor indeed all that many soft core atheists either.
5. The "Softest Core" Atheists are less than a third of the population in every country except East Germany. They are more than a fifth of the population only in four former Socialist countries – East German Russia, Hungary and Slovenia. With the exception than of East Germany more than two thirds of the population of the countries studied are willing to admit the existence in some fashion of God and the likelihood of life after death. Devout many of them may not be but on the two central issues they are more religious than not. They then may be considered as part of the religious market place if not always enthusiastic consumers.

Furthermore in the sample as a whole, Hard Core atheism correlates only with gender (women less likely to be atheists) and not with education or age (those favorite measures of the more naïve of the "secularization theorists.") 83% of the Hard Core Atheists say they never believed in God, 61% say they never attended church services when they were eleven or twelve years old and 9% more say they only rarely attended. The choice of Hard Core atheism as a philosophy of life was apparently made at a very young age in life and is sustained through the life course.

Age correlates significantly with Hard Core atheism only in Britain (r=-.08), East Germany (r=-.18), the Netherlands (r=-.05) and Israel (r=+.08), Hungary (-.14). Education correlates significantly with Hard Core Atheism only in Hungary (r=.11), Slovenia (r=.18), and Norway (r=.10) West Germany (r=.08), Israel (r=.10). In these countries as in the whole sample, there is an inverted U curve in the relationship between age and atheism, the very young and the very old being somewhat less likely to be atheists. In the middle years of life, however, the line representing atheism is flat. Only in Slovenia and Hungary is education still a significant correlate of Hard Core Atheism in a regression equation which includes age and gender.

Another problem with the assumption of correlation between education and decline of belief is the realization that we are not all that educated anymore. These atheists, being materialists and reductionists, ironically are not aware of Marcuse. They just measure education by technology but in many cases people who are the product of modern educational systems are not educated in ideas, they are merely proficient in job training programs. Just one can work a bunch of technology doesn't mean one is proficient in ideas such that one can make an intelligent judgment and rationally set aside faith. I used to run a whole academic journal devoted to Marcuse and the outlook for education is pretty bleak, even in Northern Europe (go here and scroll down to issue one "Negations the Manifest" by J.L. Hinman, also by Hinman issue 2 table of contents and choose "one-dimensionality Man in the Postmodern age." choose issue 3 table of contents and then the article on Schweitzer).

These atheists who associate higher levels of technological use with education are ignoring the fact that the ideology of Marxism swept across Europe in the Twentieth century, fuelded by the disillusionment of two world wars, and of cousre with the atheist assumptions of materialism and anti-clericalism. One sees a lot written about the decline of Marxism in the late twentieth century but the fact of it's popularity among the intelligentsia for most of the century is ignored. In the first half of the twentieth century, up through the 60s, it wasn't a decline of religion due to education but do to indoctrination. In the other all scheme of things the decline is not precipitant.

To the extent that there is some correlation bewteen higher education and decline in belief, this is not necessarily the result of enlightenment. The real association is not bewteen an increase in ideas and understanding but between a rise in affluence and decline in religion, to the extent that there is a small one. That ties into the second assumption, the one about the increase in security. The first assumption is predicated upon a conventional assumption that rise in income means a rise in pieces of paper from job training, and since that is called "education" they assume that the recipients are actually deeper thinkers. Those are both perilous assumptions. The assumption back of that is that religion is the result of ignorance nd superstition. Of cousre they can't explain the fact that most great great thinkers in the west (philosophers, and scientists) have believed in God.

The second assumptions comes closer to the truth, that it's related to economic secularist. Again the atheist just does surface level analysis, seeing only a straight correlation bewteen economics and belief. Of course the assumption they are making is again a false psychological reason for the readings of bleief. These expositors such as Barber, apologists for atheism, want to see religion as purely a matter of psychological need because it does supply a source of emotional strength. They put a negative spin on it and make it seem something bad, the need fora crutch that continued growth will eradicate. The horrible nightmare is that we are not going to sustain growth. We have only economic ruin ahead so their predictions of the elimination of religion are bogus. Yet their assumptions are bogus as well because they assume the negative spin; religion is just a manifestation of a need for psychological security. Why not assume this is a valid defense mechanism? If evolution is really behind everything we think and do, and people like Barber assume it is, then there must be a reason why the majority are religious why can't that reason be a valid psychological need to be close to God?

Where both assumptions meet is in the idea that if there is an naturalistic explanation for religion then it' disproved the "supernatural." It disproves the atheist straw man version of the supernatural, where God is a big man in the sky and has to do everything in direct contradiction to the natural. People are given the innate ability to find God and to draw strength from a relationship with God. We can understanding through psychological and genetic means. This is so for two reasons: (1) their assertion that God must work in opposition to the natural is just BS. God created the natural and is working in the natural all the time. (2) they just ignore the spiritual aspects.

For example they assume increased affluence means decline in religion (which they have not established) because they assert religion is just a crutch and life is scary, as well as the dash of ignrance and superstition. What they ignore is the basic the good old fact of sin. Affluence equals pride. When one is affluent one assumes one is superior. When one is affluent one assumes one has earned it all himself/herself. Thus we tend to either forget God, or to treat God as Fuererbach said, the mask of money. Greater affluence might mean less reliance on God due to a rise in pride, arrogance and selfishness. If religion is predicated upon a need to feel secure in a scary world it is not going away anytime soon. The need to feel secure in a scary world is not indicative of no God. The feeling of self sufficiency brought on by increased affluence is the all too familiar symptom of stupidity, the kind that as brought us to the brink of destruction ethnologically, militarily, socially, economically, and now educationally.

Bad Reasons to Doubt God

Some guy named Andrew Zak Williams asked well known (suppossedly) atheists why they don't believe in God. This is in the NewStatesman (25, July 2011).

Someone I've never heard of (but then I'm such a fogie and so dedicated to living in the past) asked public figure atheists:

Maryam Namazie
Human rights activist:

I suppose people can go through an entire lifetime without questioning God and a religion that they were born into (out of no choice of their own), especially if it doesn't have much of a say in their lives. If you live in France or Britain, there may never be a need to renounce God actively or come out as an atheist.

But when the state sends a "Hezbollah" (the generic term for Islamist) to your school to ensure that you don't mix with your friends who are boys, stops you from swimming, forces you to be veiled, deems males and females separate and unequal, prescribes different books for you and your girlfriends from those read by boys, denies certain fields of study to you because you are female, and starts killing in­discriminately, then you have no choice but to question, discredit and confront it - all of it. And that is what I did.

Some people in some religions don't' question, some in some religions do wrong things. That's a reason not to believe in God? Why is it that religious people doing wrong things is a reason to doubt that there's a God but religious people doing good things is only an excuse to examine that person super closely and be hyper critical in an extremely petty way and go after them with a vengeance (like Christopher Hitchens went after Mother Tresa) but it's not a reason to believe in God?

Philip Pullman
Author

The main reason I don't believe in God is the missing evidence. There could logically be no evidence that he doesn't exist, so I can only go by the fact that, so far, I've discovered no evidence that he does: I have had no personal experience of being spoken to by God and I see nothing in the world around me, wherever I look in history or science or art or anywhere else, to persuade me that it was the work of God rather than
of nature.

