Atheist vs. Christian - JM's critique of Hugh's answer

June 13, 7:30 PMMethodist ExaminerJames-Michael Smith

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James-Michael vs. Hugh - better get your tickets to their gun show!

Why I reject atheism as a valid worldview:
JM’s response to Hugh

[Note: to read Hugh's response to JM, be sure to visit his page!]
 

Hugh said: “As humankind's knowledge of the world expanded, religious ideas evolved to encompass what was known and offer explanations for it. Eventually, it was the turn of the monotheistic faiths that so many subscribe to today to come into being and offer their explanations for everything. The process involved in this evolution of ideas is fascinating but not within the scope of this essay to go into further. If you're interested though, Richard Dawkins goes into the subject pretty thoroughly in The God Delusion.”

I don’t accept this premise, Hugh.

While in the ancient world polytheism or henotheism were widespread, the idea that monotheism is a later evolution of these is a flawed assumption which based on a selective acceptance of historical data and a discounting of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic history of monotheism going back to the very first human beings. It is often asserted but never demonstrated.

And for a thorough refutation of Dawkins, be sure to check out his colleague Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion. Dawkins attempt at philosophical/theological discussion is taken to the proverbial woodshed by McGrath in just over 100 pages. ;)

Hugh said: “For my purpose, I just want to make three points. The first is that humanity's knowledge of the world around it didn't stop expanding when the holy books of the monotheistic faiths were written.”

I agree. While I can’t speak for any other religious text, the Biblical texts recognize this and encourage a thorough never-ending study of the world around us…which is why the modern scientific method was birthed within the milieu of theism.

Hugh said: "The second is that there is absolutely nothing in any of the holy books of any of them that arguably couldn't have been conceived of or known by people living at that time; so a claim of "divine inspiration" or "special knowledge" is definitely open to question…. The second point requires a closer look though. The claim of divine inspiration is not unquestionably evident anywhere in the holy books I've read. Take morality for instance. The Golden Rule is common in some form or other in all three of the great monotheistic faiths. It's also common to even older religions that no longer have adherents. So are rules against lying, killing and stealing. Since it should be evident that no society can last long if rules like these aren't followed, isn't it possible that could think of them themselves and see the necessity of enforcing them through law... or maybe even by promising divine reward or punishment by the gods too?"

Hugh, you are here committing the basic fallacy that many, even within evangelical Christianity, commit—the notion that Inspiration requires uniqueness. This is a claim that is not found in the Biblical texts, nor is it one that the historic Christianity has claimed for itself. Peter Enns has written thoroughly on this in his controversial book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament.

Hugh said: “If you admit this is possible, then you have to decide which scenario is more plausible; that God(s) inspired and enforce moral laws, or that men thought of them and by claiming that God was on the job would help with the enforcement of them. After all, it's easier to evade a policeman's eye than that of a god watching you and taking notes on your infractions. It's actually irrelevant to the effect the holy rules have as to whether or not the people who wrote them down thought they were divinely inspired. It only matters if you think so.”

Again, this sounds impressive…until you actually begin looking at the various laws of various religions. If purely human authorities came up with, for instance, the Torah covenant prescriptions, then they sure did a crappy job. There are all kinds of laws (not to mention narrative accounts) that totally limit the power and authority of the King, Priests and other ruling officials.

As a Biblical scholar and teacher, I believe this argument reveals a lack of familiarity with the texts themselves on the part of those who make it.

Hugh said: “And we needn't examine whether all these rules are truly moral or not; or whether they sometimes contradict what we think is moral today, such as whether it's an unalloyed good to be willing to kill your own child to please God as Abraham and Jepthah were; or whether God was making some profound moral point by sending a bear to kill children who were teasing a bald man."

Again, Hugh, you, Harris, Dawkins and company are committing the most basic of hermeneutical fallacies. You’re assuming passages in Scripture that are DESCRIPTIVE to be PRESCRIPTIVE. You’re mistaking NARRATIVE for NORMATIVE. A modern illustration of this error would be someone reading Huckleberry Finn and denouncing Huck’s character—and therefore by extension, Mark Twain—as racist because of the frequent use of the “N” word.

But this is already far afield of our discussion because it is a particular issue within textual interpretation and therefore a secondary level of debate. The question is on the validity of Theism, not particular views of Inspiration of Scripture.

Hugh said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to be considered seriously. Where is the extraordinary evidence for divine inspiration or special knowledge?”

