“When you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for six years; then in the seventh he is to leave as a free man without paying anything. If he arrives alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrives with a wife, his wife is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children belong to her master, and the man must leave alone. But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not want to leave as a free man,’ his master is to bring him to the judges and then bring him to the door or doorpost. His master will pierce his ear with an awl, and he will serve his master for life.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The United States has a pretty uncomfortable relationship with slavery. Like most of the rest of the western world, we practiced and explicitly racist form of slavery rooted in the idea that black people (Native Americans too, but mostly just black people) were not equal to white people in either worth or dignity. Unlike our neighbors across the Atlantic in England, though, we did not end slavery by popular vote or legislative fiat. We fought an ugly, bitter war over it. After that followed racism’s comeback, especially in the cultural south through what became known as Jim Crow laws. It’s all an ugly stain on our history. During that awful period, people claiming the banner of Christ were often supportive of slavery on the basis of passages like this one. So, does the Bible support slavery? Let’s talk about it.
Let me start with a rabbit trail right out of the gate, and then we’ll come back to the question at hand. This is something about which I’ve become more and more convinced recently. The question here assumes on a monolithic view of the Scriptures. I’m going to split hairs here a bit, but I think these are important hairs to split. They’re important for believers themselves, for non-believers themselves, and for believers’ engaging with non-believers. In other words, everyone benefits from this.
The Scriptures or what has just been called “the Bible” for a very long time, is not a monolithic unit. To say, “the Bible says…” this or that is not only unhelpful, but it’s also somewhat inaccurate. Before we take a step further down this trail, though, let me clarify. I do not think there are any contradictions or inconsistencies in the Scriptures. Certainly there are many accusations and apparent instances of such, but upon a fuller understanding of the text these are all just and only that: apparent. You will not find a position taken in one document or by one author that is subsequently overturned or rejected by another. The old covenant is eventually fulfilled and replaced by the new covenant, but that is an entirely different thing. Enough caveats? Probably not, but those will suffice for now.
The Scriptures are not a monolithic unit. God is their ultimate author and His Spirit superintended their composition process and they unquestionably tell one story from start to finish, but they were written by as many as 40 different authors over the span of 1500 years and in three different languages. They were written from out of several different cultural situations and to people dealing with a whole variety of different issues. While there are some documents that are directly connected to others, and while later documents are clearly informed by the ones that came before them, each document (or sometimes set of documents as in 1 and 2 Kings or Luke and Acts) stands alone.
When we think of the Scriptures as a monolithic unit, then if there is an apparent problem in one part of the text, the reliability of the whole can be brought into question. For example, if the Scriptures are monolithic and you are attempting to make the case for the historical reality of the resurrection, if the other person can call one or another of the more fantastical-sounding stories in the Old Testament in question, then he can feel justified in rejecting the history of the resurrection as well. And yet, whether or not there was a global flood or Adam and Eve were literal people or Moses somehow gave moral justification for slavery has absolutely no bearing on the question of whether Jesus rose from the dead.
So then…did Moses somehow give moral justification for slavery?
The short answer is, no. Let’s talk through some of the highlights of the longer answer. Slavery as an institution has existed continuously for thousands of years without interruption. As long as there have been people from two self-consciously differentiated tribes, there has been slavery. Most of the slavery practiced over the centuries has not been racist in its basic assumptions like it generally was in Europe and the United States in the 16th century or so and onwards. It was sometimes religiously motivated. It was very often the result of military conquest. When one people conquered another, enslaving some members of the defeated tribe was par for the course. For a long time one of the going theories on the matter was that some people were simply born to be slaves. How did you know who was who? Well, the people who were slaves were obviously born for that while the rich people who owned them were born for their better lot.
The point here is to be able to say this: The idea that slavery was a moral evil did not exist in human history in any kind of a meaningful way until Christianity exploded onto the scene. But how can this be? Nowhere in the Scriptures – Old or New Testament – do you find a single verse that pronounces slavery as wrong. In fact, Paul wrote a whole letter to a slave owner that was delivered to him by his former slave who Paul was sending back to him to serve again. Clearly the various authors of the Scriptures were morally fine with slavery as an institution.
Not so fast. Slavery was built on the notion that human value and worth was not only not equal across the spectrum of humanity, but that it was able to be raised and lowered by the particular circumstances a given person was in. To put that another way, you don’t own another person and simultaneously consider their moral worth to be equal to your own. And yet, the clear teachings in the New Testament are that all people share the same inherent worth before God. Jesus died for everyone equally. He considered all people as worthy of His sacrifice and the eternal life of God’s kingdom because He commanded that the Gospel be proclaimed to all people without distinction. It was as the church began to come to grips with these ideas that it became clear that slavery was not consistent with them. Following on this logic, followers of Jesus gradually began to advocate with increasing passion for universal manumission.
But we’re not talking about the New Testament here. We’re talking about the Old and the whole thing is not monolithic, remember? Well, even in the Old Testament, the clear moral trajectory is in the direction of equal human dignity before God. Where do you think the various New Testament authors got their inspiration? From Jesus, of course, but also from their careful study of the Law and the Prophets through the lens of Jesus. God didn’t create different classes of people. He created all people equally and the same. All people are equally bearers of His image.
Okay, but what about passages like this one? We seem to be avoiding the challenge it presents. Not at all. This is all important context for a better understanding of what is going on here. In spite of all of those truths that God eventually helped us to understand more fully through the lens of Christ, the individual people to whom these various ancient documents were written lived in a world in which slavery was simply assumed. Of course slavery was a thing. Now, God could have simply spoken from heaven to correct that misunderstanding of the nature of reality like He did with murder, but that would have been a harder truth to convey. The trouble was, because different people worshiped different gods and goddesses and had different creation stories, it was assumed that not everyone was equal in value. Certain gods created certain people and other gods created other people. If one people demonstrated themselves or, better yet, their god, to be superior to the other by conquering them militarily, then their worth was obviously higher. Thus, enslaving the other people was not morally problematic at all. Instead, it was a reflection of reality.
Because this was how the world thought, including the Israelites, the process for correcting this kind of thinking was going to take longer than simply telling people within the same tribe to not murder one another. There is another wrinkle here. A great deal of the slavery assumed on in the Scriptures was one person within a tribe owning another from the same tribe. This was almost always a debtor’s slavery. The one person had debts he could not pay, and so indentured himself to another person in order to pay them back. Or, a family wasn’t able to make ends meet, and so they would indenture a child or two in order to create a needed stream of income. Okay, but that sounds more like servitude than slavery. Well, the Hebrew word that usually gets translated as “slave” is the exact same word that gets translated as “servant.” How do you know which is which? Context. More importantly, though, this shows that their thinking on the matter didn’t distinguish so sharply between the two situations as ours does.
God in His wisdom knew that overturning and undoing all of this was not going to happen over night. So, instead of pronouncing the entire system wrong, He began with simply regulating it. He gave the people commands that were designed to point them in the direction of recognizing the dignity and value of these people they might otherwise consider as little more than property. They were to be treated justly no matter what their circumstances were. Periods of indentured servitude like this were not to be indefinite. Owners could not take advantage of their servants/slaves. As we will see later on in this chapter, they could not abuse them without consequence.
Okay, but what about the weird stuff right here? The first part isn’t so hard. When a wealthy Hebrew man hired a man to serve him, that man was to be released from the terms of service after six years, and when he left, he was to be able to take with him everything he had when he arrived, notably his family members. When Moses talks about the owner giving the servant a wife, this would have culturally involved his paying the bride price (another cultural custom we don’t understand in the west very well, but which is still practiced in many cultures around the world today). In other words, he was purchasing her for the servant, and thus she belonged to him first. The servant could repay the bride price, but he is serving in the first place because he got into debt. The owner has legal rights to keep what he paid for. And, children should be able to stay with their mother. But, if this servant has fallen in love with his bride and wishes to remain with her, he has that option. But if he does this, he doesn’t later get to change his mind and abandon his family. He makes a commitment to remain in his position for life. Thus, there is some justice here for the wife and the children as well.
That’s a lot today, and we need to take some time to digest it. Here are a few last thoughts. This passage assumes on some cultural practices that are very far removed from where we are today and for good reason. That makes them hard to understand. If we read them through the lens of where we are today and don’t take them on their own terms, we are not going to be able to make any kind of positive sense out of them. What God was doing here with the people was meeting them where they were and taking them a few baby steps forward in the direction He was wanting for them to go. He does the same thing with us. In His wisdom He knew that simply pronouncing this whole system as immoral wouldn’t have been understood by the people, so He regulated it in a way that their practice would reflect His justice a little bit more than it did before; in such a way that pointed toward the equal dignity of all people. Eventually He would make this even clearer such that His followers would be the ones to work to put a stop to the practice of people owning other people entirely. That’s where we are today. People claiming to be His followers haven’t always gotten that right. In fact, they have at times gotten it disastrously wrong. But no one but His followers have ever tried to stop it in a meaningful, systematic way.
The Nexus 
Yes, the Bible supports slavery.
LikeLike
Sigh…no, it doesn’t. We can run down that rabbit trail if you’d like, but you are mistaken in that belief. When you take the time to grapple with the full context of the relevant passages as well as the culture into which the various documents that mention slavery were written, it becomes very clear that while the various ancient documents we collectively call “the Bible” absolutely assume on the existence of slavery, their moral trajectory and the obvious implications of the broader message were pointing toward the immortality of slavery. This is why Christians have always been at the forefront of any abolitionary movements. This doesn’t mean Christians have occasionally leaned away from the Scriptures in the direction of their culture and then used various passages out of context and in ways the original authors clearly never intended to justify the practice, but the clear direction of the various biblical authors was toward the equal dignity of all people.
LikeLike
Culture, smulture.
It not only supports slavery, thanks to your god, Yahweh, it lays out laws as well.
Even in the anonymous gospel of gLuke we have the auther going on about slaves.
The US economy was largely founded on the back of the North Atlantic slave trade, which of course was largely organized and financed by Christians.
LikeLike
Some food for thought. When you write a blog post, if someone wants to really understand what you wrote and why you wrote it, they will often need to know something about what’s going on in the world or the cultural assumptions you are bringing to the digital table when you write. The same thing applies to my posts or anybody else’s posts. If you don’t know what’s going on with the author, the culture out of which he (or she) is writing, or the basic worldview assumptions from which he is operating, you aren’t going to be able to really understand some of the things he has to say. As true as that is with things written today, it is even more true for things written in the past; especially the ancient past. If you insist on using your worldview and cultural lens when you engage with the Scriptures, you are going to continue to see things like that. When you are willing to do the harder work of engaging with the text on the terms the authors were using and from out of their worldview assumptions, you will begin to see something very different. Until then, though, trying to debate this particular point won’t really be worth our time. I can observe that you are very deeply mistaken in your views, but you won’t agree, and, honestly, I wouldn’t expect you to agree. It’ll have to be what it is.
LikeLike
If you believe there is any justification for owning another human being and treating them like property then perhaps you should reconsider your belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of your god, Yahweh?
LikeLike
No, I find both beliefs to be perfectly reconcilable. When you are willing to engage with the text seriously and on the terms the author was using, and when you are willing to look at the whole trajectory of the story being told across the 66 documents, rather than taking a handful of verses out of context and through only a modern cultural lens (that is, when you are willing to read it like you would any other document you were genuinely interested in understanding properly), the clarity on this matter is obvious.
By the way, I’m still waiting for your thoughts on how compelling you find the material presented by Prof in terms of being a sound argument against the historical reliability of the Gospels and Acts.
LikeLike
Unlike you I truly cannot for the life of me imagine any scenario where owning another human being would be justified.
So, to confirm: you consider there is no ethical/moral problem with slavery as portrayed in the bible as commanded and codified by your god, Yahweh?
I find the material compelling.
LikeLike
I didn’t say anything of the sort. Slavery is a moral evil. The clarity of that moral evil is revealed in the Scriptures, but not in ways that are explicit. The moral trajectory from start to finish makes that clear. This is why, again, followers of Jesus were the first group to oppose slavery in a systematic way that was rooted in an explicitly moral argument. When we encounter slavery or indentured servitude in the Scriptures (and this requires engaging with more than just a KJV Bible), while its existence is assumed upon, it is consistently approached in ways that direct masters to honor the dignity and worth of their servants/slaves in ways that were consistently radical for their time. From start to finish, the elevation of this dignity becomes more and more explicit along with the clear attestations of the equality of all people such that the conclusion drawn by Christians very early on in their history was that owning slaves was a moral evil. People claiming Christ have variously gone back in that direction, borrowing ideas from their culture and attempting to sanitize them with Scripture, but there is no group of people who have been opposing the practice as clearly and thoroughly and for as long as Christians have…because of what they understood about it from the Scriptures.
LikeLike
This is wonderful flowery rhetoric but it still suggests some sort of apologetic justification for owning another human being.
Perhaps greater clarity is needed?
Let’s address the issue like this…
Do you at least acknowledge the fact that slavery as described in the Bible is sanctioned, and codified by your god, Yahweh?
And please, I beg you, do not ask me to quote all the relevant verses etc.
LikeLike
Slavery is allowed for and assumed as a practice in the Scriptures, yes. It is allowed for and assumed in the old covenant, and assumed by the new covenant authors. It is never explicitly condoned as a moral good, but neither is it explicitly condemned. Instead, where it appears in the old covenant, it is regulated in such a way as to point to the equal dignity of all people. In the new covenant, this pointing toward the equal dignity of all people becomes even more explicit, such that Christians concluded very early on in their history that slavery is utterly inconsistent with the way of Jesus and has no place in God’s kingdom. That is, there is no justification for owning another human being. Period.
LikeLike
So you are okay with the biblical approach to owning another human being, yes? Is this because it’s codification etc is set out by Yahweh?
How do you deal with the sex slaves as set forth in the Old T.?
How do you respond to the way the author of gLuke regards slaves?
Or Paul?
LikeLike
If I’m correct on the passage you are referring to regarding sex slaves, go read my post from today. It’s on that very passage. Your understanding of the text is in error and so your perspective is as well.
You’ll have to remind me about Luke’s particular position on slaves that you have in mind.
What specifically about Paul’s writings mentioning slavery would you like me to comment on? He does so in several places.
As I’ve said, owning another human being is ultimately never a moral good. Your first two questions are intended to be traps, and I think you probably know that. I think the regulations pointing toward the equal dignity of all people God gave the people through Moses in light of the fact that their culture practiced a kind of slavery were right for Him to give because of the direction He was slowly steering humanity.
LikeLike
Firstly. If owning another human being is never a moral good why did Yahweh sanction it and codify it?
LikeLike
He didn’t. He assumed on its happening and regulated the behavior the people were going to engage in anyway because of the nature of the culture in which they lived in such a way as to force them to honor the dignity of their servants in ways the broader culture did not. This was part of a much larger effort to gradually help people who followed Him come to understand that all people really are equal in dignity such that they would one day finally come to the conclusion that slavery is a moral evil. Which is exactly what happened.
LikeLike
Of course he did. In actual fact he condoned it and set out to codify it.
It’s all there in the text.
If Yahweh had the savvy to hand over the decalogue to Moses that included don’t steal, lie or kill how difficult would it have been to insert:
Number 11.Do not own human beings in any shape or form. They are not property. It is a gross sin and morally abhorrent. Don’t do it, or else!!
See how easy that was and I’m not even a god!