Of course this guy hasn't looked at my list of 42 God arguments has he? When people say this is usually turns out they have never really evaluated a God closely they just go by the surface "feel" of their attitudes. When they do actually go toe to toe I can take you though point for point and show you why they don't win. The next day of course they out there saying "there's no evidence." I have been through month long knock-down-drag-out debates and wound up with atheists virtually admitting there has to be "something there" yet the next day saying the same mistaken stuff I disproved the day before. In my Internet argument career I found several atheists, maybe six, who actually addmitted they would no longer be atheists any more because of my arguments.Of cousre the much more common result is that they usually wind up saying things like "O well logic doesn't really mean anything, arguments aren't proof, proof is not proof."

Actually, in my view, the answer "I don't see the evidence stacking up to prove it" is really the only good answer to the question. I really don't mean to criticize anyone who says this. The one doesn't see it stacking up that way is understandable and acceptable as a valid answer. It's when they work overtime not to see that bothers me.

Kenan Malik
Neurobiologist, writer and broadcaster

I am an atheist because I see no need for God. Without God, it is said, we cannot explain the creation of the cosmos, anchor our moral values or infuse our lives with meaning and purpose. I disagree.

Invoking God at best highlights what we cannot yet explain about the physical universe, and at worst exploits that ignorance to mystify. Moral values do not come prepackaged from God, but have to be worked out by human beings through a combination of empathy, reasoning and dialogue.
This is true of believers, too: they, after all, have to decide for themselves which values in their holy books they accept and which ones they reject.
And it is not God that gives meaning to our lives, but our relationships with fellow human beings and the goals and obligations that derive from them. God is at best redundant, at worst an obstruction. Why do I need him?

This is a classic sort of answer based upon classic misconceptions. Belief in God is not predicated upon the need to explain things (with the one exception of sense of the numinous and other co-determinate related sensations). The areas he mentions: explain cosmos, anchor morality, give meaning, I have never seen atheists pass my challenge to produce their own systems that offer even one or all of these three things. I have yet to see an atheist advance a moral system that can get past my cirteria for a valid grounding of moral axioms. When atheists talk about meaning in life their whole its an exercise in cross purposes before form the get go they can't mean real actual universal meaning; their concepts of meaning are relative, private and discordable.

Beleif in God is not about explaining the physical universe. We don't need arguments about he inapplicability of the universe to predicate rational warrant for belief. I urge everyone to read my list of 42 reasons and pay special attention to the religious experience arguments. Yet I have never seen an atheist answer the Cosmological argument with anything but duplicity and question begging and putting the problem off through logical loops that bring up more problems than they solve (I refer to Infinite causal regression).

Take that last part:

And it is not God that gives meaning to our lives, but our relationships with fellow human beings and the goals and obligations that derive from them. God is at best redundant, at worst an obstruction. Why do I need him?

Yes it is precisely God who does that. I have not seen an atheist ever provide me with a basis for such meaning that isn't either the privatized relativist meaning that just amounts to giving yourself an award, (it means something to me, of course my life is meaningless against the backdrop of eternity but it's ok it's my little meaning--which I get form silver age DC comics). He's just begging the question with this statment then redudantly echoing "why do we need him?" Because you can't make your own meaning. That's the special Olympics startegy of meaning "You all won a gold medal just for being you." Not to put down the special Olympics. that's fine for self esteem but it's not a basis for real meaning in life.

Susan Blackmore
Psychologist and author

What reason for belief could I possibly have? To explain suffering? He doesn't. Unless, that is, you buy in to his giving us free will, which conflicts with all we know about human decision-making.

O brilliant! Free will is disproved by what we supposedly know yet I choose not to believe in God. Of course if we have no free will (human decision making is where she puts the emphasis for determinism) then what means does she use to refuse to believe in God? It's obviously not something she figured by her own intelligence because it's determined. It's cut and dried, no free will remember? We know it, it's a fact beyond dispute. you are not smart for being an atheist and you didn't choose to be one. That means also means atheists are stupid for mocking and ridiculing religious people because no one chooses remember?

In fact it is not a done deal, is not proven. There is good scientific evidence that we do have free will.

Veto Power


Glenn Miller, Christian Think Tank:

"The studies of neuronal timing by Libet has demonstrated that conscious will exerts a veto effect on action sequences initiated at an unconscious level [Journal Consciousness Studies:1.1.130; CS:TSC:342f]. In other words, an unconscious process may get a muscle ready to move, but when that readiness becomes 'visible' to the conscious mind, that conscious mind can let the action continue, or shut it down! Elsewhere [CS:TSOC:113], Libet explains the implications of this veto-power, over against those who would ASSUME that even the veto was "upwardly caused":

"It has been argued that the appearance of the conscious veto would itself require a prior period of unconscious neural development, just as for conscious intention; in such a case even this conscious control event would have an unconscious initiating process. However, conscious control of an event appears here after awareness of the impending voluntary action has developed. Conscious control is not a new awareness; it serves to impose a change on the volitional process and it may not be subject to the requirement of a preceding unconscious cerebral process found for awareness. In such a view, a potential role for free will would remain viable in the conscious control, though not in the initiation, of a voluntary act. These findings taken together have a fundamental bearing on the issues of voluntary action, free will and individual responsibility for conscious urges and actions."

In case you didn't get that--the veto cannot have antecedent unconscious processes (before it becomes aware) , since it only appears in as the initiated action has ALREADY become aware--it controls with a go/no-go decision THEN.

This is why I avoid harangues about free will vs determinism. Determinism is self defeating because if they are right there's no sense in arguing about positions you are determined by genes or whatever to defend even though without those influences you would be free to reject a position that had you not been influenced by those influences that control you would be wrong anyway. It's not as though you can convince the other side, they are determined to be against you.

Richard Dawkins
Evolutionary biologist

I don't believe in leprechauns, pixies, werewolves, jujus, Thor, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah or the Trinity. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of evidence for any of them, and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe.

So, why don't you believe in God? This is so obviously just an attempt to slander belief by classing it among ideas we all know are false and which are discredited long ago; but then it's a just a pretense, and a stupid one, to assume that belief in God is like belief in these contingent myths that have nothing to do with God. They all fit the atheist straw man propaganda about "superantuarl." Of of cousre they have nothing to do with the Christian concept of Supernatural. For this reason I find it hard to take Dawkins seriously. This is not a serious reason to disbelieve. "I disbelieve in God because I don't believe these things that are totally different from God."

Then Dawkins goes on to give a perfect example of slippery reasoning. He illustrates exactly what we meant by "a greasy debater" back in high school and college debate.

Even given no evidence for specific gods, could we make a case for some unspecified "intelligent designer" or "prime mover" or begetter of "something rather than nothing"? By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to "design" of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical evidence betrays his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book.

He starts by saying "can you make a case for a general concept of God apart from any tradition?" then his reasoning against doing that is based upon a specific God of a specific tradition. Never mind the fact that he's only using bad bits from one part of the Bible, never mind that the Bible is not the only basis for Christian concepts, he would have to deal with the real thinkers of the tradition and he stays as far away from them as he can, but the fact of it is he's doing what he said he's not going to do. In both cases, both paragraphs he's basing his reasons on things that have nothing to do with what he's supposed to be arguing about. This classic case of mis direction is exactly what we mean by "propaganda."

