Skeptics frequently complain at the lack of evidence for miraculous divine intervention in the world today. Philosophers of religion call this the problem of divine hiddenness: if there is a God then why is there not better evidence for him? Why does he so often seem to be hidden? Petitionary prayer is one example. Christians believe in a God who answers prayer, so why don't we have more examples of prayers that lead to discernable effects in the world?

 In an earlier post I wrote: "I believe there are many powerful examples of the power of prayer." beetle496 replied, "So why cannot I find even one that stands up to modest skepticism?"

But what does that mean? What is "modest skepticism"? Perhaps beetle496 means this: Read more

The idea is frequently invoked to justify a pretty sweeping skepticism against the New Testament accounts of Jesus, including the miracles and resurrection. People back then were uneducated rubes who would believe anything. And if so then we really cannot trust what they said, leaving the status of the New Testament in doubt.

Here's what Conversational Atheist said to illustrate the point:

My personal favorite story that helps give an idea of the intense credulity of the time is the one where the town mistakes Paul for Zeus! Paul barely manages to stop the high priest of the Temple of Zeus from offering a sacrifice to Paul/Zeus. Read more

Christians believe they worship the God who is truth. So why is it that they often play fast and loose with the truth? "Fast and loose with the truth?" you say. "What are you talking about O Tentative Apologist?"

Well let me put it this way: I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard an urban legend in the pulpit. If I did, I'd probably have enough to take my wife out for dinner and a movie. In case you're wondering, yes, that's too many (especially considering the price of movies these days).

Perhaps you've heard this illustration of the power of prayer: Read more

While walking among the book tables at the American Academy of Religion conference in Montreal this year I came across Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's new book Morality Without God? (Oxford University Press, 2009). Sinnott-Armstrong is an atheist at Dartmouth College, a respected scholar (as employment at an ivy-league school surely implies!) and a veteran debater with the evangelical champion of debate William Lane Craig. And for a person like myself weary of reading 500 page academic tomes, at only 170 pages Sinnott-Armstrong's book provided a pleasant read on the flight back home.

I appreciated Sinnott-Armstrong's book for two reasons. First, though he is an atheist he deals with Christians fairly (for the most part, but see below) and asks the same of those evangelical Christians who are his main interlocutors in the book. The first couple chapters especially provide an intriguing analysis of Christian prejudicial attitudes toward atheists. I was interested at this point in the convergence between Sinnott-Armstrong's views and my own as developed in my forthcoming book Not All Atheists are Fools. We would all benefit from Sinnott-Armstrong's advice:

We all--atheists and theists alike--need to learn to listen and observe instead of trying to feel our way into the lives of people who seem distant to us. (41) Read more

It is a pretty standard course that when a person disagrees with us on a matter of deep conviction, particularly where we believe a significant moral issue is at stake, there is a great reluctance to attempt to understand the person's views. Indeed, a sympathetic ear is often seen to be a siding with the wicked person. And we would sooner dismiss or demonize than seek to understand.

Consider for instance the 2005 film "Paradise Now". The film depicts two childhood friends, both Palestinians, being drawn into a plot to participate in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. One ultimately participates and the other does not.

The film received high praise from some quarters, but the response from others was vociferous: the film, so it was charged, serves to justify the acts of a suicide bomber. Read more

Scenario A: Alex the Christian Murderer

Alex is a Christian active in his church, a deacon and Sunday school teacher. One day Alex comes to hold the belief that God wants him to kill his wife, and so he strangles her and then flees the city. Alex is picked up a few days later in a neighboring state and the media is saturated with images and stories about this Christian and his heinous deed. Alex's church is featured in the news, his pastor and some congregatns are interviewed. Many people suspect that there must be something wrong with that church. Alex's trial and his lurid description of God's direction creates a media sensation. Alex's lawyer pleads insanity. Many people suspect it is the religion that is crazy, and Alex is just one more casualty.

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The Case

A ten year old girl from Perth Australia named Tamar is diagnosed with advanced liver cancer. According to the hospital, she has a 50-60% chance of survival if she submits to a seven week course of chemotherapy and no chance of survival without it. The parents refuse the treatment for their daughter, opting instead for "natural" cures. As the weeks drag on the hospital becomes increasingly desperate and so appeals to the Supreme Court in Perth to intervene and force the treatment. The night before the case is to be heard, the mother flees with her daughter to El Salvador so that she can be treated for her cancer naturally, that is with herbal tea and mud wraps.