LikeLike
When you don’t really understand the text, you’ll come to incorrect conclusions about it. And, it’s always easier to be an armchair quarterback (what’s the equivalent of that in your football?) about what God should have done. I do that all the time. For better or worse, though (mostly for better), I don’t have the full perspective on things and my decisions would wind up being way worse than His.
LikeLike
When your entire worldview may sometimes seem to be on the line over such troublesome issues it must come as a relief and a blessing there are certain biblical scholars and various other defenders of the faith that are able to make answer for Yahweh, especially when the Bible so obviously does not mean what we think it means, and He seems unwilling to answer for himself…. Oops, I mean Himself.
LikeLike
When you come at the Scriptures from the standpoint of the kind of hardened skepticism you seem to bring to the table, no, you very often aren’t going to understand them. Isaiah, Paul, and Jesus all said as much. I’m not sure I see the point of what you are saying here.
LikeLike
Our moral and ethical code generally finds these tales in the Bible repugnant and revolting. But you accept them.
I imagine you find much of Islamic culture unpalatable, especially the more extreme examples.
The point being, this is where the apologist steps in to quell the trembling heart and placate the troubled conscience.
What you would normally never dream of tolerating you now find relief that your god, Yahweh always had humans best interest at heart and if this meant rampant slavery and genocide then it must be okay because Yahweh said/did it.
I have read many Christians assert that the Giver of life has every right to take it, in whatever vile, cruel and disgusting method he so chooses.
LikeLike
You won’t be surprised I expect to discover that I find your entire perspective here flawed. That being said, I’m curious…
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you accepted the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omnisapient God. Your assumption apart from that belief is that if this God existed that you would expect Him to do something more to put a stop to human evil than it appears He did in the Old Testament narrative. What would that look like to you?
LikeLike
Not only the Old T but the NewT as well.
But we can start with the Old
I already mentioned the Eleventh Commandment.
Surely you would agree that would have been a good start?
LikeLike
Okay, that addresses the matter of slavery, but given how well…or rather how poorly Israel did in keeping the rest of the Ten Commandments (let alone many of the other 603), what do you think that really would have accomplished? And even if that put God officially on record as opposing slavery, no one else in the world agreed; many still don’t. How would that have meaningfully addressed the issue of human evil?
LikeLike
See, a simple straightforward answer would not suffice, you had to take it into the weeds.
So let’s try again, Abd fir once, can you at least avoid the apologetics?
If Yahweh felt the need to include something as relatively workaday as Don’t Lie, why would he have omitted something as precious as human dignity and freedom by not forbidding the owning of a fellow human being?
LikeLike
How did I take things into the weeds? I simply asked a series of questions aimed at helping me get a better handle on your thinking here. I didn’t do the first bit of apologetical arguing. The questions themselves seemed fairly straightforward to me. I’d love to have your thoughts on them.
LikeLike
First you can answer the question.
LikeLike
With apologies, I don’t think so. You clarify your thinking by answering my questions, then we’ll be able to move forward.
LikeLike
I asked about your god, Yahweh, not including an 11th commandment regarding slavery
That needs addressing with more than a handwave reply.
LikeLike
I didn’t hand wave away anything. I sought greater clarity into your thinking. You don’t seem to like much when I do that. You asked for my thoughts on a problem that I don’t think is a problem in the first place because I see the issue in a vastly different way than you do. You proposed a solution that you can’t really think is serious. Why would I offer a serious response to a proposal that is itself not serious? Or, if you think yours really is a serious response, then let’s assume on it and push through its broader implications. When you’re ready to do that, we can keep going.
LikeLike
When one considers human behaviour and our history as a species you do not consider it a problem that Yahweh failed to include a ban on human slavery, yet deem it perfectly reasonable he placed a ban on lying?
Am I understanding you correctly?
LikeLike
I haven’t answered that particular question at all, nor did you raise it in that form until after I asked my last questions.
If, for the sake of argument, I agreed with you that it would have made sense for God to institute a ban on slavery as the eleventh command, what exactly do you think that would have accomplished? Were there any other commands you think he should have instituted then?
When I was in college getting my chemistry degree, when I got to my senior chemistry class, the professor started his first lecture by telling us that what we were going to learn was why everything we had been taught in gem chem was wrong. He was kind of kidding, but not entirely. His point was that we were going to learn so much more about some of those things that it was going to seem like we had been taught incorrectly in the first place. We hadn’t been, of course. We were given small pointers toward the ultimate truth that we could handle then. Once we had developed more of a foundation, we were going to be taught even more what was correct. This is what God was doing with Israel. They weren’t ready or able to understand the idea that slavery was always wrong. No one in the world thought that and wouldn’t really think it until Jesus’ followers began saying it in response to the things He said more than 1500 years later. When they were ready, He taught them more to point them forward. In the meantime, He gave them training wheels that met them where they were and got them pointed in the right direction.
Incidentally, when atheism was really gaining its footing in the 19th century in the wake of Darwin’s much celebrated theory, the going scientific consensus in many of those circles was that dark-skinned Africans were naturally inferior to lighter-skinned Europeans. Darwin himself advocated for as much. I assume you rather vigorously disagree with that conclusion. On what grounds do you base your disagreement?
LikeLike
Again, you are seem to be refusing to directly address the question.
Let’s try again.
If your god, Yahweh saw fit to hand Moses a decalogue of commandments that included such workaday things as Do not steal and Do not lie, why did he not consider it important enough to formerly outlaw the heinous practice of slavery?
LikeLike
I’m going to keep asking the same question until you answer it. Assuming for the sake of argument that He did, what would that have accomplished?
What’s wrong with the training wheels analogy? Does it seem somehow beneath God’s character to meet us where we are and move us forward to where He wants us to go from there?
LikeLike
It would have announced to the world that your god was really not happy with humans owning humans.
Further on down the line it would at least be a reminder that even a genocidal deity like Yahweh had the foresight to recognize simple human dignity and Christians would not have been able to justify slavery by pointing to the bible or announce:
“See, God was okay with slavery. He never banned it or declared it a sin and even made rules governing the keeping of slaves. So it seems alright for us follow God’s rules about slaves.”
Maybe things would have turned out differently?
Maybe your country might not have had a civil war where slavery was the central issue?
There we go…
Will you answer the question now?
LikeLike
It could have saved your adopted country from Apartheid and your home country from its own history with the slave trade.
I have two answers, but I don’t suspect you’ll like either of them.
First, slavery wasn’t something on their radar. At all. They didn’t have a mental category for such a thing. Telling them flat out that it was wrong wouldn’t have registered. While God certainly included prophecies in the various ancient documents that make up the Old Testament, He wasn’t guiding their composition with issues that people would be dealing with thousands of years later in mind. He didn’t oversee the composition of the Old Testament to help us more clearly resolve modern issues. He was writing with an ancient audience in mind. Giving the people more than they could handle, would far more likely result in their finding ways and reasons to reject and ignore it and not preserve the ideas. The idea of the equal value of all people had roots in the creation story, but even that didn’t register with Israel very well. So, God gave them what they could handle, and put guardrails in place to regulate the rest so that what was true would be able to be understood when it came time to present it.
This all points to my second answer: I don’t know why God didn’t include that. From the witness of the full body of the Scriptures, He’s clearly not in favor of it. That’s what His people alone over the course of human history concluded and acted on. Yes, there are unquestionably statements that can and have been taken wildly out of context to make a defense for the abominable practice, but those defenses are uniformly taken wildly out of the context of both their time and the whole. But, and as I have said before, Christians started proclaiming the immorality of slavery incredibly early on in their history. They did so directly because of the teachings of Jesus and Paul, both of whom understood themselves as fully in line with the moral trajectory of the Hebrew Scriptures. No other religious worldview at the time or before proclaimed such a thing, and there weren’t any secular worldviews. The whole reason you and I understand slavery to be wrong today is because of the worldview foundation for the equal dignity of all people given to the world by Christianity. So, to argue that the Bible clearly supports slavery as a moral good just doesn’t make a lot of sense with the historical outcome of people who sincerely believed His words were true putting those words into practice.
LikeLike
Another well thought out apologetic. Good for you!
However, in actual fact, to be fair I do know why Yahweh didn’t include an 11th commandment and to be honest I am genuinely surprised that, you being an intelligent bloke, haven’t realized the answer.
So we can have a little fun if you like before I set the table for dinner and see if you can work it out?
LikeLike
I assume you mean to suggest that the reason is that God is fine with slavery.
LikeLike
No! Have another go.
Think a bit more. I have to organize the table.
We’ll chat later if you like?
LikeLike
One more stab and then I’ll wait anxiously for your confident assessment of the matter.
Could it be because of your belief that God doesn’t exist in the first place?
Chatting later sounds delightful.
Enjoy your dinner. What’s on the menu?
LikeLike
There we go! Ding, ding, we have a winner!
Not exist? Almost. Remember I lack belief because of the complete absence of evidence.
Though I will admit that Yahweh is nothing but a man made Canaanite deity.
And we know that the Exodus narrative is a myth, as is the character of Moses.
Martin Noth concluded he was nothing but a conglomerate of hero type figures. But I think even that view has been turfed out by scholars these days.
It’s Friday so we usually have Something and chips!
Me being vegetarian I opted for veggie burger and salad.
LikeLike
Obviously, I disagree. And chips means American fries, right? We went with tater tots last night. I love me some good, crispy tater tots. I can’t join you in the vegetarianism, though. The cow burger I grilled last night was awfully tasty. Too each his own there.
LikeLike
Of course you disagree.
Sadly indoctrination does this to people.
Yes, our chips are fries.
I am sure the cow was grateful you enjoyed eating it.
LikeLike
I really am sorry you can’t see beyond the charge of indoctrination here. Alas, we’ll have to remain divided on the point.
LikeLike
Well, you are always free to produce evidence.
LikeLike
I think you know what my response to that invitation is :~)
I’m glad we can go back and forth on that with what I hope is a smile on both of our faces. At the very least, I have a smile on mine.
LikeLike
Indoctrination comes in several guises.
In essence I suppose it could be regarded as the uncritical acceptance of an assertion.
Consider a child who is led to believe in Sante and the tooth fairy.
Naturally kids grow w our if this and few talk e it seriously, because as adults we don’t take it seriously.
But children do, and you provably fix once upon a time as well.
Now consider the child raised from the knee believing she is a sinner and that Jesus is her saviour and without Jesus once she dies she will spend eternity in Hell.
And if this belief is reinforced year after year after year, and coupled with all the other rituals, Sunday School, communion, prayer, bible study marriage in a church, all surrounded by fellow believers etc, etc without such beliefs once being subject to serious scrutiny then it would be fair to say that this individual is in all likelihood indoctrinated.
LikeLike
Unless it’s all true. In which case, providing the kind of environment in which my kids are given the best presentation of the faith that I can give them so that they have the opportunity to accept for themselves something I believe (because of the evidence 😉 in the deepest parts of my soul is true and right about the world is the most loving thing I could do for them. That’s not indoctrination at all. It’s compassion.
Now, can this be done in ways that are cruel and manipulative? Of course, and that’s a tragedy every single time. But it isn’t automatically that way simply because you don’t believe it to be true (because of how you’ve responded to the evidence).
It’s why I keep engaging with you (beyond the entertainment value of it). I’m convinced this is true and that your eternal life literally depends on how you react to it. Why would I do otherwise than to patiently endure a fair amount of scorn (even if mostly a good-natured scorn), aim to show you the respect and kindness that perhaps you haven’t experienced from many believers, and keep gently insisting on what I know to be true? I’m not seeking to indoctrinate you, but simply to tell you what’s true. What you do with it is up to you. When a Christian parent gets passing on their faith to their kids right, that’s what happens then too.
LikeLike
Wrong, Your sincerest beliefs have no bearing on truth, fact or evidence.
As you cannot provide a scrap of evidence then what you are guilty of regarding the vulnerable and children is indoctrination.
No, you are not telling me what’s true. That’s what your indoctrination has made you believe.
So, have no fear, there is absolutely no chance of you ever indoctrinating me with religion, I have enough basic commonsense. Unless I have a crippling mental breakdown or something similar.
Then I could only hope there was a compassionate secular humanist on hand.
LikeLike
It’s so interesting to me that you seem to have so much hostility toward something you believe to be untrue.
I’ve mentioned several pieces of evidence and there are many more. You merely reject them as evidence. No matter how many times you insist otherwise, I’m just not going to concede that point. You’re as dogmatic about that as I assume you think I am about what I will continue to insist is true. You have all the ardor and passion of a religious fundamentalist insisting he’s right.
LikeLike
As I find it fascinating you are so passionate about something for which you have no evidence whatsoever.
I reject your assertions of evidence as they are not evidence.
Dilahunty explained this to his caller and while you are more erudite you express a similar degrees of intransigence.
That you are adament you will not concede perfectly illustrates how effective indoctrination is.
Dogmatism in this instance implies I simply refuse to acknowledge my position may be wrong.
This is so far from reality you have no idea.
I really have no dog in this fight and over and above the entertainment value
I can smile, walk away from this, switch off, go make some lunch and watch the football. Which is pretty much what I will do.
For you, on the other hand it is the
foundation of your entire life.
As Barry White once sang, You are my all, my everything.
If it turns out my position is wrong and evidence demonstrates this to be fact I will be surprised and consider I have learned something, which I thoroughly enjoy. It certainly won’t be earth-shattering.
For you on the other hand to accept that no solid evidence supports your worldview which is built almost entirely on faith is likely to be a devastating life changer, ( as those over at clergyproject.com) not least because you will almost certainly need to get a new job! I have no idea what skill sets the average evangelical preacher would bring to the secular market place?
Looked at in this light you might appreciate that for me discussions such as these are like interactive history type lessons for adults. A bit of fun, informative but ultimately they do not impact my life.
For you, there is the tacit obligation to defend your faith… your life depends on it, apparently.
LikeLike
Looks like a touched on a nerve there. I’m sorry about that. For you not to have a dog in this fight, though, you sure do seem to put a lot of time and energy and passion into it.
As for your question, evangelical preachers have all sorts of different skill sets. I could always go back to teaching high school chemistry, for instance. That was my original career goal before I got called into this.
LikeLike
No touching of nerves, I assure you. No touching period, if it’s all the same with you?
As I may have previously explained. It is fun with the added bonus of learning something historical. One of the main reasons I enjoy reading Neil Godfrey over at Vridar. The man is a treasure.
He always puts up highly interesting and thoroughly researched posts.
Ah, yes, teacher. You did mention it. Sorry, slipped my mind. However many over at clergyproject have held on and held on as they had a family to care and provide for. Being left adrift must be very scary.
So, what made you quit the noble profession of educating children to become a god-botherer if I may be so bold?. 😉
Football is on in 5. Must get my priorities in order
T’ra for now…
LikeLike
Enjoy the game.
And you are welcome to be so bold 🙂
To answer your question, although I don’t suspect this will make much sense to you given our differing perspectives on the matter, I felt a clear call to it. This was not my original plan. Even when I got started down this path, I struggled with it at first. I’ve started to make moves back toward the academy more than once along the way, but every time something has come along to reaffirm that this is the path I am to be taking.
LikeLike
I meant to add, your training wheels analogy is facile and beneath someone as educated as you.
LikeLike
I was referring to the war against Midianites as described in Numbers.
You know the tale? Kill everything except the virgins which are spoils of war… Booty( excuse the pun), sex slaves for the Israelite soldiers.
Good old Yahweh, right?
LikeLike
Are you interested in an alternative explanation for how to better understand that passage? I’m happy to offer it, but if you’ve already made up your mind about it, I don’t want to waste either of our time.