His assertion that Darwin destroyed any part of Christian belief is pure ignorance. It' no state secret that only the most primitive literalists are displaced by Darwin. Here's the kind of stupdity that really seals my opionoin of this clown:

And any theist who appeals to biblical evidence betrays his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book.

That kind of backward stupid thinking that makes my job so tough. My job: explicating Christin theology to people who mock and riducle it but don't seek to understand it. The reason this is so pathetic and puerile is because the average atheist who hasn't studied logic and doesn't know about textual criticism reads that and get's the legalistic idea that one dare not refer to a book to prove that book. Of cousre atheists do that all the time. They want to prove Dawkins is right tthey look in his books and compare what it says to other things. Do that with the bible and they all go "you can't do that that's circular reasoning." This is exactly what I've been fighting for a month on message board. I show that there are eight levels of verification in the Gospels that refer to older works that the gospels draw upon and rather than example a single bit of that evidence they call "you can't prove a book with that book."

Here's what they are confusing, and Dawkins is purposely leading them in the confusion:

Fundie says: the Bible is the inerrant word of God

skepic: how do you know it is

Fundie" It says it is in verse X.

Obviously you can't prove the authority of a book by the books own statement of it's own authority. That's about the idea of having outside proofs that demonstrate the validation of the book. Obviously there could be statements in a book that refer to external touchstones that show you how to prove the books own veracity. That's why why people defend Dawkins books. The Bible can and does have the same kind of touchstones. The Bible says the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Archaeology finds the walls they did tumble their tumbling is consistent with the Biblical account, that's an external verification mentioned din the book. The atheist fundie, the Dawkamenaltist says "no you can't do that that's a rule" (of Dawkamentalism).

The reasons for unbelief are just as shallow and silly seeming as the reasons for belief (given by many). What one should be doing rather than evaluating other people's reasons is seek for one's own. Ask yourself what you believe and why you believe it. Then ask yourself if your reasons for belief or unbelief really satisfy you. One can have total absolute assurance of God's reality but that's different from an objective reason that will convince others. The way most people reason about things it's clear that objective well argued reasons are just not important in terms of convincing others. One need only seek truth in one's own hear to find God. There's no problem with doing that. It' snot illogical it's not wrong it's not violating some secret rule of logic. The main problem is it's not satisfying, because you can't use it to convince others, but that's becuase one is concerned with the views of others. We can also have rationally warranted reasons to believe. See my God argument list.

On Death of John Stott

John Stott

John Stott was a British evangelical, he was totally different from the typical Bible thumping Jerry Fallwell. He never condemned anyone for their views or their life style. He was soft spoken and had a reasoning demeanor. I read two of his books, early in my Christian walk. One of them was on the sermon on the mount. I think it was called Christian Counter culture. The other was about Baptism of the Holy Spirit. I must say the latter book held me back from receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, by teaching--wrongly I feel--that it is not a second separate experience from being born again. I don't hold that against him and aside from that, his Sermon on the mount book was a really fine and thoughtful exposition.

Here's what Nicholas D. Kristof said said as a tribute to Stott
in New York Times Sunday Review, July 30, 2011

Partly because of such self-righteousness, the entire evangelical movement often has been pilloried among progressives as reactionary, myopic, anti-intellectual and, if anything, immoral.

Yet that casual dismissal is profoundly unfair of the movement as a whole. It reflects a kind of reverse intolerance, sometimes a reverse bigotry, directed at tens of millions of people who have actually become increasingly engaged in issues of global poverty and justice.

This compassionate strain of evangelicalism was powerfully shaped by the Rev. John Stott, a gentle British scholar who had far more impact on Christianity than media stars like Mr. Robertson or Mr. Falwell. Mr. Stott, who died a few days ago at the age of 90, was named one of the globe’s 100 most influential people by Time, and in stature he was sometimes described as the equivalent of the pope among the world’s evangelicals.

Mr. Stott didn’t preach fire and brimstone on a Christian television network. He was a humble scholar whose 50-odd books counseled Christians to emulate the life of Jesus — especially his concern for the poor and oppressed — and confront social ills like racial oppression and environmental pollution.

“Good Samaritans will always be needed to succor those who are assaulted and robbed; yet it would be even better to rid the Jerusalem-Jericho road of brigands,” Mr. Stott wrote in his book “The Cross of Christ.” “Just so Christian philanthropy in terms of relief and aid is necessary, but long-term development is better, and we cannot evade our political responsibility to share in changing the structures that inhibit development. Christians cannot regard with equanimity the injustices that spoil God’s world and demean his creatures.”

Mr. Stott then gave examples of the injustices that Christians should confront: “the traumas of poverty and unemployment,” “the oppression of women,” and in education “the denial of equal opportunity for all.”

For many evangelicals who winced whenever a televangelist made the headlines, Mr. Stott was an intellectual guru and an inspiration. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, who has worked heroically to combat everything from genocide to climate change, told me: “Against the quackery and anti-intellectualism of our movement, Stott made it possible to say you are ‘evangelical’ and not be apologetic.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, head of a Christian organization called Sojourners that focuses on social justice, added: “John Stott was the very first important evangelical leader to support our work at Sojourners.”

Stott graduated form Cambridge and worked on the premise that faith and intellectual go together. His father was a Harley Street Consultant (a high priced doctor) who wanted his son t be a diplomat (Eternity).

Eternity: Remembering John Stott
Stuart Barton Babbage

John Stott was pre-eminently an evangelist to students around the world and in commentaries he wrote as a gifted expositor of the word of God. It is instructive to compare Billy Graham’s autobiography with Timothy Dudley Smith’s massive biography of John Stott. Billy Graham’s autobiography is graphic and revealing; by contrast John Stott’s biography is reticent and discreet. We learn much about John Stott’s bird watching, nothing about his role as Chaplain to the Queen and the names of individuals, high and low, whom he met and ministered to.

Many of the things Stott said those two books I read stuck with me. Even though I wound up disagreeing with his views on the Holy Spirit, I still feel that he was a very positive and important influence upon my early walk with Christ. He's gone home.

Was Jesus Wrong in his "Olivette discourse"?

Atheists often use the so called "Olivette discourse" As what they must think is a certain proof that Jesus screwed and predicted the end of the world wrongly. The issue is found in all three synoptic Gospels but in Mark it's found in chapter 13: 1=3

1As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"

2"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

Jesus seems to say "this generation will not pass away before this comes to pass," by "this" is included angels coming in glory and the end of the world. So it appears that Jesus got it wrong. There is an answer that I came up with. It's not the only answer, there are others. The Preterits answer for example (which most Christians find untenable). I like my answer best. I came up with it way back around 2002-4 or something and I've used it a lot. It's based upon textual criticism.

My answer says there is an older version than we have in the canonical Gospels. The pre-Mark redaction was circulating in writing as early as AD50 and this is agreed upon by a majority of Scholars* today. Certainly three of the major one's, Koester, Crosson, and Brown all agreed in principle even though they all have different senerioes as to what that original writing was like. So I assume that in the original there were two separate questions.

(1) What will be the sing of Messiah' coming

(2) when the temple be destroyed.