The rest of the story, told on an Australian news program (and available here: http://blip.tv/file/2707012/ [with thanks to Conversational Atheist who drew it to my attention]) then unfolds at an agonizing pace. The film crew follows the family to San Salvador where they are interviewed. It is clear that Tamar is growing worse by the day and is in great discomfort. Soon, doctors predict, her airway will become obstructed, thereby creating the sensation of suffocation. And we are filled with anger and disgust at her parents, wondering how they could let their child die for such foolish beliefs.

The story makes clear that this family is not only drawn to alternative medicine, but also holds a devout Christian faith. Both parents have a peace that also has something of the spirit of resignation about it. The mother says "We just trusted that the Lord will protect us." And the father adds: "I don't want to lose my daughter, but if it is God's decision, who am I to fight against it?" The grim situation is summarized by the reporter: ""Tamar's parents are risking everything on a miracle cure. As devout Christians they believe ultimately it is God who will decide her fate." Read more

Paul lamented to the Corinthians "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready." How little things have changed in two thousand years. It is a sad commentary how many Christians yet today remain content with a kindergarten Christianity understanding of the faith. They know that Jesus loves me, but they seem not to know much more.

Actually some will say they can't get much farther than "Jesus loves me". And it ain't their fault either, because doctrine is just too hard. Theology is difficult and makes their brain hurt. As a seminary professor I hear these kinds of protests on a regular basis. And I don't buy them for one minute. I know such asseverations are baloney because I have listened to late night sports talk radio. And it doesn't take long listening before I am marveling at the encyclopedic knowledge and brilliant strategizing that is repeatedly demonstrated by the Joe Six-Packs that call in to offer commentary on their favorite team.

The issue it would seem is not one of intellectual ability, but rather of interest. Many Christians simply are not that interested in thinking about Christian doctrine. They are content with week after week of sermons that reiterate "Jesus loves me" in a thousand different ways. But they are not interested in venturing off those well worn paths and into the wilder territory of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the atonement, or arguments for the existence of God. Read more

In my last post I pointed out that atheism becomes very contentious when it is wedded to the naturalistic worldview. As a way into the discussion I summarized naturalism as follows:

Naturalism: "the view that the only things that exist are matter and energy and that which supervenes upon matter and energy."

Let's call this the "naturalism thesis" or "NT". I then argued that NT lacks justification: the atheist has no reason to believe it true. Read more

Most theists are not "plain theists". Rather, they embed their theism within a wider worldview perspective such as Christianity, Islam, or deism. By the same token, most atheists are not plain atheists. Instead they embed their atheism within a wider worldview perspective: that which is commonly called "naturalism". As such, it is worthwhile not only for the theist to critique atheism as a claim, but also to evaluate the justification for the naturalistic worldview in which atheism is typically embedded.

So what then is naturalism? This is a fascinating and very difficult question to answer. While naturalists debate over the best way to define their position, here is one way that naturalism is commonly defined:

Naturalism: "the view that the only things that exist are matter and energy and that which supervenes upon matter and energy." Read more

Over the last few posts I have been arguing that morality is objective and that naturalistic (i.e. non-supernaturalist) views of the world are unable to ground morality as objective. Thus, insofar as we agree that we do in fact know certain moral facts as objective, absolute facts (e.g. it is a fact that it is wrong to torture infants for fun as surely as it is a fact that 2+2=4), this counts against the truth of naturalism and is indeed a reason to reject naturalism.

In other words, the atheist must choose which of the two propositions is more plausible:

(1) Naturalism is true 

(2) It is objectively wrong to torture infants Read more

The Nazi alien thought experiment showcased in "Rapist insects and Nazi Aliens from Planet X-1951" was intended to demonstrate the implausibilty with species-relative analyses of morality. I am happy to report that the last fifty hours have seen a number of interesting comments by way of response, but nothing that hinders the argument. 

Sorceror responds by talking about ethics as akin to a game like chess. I would appreciate it if he would develop this analogy a bit more, put a little more meat on the bones as it were, so it would be clearer what he was actually intending to communicate. How do you know if you've won the ethics game, for instance? Because if winning this game entails the possible commission of moral horrors then Sorceror's analogy falls flat. (E.g. if a person wins by leaving the most progeny, and raping leaves the male with the most progeny, then the male can win the ethics game by raping which means that he ought to rape. Obviously this outcome would count against this type of moral analysis. So unless Sorceror can explain how the rules of this game map reasonably well onto our moral intuitions, the analogy must be rejected.)