LikeLike
I doubt there is an apologetic response to the subject of biblical slavery I have not encountered, but go ahead, post your response.
LikeLike
Well, given that, I’m probably not going to offer up one you haven’t already heard and rejected. I’ll save both of us time.
LikeLike
I highly recommend listening to Matt Dilahunty. He has/ had a you tube channel where callers would phone in and ask all sorts of questions. The issues of slavery seemed to be popular among his Christian callers.
LikeLike
I’ll have to give him a listen sometime. I assume he’s a skeptic, coming at the issue from that point of view.
LikeLike
Rather not listen with any preconceived ideas and just listen to him speak.
The bloke is a straight talker.
LikeLike
That’ll work. I don’t promise it’ll happen soon, but someday.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I missed your last note on this. If Prof’s arguments are ones you find compelling, we really don’t have much else to talk about on the historical question. I don’t find those even remotely credible as far as supposed contradictions go. With a bit closer and more detailed reading of the relevant passages, those are easily reconcilable.
For that matter, from what I saw in a quick look at the contradiction website he linked, while the effort put into it was indeed impressive, it looked to be mostly a gigantic exercise in taking a whole bunch of verses completely out of context, ignoring all of the explanations for why they are as they are available, and labeling them contradictions. As before, a bit closer of an examination of at least the few I looked at easily demonstrate none of them were contradictions.
If there is real evidence for genuine historical inaccuracies, I haven’t seen it yet.
LikeLike
This response is an excellent example for why there is an apologetics industry.
Is it truly any wonder for example that even after the results of the Human Genome Project were released the response, certainly from the more evangelical corners of the Christian world, was to circle the wagons, cover their eyes and like a small child call out, “You can’t see me.”
A similar scenario is present with the Ark Experience and YEC. All the scientific evidence you could possibly demand from the ground up that denies every ridiculous Bible claim of a global flood yet there is the Ark, bold as you like in Kentucky.
Likewise the Exodus narrative.
Prof Taboo has an excellent if somewhat lengthy piece on his own blog.
It is detailed, well worth the read, and as far as I can see, every issue raised is supported by comprehensive evidence from relevant scholars etc in their fields.
It also covers the areas of slavery, including some of the very examples which you have been at pains to point out I too have taken out of context or misunderstood.
LikeLike
I’m curious why you raise all of those issues that don’t have anything to do with what I said and what we were talking about. I was talking about the historical reliability of the Gospels. You pointed me to what you consider compelling evidence to the contrary, and I replied that I don’t find it even remotely compelling or even particularly good. What does any of that have to do with the apologetics industry, the HGP and the YEC crowd?
I skimmed through Prof’s piece and at least one link. He’s nothing if not thorough. I’ll give him that. I’ll confess though, that I didn’t find any of that even remotely compelling. There are a parade of bad arguments, a near total non-interaction with the counter-arguments that have been around for a long time for pretty much every single point he raises, an apparent ignorance of more recent archaeological evidence that explicitly refutes some of his charges (Abraham’s camels for instance as we talked about), a standard skeptical insistence that the historical accounts of the Gospels be ignored while often far more dubious historical accounts of later skeptical writers should be given more credibility, a willingness to rely on his own biased presumptions rather than the historical documents that were written much closer to the actual events they describe, and a general clarity that while he’s obviously really intelligent, when it comes to Christianity, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. While this kind of a presentation may be convincing to someone who really isn’t very familiar with the arguments and evidence in favor of Christianity (including folks who have professed faith in Christ but have never been meaningfully discipled in the faith), for anyone who has spent much of any time learning a bit more about it, nothing there is surprising much less convincing or compelling. I have great respect for Prof’s obviously keen intellect and the thoroughness of his presentation, but when it comes to Christianity, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
LikeLike
You write blog posts, I simply carried on reading and thought I’d make a comment or three.
You seem to put a lot of effort into them and from what I gave seen so far almost noone visits or comments.
It’s unfortunate that you current most frequent visitor is an curmugeonly atheist from halfay round the world, but sometimes beggars can’t be choosers.
😅
Maybe you should encourage your flock/ congregation to support you a bit more?
Considering his background he knows an awful lot more about Christianity than you are willing to give him credit for.
Always worth remembering, he is one who was once on the side of the fence you still are.
Did you at least watch the video at the beginning of Prof’s article?
LikeLike
Well, I’m glad for it. No, I haven’t tended to get many commenters over the years. I’ll be glad for a curmudgeonly atheist as a starting point :~) I have more visitors than I used to, but I also don’t do much in the way of promoting my blog at all. I’d love to have more readers, but I’m not sure how to do that. Honestly, I write because I love writing. I was doing it all on paper until a few years ago when my wife encouraged me to start a blog. I’ve been jamming ever since. I’ve got quite a few church members who are regular readers, but not many commenters. That’s okay. What’s always fascinating to me is seeing where I get views from. How my little page gets viewed by folks from literally all over the world is beyond me.
I’ll give Prof more credit than I initially did. Still, his arguments were pretty unconvincing. It’s all recycled material from old atheist arguments that have long since been answered by Christian scholars and apologists. I’ve seen both sides and find Prof’s view lacking.
I actually did watch the whole video. It was pretty ironic to me. He was claiming for his atheism the exact same kind of rightness over and against various theistic positions that he was mocking them for having against one another. “You think you’re right and everybody else is wrong, but really I’m right and all of you are wrong.” Do you think he recognized the irony of his doing that, or was he trying to be funny?
LikeLike
For what it’s worth, I have more views so far from South Africa today than the U.S. I assume most of those are from you. It’s not very often my local views get outstripped by international ones.
LikeLike
Well it isn’t his video but one that has done the rounds.
Every religious person thinks their religion is right and their god/s the only one/a.
The point being they all can’t be right but they can all be wrong, and in the comokete absence of evidence to show otherwise, the liklihood is they are all wrong.
LikeLike
Yes, but you are just as likely to be wrong in your position, is that not correct? So, to call out religious believers for thinking they are right and others are wrong when your whole position is that you are right and they are wrong seems a bit duplicitous, does it not?
LikeLike
No, not just as likely as no evidence has even been forthcoming from any religion to demonstrate the veracity of their claims.
And this is without taking into consideration the fact and import of geographical location and cultural affinities.
LikeLike
Just to clarify then: For you to say you’re right, and the vast majority of humanity from time immemorial is wrong isn’t arrogant, but for them to do the same thing is. Do I have that correct?
LikeLike
The vast majority of humanity has always believed in various gods and super natural nonsense. Human nature is like that.
Critical thinking is not a desired trait from a religious point of view. Shepherds and flocks and all that?
Martin Luther recognized this.
Not once has any religion demonstrated the veracity of its claims.
Every religion is initially geographically and culturally centric.
Sociologists have long explained the reasons why.
So there is very little liklihood that any religion is the right one or their god/s the only one.
LikeLike
So then, is that a yes? You’re pushing me for simple answers. Let’s have one here.
LikeLike
Yes, there is a greater likelihood there are no gods.
But I am always open to be shown the error of my ways.
Got any evidence?
LikeLike
I see what you did there 😉
So, it is not arrogant for you to say believers of all stripes all around the world and throughout human history are wrong, but it is arrogant for them to do the same. Just wanted to understand where you are coming from better.
Second question: you’ve accused believers of being hypocritical in the course of our conversation. How is your position not hypocritical? To accuse your opponent of the thing you are literally doing is kind of the definition of hypocrisy. I assume you don’t think you are being hypocritical. How come?
The thing is: the question of God’s existence is not one that can ultimately be proven or disproven by science. That’s a philosophical question. I think there is much evidence to support the reasonableness of the conclusion. I’ve presented some of it. You’ve rejected it. That doesn’t make you any more likely to be correct. It simply means you have interacted with the relevant evidence from the standpoint of different philosophical assumptions than they/we have. The very fact that we are having a debate over what counts as evidence is ultimately a philosophical debate. You’re making the mistake so many atheists I’d debated with in the past have made. You wave the banner of science when you are really doing philosophy. If you would like to formally switch gears, I’m game.
LikeLike
Let’s sort this out first as it is the crux of all god-belief.
If you consider there is “much evidence” are you willing to acknowledge that every other believer of every other religion will undoubtedly assert the same thing with equal conviction?
LikeLike
Many will, yes, but the evidentiary claims made by Christians are generally qualitatively different from those made by other religious worldviews because of the intensely historical and thus potentially disprovable nature of those claims.
This is a mistake that same many skeptical critics make when they treat all religious worldviews as a single monolithic block. Buddhists don’t generally make historical claims that are intended to serve as evidence for their position. They don’t need to. The same is true for Hindus. Even Muslims don’t depend much on historical evidence. That Mohammed was a historical figure is unquestionably the case, and that he did many of the historical and non-miraculous things he did is fairly easy to demonstrate, but much beyond that doesn’t really matter. Even modern Judaism falls into this camp. For most Jews today whether or not Moses existed historically is totally immaterial. Beyond these major religious worldviews the necessity of an historical grounding for their various truth claims becomes even more irrelevant. In other words, when it comes to the kind of evidence you and I continue to quibble over, most other religions actually don’t “assert the same thing with equal conviction.” They don’t need to. The truthfulness or not of their religious claims doesn’t depend on it. You only need emotion or belief.
With Christianity, as much as you might like to claim otherwise in asserting (rather arrogantly to use the standard you seem to have set) that evidence never plays a role in anyone’s decision to convert to Christianity over and against what many people have said themselves was one of the primary motivating factors for their decision, this is not the case. The apostle Paul made very clear in his first letter to the Corinthian church that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then the whole thing is a sham and should be rejected. In other words, the whole of Christianity rests on a single historical claim.
So, for me or any other Christian to say there is a great deal of evidence to justify the reasonableness of our decision to put our faith in Jesus as Lord qualitatively different than nearly every other religion’s similar claim. Although, again, most other religions aren’t going to claim evidence like we have been talking about because they don’t think in those terms in the first place. If Mohammed never existed, you could still be a good Muslim. If Jesus never rose from the dead, there would be no Christianity.
So then, to go back to my question: How is it not hypocritical for you to claim that it is arrogant for religious believers to claim their position is correct over and against all other worldview truth claims while you are doing the exact same thing in claiming you are right in your skepticism and everyone else is wrong?
LikeLike
Well, Paul was correct it IS a sham.
If Jesus never rose from the dead, so what?
You think your god is the only one to have been claimed by its followers to have risen from the dead?
Your claims of evidence are not qualitively different at all, and THAT is arrogance in the extreme.
If any religious person can provide any evidence for the supernatural foundational tenets of their faith I will acknowledge my skepticism is finally unfounded.
Until then, I am neither a hypocrite or arrogant.
LikeLike
The thing is, a religious person could say the same about your position of skepticism and then reject all of the evidence you produce to defend it on worldview-related grounds, and they would be doing the exact same thing you are doing. For you to say that it’s arrogant for anybody else to claim to be right while you are wrong while maintaining that it’s not arrogant when you do it is a hypocritical position. If their positions are falsifiable, then yours must be too. That you think theirs is false and yours is not doesn’t make you arrogant any more than it makes them arrogant. My point is not that you are arrogant. I don’t think that. My point is that it’s silly for you to claim anyone else is arrogant simply because they believe themselves to be correct about a position whose truthfulness necessarily implies other competing truth claims are not correct.
I didn’t say that Christianity is the only religion to claim the resurrection of its founding God. I’ll thank you to not assume on arguments I haven’t made.
What other religions have truth claims that are similarly as historically rooted as those of Christianity? Mormonism is the only one that comes close to something like that of which I’m aware. Are there others you know of whose entire foundation is a single historical claim? If not, then I remain by my statement that the evidentiary claims of Christianity are qualitatively different from all the others. There’s nothing arrogant about that at all if it’s true.
LikeLike
It isn’t arrogant to assert the global flood as described in the Bible is nothing but myth.
Neither is it arrogant to assert Adam and Eve were not the original proginators of the human race.
Nor is it arrogant to assert that the Exodus narrative is nothing but a geopolitical foundation myth.
And the solid evidence that has refuted those three tales wipes the floor with Christianity. And this without even bothering to address the hyperbolic supernatural nonsense in the New Testament.
And if space allowed and I was so inclined I would take the time to detail every other claim that has been refuted by evidence.
However, we are fortunate there a fair number of highly qualified people – certainly a lot more qualified than I am – who have done just that.
And that is not arrogant either. That is simply being honest.
LikeLike
I didn’t mention any of that. You are insisting that people who hold religious beliefs claiming they are right while others are wrong is arrogant while it’s not arrogant when you do it. That’s a hypocritical position. Just be honest about that.
LikeLike
It isn’t arrogant because all I ask is for the religious believer to produce evidence for their claims.
Noone ever has. Therefore, for you to assert I, and anyone else, am likely doomed for not believing in the Instant Viticulturist and Lake Tiberius Pedestrian is the absolute epitome of arrogance.
And any other religious person who makes similar unsubstantiated claims about their religion is also arrogant.
LikeLike
If you say so…
LikeLike
You do not consider it in any way arrogant regarding your claim that your religion is fully supported by evidence and unfortunately several billion people of other religions are at best misguided, at worse wilfully ignorant, but will nevertheless eventually be going to hell?
That isn’t arrogance in your view?
Pray tell, then, Mr Waits, what is it, exactly?
LikeLike
You’re deflecting.
If I’m correct, then it’s honest. If I’m wrong, then I’m a pathetic loser. I’ve yet to encounter a compelling enough case to suggest the second. If you’re correct, then you’re being honest. If you’re wrong, then you’re some version of condemned depending on which religious worldview is right. There’s no arrogance on anybody’s part here. There’s only varying levels of sincerity to a set of beliefs (or non-beliefs as you say) that may or may not be correct.
LikeLike
Not deflecting at all. Well, certainly not intentionally.
Let’s test it, shall we? We’ll use Christianity as we are both familiar with it but the example could apply to each and every religion, more or less.
I was raised C of E as I mentioned before. I did all the churchy things as a kid, even though I would never say I believed in all the supernatural waffle ( sorry, but that’s really all it is)
So as an adult I openly reject every religious claim I am openly atheist among other things.
Now, according to you I have willfully rejected your god and will upon my death receive my just deserts; an eternity with no reprieve in Hell. ( or whatever version any particular Christian sect / denomination subscribes to)
And this is all based on not a single scrap of (verifiable) evidence whatsoever.
How is it in any way arrogant of me to tell you or any religious person to get on your bike and bugger off?
LikeLike
I’m not saying that it is. You are. You have set the standard here. I’m just trying to make you follow your own rules. You have said that assuming on the rightness of your position and concluding everyone else is wrong is arrogant when it comes to religious people. I’m simply saying that you need to live by the standard you’ve set. I said rather explicitly in my last response that no one here is arrogant.
And on the justice of Hell since you brought it up, you’ve made my point. God provided you the opportunity to knowingly accept His offer of eternal life in Christ and you said, “No thanks, that’s silly.” Why would He force you to accept it anyway and make you spend eternity somewhere you not only don’t want to be, but that you don’t think will exist in the first place? That wouldn’t be loving. There’s no injustice there at all.
LikeLike
And I am saying very explicitly based on the comletely unsupported claims you and your religion make tells the world you ARE arrogant.
The world of non believers has been incredibly patient waiting for you lot to step up to the plate and deliver. But so far zilch.
It is as if you lot are simply making it up as you go along.