To one Jesus says "this generation will not pass away," to the other he says "you will see the son of man return in the clouds with the angels" to the other. So he has two questions and two answers. It only makes him a fool if he gave as an answer to "when is the end of the world? (messiah returning) as "this generation will not pass away" and when will the temple be destroyed as "when you see the angles coming." If he got it the other way, when is the temple destroyed, before this generation passes away, when is the end? "when you see the angels coming," then he's a prophet. The fact that that's the right is just obvious since the end of world did not accompany the fall of the temple but some of Jesus' generation did live to see it. So that seems to be what did happen and that's that's a good reason to think that's the way the questions and their answers really stack up.

But we can see that Mark reduced or collapsed the two questions into one and Matt preserved them as two with their two answers. but the answers were cross threaded. Let's see how it's worded:


Mark 13:

¹As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" ²"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
³As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

there we see the collapse into one question. Why? Because this is the question:

v4 (a) when will these things happen?

(b) what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

this is the same question. It's just saying "when will this happen" and when will it be fulfilled? that's the same thing. What things' (Notice plural two things what are they?) he's been talking about destruction of the temple. what was said in vs 2:

²"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

that's just one thing, the stones will not be left, (they are at the temple so they are talking about the destruction of the temple) they get to the mt of Olives and suddenly it's "things" not just one but two. where did they get two things to ask about? Obviously there are two questions in the original version and Mark has collapsed them into one. They began with the temple and suddenly they have the return of Messiah in it and the the end of the world and they are talking about more than one thing. where did they get that? How do I know they are discussing the end? Because the rest of the chapter, Jesus' answer to this question is about the end times, it concludes in verse 25 with this:

²⁴"But in those days, following that distress,
" 'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
²⁵the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'^{[d] 26}"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. ²⁷And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

So somehow they go from destruction of the temple to the end of the world and form one question to discussion "things" including the return of the Messiah. Why do that? Why collapse two questions in to one and why one questions bout the end times? Because they Jews believed then and they do now that the Messiah will return at the end when the temple is destroyed. They would not conceive of their faith with out the temple so the end of the temple had to mean the end of the world. So why bother to preserve two questions which are unrelated when you assume they are about the same thing? Of cousre Jesus answer is not reflective of his real words, but may contain the elements of his answers but crosses the answers to the wrong questions because they assume it's one question, about one event with one answer: when the temple is destroyed you will see the angels coming in the clouds with the son of man. one event.

Now Mat just happens to preserve the original two questions, but the redactor while not collapsing the questions cross threads the answers. So the answer to "when will the temple be destroyed" becomes "when the angles come down" and the answer to "when will the end come?" becomes "this generation will not pass away. It should be the other way around. Since the redactor didn't understand that the questions are preserved as separate becuase they are two separate events, he just preserved them by accident and when on assuming that' they about one event.

Let's look at how Mat preserves the questions:

Mat 24:1-3

¹Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ²"Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." ³As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"

This is not just one question repeated two different ways as Mark has it. These are two seperate questions, even though the redactors probably never realized it. They are (1) when will this (destorcution of temple) happen? and (2) what is the sign of your comming? But since they understood those two things as one event Mark conflated them. Mat on preserves the distinction by accient. why? because the answer Jesus gives in Mat reflect the notion of one event:

⁴Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,^[a]' and will deceive many. ⁶You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸All these are the beginning of birth pains.

He goes on for the rest of the chapter talking about the end times. So clearly the redactor the two events as one even though it seems there must have been two seperate qeustions in the begining. Now one might ask do I know it wasn't the other way around? Mat might break them into two when they were one to begin with. But while its' obvious what the motive would be for conflating them but there seems to be no motive I can think of for doing it the other way. This is especially true the the answer Mat gives implies that he though of these two events as one just as everyone else did, it's just by happen stance, (or because the original document did) that he preserves the two (perhaps the original document did because there really were two questions in the beginning). I have shown above direct evidence that Mark was deal with two questions and collapsed them into one: Jesus speaks of one thing, the stones wont be left one another (the context is the temple) but then Mark suddenly sticks in end times stuff and changes it to a purl "these things."

This is textual criticism. This is exactly what the work of lower criticism invovles. The only thing I'm missing that a real textual critic would do would be to look at the various ms of these existing passages and show their differences and ry to relate that the analysis. I no longer have my textual apparatus after moving so many times in the last view years. I don't have the time or Patience to look it up, and I think I have a good argument anyway.

*The phrase on that page that documents my view is this: "Nevertheless, the idea of a pre-Markan passion narrative continues to seem probable to a majority of scholars. One recent study is presented by Gerd Theissen in The Gospels in Context, on which I am dependent for the following observations." (Peter Kirdy). Now some atheist is goign to say "that's just for the Passaion narrative not a whole pre Mark redaction" but with Koester the Passion narrative includes several redactions of books such as Eterton 2, GThomas, and others. It includes much more than just the passion.

My Wounded Inner Conservative and What He Tells me About the Current Mess

I do have a conservative side. I hate to admit it after having been a Marxist and having published an academic journal about Marcuse and the Frankfurt school. I do have a wounded inner conservative. The meaning of the term "conservative" has been lost in modern politics. Most people think of it as right wing, really something more like a libertarian (which in my political glossary just means "confused"). The true meaning of the term was defined for me by the late Gavin Hambly a historian of some note from Cambridge for whom I was teaching assistant for a year. He said it was the influence of Rudyard Kipling who brought the concept of conservatism into focus. The original idea was a kind of nostalgia, a fond feeling for a time or the way things used to be and the desire to order events in an attempt to bring back that way.

This fits with Webster's second and third definitions of conservatism:

Definition of CONSERVATISM

1

capitalized a : the principles and policies of a Conservative party b : the Conservative party

2

a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change; specifically : such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (as retirement income or health-care coverage)

3

: the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

Although that institutionalizes what Hambly felt was a nostalgic feeling.I would suggest that that definition is flawed. It has the right idea about established order and resisting change but all the lower tax stuff is not really part of conservatism. That's the mark of the modern era, what conservatives have become. The original concept was less about preserving institutions and more about ideals. It was about honor, a revererence for the past, trying to hold on to things that were worth holding on to, but they were intangibles. Both sides have lost thier ideas, that's the problem. conservatives have traded in their penchant for honor and vlues for a tax revolt. Every nation of earth, even the most conservative, the Dutch of the 17th century for example, had some form of welfare policy. Even the puritans in American had some means of looking after those who could not take care of themselves. While liberals have lost thier ability to fight and mistake stuborn refusal for political fighting.

When I think of it from that point of view I am reminded of the politics of my childhood. The time when first began to take note of political issues I was in grammar school, it was the 1964 elections, Johnson vs. Goldwater. My parents being good Democrats and good Texans were totally behind Johnson. They were so staunchly Texan and Church of Christ they voted for Johnson ni place of Kennedy in 1960 elections. They wrote in his name even though he was the VP candidate with Kennedy. Of course they would have voted for a yellow dog before a republican, which is why I have that yellow dog in the upper right side bar. That particular dog looks almost exactly like my old dog "Mutt," (1969-1985).

Yet one feature of politics in that era that is totally absent from today's politics is that there were statesmen on both sides and Republicans and Democrats respected each other. Goldwater (1909-1998) was painted as a nut case by the Johnson campaign but he was actually a fine statesman. He was extreme some ways, but being irrational and ready to bomb the Viet Kong with nuclear weapons was not one of them. Geroge McGovern (07/19/1922--still living), who got the Goldwater treatment form Nixon in the 1972 campaign, the major arch liberal of the era, characatured as the liberal nut case, was a good friend of Goldwater's. You could not find two more diametrically opposed political opponents yet they were good friends. Everett Dirksen
was the minority leader (republican) in the 1960s. I would never vote for him,but even today I feel a sense of reverence just looking him up. He was a statesman. He was the kind of guy would you would not feel bad about leaving in charge in an emergency even though you may not agree with his views.