Sorceror then finds fault with the Nazi aliens thought experiment: "Just as changing from a plastic to a marble chess set doesn't change the rules of chess, throwing a birthmark onto human beings doesn't change their whole moral scheme." Read more

I fear that I cannot engage everything in the last post, so I'm saying a few words here about Sorceror's fine comments which were, I believe, next in the queue. As with most of the skeptical atheist types responding here, Sorceror is not happy with the notion that rape, cannibalism, torture, and the like are objective moral horrors. Sorceror believes at best they are horrors only relative to the human species.

Why? Sorceror begins with by saying a few words about the moral sense: "We also have a 'moral sense' - understanding the motives and actions of others, and how best to relate to them, has also been kinda important to survival, too. We can 'just tell' that mothers sadistically killing children is a bad idea."

Sorceror is not being facetious here it would seem. No he (Sorceror, if you're a she, please correct me) appears to assume that we do know this, but we only know it relative to our species. Read more

Ahh the relativity of strangeness. That which doesn't fit with one's presuppositions is suddenly suspect, brazenly bizarre. So it seems to be is the reaction when some atheists countenance the existence of a moral law that exists objectively regardless of the existence of any and all finite creatures.

AnAtheist.net's comments on my post "If there is no God then is everything permissible?" provides a great example. I explained there to AAN that I was concerned with the existence of objective morality, not merely morals that exist only relative to our species. (The former would mean, for instance, that it is wrong for all rational creatures to torture other creatures for fun. The latter would be that the wrongness of torture is relative to a given species [e.g. humanity] such that it may be morally praiseworthy for other species to torture for fun.)

I have no interest in evolutionary, species-relative morality not least because thought experiments on ethical situations of inter-species contact provide strong grounds that such a view utterly fails to account for our moral intuitions. Read more

The notion of argument tends to have a bad connotation today, suggesting to many an image of red faced, outraged people with bulging eyes and flecks of spit flying from their snarling mouths. That is unfortunate since the verb "to argue" comes from a Latin root meaning "to make clear." And making your position clear to people you disagree with seems to me at least to be an eminently valuable exercise.

With that said, I now turn to one of the challenges of reasoning with my skeptical/atheistic readership. In short, many of them appear to be unable to see (or unwilling to concede) a point that I have stressed time and again: namely that the invocation of "strangeness" and the demand for explanation of something deemed strange is relative to one's background set of beliefs. To one person that which seems a fantastic folly is, to another, a familiar fact.

The problem is that the atheists that frequently post here complain about anything that is not a part of their worldview or experience set as strange, incredible folly, while laboring their level best to treat equivalently mysteries that they do accept as incontrovertible familiar facts. And I have been laboring to show that this is an inexcusable double standard. Read more

The moral argument for God's existence finds one of its most historically influential treatments in Dostoyevsky's magisterial The Brothers Karamazov. Consider the following passage where Smerdyakov replies to Ivan (the atheist):

I first thought that if I had some money I could start all over again, either in Moscow or, better still, abroad; I got that idea, sir, mainly from 'everything is permitted'--it was you who taught me that, sir, because you used to say it a lot--because, if there is no eternal God, then there is no virtue and, what's more, absolutely no need for it.

Christian apologists have frequently adopted Dostoyevsky's treatment of the argument. For instance, Peter Kreeft argues: "Is it not true, as both Dostoyevsky the Christian and Sartre the atheist say, that 'if there is no God, then everything is permissible'?" (Three Approaches to Abortion, 50).

The unstated premise in such arguments seems to be that everything (e.g. every free human action) is not permissible. Thus the fact that atheism permits everything counts against the truth of atheism. So what is to be said for this argument?

If we are to assess the worth of the argument we have to distinguish two distinct arguments. Consider again Smerdyakov's closing sentence: "if there is no eternal God, then there is no virtue and, what's more, absolutely no need for it." Thus, the existence of God is tied to (1) the existence of virtue and (2) the obligation to satisfy virtue.

We can call the first argument the "Virtue existence argument." According to this argument, the existence of objective virtue and vice or value and disvalue depends on the existence of God.