All you are doing is making unsubstantiated claims that are not only vile but in the context of the vulnerable and especially kids is tantamount to abuse.
LikeLike
As I have maintained throughout our conversation, they are not unsubstantiated. You have rejected the substantiation.
You reference “the world of non believers.” That’s a pretty small group historically speaking and even today, relatively speaking. For such a tiny minority of the human population that is almost entirely concentrated in the last 150 years and which makes claims that rests on a foundation created by the worldview they most vociferously reject to insist that the rest of the world is totally wrong and arrogant for saying otherwise might possibly strike…I don’t know…the rest of the human population…as the more arrogant claim to make.
I’m curious: do you have any kids?
LikeLike
You have not provided a single piece of evidence over and above the gospel claims, as Dilahunty pointed out to his Christian caller. No evidence. And this is the same fir all religion ( I am aware of)
Again, let us remind ourselves, the onus is on those making the positive claim. This would apply to every world religion.
Now, you lot can’t all be right, can you? Of course not. However, based on the dizzying array of claims, none of which has ever been supported with evidence, all of you could be wrong.
Therefore, for the non believer,vor the wrong believer who has had to endure all these outrageous claims, and often suffer for his non belief, even to the point of being killed, it isn’t arrogance to demand that evidence is provided. And until the time it is then us non believers will consider the likelihood of our position to be the only truly honest one to adopt until shown otherwise. That is not arrogance, that is simple commonsense and in the religious climate it is also self preservation.
I have two children.
LikeLike
You can frame it out however you want, but you are nonetheless insisting on one standard for you and a different standard for everybody else. That’s the very definition of hypocrisy.
On your kids, first that’s awesome. We have three boys. Second, I’m curious: Have you raised or are you raising them to share in your skepticism? How would you handle it if one of them (or both) became committed Christians or adherents to some other religious faith? Would you turn all of your passionate animus for religion on them?
LikeLike
If I am asking for evidence and no religion has ever produced any how on earth can my position be hypocritical?
If one of my children suddenly adopted a religion I would wonder where I had failed as a parent.
As I did when my son began to smoke. Luckily he had the commonsense to quit.
This is very much like a number of parents I have read who deconvert and then are wracked by guilt for indoctrinating their kids.
LikeLike
I’ll just keep patiently making the point. There is much evidence. You have rejected it as evidence. I can’t do anything about that.
You have categorically declared for worldview reasons that anything a follower of any other religious movement presents as evidence isn’t evidence. This doesn’t make it so, of course, but it does give you the cover you need to feel like you successfully evade it own charge of arrogance.
All these other people have embraced their religious traditions based on what they believe to be sound reasons and evidence. I suspect most of them would find your rejection of that evidence as unreasonable as you think in reverse. In insisting they are wrong and you alone are right, you are doing the same thing you accuse them of doing.
LikeLike
I am insisting they have no evidence to declare their religion is what they assert and is the one and only true religion, best of the best… with honours, sir!
Fair enough then please explain if there is evidence to demonstrate the veracity of the claims of Islam, for example, why do you not convert?
LikeLike
I don’t think there is. I’m saying they do. But, Islam isn’t rooted primarily in historical claims the way Christianity is. The two are different in that regard (as well as many, many others, but that’s another matter). Personally speaking, I find the claims and the practical outcomes of Muslim beliefs to be wrong on several grounds.
My point, though, has remained the same throughout this phase of our conversation: It isn’t arrogant for any of these different positions to claim they are right and others are wrong. All of these different worldview claims (including those of atheism) are qualitatively different from one another. Thus one of them must be right and all the others wrong. You happen to believe that yours are right for a variety of reasons. I think mine are for a variety of reasons. Neither of us is arrogant in that.
LikeLike
So not arrogant then?
Misguided, wilfully ignorant?
Tut Tut…. Atheism is not a worldview, Jonathan. You’ve been told umpteen times akready. Now stop being naughty.
I happen to believe there is a much greater likelihood of my position to be correct until evidence from any of the myriad religions is produced to show otherwise.
So far, no evidence has been forthcoming.
LikeLike
And, given the evidence, I am convinced my position is the correct one. Until I am presented with sufficient evidence to convince me otherwise, I’ll stick with it. See, same as you 😉
Atheism itself isn’t a worldview, yes, but it is the logical result of a naturalistic worldview. And from the standpoint of a worldview of naturalism, all of the evidence for theism seems like so much nonsense.
We are treading into philosophical waters, though, which is where the ultimate question of God’s existence is properly sorted out. Science and empirical evidence can help make a case one way or the other, but the question is a metaphysical one at the end of the day. I’m ready to shift gears in that direction when you are.
LikeLike
Given the <em>claims</em> of evidence, the view of every other religion and their followers is they are right and by extension you, and I are wrong.
So how do we sift the wheat from the chaff?
Belief does not qualify as evidence unless it can be demonstrated to be fact, ergo, the need to produce evidence.
Examples.
Is there evidence to support the claim Gabriel visited Mohammed?
No.
likewise, is there evidence to support the claim Gabriel visited Mary?
No.
Is there evidence Mohammed flew up to heaven on a winged beast?
No.
Likewise is there evidence Jesus was lifted up to heaven.
No.
Therefore if we consider the other myriad claims each religion makes that also cannot be supported with evidence my position is more than tenable, and thus more likely to be correct.
“Atheism itself isn’t a worldview”
Finally! Thank the gods we have at last got you to acknowledge this fact. A step in the right direction.
And I sincerely hope you refrain from leveling the charge toward any and all non-believers in future discussions.
If this is the only takeaway from our conversations then I will consider a little bit of light has reached the dark recesses of supernaturalism.
LikeLike
Which is funny, because the light/dark metaphor is shifted around from my point of view.
And which gods exactly are you thanking? 😉
I haven’t claimed atheism is a worldview unto itself. (At least, I don’t think I claimed that directly…I didn’t mean to if I did.) I have claimed that atheism is rooted in worldview beliefs. Two different things.
If the Gospels and Acts are historically reliable, as I maintain they are because of the evidence I’ve already cited and more (that video from Dr. Blomberg makes the fuller case if you ever get interested), then those claims are historical. If Muslims have evidence for their claims, they are welcome to produce it.
LikeLike
Nope, you asserted it us a worldview.
I can trawk through the discussion butv
I haven’t the energy. And it Isn’t rooted in workdview beliefs either, which comes across as weasle words .
Again, your beliefs are not evidence, and your claims are unsupported by evidence as Dilahunty so eloquently demonstrated to his befuddled caller.
And for the record, arguments, no matter how clever, are not evidence either.
I am sure Muslims think they gave evidence.
And yes, I agree, they are welcome to produce it.
Which gods?
All of those I lack belief in, of course
LikeLike
I don’t have that energy either. I’m still not sure I did, but I’ll take your word for it and offer an apology for my lack of clarity on the point.
That being said, yes, atheism is rooted in worldview beliefs as are all belief (and non-belief) frameworks. That’s basic philosophy.
I haven’t said my beliefs are evidence. I have said they are supported by the evidence. I also agree that arguments are not evidence. Good arguments can help show why certain beliefs are reasonable, and should be used in conjunction with evidence, but they aren’t evidence in and of themselves. I agree there.
See! Look at all these places where we agree. We’re almost on the same page 😉
LikeLike
Atheism is solely the lack of beliefs in gods.
How is that rooted in a worldview?
I don’t recall asserting you said your beliefs are evidence?
I have continually said they are not evidence and this is simple fact. Neither are your religious beliefs/ claims supported by evidence, as Dilahunty demonstrated.
Clever arguments, as good as they may come across, ultimately fall flat if they cannot be supported by evidence.
They fall harder when actively refuted by evidence. Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, Exodus etc.
LikeLike
Everything is rooted in worldview. All of your beliefs come out of your worldview. That’s how worldviews work. The worldview forms first in ways and times we aren’t even aware of as it is happening, and the beliefs gradually come out of that. From there, we either find reasons to further justify and embrace our worldview and its attendant beliefs about how the world works, or we gradually come to adopt another as we find those beliefs not to work for some reason (and, no, a simple encounter with what appears to be evidence to the contrary is almost never enough to prompt such a shift by itself). Atheism is not somehow detached from a larger worldview framework. It is intimately a part of one; generally a naturalistic worldview framework (although sometimes a Marxist one).
And you had made the assertion that my beliefs are not evidence in and of themselves. I was merely making the counter assertion that I’ve never claimed they are. I agree with you that beliefs are not evidence.
LikeLike
Atheism may be a part of my outlook on life, but it isn’t a worldview as Christianity most assuredly is.
As I have mentioned before, vegetarianism/ veganism, being self-sufficient as much as possible, and any number of things that for me and mine and those near and dear which leads to being more positive and more comfortable, are things I try to include in my life.
I am sure there are atheists who hold none of the other views I do, yet the lack of belief in gods is the one thing we have in common.
And there are devout religious people who hold similar views about animals etc as I do, I am sure.
However, their worldview is ultimately underpinned by their religious faith and the doctrine that is its foundation.
Atheism is not guided by any such doctrinal foundation
LikeLike
Your persistent misunderstanding here may be my fault for not being clear enough. I am not arguing that atheism is a worldview in and of itself. Where I apparently suggested that sometime ago, I most assuredly did not intend to. Atheism comes out of a set of worldview beliefs. It is a philosophical/theological position resulting from a number of prior worldview beliefs that may or may not be understood by any given individual.
LikeLike
What are these specific worldview beliefs that atheism comes out of?
LikeLike
For one, the philosophical decision to believe the universe is a closed system and that matter and energy are all that exist.
LikeLike
Again, this may be a view held by some atheists but it is not a worldview that atheism is rooted in or comes from. I presume you aren’t suggesting this is the view of all atheists?
LikeLike
I’m not at all suggesting this is the view of all atheists. You are my currently prime evidence for that.
I’m saying that philosophically speaking, atheism is the result of a collection of worldview beliefs. And, given what those authors rightly observe, it helps form the basis for a worldview as well.
LikeLike
Atheism is not a collection of worldview beliefs as I have been at pains to try and explain.
It is solely the lack of beliefs in gods.
What particular views individual atheists bring to the table is entirely their own business.
I’ll venture there are an awful lot of atheists who don’t have a clue what a closed universe is or even a naturalist perspective.
I imagine some atheists are also nihilist. I’m not one of them.
I’ll bet plenty of atheists are Fossil Fuel nuts who vehemently deny climate change. Not me!
So, while the viewpoint of these authors is noted, until evidence is presented to demonstrate unequivocally it is a fact I’ll reject it, if it’s all the same to you?
LikeLike
Perhaps you will find this explanation helpful on the matter: https://wisedisciple.org/podcast-episodes/atheism-is-a-worldview
If you are willing to create a free account, this explainer is helpful as well: https://ericevans643.medium.com/is-atheism-a-worldview-4476b0c10002
LikeLike
A Christian blog? Who is the author of your first link? ‘Guest author’ is a bit like reading the anonymous gospels.
Can’t be mithered to sign up.
His interpretation of atheism I find interesting.
However, I prefer the one I use in all discussions.
I lack belief in gods because of the total absence of evidence to demonstrate the veracity of
claims of existence.
However, although the article is shortened there is the feeling I get he is /may be a Christian?
Is he?
LikeLike
I believe he is. But that’s not particularly. Is his philosophy bad? He’s making a philosophical claim. If you disagree, don’t just state it, make a philosophical counter argument.
LikeLike
The first link: Guest author?
How does one check his credentials?
Is he/she a Christian?
Second link.
You believe he is a Christian yet say I must address his philosophical arguments? Why?
He comes from a Christian mindset. Everything he believes will be underpinned by this.
If I want a philosohical approach I would much rather listen to someone such as Dan Dennet. He at least is not encumbered by any religious worldview
LikeLike
Either philosophy is good philosophy or it’s bad philosophy. You’re refusing to engage because the person claims to be a Christian. Who cares? That’s like my saying I’m going to refuse to listen to an atheist because he’s an atheist. It would be like my refusing to listen to anything else Dilahauty says just because he’s an atheist. You’d rightly think that to be silly. Evaluate the things they say on their own merits.
Dennet doesn’t have a religious worldview, but he still has a worldview, and that worldview influences his conclusions. That’s what worldviews do. I’m thinking maybe you don’t actually understand the concept of worldview nearly so well as you think. At the very least, while you have spent a lot of time reading about science, you haven’t spent nearly as much time reading about philosophy. You would do yourself a favor to do that.
LikeLike
Yes, I Am refusing to engage because he is a Christian.
That is a decision I choose to make. Largely because I have engaged a number of philosophical arguments punted by believers and they all begin with the presupposition that their god, Yahweh is real and underpins everything in the universe.
And when one has listened to enough drivel as punted by William Lane Craig and his ilk it tends to scar one for life when it comes to Christisn philosophers.
Yes, you CAN refuse to listen to anything else by Dilahunty. But that would be your loss in my view as he is astute and in my experience has never come unstuck while discussing any religious topic.
Dennet has a worldview? What is it? I have watched a few of his YouTube videos but haven’t head him express what it is.
Will philosophy provide solid evidence of the resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth or solid evidence for the Noachian Flood or the Exodus narrative? Will it supplant the HGP, or the radio carbon dating of Jericho?
As you seem to reject scientific evidence in favour of philosophy when it clashes with your Christian worldview how would philosophy benefit me in this regard?
LikeLike
We’re talking about two different things, and you keep merging them into one, accusing me of violating one while not really understanding the other. Philosophy and science are two separate disciplines, but they inform each other. More specifically, philosophy informs the way we do science. This is why there is an entire academic discipline called the philosophy of science. Philosophy comes first, then science. What you are and aren’t willing to accept as evidence is a result of the philosophy of science by which you are operating even if you don’t realize precisely what that is. That’s how philosophy works. It’s always in the background.
No, of course philosophy won’t provide empirical evidence of any of those things. I’ve already said that. But like I just said, those are different questions.
Of course Dennet has a worldview. Everyone does. You can’t escape that. That’s how worldviews work. Just because you haven’t heard him spell it out doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.
To wit, if you are refusing to engaging with any particular source because it’s got a Christian outlook, why do you keep engaging with me? Being a Christian or not doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not someone knows what they are talking about any more than being an atheist somehow has something to do with that. Take that same line of logic and apply to other areas of life. It will quickly be seen to not be a very good one by which to operate.
Of course the philosophical conversations you’ve had with Christians has them starting from such a place. That’s kind of the point of their being a Christian in the first place. The question isn’t whether you agree with every point of the Christian worldview (you obviously don’t), but whether the philosophy being espoused is correct. In this case, the philosophical points being made about worldviews is true and right philosophy that doesn’t have anything to do with the Christian worldview. It’s just good philosophy.
And there you go hating on Craig and other Christian thinkers or apologists again. What is it about those guys (us guys?) that you so don’t like?
LikeLike
If the Christisn philosophy/ worldview is underpinned by the assertion the resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth is an historical fact and everything they believe hinges on this then how can it be correct?
If philosophy won’t produce empirical evidence is this why you reject empirical evidence the moment it clashes with your Christian worldview?
I asked what is Dennett’s worldview, not whether you consider he has one, that already knew from the way you addressed the topic.
I loathe Craig because he is disingenious in the way he presents his arguments. He is also a proponent and defender of DCT.
Listen to the takedown Sam Harris did of him. The video is included in the post Prof Taboo put up or simply Google it.