We don't have that today. Today we have raving lunatics who can't agree on anything. We have a segment of the Republicans who seem bent on playing "rule or ruin." The idea of closing tax loopholes on the rich is off the table and the tea party guys are still not willing to compromise. They know that if the economy goes down the tubes totally Obama will be blamed regardless of his current willingness to compromise. That means they are willing to ruin everything just to score political victory. We know there are equal inflexible Democrats but they are kept in check by Obama to some extent. Obama has given up the tax the rich centerpiece of his campaign several times now and we have yet to get a major concession out of the tea party nucleus of the Republicans. How many old and disabled people have to go without their ability to buy food and pay rent and bills next week to satisfy the tea party need to ruin Obama?

My nostalgia is for a day when politics made sense. There was a time when there were honorable people on both sides. This is what we have to get back to, a time when we are willing to tolerate disagreement. I think it's our selfishness that has put us here. We are not wiling to tolerate the other side becuase we are so desperate to get what we crave (the American dream, or just a secure situation) that everything else must take second place to that. The media panders to the situation becuase that builds viewers or readers. The nature of American politics has imploded, and is feeding off itself.

the whole science preisthood arguemtn with Westverlen

http://forums.carm.org/vbb/showthread.php?62674-If-the-universe-has-a-cause...

I am becoming more and more heart sick about the fate of humanity. It really crushes my spirit to see the stupidity of people when they do things like, after goading atheists for about 12 threads (not posts but whole threads) to deal with the specifics of my 8 levels of verification they claim that they "dealt with it." when you look at how they dealt with it you see they have nothing specific at all of any kind. I goad them on the fact that they want say anything specific, even though they have been claiming they beat it, then they do "I just don't care about it." They continue to say 'there's no verification of the Gospels." They wont answer the arguments but they still continue to insist upon the errors that the arguments correct, while claiming not to care. If they don't care why are they still talking about it?



Originally Posted by Metacrock

how are you going to learn that it's wrong if it's just a matter of your little taste? nothing can make something wrong in a world with no innate morality. you only have the idea of "wrong" becuase society tells you to think it. In a world where no believes in right and wrong (which are metaphysical and are part of belief in God) no one is going to say "this is intrinsically wrong" becasue there can't be an Intrinsic anything in a world of pure naturalism.

Marty Hamerstock

Why not? Why do you need something metaphysical to have moral absolutes? I find that simple logic works well. Why do morals exist and why are they needed? What makes something intrinsically right or wrong? In order to have to attach something metaphysical to it, you would have to believe in a "pure" good or a "pure" evil, which I don't believe exists. There simply is no evidence fo it. Any social and political animal from lions to chimps have something resembling ethics that serve the community at large. This shows to me that morality developed through natural selection just like everything else. You mentioned matters of taste. Evolution programmed the moral "biggies" into our DNA, leaving plenty of "wiggle room" for individual cultures and societies.

aadsdf


One of them says ethics is about brain chemistry. Feeding into the lie that we don't need God for ethics. Then continually blurring the distinction between what we should do and what people do in fact do. Asserting a good all the while being denying the logical basis for supporting why there is a good. Then asking "why does there have to be a big magical man in the sky to say that something is good." Why is something good? because we have brain chemistry that leads us to do certain things a certain way. That's what they think good is. When I see that kind of thinking I just don't want to live in this century anymore.


The heart of Hamerstick's claim is this: Any social and political animal from lions to chimps have something resembling ethics that serve the community at large. This shows to me that morality developed through natural selection just like everything else.

That is a self contradictory claim. No animals have anything like ethics. The fact that he thinks they do merely proves that he doesn't know what ethics is. There is no group of animals that sits around discussing moral decision making. Animaols do not examine their actions.That is moral thinking, not behaviors not lists of rules. The reductionist reduces morality to behavior. All atheists are reductionists in a sense and thus they all reduced ethics to behavior. When you take the moral thinking out of morality it's not moral anymore. Moral thinking is decision making, that means deliberation not a list of rules or instinctive behaviors. Ethics is the academic discussion about moral decision making.

This tendency to reduce everything to the purely physiological and it all on the level of the surface aspects of the natural is symptomatic of the kind of thinking that subsumed the age People are losing the intellectual ability to understand what thinking is. Certainly ethics, morality, God, theology, philosophy, the meaning of life, these are all beyond the grasp of the kids being trained by these modern advocates of surfaceism. With the loss of these old fashioned concepts and the antiquated ways of looking at things (like thinking and reason and learning things in books) comes the loss of all the aspects of humanity that marks us as human.
They just say "I want to be a machine, machines are cool."

Nature of Faith is Confussing to Moderity

A lot of people are confused about the nature o faith. Some think these are contradictions. A big soruce of misconception s a popular definition of faith as "believing thing without reasons." Take a comment, one I find typical, from a recent message board encounter:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atheist_Devil View Post (carm aug 31 2007
I completely disagree with you. As Dan Barker calls it, faith is the "Great Escape".

So here we see the atheist take on faith still casting it in pejorative terms. The atheists set up their straw man definition of faith in which it is defined as "believing things without a reason. OF this is a totally inadequate definition.

Where do we turn for an understanding of faith? The best place would be the Westminster's Dictionary of Christian Theology, which is the official defining source of theological concepts. Here we see the simplistic bromide "faith is believing things without reasons" just wont do.

Westminster defines faith in a complex way, the article is very long and the definition is long.

The only atual Biblical definition of faith (Heb 11) does not encapsulate all that the Bible says on the subject, but indicates its main features 'the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.'

some translations say "evidence of things not seen. Faith is not a wild abandonment of logic, it is like faithfulness, it is a commitment to an understanding or a realization one takes as truth, and that realization can be gleaned from many sources including revelation, logic, personal experience. All of these things can be good reasons.

Westminster demonstrates the commitment aspect of faith in the sense of faithfulness which is part of the definition it gives for faith.

It is a confident obedient trust in the reality, in the power and love of God known through his acts, and an awaiting of their future consummation. The bible contains a variety of emphasis within this overall view. The noun 'faith' is comparatively rare in the OT where, (eg Hab 2.5) It may indicate faithfulness or loyalty to God rather than a passive reliance. But dependence upon God as distinct from human powers was imortant for Isaiah (7.9, 30.1-5). While the OT so often sees faith concertized as obedient action (Duet 6.1) the note of trust also resounds especially in the psalms.

Not to lose the complexity in a simplistic short hand, but we can encapsulate the OT view of faith as "trust, faithfulness, obedience." We see that is not passage acceptance of truth claims without reasons. The definition says the trust is based upon "The power of God" and that is a reason, it may one atheists don't like but it is a darn good one. If one has experienced the power of God in one's life one need no better reason.

In the Synoptic Gospels those who respond to Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom and respond to his salvific powers, are commended for their faith (Mark 2.5, 5.3) Unbelief is a hardness of heart a refusal to accept the immediacy of God's saving power (Mark 6.1).