In the historical events to which the texts witness.

We can come back to this later, but the best historian who’s written the most persuasively on this, even by Antony Flew’s newfound Deistic standard of judgment is N.T. Wright. I wholeheartedly recommend him to any serious thinker as someone to engage with. He’s no pop-apologist by any means. (www.ntwrightpage.com)

Hugh said: “Where does Jehovah say, "No, no, no, King Hiram. 3 is not the best value to use for pi when you build my temple. Use 3.14159 and the structure will be more pleasing to me." If God had given the value of pi to five or more decimal places, that would have shown special knowledge unavailable at the time. As it happens, the Egyptians already had calculated pi to two decimal places but the "divinely inspired" Hebrew who wrote about the First Temple wasn't even aware of that.”

Hugh, this is the biggest strawman I’ve come across in a long time! Why would anyone expect an Ancient Near East suzerain covenant treaty document (such as Exodus) or Royal court chronicle (such as 1-2 Kings/1-2Chronicles) to provide lessons in geometry?? You are enforcing your own unique notion of what “Inspired” means onto the texts that are completely anachronistic and foreign. This would be like me criticizing Shakespeare because he didn’t use the word “D’oh!”

You can’t use a subjective, foreign standard in order to criticize any body of literature, divinely Inspired or otherwise. I suggest reading my article on what Inspiration actually means, and more importantly the works I cited in it, before pursuing this line of debate in the future.

Otherwise you’ll end up looking as Biblically inept as Harris! 

Hugh said: “Similarly, wouldn't it be nice if Jesus said, "Hey, I raised Lazarus from the dead but here's a miracle you can perform even when I'm not in town; a cure for cancer."

“It would’ve been nice if…”   =/=   valid argument against historical claims

It would’ve been nice if Jesus did a lot of things. But the question that matters is not “why didn’t Jesus do X?” It’s “what do the things that Jesus actually did mean and why did He do them?” But again, this is drifting significantly from our original question.

Hugh said: “Unfortunately, there is nothing in any of the holy books that could not plausibly originate from the minds of the people of the time. Even the verses that some claim predict future events, as Deuteronomy 28:64 and Luke 19:43-44 are supposed to do for the Jewish Diaspora, aren't written with the kind of specificity one would expect from an all-knowing deity. If they were, they might read, "66 years after the Savior's birth and again 132 years after it, the Jews will rebel against their Roman overlords, be defeated after terrific struggles and be scattered across the face of the Earth. Not until 1,948 years after the Savior's birth will they have a homeland again." (author's note: most of these examples were taken from or inspired by Sam Harris's wonderful little book, Letter to a Christian Nation. I recommend it for its concise, easy-to-read explanations of most of the critical thinking vs faith arguments.)”

See the previous two answers to these extremely juvenile arguments. I’m not meaning that as a personal insult. I’m saying that these lines of critique of Biblical events are tell-tale signs of an ignorance basic hermeneutics and wouldn’t hold any weight in discussions of any other literary works…yet people continue using them when discussing religious literature for some reason. None of this is compelling evidence against the existence of a theistic God. It’s just compelling evidence for why we shouldn’t settle for bad interpretations of Scripture! ;)

Hugh wrote: “Finally we come to my third point. Despite the fact none of monotheism's holy books can be unequivocally shown to originate anywhere other than the minds of people of the times they were written, each is claimed to be the repository of absolute truths. The effect of this is a tendency to freeze that time's worldview into dogma and retard the acceptance of any new knowledge that's at odds with it. It skews understanding as people of faith try to pound the square peg of reality into the round hole of their dogma. Almost all the social, material and scientific progress of the world has been held back rather than assisted by theists. It isn't just Galileo's sun-centered view of the solar system or Darwin's theory of evolution that they've rejected and tried to suppress; it's Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine, Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod, emancipation of women and a whole host of other things.”

Hugh, there are so many urban legends in this part of your answer that I just don’t know where to begin. I’ll just say that if the above caricature was accurate, there would be no such thing as modern science...which began within a theistic worldview.  Genetics (Gregor Mendel, Francis Collins?), physics (Sir Isaac Newton?), astronomy (Brahe, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler??). Seriously, ANY competent history of science intro textbook could demonstrate the fallacy of claiming that theism is somehow antagonistic to science.

C'mon, you gotta step it up, Hugh. You’re sharper than this!  ;)