LikeLike
Sound philosophy is sound philosophy whether it is being espoused by a Christian or an atheist. Rejecting people solely because you don’t agree with their ideas is a dangerous position to hold. That thinking has historically led to not a few atrocities including some committed by people claiming to follow Jesus. It is philosophical correct to say that atheism both comes out of a worldview position and feeds into a worldview position. Just because you don’t understand fully what that worldview is for you doesn’t make it not true.
Your second point is a case in point for me. Philosophy doesn’t deal with things that can be proven empirically. That’s science. But the position you seem to hold is called empiricism which is a philosophical position and helps to inform your larger worldview. Philosophically, I don’t think it’s a very good position.
I don’t know Dennet’s worldview as I’ve honestly never paid any attention to him. But I know that he has a worldview because everybody does. That’s how worldviews work.
I’ve engaged with WLC’s stuff quite a lot. I’ve never found him to be disingenuous at all. Can you offer any examples of a time when he really came across that way to you? I’ve personally found him to be incredibly humble, especially given just how intelligent he is.
I’m not sure whether or not I’ve seen that particular debate between Craig and Harris, but I have listened to the audio of some of his debates with guys like Harris and generally came away with the impression that Craig made the stronger case and it wasn’t close.
LikeLike
Philosophy espoused from the pov of a Christian worldview is NOT sound as it embodies so many aspects that are simply quite vile, so there are very good reasons why I reject it.
I suggested a video for you to watch, the takedown of part of Craig’s worldview that included his obvious endorsement of DCT.
Again, it is only six minutes long and Proff Taboo included it in the piece he recently posted.
The entire debate is online. It’s over hours long so if you have nothing to do one day, go for it!
It is an excellent example illustrating why I loathe the position Craig takes.
His debate routine often uses the Gish Gallop approach, another reason why I find him distasteful.
LikeLike
If the philosophy is bad, then the philosophy is bad. The worldview of the philosopher doesn’t have much of an impact on that. That you insist otherwise is your worldview bias talking.
What’s DCT?
Can you give me the link for that video or at least a quick link to Prof’s post? I’ll give the short video a look. I don’t know how far back I’d have to go or which post it was on anymore to find the last link you sent.
I wish I had time to watch a several hours’ long debate…
LikeLike
Also, when do you sleep? You manage to post all day and all night!
LikeLike
I love my sleep, believe me! However, without going into too much detail on an open forum we had a security issue on our property that is busy being resolved. Meantime… as the Commodores once sang, I’m… “on the night shift.”
LikeLike
That’s plenty of detail for me. I hope things are able to settle back down quickly so you can get back on a normal rotation. Keep on with the good work of taking care of your family, though, and be safe yourself. That’s good stuff.
LikeLike
We’re getting there. It was not pleasent.
LikeLike
I’m sure of that! I hope everyone on your side was physically okay. The emotional wounds take longer to heal.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One reason that for now at least, I work the night shift as it were and grab some shut eye at odd hours.
The brain tends to get a bit frazzled after a while. That’s going to be my excuse for all the typos… And my fat fingers!
LikeLike
Typos happen. I was just ignoring those. But, yes, a sleep-deprived brain is rarely as sharp as we’d like it to be. Still, the sacrifice for the sake of your family is noble and good. From my perspective at least, it is a good and God-honoring thing for which you should be rightly commended.
LikeLike
The Sam Harris video you asked about, from his God debate with WLC.
LikeLike
Is that the video you were talking about that makes you so dislike WLC?
LikeLike
One of them, yes.
LikeLike
But he never says a word in it. How could you have any kind of a fairly formed opinion from that? Are there other videos that have swayed your opinion in which he actually appears and make a defense of his position? That would be like my concluding you are a cold-hearted jerk because I read a critical blog post about you. (I don’t think that at all, by the way.)
Harris’ monologue there is filled to the brim with straw men and example after example of someone who doesn’t understand the Scriptures at all taking one verse after another out of context and presenting them in the worst possible light that he can manage. I have a sneaking suspicion that WLC went on to totally dismantle his arguments.
LikeLike
The debate with Craig is 2hrs.
Perhaps the one who posted this clip presumes we have already watched the entire debate and decided to post.. Even so, if you are aware of Harris and Craig and the argument for DCT and objective morality etc this clip should be self explanatory.
I must have missed the straw men. Did we watch the same clip?
LikeLike
But have you actually listened to Craig’s arguments, or only Harris’ (mis)characterization of them and other clips like this? Is the same true of your interactions with other apologists you relish in renouncing? Which ones have you actually listened to with an effort to understand their arguments as they are framing them (even if only for the purposes of refuting them)?
His description of divine command theory is a total caricaturization of Craig’s position. I’ve heard Craig explicitly reject the way Harris frames the matter. I’ve read his book Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview from cover to cover. Nothing even remotely like what Harris describes is part of Craig’s views.
If this kind of video and other atheist blogs along with a handful of nuts who claim Christianity but think the earth is flat are the primary sources you’ve had for understanding genuine, orthodox Christianity, it’s no wonder you have the position you do. I would too if that was all I had really engaged with.
LikeLike
Please explain DCT
LikeLike
Let me brush up on this one so I can explain it accurately and I’ll get back with you.
LikeLike
Sure thing.
LikeLike
To be fair and honest I know what it is. I was more interested in whether you accepted it ( as Craig apparently does) and if so your reasons for also accepting it. Or not if this is the case?
LikeLike
Honestly, given that you don’t have anything even remotely resembling a robust understanding of the nature and character of God as revealed in the Scriptures (at least that I have thus far seen demonstrated in our conversations), and that you haven’t been particularly interested in accepting one when I’ve presented parts of it for you, your being able to make any kind of positive sense out of something like Divine Command Theory seems pretty unlikely. To put that another way, if you don’t get God’s character right, little else about Christian theology is going to make much positive sense. And, you don’t get God’s character right from anything that I’ve seen over the course of our dialogue. So, a great deal of historic and orthodox Christian theology won’t make much in the way of positive sense to you.
Yes, from rereading Craig’s basic position in his book, I’m very content with the idea as he lays it out. And, yes, I know that’s going to come across to you like I have a second head growing out of my shoulders. Not accepting a right understanding of the character of God, it’s hard to imagine it would come across otherwise.
LikeLike
You open your reply with an unsubstantiated tacit ad hom?
Seriously?
So can I conclude you accept the notion of DCT?
LikeLike
What did I say that is unsubstantiated? Where did I attack you? I surely didn’t intend any of that to convey that I have a negative opinion about you at all. I’m certainly sorry if it came off that way.
And, yes, I agree with Craig’s position on the matter.
LikeLike
“Honestly, given that you don’t have anything even remotely resembling a robust understanding of the nature and character of God… ”
So, not ad hom, but vondescension?
We can conclude you will tell your kids that, yes, according to your evangelical understanding of Yahweh, non Christian kids will in all likelihood be going to hell?
What would your explanation be for why Yahweh didn’t save the child from meningitis?
And let’s say she is part of a devout evangelical family similar to yours?
LikeLike
That did come off very condescending. I apologize for that. My wife keeps working with me to make sure I don’t come across as arrogant when I don’t intend to.
We’ve already talked about my understanding of Hell and God’s justice. You already know the answer to that.
As for your last question, I felt like I answered that in that response.
LikeLike
Oh, and I have watched the entire debate.
LikeLike
There’s at least that then.
LikeLike
Craig, like the average apologist, approaches debate not from the position of ‘Let’s see where the evidence leads’, but with a well honed presuppositional framework that will not allow even the possibility of reconsidering.
This is the nature of apologetics.
As Harris pointed out, it is either God is great for the good thing or God is a mystery when the shit hits the fan.
There are times during some debates of Craig’s I have watched where I have wondered what the Gehenna he is prattling on about, as he just never seems to address certain points his opponent raises.
At times it is like listening to an endless stream of religious Gish Gallup.
I stopped watching him a while back as his smug condescending drone made my fillings hurt.
Lennox I can stomach – just-and as clever a mathematician as he is, his arguments are also devoid of evidence.
Ultimately all religion boils down to faith and if the indoctrination of children was skipped for two or three generations I’d venture religion would rapidly become like just so much cultural myth.
LikeLike
Do you think there’s a chance he presents himself that way because he’s already examined the evidence, come to a conclusion about it, and is presenting his views as a counter to the various alternative conclusions someone could reach?
And on that, how is his doing that any different from what his secular counterpart is doing in that same forum? Harris didn’t present any evidence in that clip. He merely made a series of assertions based on his conclusions regarding the same evidence Craig had likely examined.
Harris’ point that you mention here is a caricature of the orthodox Christian position and a bad one at that. It gives absolutely no indication that Christians have wrestled with the problem of evil and offered any solutions at all that don’t boil down to that kind of nonsense that comes across as offensively simplistic.
If Craig is guilty of religious Gish Gallup, then his critics are guilty of the same. Harris here just offers 10 minutes’ worth of arguments.
For what it’s worth, Harris comes across as pretty insufferably arrogant to me in that video. Perhaps our respective biases frame out how the debater with whom we are already inclined to agree comes across. People generally like to listen to people who look and talk and sound like who they understand themselves to be.
Obviously I dispute the beginning of your last point. We’ve covered that pretty thoroughly. On the very last part, I wouldn’t be so sure. Human beings are pretty incurably religious. Religion can take all kinds of forms including a variety of secular versions of religion, but it’s pretty universal.
LikeLike
Once again, religious BELIEF always precedes any notion of evidence for the claims it makes.
So Craig can not produce evidence to demonstrate the veracity of his claims.
This is what Harris so astutely pointed out
Whether you consider Harris take is simplistic or down right offensive is completely irrelevant to whether his arguments are correct, none which you have even bothered to address?
I venture that, pretty much every one of the points Harris raised has been put to you in some fashion at some time during your time as a Pastor?
Haven’t your kids ever asked you what happens to people who don’t believe in Jesus? Do you ever make a point of telling them?
Or, why didn’t Jesus save my friend Jenny when she got meningitis?
Daddy, how do you know I will go to heaven when I die, but that new Chinese kid at school who’s a Buddhist will go to hell?
Or: My friend Susan told me Sanjay’s Mum and Dad aren’t Christian. Susan’s mum said they are atheists and they are going to hell when they die. Is that true, Dad?
So why not address the points Harris raised?
LikeLike
Are you really interested in answers to those questions, or are you just looking for things to reaffirm what you have already concluded?
And I’ve had some of those very conversations with my kids when they’ve asked.
LikeLike
And how have you managed to provide wholly honest responses for your children without compromising your evangelical standpoint?
LikeLike
What do you mean?
LikeLike
If the evangelical position is that non believers go to Hell is this the answer you provide when your kids ask about Hindu or Muslim kids at school?
Or what answer do you provide about why Yahweh did not save the child who died from meningitis or cancer!
LikeLike
On the first: We know from the Scriptures that God is loving and just and good. He has also given people the ability to make meaningful and consequential choices; a gift He honors even when they make choices that are hard for them and hard for others. Because of this, people choose all kinds of things other than the path of life He has laid out for us. God honors those choices even when they stick with them their entire lives. In that case, God will honor their desire to be apart from Him by not forcing them to be a part of His eternal kingdom. He will give them a place that is entirely separate from Him where they will spend eternity. This place is sometimes called Hell in the Scriptures and from what we can tell, it’s not going to be good because it will be totally separated from God who is the only source of goodness in the world. Yet because God is just and loving and good, He’s not going to let anybody make the choice to not follow Him without first giving them the opportunity to choose otherwise. Sometimes that offer comes in ways that go beyond our ability to understand; sometimes they come by way of our being faithful to Jesus’ command to bear witness to the truth. When you have the chance to have spiritual conversations with your friends, take those chances to ask them about what they believe and share what you believe. Always be kind and respectful when you do this because anything less than that is not a fitting representation to them of the character of God.
On the second: Because of sin, we live in a world that is broken at every point. This is a tragedy of the first order. Sin affects everything from our relationships to the environment to our very bodies. One of the ways the brokenness of sin manifests itself is through a whole variety of diseases. This does not at all mean that someone with a disease has committed some specific sin that led to their getting that disease, but rather that the consequences of sin affect us even when we are innocent of whatever sin was the original cause of those consequences. In the same way, when I make bad choices, those choices can affect the people around me even if they didn’t make the same bad choices. God has a plan to deal with sin which starts with Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross. The final fulfillment of this plan hasn’t arrived yet because when it does, that will be the end of human history when God makes all things new. In between now and then, the effects of sin still rage including things like cancer or meningitis. And sometimes those effects can be pretty terrible indeed. Sometimes God in His wisdom and mercy cut short those effects, but sometimes He doesn’t, and as hard as it is for us to understand, we don’t know why one happens or the other. What we do know and can see, though, is that God’s plans are for our ultimate good, and He still reveals Himself as good even in the midst of situations that otherwise seem irredeemably bad to us. He can take things that are broken and work great good out of them when we are willing to trust in Him and keep striving to do life His way. Our ultimate hope, though, is that one day all things will be made right and new; they will be restored and whole. It is our hope in this promise that can sustain us through the hardest times we face here and now.
LikeLike
Just Wow! Bye bye, sort of reasonable Pastor Waits, hello thoroughly indoctrinated wtf where did that come from, watch out kids, dad’s been at the Koolaid again and is wearing his Yahweh’s gonna smite the Amalakites persona. Run for cover!
That is some really sick apologetics.
That you would tell or even allude to your own kids this nonsense that a child who dies from meningitis is because of sin is tantamount to child abuse.
When I read this stuff straight from the horse’s mouth as it were it is no wonder my blog pal, Zoe still attends therapy years after deconverting or my other blogpal, Ben still experiences excruciating bouts of guilt for what he indoctrinated into his two sons.
His daughter has not been subject to such thoroughly warped manifestations of love.
Is there anything left to say but I sincerely hope your kids survive their dad’s unfortunate sick delusion and grow up to forgive you.
LikeLike
Nope, I’m still the same Pastor Waits you’ve been dialoguing with this whole time. But, like I made clear even through the unintentional haze of condescension earlier, if you don’t get the character of God right, much of what a Christian is going to argue about the nature of God and the world isn’t going to make much sense to you.
I explicitly said that a child’s dying from some disease is not the direct result of any sin they might have committed. Sin is a thing, and it destroys by its nature. Where there is death and destruction in the world including in the form of disease, that is all a result of sin’s being in the world. The world is broken and full of all kinds of evil. On that at least I hope we can agree. The Christian worldview allows us to account for the existence of evil, to accurately identify what is evil, and to have hope that evil isn’t going to be the end of the story.
I’m curious for your perspective on the matter. When your kids have a friend who is fighting cancer, what do you tell them? What kind of reassurance or hope do you offer from out of a secular worldview? What reason do you have for hope generally?
I don’t know anything about the experiences of your friends Zoe or Ben, but I’m sorry for what they went through. Where they were abused or manipulated, that was wrong. My heart hurts when I hear stories like that. Those kinds of stories, though, do not mean there is somehow something wrong with the Christian faith in particular or religion in general. That means they had awful experiences which I would argue had more to do with the people who caused those experiences than the religious context in which it happened. Abuse and terrible experiences happen in all sorts of different contexts both religious and non-religious.
I am genuinely sorry that your view of the Christian faith is so negative. Christians don’t even nearly always get things right, but the Christian worldview has contributed far, far more good to the world than I think perhaps you’re willing to give it credit for. On that note, I suspect my kids will be okay just like I’d like to think I’m doing pretty okay in spite of being raised in the same kind of environment I’m seeking to raise them in. I do appreciate your concern, though.