Atheists have a strong tendency to deny that belief is a choice. They seem to think that it is some conclusion one is compelled to by logic, or maybe by stupidity; although in the context of religious belief they say that faith is antithetical to reason. They are missing the boat, in this definition we see that Jesus expected us to make a commitment, that is the essence of faith (from the last preceding quote). The basic skeptical position is hardness of heart, refusal to accept immediacy of God's saving power.

The dictionary lists tensions with faith. Tension is a favorite concept among theologians. It means the pull exerted between two seemingly contradictory ideas which are both true and yet conflict in some way. Tension is not a real contradiction but often results form either misunderstanding wrong emphasis. Tensions with faith are:

The first on the list is faith vs works, which I will not go into here. The second is faith verses reason. That's the atheists cease upon as a contradiction but they are driven by the wrong understand ing of faith. The Catholics have always recognized that "reason was capable of demonstrating the existence of God." (Ibid) while Protestants tended to down play reason as the product of the fallen human mind. The source of the modern misunderstanding of faith is the result of historical accident. It comes from the skeptical crisis in early modern Europe. This is specifically the 1600s, after the religious wars, when the Protestants and Catholics squared off against each other to decide which was the true way, faith or reason. We need to take note of a couple important thing here:

(1) the Catholics did not say "boo faith we like reason." They said faith and reason are not enemies. Faith and reason work together.

(2) the Prots did not say "reason is no good don't ever reason" they said human understanding can't equal the truth of God, faith is required for salvation so faith is over reason.

(3) The Prots did something else interesting: they turned to empirical proof rather than logic as the exposition of reason. The Catholics like logic because they Aquinas and the logic of their God arguments. the Prots had God arguments too but they preferred their own empirical God arguments such as the design argument.

The Protestants also used a form of Scholasiticm that was more rigorous than the Catholics version (and purposely so, to counter the Catholic intellectual heritage) but this went by the way side when they place all their epistemic eggs in the science basket. As a result seventeenth century Protestantism was instrumental in the rise of modern science. On the Catholic side Descartes made his name writing philosophy which was in direct response to the Church's request that the enter the battle on their side and help defeat the intellectual claims of the protestants. that is what produced the meditations. That whole period is known as "the skeptical crsis of early modern Europe." It was a major problem and created vast social upheaval and led to the rise of modern science as a means of checking reality. A major part of the struggle was over which to accept, tradition and authority or empirical proof. Tradition and authority were the answer of the faith camp. One might be tempted to think that this was the answer of the faith only camp but not so. It was the reason camp (Catholics) who construed tradition and authority extensions of reason. It was the faith only camp (Protestants) who developed empirical experimental methods as an extension of faith. Although a Catholic invented range and domane (Descartes) and a Catholic invented statistical probability. All of these things came out of this era and had some tangential connection to the skeptical crisis.





My dialog partner continues:

Quote:
When faith is invoked, you've admitted you've lost the rational argument and have retreated into the land of conjecture, speculation and maybe. Believers are not on the same intellectual plane.

This is because he misconstrues faith as "being stupid and beilef without reason." Kierkegaard called faith "irrational" but he did not mean by that blind stupidity crashing around and accepting stupid things. He meant an existential encounter, first hand face to face experience of truth. For him logic was hypothetical, only on the pages of books. He wanted engagement with God!

Faith is a free-for-all. If one faith claim is accepted, any other faith claim can be "true" as well. All it takes is "belief". How egalitarian! Everything is as good as everything else with no standard used to make these world views held to account. Ah, but there is a standard, isn't there. It's called results.

Of course the claim that I "admitted this" is nonsense, I don't' know what I said that made him assume this. But in anyway, he does the point, how can choose between conflicting tenets of faith? I really don't think this is a very tough one, although the answer may allude many people. The answer is bipolar:

two tensions

(1) On the one hand, there is the personal existential aspect of faith.

This is what people are seeing when they give that most annoying of answers: "it's truth for you." This is the kind of relativism that makes fundies cringe. But I have to admit I do my cringing too when I hear it, even though I think I have a handle on it.

This is not saying that truth very from one person to another, although some who use that phrase, I can't help but feel really think that. It means that since we don't understand truth exhaustively the existential commitment is what I recognize immediately as truth, even though ti's really just similitude. This is an aspect of my understanding that is standing in for truth since our understanding of truth is limited. It's personal commitment, that is it my on self defining moment that clarifies for me what I'm willing to faithful to as a sense of ideal and idea.

It's a way of saying "I am willing to keep my commitments, as long as I understand truth this way I will treat this as truth." This is the nature of the case an needs must be, because your understanding of God is pathetic. We can't possibly stack up to the reality of God, it's too overwhelming. Everything we know of God has to be metaphor because we just handle the way God really is. It's beyond words and thus beyond anything we know.

(2) the use of logic.


On the other hand, at the other end of the pole is the use of logic to understand. We can sort our competing truth claims by the use of logic. The atheist bromide that faith is anti ethical to logic is simply wrong. Logic is the standard we can use to sort out competing truth claims, even if they are the result of this other pole of personal existential commitment to perceived truth. How can these two co-exist without contradicting? Logic is also a personal commitment. It is an objective truth finding mechanism but we are not objective creatures. We cannot be objective. Objective truth exists "out there" but we just can't understand it exhaustively. For this reason we must hold our logical conclusions as personal existential commitments so we don't' impose them harshly upon others, but we can live by them ourselves.



Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology
. ed., Alan Richardson and John Bowden, Great Briton:Westminster Press, 1983.207

How Do We Know God is Not Evil?

I've seen atheists ask this in various forms. The most recent I've seen is "prove God isn't evil." I answered that with three arguemnts only to find the atheists pulling the old relativism thing. How do we know good and evil even exist at all they said? Well, first of all, in answering the question about "prove god is not evil," the challenge was in reference to Christian ideas. To even ask the question assumes a Christian framework. You can't say on the one hand "God might really be evil," then say "but there's no such thing as evil." That would have no meaning. God might really be this thing that has no meaning and doesn't exist? What kind of meaning does that have? One get's the feeling of being set up for a cheap trick. Like we say "ok so God is evil ni the sense that there is no such thing as evil. so what?" they say "O you admitted it, God is evil you said it ok that's the end of Christianity!" Those are two completely different questions to answer the one you must bracket the other. first I will present my arguments to prove that God is not evil, and to do that assume the Christian framework for good and evil. Then I will deal with the relativistic stuff (that there is no good or evil).

I am assuming there is such a thing as good and we all have a general idea of what that is. Now I also noted that many atheist in the discussion I allude to above (where the challenge was made "prove God is not evil") were assuming a contradiction in the Bible where on the one hand God says "love your neighbor" and on the other hand he says "slaughter the Amelekites kids." So there's the problem of a contradiction between the values God expresses and the behavior God exhibits. Thus we assume the values expressed are true values of good, and that is a meaningful term, but the question is does God seem to betray the very values that he instigates?

Before giving three positive reasons to think God can't be evil, (that is a logical impossibility) we have to deal with the seeming contradiction in the Bible. In the discussion on a certain message board aluded to above, a friend of mine who is an atheist said this:

Originally Posted by mikey_101

No genocide isn't evil, killing children and homosexuals isn't evil, eternal torture for not believing in one particular religion out of thousands isn't evil, slavery isn't evil. Actually you're right, God isn't evil because God is a reflection of OUR evil.