The second argument is the "Virtue reward/punishment argument." According to this argument the existence of objective reward and punishment, or the satisfaction of justice, depends on the existence of God. If there is no God then ultimately there is no one to lower the boom if we fail to pursue virtue in our moral lives. (Those familiar with Kant will see here an inchoate version of his argument for the existence of God from practical reason.)

The virtue reward/punishment argument seems to me certainly correct in one sense. If there is no human being more powerful than Genghis Khan to call him to account, then anything is permitted for Khan. But the argument seems weak in another sense since it is very doubtful that our strong inclination to see the standards of justice satisfied (that is, to see Khan get his comeuppance) provides in itself a very persuasive argument for God's existence. Maybe this is just the kind of universe in which virtue, though existent, is not necessarily rewarded.

The more promising argument is the first. As the virtue existence argument goes, the existence of objective virtue or value could only exist if God exists. Thus, if certain free human actions exemplify objective moral value or disvalue, then this implies the existence of God as the source of that value.

Unfortunately I don't think the virtue existence argument is particularly persuasive. But that is not to say that it is a complete misfire. It certainly does refute naturalism which claims that only the spatio-temporal continuum that is the object of scientific enquiry exists. On the value view there is at least one dimension to reality irreducible to the spatio-temporal and that is the moral universe in which free actions have moral value or disvalue. 

But the fact that the existence of objective value counts against naturalism does not mean that it necessarily counts for God. Rather it only counts for supernaturalism, and that is compatible both with objective value being rooted in the necessary willing of a personal agent (i.e. God) or with it being self-existent as in Plato's form of the good. 

So to sum up, we have here an argument against naturalism, but it underdetermines whether personal (i.e. theistic) supernaturalism or impersonal (i.e. platonic) supernaturalism is the best explanation of moral valuation.

Atheists typically are not up on how a theologian reasons to a certain conclusion. Clearly Consersational Atheist is among these. But I'll give him credit. Rather than dismiss theology as bunkum, he has politiely asked for me to explain how a theologian reasons to a particular conclusion. He lists a bunch of doctrines and then states: "choose from these any ONE that you believe and can present a methodology."

Being the pleasant fellow that I am, I will happily oblige the request. I'll discuss here #2 "that souls exist". The point is not to mount a full case but to provide a very brief outline to explain how a theologian reasons.

Tradition Read more

My friend Conversational Atheist (CA) expresses a common complaint that theology lacks street cred because it is not sufficiently analogous to the natural sciences which (apparently) is the gold standard of public knowledge discourse. This is how ole' CA puts it:

I know that theology is not science. It's very obvious that it is not a science.

But do you have anything at all resembling a methodology of ANY kind that you could tell a person who is just interested in the truth of the matter without an opinion one way or another? How could he check the claims of the theologian? I'm not asking for something that can be measured with a microscope or something -- although that would be nice -- but even something as nebulous as: if you pray every day you will feel warm inside. Cause then we could discuss the interpretation of the results. Read more

You know how conversations go, off down one tangent and then down another. Before you know it you turn back and wonder: how did we ever arrive here?

And so it was that the last thread began with me presenting an argument for testimony as a properly basic way to learn about the world, and it ended up (at least so far) with gaga challenging me to provide the grounds on which I would reject ancient testimony attesting to the existence of giant spiders that ate camels.

That's right. Giant spider-eating camels. I mean camel spiders are freaky enough (as Iraq veterans will tell you), but camel eating spiders? Yikes. Read more

It has been a busy few days, but at last I have some time to return to the bevy of comments on our ongoing epistemology debates. Given the sake of space limits, I shall have to limit myself here to AnAtheist.Net's counter-claim (in the "nailing jelly to walls" thread) that we only accept the testimony of others when we have evidence for their reliability.

My argument was concerned to defend the claim that a wide variety of our properly basic beliefs are innocent-until-proven guilty. Among the examples I provided are testimony beliefs, memory beliefs, and sense perception beliefs.

The point is simply this: if many of these beliefs are innocent-until-proven-guilty (that is, rationally held and if true then known, without evidence and in the absence of defeaters), then it may be that some religious beliefs are likewise innocent-until-proven-guilty. That is, a Christian could know "God loves me" or "Jesus is God" in a properly basic way, apart from evidence. Read more