LikeLike
I am not clear on what you mean by “what do I tell them”?
LikeLike
If your kids were struggling with a friend who is fighting cancer, and the fight doesn’t look to be going well, what kind of comfort or hope do you give them? How do you encourage them? Would you tell them anything more than, sometimes diseases happen, and people die? Sometimes our medicines work, and sometimes they don’t, and we don’t really know why one happens or the other? In the end, we all die and are gone, so it doesn’t really matter beyond what we imagine it does anyway? What does your worldview offer in that situation that mine doesn’t or that you see as better than what mine does?
And if any of those questions come off as a caricature of what you really believe, know well that I don’t intend for it to be. I’m genuinely curious. I really would love to have the best explanation of what you as an atheist would tell your kids in that kind of a situation to give them hope and comfort.
Speaking more generally, how do you make sense of the brokenness and evil in the world? You’re lampooning me and Christianity generally for our approach to these questions. How do you handle them? Not the question of what comes after death and other religious worldviews, obviously, but on the question of suffering and disease and death generally. How do you, given the things you believe (or don’t believe, as it were), answer the question of what to do about the fact that the world isn’t the way it should be? You obviously don’t have the issue of theodicy to deal with, but the world still is full of all kinds of awful things that people have always had a sense shouldn’t be that way. How do you deal with that in a way that isn’t ultimately nihilistic? Or do you subscribe to some form of nihilism? And if so, do you raise your kids to be nihilists too? How is that better than a worldview that offers explicit hope and purpose and meaning?
LikeLike
I tell the truth.
What do you mean by hope?
People die all the time.
So do animals. So do plants.
You make the most of the time you have, as best as you can.
LikeLike
I’m genuinely sorry that you can’t give them…or yourself…something more than that. Christian hope is the willingness to live now with joy and peace and contentment and even in spite of grim circumstances because of our trust in God’s promise to one day restore all things. Hope is something Christianity offers that atheism simply can’t. And hope is powerful stuff. Hope is what has propelled Jesus’ followers over the centuries to give all kinds of gifts to the world that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Find something good you like about the world. That thing can almost assuredly be traced back to believers in the past, driven by their hope in God’s promise to restore all things and His command to begin doing things now to let the world around them experience that future good, finding ways to practically make the world a better place.
The unavoidable truth is that the world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Every single human culture has recognized that in some form or fashion. As far as I’m concerned, Christianity has the best answer to the problem. That in and of itself doesn’t make it true, but we’ve already hashed out our disagreements on the question of evidence. Ultimately, millions of people are drawn to the Christian faith each year – many of them out of secularism of one form or another – because it offers better, more hope-filled answers to the big questions of life than secularism can provide. They are drawn to it, they experience the goodness and truth of the Gospel for themselves, and their lives are changed for the better because of it. Then, a great many of them go on to make the lives of the people around them better to because of the good they commit themselves to doing in obedience to the one command Christians have to follow: love one another after the pattern of Jesus’ own love for us.
LikeLike
You’re prattling, Jonathan.
A verbose apologetic that you could express in a paragraph or less without defaulting to a mini sermon.
Have another go at What do you (really) mean by hope, and try to be concise.
I really don’t want or need the fluff.
LikeLike
I didn’t give you any fluff and I’m not prattling. And I gave you just one paragraph on hope including a definition. Look at the second sentence.
The bottom line here is that atheism can’t offer anyone more than some version of, “Life sucks and then you die.” And for most people, that’s not nearly a good enough answer. That’s why atheism isn’t a catching thing. When the new atheism movement blew up in the wake of 9/11, we were greeted to many bold predictions of religion’s forthcoming demise. Those didn’t really pan out. Many folks stuck with their rejection of Christianity, but most didn’t go to atheism. They went to some other religious movement. Even some of the most prominent atheists of that movement have started to soften just a bit in their criticism of Christianity because they recognize it is different in good ways from other religious movements. Ayaan-Hirshi Ali went from Islam to ardent atheism and now to Christianity. Eventually most people get tired of having to play make believe with meaning and purpose in life and hunger for something more substantial than that.
Call that a mini-sermon if you’d like. I am a preacher. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
LikeLike
“Life sucks and then you die” ?
Hilarious! Seriously, Jonathan that old trope is a load of bollocks.
To parrot such garbage should be beneath even one as religiously indoctrinated as you.
Having chatted for a bit, do you honestly believe I think my life sucks?
You tell you kids this stuff?
Restore all things?
What on earth does this even mean?
LikeLike
I don’t think you believe your life sucks at all. But your response before was literally, “People die all the time. . .You make the most of the time you have as best you can.” What if the time you have is nothing but pain and suffering? What if you live in North Korea where the government keeps its people starving? What if you are a woman living in Afghanistan under the evil rule of the Taliban right now? How do you make the most of that if there’s no real promise that things are going to get better for you? If all you can do is “make the most of the time you have” in those kinds of circumstances, then, yes, the view you expressed strikes me as little more than “life sucks and then you die.”
As compared with the hope offered by the Christian worldview, that’s a pretty hopeless view of the world. It means that you are the one who is singularly responsible for furnishing meaning for your life. That gets exhausting after a while, especially when you go through periods of intense suffering, or when the purpose you made for yourself turns up leaving you feeling totally empty. Where’s the hope in that?
On God’s restoring all things, check out Revelation 21:1-4.
LikeLike
Well, let’s face it, much of the Muslim world is governed / controlled by religion, a somewhat (more) warped ideology that was spawned by its Judeo/Christian parents.
Considering the background, using a poor Afghani women doesn’t really make your case, now does it? .
In many/most cases at some level humans are the cause of their own suffering/downfall. Their own worst enemy in fact. Either through wilfull ignorance or design.
Do you know there are Christians preaching that veganism is rooted in some form of Satanism?
Saw a clip of a preacher on a Facebook short.
Religion plays a large role in this and while we can point to much good individuals have done/do, it is nevertheless, devisive and destructive.
Preaching that hope or a better life lies outside of human endeavor and resides solely within the realm of the supernatural faith etc is, quite frankly, somewhat gross, not to mention unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.
And what if you’re a small child growing up in a strict evangelical home where you are told you are a sinner and the only way to redeem yourself and avoid spending eternity in Hell is by accepting Jesus into your life?
That must suck, don’t you agree?
Revelation? Seriously? You think you will instill confidence and credibity by referencing an apparent hallucination from a supposed exile on Patmos ?
Good grief!
🤦
LikeLike
Of course it makes my case. I wasn’t talking about what I would say to her. I was talking about what you would say to her. On the secular view, what kind of hope can you give her?
I agree with you on the second point. That’s sin in a nutshell. We do dumb things and then have to deal with the natural consequences of those things.
What does the anti-veganism preacher have to do with anything we’ve been talking about? People believe all kinds of crazy things including those who claim Christianity.
Religion can be divisive and destructive, but it isn’t necessarily so. Differing worldview beliefs coming into conflict with one another causes division and destruction. People claiming atheism in some form or fashion have plenty of blood on their hands too. You’ve no doubt gotten long lectures on the havoc caused by Stalinism or Maoism or Nazism, although some of the Nazis started getting a little mystical before the end of their big run. I’ll save bringing them up anymore.
I’m not sure how preaching a Christian hope is gross. And the resurrection is what is supported by the evidence. All the rest of it flows naturally from there.
When the Gospel is presented that starkly to children and they aren’t given a good context for understanding it more robustly than that, I’m sure there are some folks who react to it that way. That would indeed suck to be stuck with an incomplete and poorly framed presentation with the Gospel that leaves you thinking things about it and about yourself and God because of it that aren’t true. I agree with you there.
John’s vision was a supernatural event. Your response is to call it a hallucination because your worldview doesn’t have room for the supernatural. That’s what I was talking about in our other feed. What you would look at an pronounce one thing, someone with a framework that allows for an accepts the supernatural might see in another light entirely. And, no, I didn’t have any delusions that was going to instill any kind of confidence in you. You asked what I meant by God’s restoring all things, and I gave you an example from the Scriptures of what I was talking about. That was all.
LikeLike
I would say to her: “Look at what your crazy arse religion has done to you? Your kid died as a suicide bomber.”
However having been so indoctrinated up the Wazoo she will probably praise Allah and gleefully embrace such insanity.
To understand what atheism and secular humanism means and can offer one should probably talk to a woman who has managed to escape from such an insane religion.
You should check out such testimonies. There are plenty.
The point about the preacher is he was using Christianity to justify attacking veganism which in turn justifies the slaughter of billions of animals. As well as tacitly asserting vegans are Satanists.
And there plenty of indoctrinated Christians who will lap this nonsense up for breakfast.
As for kids. Sorry, but here we go again with the apologetics. It becomes a futile exercise as you will always cite there is context to justify the heinous aspects of your religion thus justify indoctrinating children, and when this is pointed out, and almost endless examples can be presented to prove the point, the answer is almost always along the lines of: That is wrong Christianity or, your description is oversimplistic or a caricature, and yet there are enough cases to warrant a recognized psychological condition akin to PTSD.
Children should be raised in a neural environment and allowed to find their feet in their own time in this regard. Unfortunately your own indoctrination not only prevents you from seeing this but to an extent actively discourages it as they will be led astray etc etc
How do you KNOW John’s vision was a supernatural event?
For example, Patmos has morning glory growing there ( so I read) . Maybe he ate some? Or a lot even.
Tertullian asserted he was boiled in oil before being banished by Domitian suffering no ill effects. For goodness’ sake, Jonathan, an unscathed human French fry! It’s a damn miracle I tell you.
The book was originally not even considered worthy of inclusion in the Canon.
That you cite this suggests you accept it as ‘Gospel’ when simple common sense would tell you it comes across as the ramblings of a delusional mind.
Probably one reason it was initially rejected.
LikeLike
But you couldn’t offer her any really meaningful hope, nothing that took the suffering she faced and redeemed it to ultimately become something life giving for her and others. I can.
Ayaan Hirshi Ali did escape such an insane religion and was an avowed atheist for several years before embracing Christianity. Did she start taking crazy pills again, or did she find something more meaningful than atheism can offer? I guess that depends on your perspective.
I still think the Facebook preacher was wrong, but did he say vegans are Satanists, or did you fill in the gaps with what you wanted to hear (not that you wanted to be called a Satanist)? Either way, I’m still curious how that has any relevance to what we’re talking about.
As much as perhaps you don’t want it to or understand that it does, context matters. It matters in understanding what you write. It matters in understanding what I write. It matters in understanding what ancient writers wrote. Yes, you can find tons and tons of verses which, when taken out of their immediate and larger context, can look and sound like they say all kinds of awful things. And, when your driving motivation is to find reasons to support your rejection of it, you’ll be able to do that in spades. When you are willing to take the Scriptures on their own terms and fully within their context, things start looking a whole lot better.
How do you know John’s event wasn’t a supernatural event? There’s not empirical evidence for either case. If you’re operating from a naturalistic, empiricist worldview, then of course it wasn’t. It couldn’t be anything else other than the product of a wildly creative mind or a hallucination of some sort. I accept the supernatural exists, and John’s vision is deeply rooted in themes that are introduced and developed throughout the Scriptures. A supernatural experience is a much better explanation of it than the alternatives as far as I’m concerned. And they didn’t want to include it in the canon because it was so hard to understand.
But to state the matter again: you’re not coming at any of these things from a perspective that will allow them to make any sense. I don’t expect them to make any sense to you. I’m still going to be honest about them with you. To do otherwise wouldn’t be respectful.
LikeLike
When she already believes she is a part of the pinnacle of wonderfulness what could I possibly say to change her mind?
Maybe Ali found Christianity a less aggressive form of indoctrination?
I guess when you come from such a heinous religion like Islam perhaps the stark reality of being out in the cold as it were was too much for her?
Some people struggle to live without the notion of a patriarchal figure ostensibly telling them what to do.
Yes the preacher is wrong, of course he is. He stated veganism led to Satanism. You joint the dots I looked for the short again but couldn’t find it.
No matter how he phrased it putting veganism and Satanism in the same sentence is idiotic and the tacit implications are there for all to see.
I was raised in a Western Christian culture so my “driving motivation” was largely indifference as previously explained. When I became interested it was merely to establish the historicity behind such tales as the Noachian flood and the Exodus narrative.
Once the evidence showed these were nothing but myth only then did I take the time to read the Bible with greater interest.
Re: Revelation. We simply go round in circles.
The Bible makes the claims, you accept them.
The onus is on the one making the claim to provide the evidence to demonstrate the veracity of the claim.
LikeLike
That’s my point. You couldn’t. You don’t have any meaningful hope to offer to her in her situation. The Christian worldview does.
Or maybe Ali carefully considered the truth claims of Islam, found them wanting, carefully considered the truth claims of Atheism, found them wanting, and finally carefully considered the truth claims of Christianity and found them accurately descriptive of how the world actually is. It’s really too bad that the position you hold leads you to so frequently belittle people who don’t agree with you and to assume you know more about their thinking and experiences than they do.
Okay, we both agree that preacher is wrong. Radically, stupidly wrong. I’m still failing to understand why you brought him up in the first place. People believe all kinds of crazy things. Sometimes those people claim to be Christians. Sometimes they claim to be Muslims. Sometimes they claim to be Atheists.
So, you didn’t ever really engage with the Scriptures in any kind of a meaningful way until you were looking for reasons to further justify your skepticism? No wonder you found so many.
And, we do indeed go around in circles a lot. Good thing we both have strong stomachs :~) I’ve presented the evidence, you’ve rejected it. Now it’s your turn. “But you didn’t produce any evidence.” Wheeeeee!
LikeLike
“People believe all kinds of crazy things”
That is the point.
When you answer for me so eloquently why waste ‘ink’ ?
You might like my latest post. Not that I’m groveling for attention, only it might make you smile.
LikeLike
Yes…all kinds of people believe all kinds of crazy things. We are in agreement on that. There are people who claim to be Christians who believe vegans are somehow Satanists. There are no doubt people claiming to be atheists out there who believe lizard men from outer space are controlling the planet. I still fail to see how any of this is at all relevant to what we’ve been talking about.
Your groveling worked. I gave it a read. And wouldn’t you know it, it did give me a chuckle or two. :~)
Let me know when the second part goes up. I’ll be curious to see what your plan is.
LikeLike
Because people who can assert that vegans are very likely Satanists will just as easily assert that, in a nutshell, even in the face of absolutely no evidence whatsoever, if you don’t believe a man crucified for sedition rose from the dead after three days you will be going to Hell to be tortured for eternity.
Can you see the relevance now?
LikeLike
And there are likely atheists who believe lizard men from space are controlling the world. People believe crazy things that don’t have any evidence to support them from out of every single worldview position you can imagine, including atheism.
We can keep going on this merry-go-round as long as you’d like. There’s no evidence for the former, of course. There is evidence for the resurrection. I’ve presented it. You’ve rejected it.
The anti-vegan preacher is a straw man, a red herring, or both. He’s irrelevant to our conversation.
LikeLike
Refresh my memory… What independant non-biblical evidence have you presented that demonstrates the veracity of the anonymous gospel claims of the resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth?
LikeLike
We’ve already talked about that and you know it. Around and around we go…
LikeLike
Talked about it, yes, but you have yet to provide evidence as I have asked, merely expressing your beliefs.
LikeLike
Nope again. I’ve presented the historical facts whose best conclusion is that Jesus rose from the dead. You’ve rejected the conclusion and them as facts in the first place. I can’t do anything more about that.