Those are based upon bible verses and bible verses are not creeds, they are not dictum they are not decrees. In short we don't have to bleieve them.

There is NO official Christian doctrine or document or creed or council that say "you must believe every verse in the bible." The fundies say it but they didn't exist until the 1820s. They are merely late commers in Christian history.Each one of those passages must be analogized in the original language and discussed according to the history and culture and textual evidence to show it really belongs in the Bible or not.I can tell you now there is evidence Amalekite passage is added in latter.



The text of 1 Samuel is one of the most heavily redacted in the Bible. As we will see, it's very presence in the canon has been brought into question, but the version we have is probably a corrupted second rate copy, and the LXX is closer, and Q4Sama at Qumran closer still, to the actual original.

Institutte Bibilcal Scientific Studies:

Biblical Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls and OT


"1&2 Samuel"

"For the past two centuries textual critics have recognized that the Masoretic Text (MT) of 1&2 Samuel has much textual corruption. The Samuel MT is shorter than the LXX and 4QSama. The Samuel MT has improper word division, metathesis, and other orthographic problems. Certain phrases and clauses go against the Hebrew grammar rules. Parallel passages vary from each other" (See Charlesworth, 2000, pp.227-8).

Redaction of Infant Slaughtering Passage


Notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible on 1 Sam 15:1-35

"Another story of Saul's rejection: The late source. Compare this section with 13:7-15, Samuel, not Saul is the leading figure once more."

This is the very passage in which Samuel relays God's command to wipe out the infants. So even though I still need to find more specific evidence for that very passage, there is a good chance of proving redaction. While its true that I can't produce an actual MS showing no infant slaughter command, the passage in which that command is given has been redacted. The odds are very high that this command was not part of the original passage, or we can regard it as such. We know that slaughtering infants in evil, and we have no obligation to accept a command as divine that we know to be totally at odds with God's law and God's moral code.

All the other verses must be dealt with in similar fashion, one by one, and an overview entailing a theory of inspiration adopted so that one knows how to approach scripture. For an example on this one might consult my page on the nature of Biblical revelation as an example.

Now I present the three arguments that prove God is not evil:

I. Being is good.

Being is not evil. We are all part of being, we all engage in the act of being. We know from our existence that existing is good and it's not evil. There's no reason to think it is. It's hard for a lot of people to get thier minds around the idea of God as being itself. I've certainly spent a lot of time blogging about the concept. I wont go into it here. It can be found on Doxa in several pages. I'm also just finishing my second book which is on the subject. Wait a couple of years and it will be out.

syllogism:
*God is being itself

being is good.

therefore God must be good.

One objection to this is that some atheists tried to evoke the notion that life is not good. One cna mean this either in terms of "my individual life sux," or in terms of amorality or some form of relativism. That would be cheating the issues here becuase I explain above the original challenge assumes Christian categories of good and evil. Moreover, one can condemn the concept of life itself by one's own experiences. I can have rotten life (to some extent that's what I make it) that doesn't mean all life is rotten. There is a goodness about life itself. Here I take life as a pragmatic form of existence. Existence in and of itself is "good," if not in a moral sense (which is one confussion of the argument--the mixing of senses between moral and pragmatic) at least just in the sense of the (apparent) goodness of open ended possibility.


II. Love can't be evil.

This is one of those mysterious points that of which atheists are most incredulous. Almost every time they will say "you are logic is so bad" on this point. When pressed they never say why. they can't give me a rule of logic that's violated, nine times out of ten it's a matter of rejecting the concept of a priori. That unusually happens becuase they have self esteem problems, as atheists are known to have.


The nature of love makes it the very definition of Good. What is the nature of the good, it's what love is, being kind, being gentile, caring about others, giving to others, living for others. How do we know this? First we have to realize we are not talking about butterflies in the stomach. Many atheists try to lose the concept of love in the emotions that go with it, which they sweep away as the side effect of brain chemistry. The kind of love experienced in romance, puppy love,infatuation, lust, sexual attraction and the like is what is meant here by "love." Here I speak of agape. This is "God's love" sometimes translated "charity." Although that is not a good translation. Paul Tillich defines it as "the will t the good of the other." I think that is a most apt decryption. The Greek does imply the willingness to assign to others the human dignity due them.

It is more or less an axiomatic tenet that love is the background of the moral universe (consult Saint Augustine, and Joseph Fletcher). I am not sure it can be proved, thus making it "axiomatic." Like most axioms trying to deny it would be absurd. This is certainly true in terms of Christian theology.

1 John 4:

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Don't even think about trying to argue that "you are trying to prove the Bible by the bile." I am not trying to prove the bible I'm demonstrating the Christian categories which the original challenge assumes (so I have to go by the to answer the challenge). This is exactly what atheists would do to try and prove than an idea was Christian. If we are considering Christian ethics then we must consider that love is the background of the moral universe. Love is the basis of God's character.

That either the issue becomes redundant if we consider the relativist position (which we will soon enough) or it rebounds onto the Christian categories and becomes a matter of what we think about the Bible. With a fundamentalist view of inerrancy it's hard to see how there is not a contradiction in the categories, what God says and what God does. Yet of course that is not the only Christian answer; there are several other views that take up different approaches to the bible that serve as alternatives.


syllogism:

Love is not evil

God's nature is love and God is the original source of love

therefore God is not evil.


Thus, from the perspective of the Christian categories each of the above arguemnts individually prove that God is not evil and cannot be construed as evil.

III. Evil can't be the first thing.


Evil is the absence of the good. That means there has to be a good preceding evil to be departed from to create an absence. evil is rebellion against good. Evil is rejecting the good. all of this implies good is first.God is eternal so God has to be first. A lot of people reject the categories of good and evil becasue they don't like the way they are made. One of the major issues in atheism (even though many atheists don't realize it--a psychological problem) is self rejection leads to rejection of the idea that a loving God would make me the way I am. I was an atheist I know what it is to think that way. The old cliche "God is not finished with me yet" has it's uses and this is one of them.If you don't like the way God made you it's only becuase he's not finished yet. If you rebel against God you are not letting him finish you.

That means there has to be a good preceding evil to be departed from to create an absence.

Actual Atheist Objection:

"That doesn't follow. A hole is an absence of earth, the existence of a hole doesn't imply there was earth. Counter example to your premise." I this I argued "are you kidding? Isn't a hole defined by what's around it? That's like saying "I don't believe donuts exist, only the holes exist." A hole with nothing around it is nothing.

syllogism:

evil is falling away from, therefore, good is prior to evil

God is eternal and thus is prior to all things

therefore, God can't be evil.


Now we come to the issue of relativism. For those who do not hold to the Christian categories of good and evil but try to define them either by sweeping them away, or by using the terms relative to other standards, how does one come to ascertain the truth content of the Christian categories? The only way one can really do this is empirically. Of course this assumes there's a god. Though many atheists will try not allow such an assumption, it's pointless to ask about God's character if you don't assume there is a God, at least for the sake of argument. I have certainly spent enough time on this blog giving reason enough why one can assume God based upon any number of things. For those tempted to make comments and demand reasons I tell you now, see my 42 arguments, especially no 7 and no 8. I single out those two becasue they form the basis of the empirical approach. One might also see my essay on phenomenology and Method.