LikeLike
I don’t recall you presenting a single fact.
Assertions, claims and Bible references, yes, but no facts.
Which facts do you consider you have presented over and above the fact that people believe the claim?
LikeLike
I have indeed. You dismissed them as “assertions, claims, and Bible references.” That’s on you, not me. I’ve pointed you to the case for the historicity of the Gospels and Acts. Whether or not you accept it is up to you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You have nade claims about the assertions based on your beliefs but you haven’t presented evidence to demonstrate the veracity of these claims.
And we can point to all the interpolation etc that casts even more doubt on the historicity.
I mean why would you believe one claim but reject another?
LikeLike
Because the Gospels and Acts are historically reliable, they are evidence for the claims I have been making that are just as legitimate as the documents by which we profess knowledge about any other ancient historical figure. I’m applying the same standard to both.
Which interpolations and claims do you have in mind that I have rejected?
LikeLike
I didn’t you had rejected them… yet.
How about the woman caught in adultery? Always a good one to kick off with.
LikeLike
John probably didn’t write that, but it probably really happened during Jesus’ ministry. What impact do you think that has on the historicity of John?
LikeLike
It is a forgery.
You continue to assert the gospels are reliable and without blinking, I an atheist, an non scholar have just identified what has been a focal point of C
Jesus’ teaching since the Bible was compiled. The supposed actual words of Jesus and yet it is recognised by scholars across the board as a forgery, and you ask what impact?
How do you know anything else is trustsorthy/reliable?
LikeLike
Of course I do. I’ve studied them quite a lot including arguments for and against their historicity and have concluded the arguments for are far stronger than the arguments against.
You look at the Scriptures from the standpoint of finding reasons they can’t possibly be correct and thus you are justified in your skepticism. By your own confession, that’s the only way you have ever really interacted with them. Of course you would take up that position.
Do you think you are somehow raising a point that hasn’t already been addressed dozens and dozens of times over? This is not a new argument against the historicity of the Scriptures. Jesus like said the things He reported to have said here, John simply wasn’t the original author of the passage. John himself acknowledged at the end of his Gospel that Jesus said and did a ton of other things that nobody reported because they had to be selective.
The great majority of John scholars are confident is a complete unit. This one passage doesn’t appear in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts we have. Its inclusion doesn’t affect the integrity of the whole at all.
LikeLike
Assertions of scriptural lack of integrity is something Christian apologists of the likes of Koukl, Craig, Lennox,Licona, the late Geisler Strobel, Wallace, and Habermas are called upon to attempt to refute.
Be it the nonsense of Adam and Eve, slavery, genocide, the myths, the forged gosspel passages or the forgeries in the Pauline corpus , the gospel anonymity and the unsupported claims of the resurrection.
Defending one may be reasonable.
Even defending each in isolation. However when taken as a whole and scrutinized with the highest level of critical scholarship, integrity and honesty, to continue to assert they are the historically reliable inspired word of a genocidal meglomaniacal Canaanite deity is not only preposterous, it is an illustration of hypocrisy and wilfull ignorance at its most base.
LikeLike
I’m sorry you’ve been convinced of that. I don’t think anything about that perspective is true.
LikeLike
The difference between believing claims about lizard people and a crazy preacher is the preacher is not seen as crazy by his flock as he is a bona fide earth bound representative of your god, Yahweh, and thus he claims a degree of authority.
When Sir David Attenborough makes a public announcement that lizard people are a natural part of evolution and presents a documentary about them running things from a secret lair then you may have a case for crying straw man..
LikeLike
In his little community of fellow lizard people believers, that atheist nut is thought to be just as sane as that flock considers their lunatic preacher. All the more so if he’s the leader of the group. There’s still no meaningful difference I can see.
LikeLike
No, he is not the same as he is not appealing to divine authority as your preacher is. The Lizard Nut will most be likely be dismissed by everyone as a nut.
Your congregation will accept verbatim what you deliver from the pulpit, as you will always justify / qualify your sermons with words such as Bible, Jesus, gospel and God. You are entrusted to interpret the W. O. G. and your flock believe you are authorized to do so.
After all, your god sanctioned slavery, burning witches, and killing gays.
After this, getting a group of indoctrinated pew warmers to believe veganism leads to Satanism is a walk in the park, abd they will pay money to hear such garbage.
LikeLike
The Lizard Nut has a congregation too, it’s just of a different kind. The vast majority of Christians across history would agree with you that the anti-vegan nut is crazy, just like the vast majority of atheists rightly believe the Lizard Nut is crazy.
If you want to swap issues, a whole bunch of atheist folks used to believe black Africans were genetically inferior to white Europeans because of the teachings of Darwin and his earliest disciples. That’s nuts. But they had a source of authority and a community and were absolutely convinced it was the case. The Nazis built their whole program of extermination on Darwinian ideas. They were indoctrinated, you might say.
Is any of that the case today, of course not. But it’s happened. And it could happen again. People will buy into all kinds of things and find all kinds of support for it that “proves” them right whatever their worldview position happens to be.
LikeLike
“People will buy into all kinds of things..”
As you and your congregation do, yes?
LikeLike
Sure, we believe things. So do you and the community you have on your blog. The question isn’t whether or not people believe things, but are those things true.
LikeLike
I try not to have beliefs as such, (Believing Liverpool are the best team in the works and silly things like that) however I do accept certain things based on evidence.
The foundational beliefs of your religion have no evidence to support the veracity to assert they are true, or fact.
LikeLike
The resurrection does. The Gospels and Acts are historical documents. Given that, the resurrection is the best explanation of the available historical facts. I feel like I just keep saying this same thing.
LikeLike
You do keep saying the same thing, but again, what historical facts are you talking about?
Try this. Should be a walk in the park for one who has based his career on knowing this stuff off by heart.
Make a list, 1-5 or 10.
Then, without any accompanying explanation bullet point each thing you claim is an historical fact, identify the source, and I will respond to each one.
LikeLike
We’ve already done that. Both parts. My list and your rejection. Why do it again? You are welcome to scroll back through and look at it again. I think that was probably in the Romans 8:28 post where we started.
LikeLike
Would you do me the favour and type it out (again? ) in the form I have asked?
It shouldn’t take you more than a couple of minutes and as a list it would be easier to address them one by one.
Just do five if you think ten too many.
LikeLike
I did that last time. If I honestly thought you would respond any differently, I might be more interested in typing that back up. But you’ll have to excuse me for not having much confidence in that outcome.
LikeLike
What you have acknowledged is there is no non biblical examples of evidence to support the Bible claims of the resurrection and you consider this unessecary in any case as you believe the gospels are historically reliable.
If there are no sources/evidence to check / confirm their historical reliability on what basis did you arrive at the conclusion they are historically reliable?
LikeLike
You’re right on that first part. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve already acknowledged that the resurrection is not mentioned by contemporary non-biblical sources.
As for the case for the historicity of the Gospels, here you go…
More than that will have to wait until tomorrow (which, by the way, was the name of a rock band I drummed for some in college) or possibly even Monday.
LikeLike
Wait until tomorrow
After the Hendrix song?
LikeLike
Just “Until Tomorrow.” And, honestly, I have no idea where they got the name from. I was a late addition just before they called it quits because everyone was graduating and moving to various places across the country.
LikeLike
In a genuine attempt to be open minded and unbiased I am trying really hard to watch Blombergs. His voice is somewhat monotonous which I am having difficulty concentrating on and stopping myse from nodding off.
Aside from his delivering style which reminds me of watching a telly tubby rock side to side side and back and forth – stand still, dammit – the content is standard evangelical apologetics, which, from his apparent preferred early dating “All first century….” to his unfounded assumptions regarding the authors; traveling companion, tax collector etc. Really? SMH
We are looking for evidence to demonstrate historical reliability, yet all he relays ( so far) is church tradition.
While he mentions a “literary relationship” ( between the synotics), he mentions nothing about the obvious fact the bulk of gMatt is copied from gMark, sometimes verbatim. I got the feeling he actively avoided it.
He hasn’t mentioned ( so far) the importance of the interpolated ( forged) long ending to gMark.
He mentions Quelle, another assumption for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
He spends far too long on oral tradition, something there is no evidence for with regard the gospels.
I have to take a break to attend to work stuff.
If you read this before I return to the video and you feel there is anything specific that will demonstrate proper historical reliability rather than standard apologetic fare, please let me know ASAP. You can time stamp anything you feel I should pay close attention to.
Blomberg’s content is nothing I haven’t heard or read from umpteen apologetic sources and it is frustrating you would truly think I was unaware or ignorant of this apologetic approach.
But I will grit my teeth and finish it.
Catch you a bit later.
LikeLike
Yes, Craig’s voice is high and nasally. He was always pretty engaging in class, and he’s a wonderful person aside from all his scholarly credentials. He was famous on campus for his dad jokes and for walking across campus (which isn’t large) carrying a briefcase in one hand while swinging his free arm back and forth. It was always a sight to see.
While I haven’t listened to this very presentation, I have heard him make it more than once and in greater detail even than he does there. I had a whole semester of it.
He’s also one of the most reputable scholars in the world on the subject of the historical reliability of the Gospels. I won’t be able to add anything he doesn’t say better than I could. He’s forgotten more about the subject than I’ll ever learn. He did give me a nice shout out in the acknowledgement of the revised version of his textbook on the Gospels that I did a lot of the legwork for in terms of sifting through the most current scholarly work at the time.
I’m honestly not sure what you are looking for when you ask for things which demonstrate “proper historical reliability.” The standards and approaches Craig is using and that I have been using when evaluating the question of Gospel historicity are the same basic standards used for evaluating the historicity of any other ancient document.
As I’ve noted more than once over the course of our conversation, if you applied the standards you seem to be insisting on for the Scriptures and particularly the Gospels and Acts to any other ancient document that secular scholars use to construct a picture of what happened in the ancient past, you would be left with a far, far more incomplete picture than the vast majority of scholars of antiquity would be comfortable acknowledging. Using the example I’ve used before, if the Gospels can’t be trusted as historical, then we don’t actually know anything about Alexander the Great’s life beyond that he was an historical figure.
I don’t say that as a complaint, by the way, but just an observation in an attempt to better understand exactly what you’re looking for on this question. I may still not be able to provide it, but at least I’ll understand a little better where you’re coming from and that’s not nothing.
What work do you do?
LikeLike
As you seem particularly fond of Bloomberg I was hoping for specifics pertinant to my request.
However, as I noted, his is the standard evangelical approach, which is biased toward his Christian faith and tradition, and this does not address a single issue or concern raised by critical scholarship.
There is ample historical evidence for Alexander, whereas there is nothing for the bible character Jesus of Nazareth.
Again, to clarify, historical reliability of the gospels refers to the claims and assertions they make regarding the central character/s.
So when Bloomberg mentions physical features /landmarks that is no different to when Fleming includes such physical landmarks in his Bond novels.
This is why I asked for you to bullet point specifics and their source that you consider demonstrate the historical reliability of the gospels. As you have written above you want to better understand where I am coming from this would go a long way to achieving that.
Again, just five or ten examples and their source.
We have a small family cake bakery business.
LikeLike
First, that’s fantastic. I love a good bakery. They’ve been slowly turning the building across the street from the church here into one. It’s been a long process. I’m hoping in the next year or so it’ll finally be done. Then I will give them all of my money.
It’s actually Blomberg, not Bloomberg, but that’s an easy mistake to make.
When it comes to Alexander the Great, if you are going to evaluate Alexander using the same historical standards you seem to be insisting on for the Gospels, there’s actually less evidence and what we have is less reliable. And the further back in history you go, the less confidence we can have if you’re operating from the same standards. The surviving sources we have that make reference to Jesus are more numerous and date to closer to the actual events than anything we have for Alexander (or most other ancient historical figures, for that matter).
What kind of evidence for the historical reliability of the Gospels are you looking for that Craig didn’t cover? Rest assured, he didn’t avoid anything in that presentation on purpose. He deals with all of those issues and more in his book on the subject. If you’re really interested in understanding it better, it’s worth your time to get a copy and read it. The full title is: The Historical Reliability of the New Testament: Countering the Challenges to Evangelical Christian Beliefs. He specifically refutes several of Ehrman’s arguments in it.
You’ve mentioned it several times now, but I’m not sure what relevance Matthew’s use of Mark has for his reliability. The same goes for Luke. He didn’t feel the need to rewrite stories that were already written. He gave the Cliff’s Notes version of most of them, but then added a fair bit of his own material, all composed with his particular audience in mind.
LikeLike
You’re appear to be doing what I call the theological two step and not addressing the specifics as I continue to ask for.
Identifying specific archeological landmarks, the two pools in John for example, or Pilate, or Herod, or Bethlehem does not make the gospels any more historically reliable than London, MI5, Aston Martin and Martinis make a James Bond novel historically reliable.
I cannot understand why, if you are confident of the gospels reliability you won’t simply bullet point a list of 5 to 10 examples and their source.
Seriously, how hard can that be?
LikeLike
I’m not trying to two-step around anything. I’m trying to work around the fact that you are coming at this question from a totally different perspective than I am, and that you are using a burden of proof that places nearly every historical event from that time in the realm of fiction. The trouble is, you’ve decided the Gospels are historical fictions. Leaving aside for the moment that category of literature didn’t exist in the first century, what are you looking for beyond accurate place names and people and external events from 2,000 years ago to demonstrate historicity? What for you would demonstrate them to be historically reliable?
How do you come to the conclusion that Alexander the Great and the things we know about him are indeed historical?
I could rigorously demonstrate that every single person and place and event mentioned in the Gospels is historically accurate, and I suspect you would still consider them historical fiction because of the miracle reports. That’s a function of worldview, not evidence. What you keep tacitly communicating is that as long as I’m willing to play by your rules, then a document that doesn’t play by your rules at all can be considered reliable.
LikeLike
You continue to assert historical reliability and even someone like Sanders recognizes this is not the primary function of the gospels.
I have no interest in wanting to compare this figure with that or engaging in a battle of, if this then that, or she said he said.
While you have repeatedly acknowledged there is no contemporary evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and all we have are the claims in the Bible, it is because of your fervent belief in the gospels reliability you are thus convinced the resurrection story is fact.
Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable for a skeptic such as me to ask for examples from the gospels that you regard are historically reliable enough to consider the resurrection of Jesus to be historical fact.
Surely there must be five or ten bullet point examples and their source you can name at the drop of a hat?
LikeLike
Of course historicity is not the PRIMARY function of the Gospels, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t historical.
I’m not making comparisons for the sake of making comparisons. I’m making comparisons to demonstrate that you are taking an approach to the Gospels and Acts that you do not take with any other ancient historical document.
As near as I can tell, what you are wanting me to produce are a list of historical events in the Gospels that are mentioned by external sources. You’re asking this because you’ve done enough homework to know those don’t exist save a handful of references to the crucifixion of Jesus. Unless I’m mistaken, you’re waiting for me to try to do this or to acknowledge I can’t so you can proudly declare, “See, there’s no evidence, so therefore none of it is historical!” This does not, however, have much of an impact on the assumption of historicity unless you are coming at things from an already committed framework of skepticism (or you’re coming at it reasonably neutrally, but the only people you listen to when you are forming your views are people who are operating with such a framework). The truth is, for most ancient historical events, we only have a handful of documents making reference to them and beyond that, nothing else was preserved. In treating the Gospels and Acts as not historical sources, you are holding them to a different standard than you do any other ancient historical documents.