Certainly we are talking about taking religious experience seriously. The same reasoning that would allow one to understand God as reality would also allow one to understand God's character as love. It makes no sens to take up a challenge or to even issue one about God's goodness then turn around and say "you can't prove that becuase you can't prove god exists." Ok so that what sense would it make to argue "god is fictional but he's really evil?" The realization that leads to faith is the same realiation that allows us to understand God's love. It's simply an empirical matter. We experince God's presence, swe sesne God's love. In a life of 30+
years that has never been disproved. Even in times when I lost faith and thought God was disproved, even in times when I lost everything and thought God was evil, he was neither evil, or absent nor unfaithful. (see part 2 here).

excerpt from those last two links:

Looking back on it things actually were better after we left the house. At the time, however, we couldn't see that. Then it seemed like the end. We were scared, we were homeless, we couldn't find an apartment because we had "financial leper" on our credit. Since 9/11 getting an apartment in Dallas was next to impossible. When I first moved away form my parents and went to New Mexico back in 80, no one cared who I was or what my credit was. I gave them money they gave me an apartment. By 2006, however, in Dallas, it was next to impossible even if your credit was good. It really seemed like the end. I began saying "I am dead, I died, they just haven't told the corpse to lay down yet." I also began to say "God has cursed me." "God loves to crush his own guys, this is what I get for caring about my parents." You know I was practicing for the glee club. I was a tower of faith. We did find an apartment, we had a couple of thousand dollars from the guy who bought the house (because he was a Christian he said) even though the mortgage company actually makes them promise not to help the victim, not to give more than the mortgage price in a short sale. It's set up so the the victim losing the house can't get anything for his/her hard earned ears of struggle to buy the house. He bought the furniture and car and then let us keep them.

God was faithful to me even when I was not faithful to him. I was calling him a lair and shouting at him and I said worse than that. I called him a monster and told him he loved to hurt people. He didn't care, he's heard it all. I didn't shame God into helping me, he was working to help me anyway, I only held up the process and made it take longer by not trusting and not looking to seek the spiritual instead of freaking out because things didn't look good. Easy to forget, we walk by faith and not by sight. That means its' going to look grim. That doesn't mean anything you just have to trust God. Cultivate your spiritual relationship with God. Cultivate our inner life! It's a life long project, work on it every day.

That requires a life of faith to understand. The first step is to seek. Then it will fall into place. It wont fall into place when you renounce God and make skepticism your watchword. If your principle is to see through everyging, as C.S. Lewis said, you wind seeing nothing.

Causality in MIracle Hunting.

In the discussions of miracles several atheists have made some big misconceptions.

(1) mistaken assumptions about my knowledge of correlation and cause.


some assume that since they are clever enough to know the very basic information, the difference in correlation and causality, that I must not know that because I'm a Christian and Christians are stupid, and they are so very clever to know some basic fact that all high school kids should get, correlation is not causality.

But what they don't get is that just as I argue inductively that correlation is indicative of a cause if certain conditions obtain, that doesn't mean I don't know the difference.

(2) Correlation is indicative of Cause.


What these very clever atheists don't get is that correlation is indicative of cause. part of the problem is that certain people don't seem know what indicative means. Be that as it may, there is an epistemological gap in our knowledge it is a problem at the most fundamental philosophical level. We can only establish causality in one way, buy making very tight correlations and eliminating alternate causes. This is the only way there is, and that's what Hume really proved with the billiard balls.

Science can't prove causes. We can only prove correlations. When I assume causes on miracles, it's the only way we ever establish cause. Hans (HRG the atheist guru on CARM) says "only if we eliminate the alternate causes." Yes, that's true, but it also leads to recursion of the original problem. Because if we can't observe causality and it must be inferred from correlation, then you can't say "I have eliminated an alternate cause by showing causality and eliminating it." That's just a repeat of the same problem. The alternate causes are only possibilities, they are not proven either. What it boils down to is in the final analysis a really tight correlation is the only way to determine cause. Although it is important to eliminate the alternative possible causes, essential in fact. What this means is I am right to assume causes from correlations, given that I can eliminate alternatives, and I usually can. There is also the need to show a mechanism. Yet causes have been inferred without knowing mechanisms, as with smoking = cancer, but mechanism is also inferred from correlations. That is what we always come back to.

All of this means that medical evidence showing the disease went away, when examined by scientific medicos is good evidence for miracles. It's not absolute, there is no absolute. There will always be a gap in our epistemology. We will always have to make epistemic judgment.


(3) Don't need to show hit rate


The argument is made we must show the percentage of those healed vs not healed.

That's ridiculous. The reason is because we do not know the reason when someone is not healed. We cannot assume "O not being healed means there's no God, because some are healed." Knowing the hit rate is important in many cases. such as prophesy, "so and so is a true prophet he predicted x," but how many predictions did the make that did not come true?

Knowing the hist rate is not true in terms of empirical evidence of healing because:

(a) We don't know if the not healing is the result of no God, or God just didn't want to heal. Because a will is on the other end of the prayer we cannot treat it like a natural process and expect it to behave like a drug in a field trial.

(b) Miracles are supposed to be impossible. they violate natural law. that's the whole theory of naturalism in a nut shell; nothing happens apart form natural law.

Thus if one miracle happens that proves miracles and all it takes is one. proving that x% are not healed doesn't prove anything. miracles are supposed to be impossible and can't happen, if one of them happens, or we can assume it happened, then that proves they do happen. We don't know the rate because God is not a drug. Divine healing is a matter of God's will.


(3) God's action in healing is not indicative of God's feelings about those healed or not healed.

This is the whole fallacy of the God hates amputees thing. You might as well say God hates breakfast because not once in my Christian walk has God ever made me scrambled eggs in the morning.

St. Augustine proved that there is no correlation between worldly prosperity or success and God's love. Rome was sacked by the vandals and everyone was saying "this disproves Christianity." but Augie said "no it doesn't, divine favor is not based worldly success. Stuff happens to Christians too, God causes it rain on the just and unjust."


(4) No double blind


Lourdes evidence does not need to be double blind First of all these are not "studies." They are not set up as a longitudinal study to see if healing works. These are real people and their journey to Lourdes is part of their journey in life in a search to be healed, they are not white lab mice plotting world conquest.

Secondly, double blind is used as a means of control so we know data is not contaminated by the subjects knowledge of the test. People suffering from an incurable disease cannot cure themselves. So it doesn't matter if they know. If the data shows the condition went away immediately and it can be documented that all traces are gone, the of course can assume healing, provided there is no counter cause such as he took a wonder drug before he left for Lourdes; they do certainly screen for that.

Of course there are still epistemological problems. There will always be such problems. That's why you can't prove you exist. But just as the answer to that problem is "Make epistemic judgment based upon regularity and inconsistency of data," so it goes with miracles, proving smoking causes cancer or anything else.

Thomas Reid got it right, we are justified in assuming empirical evidence provided it's strong evidence.

One more problem. When I say "correlation" this invites the question "how can you find a correlation if you don't know the hit rate? A correlation implies X and Y are seen together a lot, not just in one instance. But we can't go around giving people cancer and praying for them over and over to see if they ar always healed. We have to let multiple cases stand for correlation. But since we can't say why healing didn't take place we have to use empirical means to assert on a case by case basis.