The comparison of your willingness to accept the historical claims of the Gospels with your willingness to accept the historical claims of other ancient events makes the case, and that’s why I do it. You may not have interest in it, but it matters nonetheless. You accept, for instance, the writings we have that mention Alexander the Great as historical. Great. Outside of those few sources – fewer than the number of documents in the New Testament that make reference to Jesus and the things He said and did – we don’t know anything about Alexander.
There are five major historical documents by which we know about who Alexander was and what he did. Well, there are five major ones that make reference to Jesus. The earliest document making reference to Alexander was written two hundred years after he lived and was based (so the author, Diodorus Siculus says) on the works of earlier writers who were eyewitnesses to the events. The latest of the five was written almost 700 hundred years later, but you still take it to be at least reasonably reliable in terms of presenting the basic facts about Alexander’s life. Well, the earliest Gospel document we have making reference to Jesus (which is probably not the earliest reference; that distinction goes to some of Paul’s letters) was written within 30 years of his life and while Mark wasn’t an eyewitness to the events he describes (save possibly Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane) many scholars believe Peter to have been his primary source, and Peter was an eyewitness. The latest document, John, was written about 60 years after Jesus disappeared from the scene, and was an eyewitness. By what standard do you reject the historicity of the documents making reference to Jesus but accept the documents making reference to Alexander? Using the same historical standards for both individuals results in a stronger case for the historicity of Jesus and the things He said and did than there is for the things Alexander said and did. Why accept one and not the other?
If you want to call all of this my doing apologetics, that’s fine. What Craig laid out in that video is an approach to the historicity of the Gospels and Acts that is the same as a secular historian would use for evaluating the reliability of any other ancient historical document. What I’m trying to help you see, though, is that you are using different standards for the Gospels and Acts than you are using for any other ancient historical event or document. My question is: why? The conclusion that is becoming harder and harder to avoid is that you don’t want any of it to be true and so you are playing by a different set of rules when engaging with it to enable you to declare it isn’t.
LikeLike
Don’t want to be true?
I may not want it to be true that Armstrong landed on the moon.
But the fact us, he did.
I may not want it to be true that eating too many of our cakes is likely to spike your insulin and add to your waistline.
But the fact is it’s true.
Your appeal to something vaguely emotional on my part, like the well worn ridiculous claim regarding those who deconvert so’s they can ‘sin’ is another eyebrow raising moment and to me suggests a fair degree of projection on your part, Jonathan.
If anyone desperately needs for all this to BE true it is most assuredly you as your entire worldview including your career is built upon this being so.
For me, it would make little difference at a personal level, though I admit it would be super fascinating. But it certainly wouldn’t be the straw that made me leap up and cry, “Yes, I believe in Jesus, thank you lord, I am saved!”
Therefore, can we be brutally honest here and conclude that the reason you flat out refuse to bullet point a short list including sources of what you consider to be the Top Ten reasons that demonstrate the veracity of the gospels ( historical reliability) is because they do not meet generally recognised historical criteria?
If we are beung brutally honest?
LikeLike
The reason, if we are being brutally honest, is that these kinds of questions don’t get asked a lot in the environment in which I live and work, so I don’t have them on auto-recall like perhaps I once did (especially the sources part), and I haven’t had or taken the time to go through my library to pull them up to write out here. Yes, I could google them, but so you could, and Craig listed out 12 reasons you have already rejected. I’ve already told you I don’t have much of anything to add to his presentation.
I’m not sure about a need on my part, although I’m certainly convinced it is all true. But, yes, it would be rather inconvenient if it weren’t. I do agree that accepting the historical reliability of the Gospels would very likely not be the final straw pushing you to accept Jesus is Lord.
The fact remains, though, that you are using a different set of standards for evaluating the historical claims of the Gospels and Acts than you are for evaluating the historical claims of any other ancient historical document. I’m just trying to understand why. I took a stab, and was mistaken. I’d still like to understand all the same.
LikeLike
Let’s be crystal clear. We are talking about historical reliability of the gospels as they pertain to the events of the main characters and the storyline and not any specific archeological find or accurate geographic reference to town, lake, or independantly attested historical figure; Pilate, Herod, etc.
As for special/ different standards?
Not me.
The fact is those who defend the reliability of the gospels expect them to be held to different standards and this is why no historian worth their salt considers them to be historically reliable. Claiming otherwise is tantamount to. .. I dunno, whining.
Enough time has passed for you to have made a random mental list even if not enough to do a thorough check. And the fact you are a professional theologion/ Pastor and even need to check causes me to yet again raise an eyebrow, albeit less than genuinely surprised.
If you cannot bullet point a simple straightforward five point list and their sources to demonstrate the historical reliability of the gospels then, as I know darn well you are neither stupid nor ignorant, I can pretty much guarantee, you are aware no such list is possible.
LikeLike
I’m happy for the Gospels and Acts to be held to the same standards as any other ancient historical document. When that happens, they present as documents the authors clearly wanted to be understood as accurate and historical in their reporting. If the authors understood themselves as reporting history, why don’t you?
Of course enough time has passed to have produced a list for you to pick apart as you did before when I presented the broadly accepted historical facts regarding the resurrection. I already told you that I haven’t taken the time and why. You asked for a sourced list which I assume – like I already said – that you are wanting a list of events in the Gospels and Acts that are cited by non-biblical sources. I’ve already told you that beyond references to Jesus’ death by crucifixion, there aren’t any. I’ve also already said that this doesn’t present any greater challenge to the historicity of the Gospels and Acts than such a lack does for any other ancient historical document. That you continue to argue otherwise is what tells me you are using a different set of standards for the Gospels and Acts than you are for any other documents. So then, continuing with the example I’ve been using throughout this conversation, why do you think Alexander the Great was a historical figure about whom we can confidently say a whole variety of things? You have lots of confidence in Wikipedia as a starting point for learning about various things. Go to Alexander’s page. Scroll down to the Historiography section. Alexander’s evidence isn’t any stronger than Jesus’ based on the standards you are using.
LikeLike
Because the gospels are NOT regarded as reliable history as has been pointed out to you time and time again.
And Noone here is disputing the historicity of a 1st century ittinerant rabbi crucified for sedition. And this is pretty much all you can say about him.
If every source for any other of your claims is internal and cannot be corroborated then they are not historically reliable.
Best you read that last paragraph again.
More so when many of those claims are factually incorrect.
To then assert that the resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth is the only likely explanation one can conclude from such claims is not really even a case of arrogance, but rather one of bloody-minded intransigence or simply, gross wifull ignorance,
Which of the two categories do you reckon you fall into?
LikeLike
But you are right: theological views (both yours and mine) come into play here. Debating those, though, takes us back over into the world of philosophy.
LikeLike
By the way, I too accept certain things based on evidence.
LikeLike
Such as gravity, I hope?
LikeLike
I mean, I wasn’t a big fan of it when I was growing up and thought there was a chance I was going to develop super powers, but I eventually came around to it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When you realise wearing your underpants over a pair of your sister’s winter tights and tying a table cloth around your neck as a cloak as you are about to launch yourself from the garage roof probably won’t cut it.
LikeLike
It was close, but somewhat before that. Besides, my sister was way smaller than me. Her tights wouldn’t have had a chance. And I always just went with a blanket for a cape. I was always too short for a full tablecloth. My growth spurt came late.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In answer to your question back to Zoe on your last post, by the way, sure we do. Just not very often in the way you’re looking for. It’s a secret trick of the trade ;~)
LikeLike
Typo: raised in a neutral environment.
( but neural sounds good as well! Bit of critical thinking?)
LikeLike
Maybe you might like to put your view to those currently commenting on the post I put up?
Some come from a similar background as you. Perhaps your ideas will gain more traction or at least a more vigorous debate?
Probably not Brian, though!
It might attract a few more readers to your own blog?
LikeLike
With respect, no, I don’t suppose I’ll gain much of a hearing from that crowd. The general reaction so far there seems to be not much more thoughtful than, “Wow! What an idiot,” and worse, I somehow doubt my adding anything there will accomplish all that much. Mrs. (Ms.?) Thompson in particular seems to have had the same reaction you did that accuses me of making a point I explicitly refuted in the comment itself. You shared the comment with a group of people who are by and large likeminded with you on the issue. Lo and behold, they reacted like you did.
LikeLike
Shrug.
Don’t let it be said I didn’t extend you the courtesy of defending your position to a wider audience.
However, if you are only going to preach to the converted( to quote the popular phrase) perhaps you don’t have much of a genuine, evidence based position to defend?
Or to reference one of my favorite films… Back to the future
“Are you 🐔?”
LikeLike
I wouldn’t dream of it.
I’m perfectly willing to engage on these matters with anyone who’s genuinely interested. Although, to be honest, I don’t really get the sense you are genuinely interested so much as using this as an exercise in entertainment. So be it. However, standing up in the middle of a crowded digital room to take up a wildly unpopular (among that crowd) position in front of a bunch of people who for the majority part not only don’t agree, but don’t agree rather viscerally, so they can throw the rhetorical version of rotten cabbage at me doesn’t strike me as a particularly effective platform for engagement. That may very well mean missing out on some genuine engagement, but that’s a risk I’ll live with taking.
If that strikes you as me being a chicken, I guess I’ll have to live with that. I prefer to think of it as being wise with my engagement. Plus, just getting to enjoy going back and forth with you takes up more than the time I really have allotted for this kind of thing. I’ll take up the digital opportunities as they come, but keep on seeking to give the bulk of my attention to having those kinds of engagements with people who are in my own community. After all, face to face is nearly always better than screen to screen.
And also, I love the Back to the Future films. The second was always my favorite. It is sad, though, that we are nearly 10 years further into the future than Marty and Doc went. I remember the fun little buzz of excitement when we got there. That was a long time ago now…
LikeLike
As if Jesus preached because he wanted to be popular?
I am always genuinely interested in the claims of evidence for the supernatural but until such time as any comes along then I will have to be content with trying to learn and understand the historical aspects of religion which I still find fascinating.
And yes, there is entertainment in this also.
LikeLike
No, He certainly did not. Quite the opposite, in fact. But He also told His disciples when sending them out to proclaim the Gospel that if they encountered a crowd that rejected their presentation of His teachings, they were free to seek an audience with another group that might be more receptive. The group of commenters on your blog strikes me as one that has generally already pretty thoroughly rejected what I might have to offer. It seems a better use of my time to concentrate on those who are sincerely interested in it.
As for your interest in the supernatural, unless I’ve missed something, you still don’t even know what such evidence would look like if you encountered it. Besides, you’re operating from out of a naturalistic, empiricist worldview framework. Evidence for the supernatural will very likely go beyond merely empirical means. How do you know you haven’t already encountered it, but rejected it because it didn’t fit your worldview framework? People tend to see what they want to see (and, yes, I know that goes for me too).
LikeLike
Shake the dust off the old sandels and all that.
“Evidence? No squire we just do the faith thing. But if you follow us you might get to keep your schmekel in one piece and the boss runs a course on instant viticulture for full members”
Yes, they have been there, done that, seen no evidence abd got out relatively unscathed.. well, most of them.
Re: Supernatural. Good point! I might have missed it. However if it was from Yahweh I reckon if he wanted me to know he would have ensured I got the message. Meantime, I just have to deal with reality as it is and evidence.
As you have accepted the supernatural what did Yahweh show you that convinced it was real?
LikeLike
The water into wine was a one-off affair as far as I know. But again, you don’t accept the supernatural, so that one (like all the other miracle claims) will seem pretty far-fetched to you (to say the least).
People in the first century didn’t reject the Gospel for reasons of a lack of evidence. They didn’t think like that then. Jews rejected it because they didn’t think it fit with their understanding of God and the Law. Gentiles rejected it because the idea of a god loving them sacrificially was nonsense to them. Their gods weren’t anything like that.
God doesn’t tend to force Himself, and He doesn’t take away or much get in the way of our ability to make meaningful and consequential choices. He tends to work much more subtly than that, a few notable exceptions noted in the Scriptures to the side. He may have reached out to you in some subtle way so that you had the ability to choose or reject Him freely, but because you were operating on the basis of the assumptions you carry, you did indeed miss it. And, like I said, we tend to see what we want to see. People are perfectly capable of missing something right in front of their faces because they aren’t looking for it. I’m not saying this is for sure what has happened because I don’t have idea, of course.
If the supernatural is real, then you aren’t actually dealing with reality as it is. You’re only dealing with half the picture.
You’ve asked that last question before, and I asked my own in return, but you never answered it that I can recall. Are you willing to accept personal testimony? Most of the experience with the supernatural I can recount is personal, as is the case with most people. And, yes, I know that puts it out of the realm of what you will count as evidence, but that’s not something empirical evidence is going to be able to prove in the first place. The resurrection is the lynch pin. If Jesus rose from the dead, then a supernatural God exists. Once you’ve crossed that line, it completely reframes the way you see the world. Until then, much (most) of it won’t make any sense.
LikeLike
The people in the first century probably didn’t reject the claims because of lack of evidence as evidence probably wasn’t so important ( maybe?)
My little skit/ caricature was to illustrate why the lack of evidence ( and the contradictions and moral ambiguitues) is so often the reason so many deconvert in this day and age, not the 1st century, where miracles abounded, gods were two a penny and supernatural events happened on a routine basis witnessed by all and sundry. Ah, yes, the good old days!
Yes. The big IF. I can’t deal with the other half of this supposed reality if it isn’t part of the reality we already have.
Are you willing to accept personal testimony for deconversion?
The resurrection claim is the lynchpin.
Why do you consider those who deconvert reject it?
LikeLike
You can’t if you’re not willing to accept it.
Sure. Those stories are all intensely personal. It’s a big deal to stop believing something you were raised to believe and start believing something else. That goes no matter which direction the conversion is pointed.
And they reject for all kinds of reasons. Some get convinced by the apparent counter evidence. Some never really believed it in the first place. Some convince themselves not to believe it so they don’t have to worry about the moral framework of Christianity stopping them from doing what they would rather be doing. Some were abused by people claiming Christianity and reject because of the pain they were made to associate with the faith. Some were presented with a false picture of the character of God and so rejected a god I agree with them should be rejected, but didn’t really understand who it was they were rejecting who they should have been following in the first place. And the list goes on and on beyond even what I can imagine. And if I were in their shoes, I just might be doing the same thing. That doesn’t mean I think they’re right to do it, but I can at least understand to a limited extent why they did.
LikeLike
That was my last response for the night for me. Time for church :~) Dinner and a business meeting tonight. Thankfully, ours don’t become quite the wild affairs that some churches experience. There are pretty good folks in this community.
LikeLike
Be safe tonight as you keep watch.
LikeLike
By the way, that I merited a response during the game is a pretty big deal. I feel honored. Or is it just halftime?
LikeLike
It was halftime and in any case, only Manchester United.
United are currently ahead 2-0.
Everton’s time in the Premier league looks ever more tenuous, I’m afraid.
The game has all but fizzled out. Boring as Hades.
LikeLike
I wish I understood what any of that meant. I watched all of Ted Lasso, but that didn’t help me understand it any better. Appreciate, yes. Understand, no. Wonderful series, though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Indeed it was. We loved it.
It was recommended to me by Prof Taboo. He lives in Texas!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sudekis is from near my hometown and shares all the same sporting loyalties I do. That made the series extra enjoyable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Totally separate issue: As a fellow WordPress blogger, have you ever gotten a viewership hit from “the European Union”? Exactly what nation would that be? I’ve always wondered.
LikeLiked by 1 person