Contra Dusman
January 2006
These are my posts to the Unchained
Radio forum, in a thread titled The
Bible vs. Evidence. Most of my entries in this thread were posts in
response to a Christian who subscribes under the nickname Dusman.
Since my responses to Dusman were comprehensive interactions
with what he had written to me, there was no need to post his messages as well,
for this would have been redundant, resulting in a much longer webpage.
Inquiries should be sent to: Dawson Bethrick
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:58 am
Dusman wrote:
It's soooo funny that you don't understand that Bahnsen is *NOT*
saying that there are *no* evidential facts, but that they are interpreted
differently depending on the type of "glasses" a man wears.
Which suggests that Christians have
deliberately donned a set of glasses which allows them to see what they want to
see. I'm reminded of the words of Christian apologist Phil Fernandes, in his
debate with JJ Lowder, when he candidly stated:
"I just believe that we are
very good about lying to ourselves, and only accepting, uh, or interpreting the
evidence the way we would like to."
When a man says such things as this, I recognize that he's speaking for
himself at the very least. So what he's telling us is that he's good at lying
to himself and at interpreting the evidence the way he would like to. At least Fernandes seems to understand.
not_reformed wrote:
I keep asking you, and you keep
ignoring it....what is the point in continuing to tell non-believers on this
board that they are wrong, they are illogical, they are irrational, blah blah blah....when you believe *THEY
CAN'T* see things your way....unless they get the scales removed from their
eyes?
Actually, from what Dusman has said, it's more
like "you non-believers cannot see unless you put on these special glasses
that allow you to see what we want you to see." Fernandes
makes it clear that it's about deceiving oneself into believing what he wants
to believe (we know this is possible with other religions and forms of
self-delusion), and people like Bahnsen are clear in that one will only
"see" the evidence as supporting the claim that a man in first
century Palestine rose from the dead if we choose to insert a device which
allows us to "see" that evidence in the way we want to see it.
*Wanting* is the key here: if you *want* to believe, well, what's going to stop
you? Meanwhile, it's not clear what precisely is supposed to be taken as
"evidence" supporting the view that a man in first century
_________________
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:46 pm
Christian apologist Phil Fernandes wrote:
"I just believe that we are
very good about lying to ourselves, and only accepting, uh, or interpreting the
evidence the way we would like to."
Dusman wrote:
Ditto
unto the atheists.
Yes, I know that Christians want to speak for others. However, notice
that all I've done is allow the Christian to speak for himself. There's nothing
I need to add to that.
I wrote:
Actually, from what Dusman has said, it's more like "you non-believers
cannot see unless you put on these special glasses that allow you to see what
we want you to see."
Dusman wrote:
Actually, from what the BIBLE
says, it's like this: "you unbelievers cannot and will not EMBRACE the
Christian *worldview* in its entirety so as to avoid being intellectual and
moral fools."
Let me get this right. Are you saying one should not avoid being an
intellectual and moral fool?
Dusman wrote:
Want to see the folly of
unbelief? Just read Dawkins' Dangerous idea we discussed on The Narrow Mind
last night. Now there's an HONEST atheist!
I don't think I've read that one. Am I really missing out?
I wrote:
Fernandes makes it
clear that it's about deceiving oneself into believing what he wants to believe
(we know this is possible with other religions and forms of self-delusion), and
people like Bahnsen are clear in that one will only "see" the
evidence as supporting the claim that a man in first century Palestine rose
from the dead if we choose to insert a device which allows us to
"see" that evidence in the way we want to see it.
Dusman wrote:
Explain "device."
From Merriam-Webster's:
1 : something devised or contrived:
as a (1) : PLAN, PROCEDURE, TECHNIQUE (2) : a scheme to deceive : STRATAGEM,
TRICK b : something fanciful, elaborate, or intricate in design c : something
(as a figure of speech) in a literary work designed to achieve a particular
artistic effect
See? It fits.
I wrote:
*Wanting* is the key here: if you
*want* to believe, well, what's going to stop you?
Dusman wrote:
In the case of atheism, nothing
but the Holy Spirit working through the means of the preached/taught/instructed
message of the gospel either through apologetic encounters/worldview clashes
(Acts 17) or through the preached message (Acts 2).
So, are you saying that if someone is not preached to, the Holy Spirit
cannot operate on non-believers? John Frame gets a lot closer to the truth when
he states “A person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to
belief.” (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37.)
Sort of says it all, doesn't it?
I wrote:
Meanwhile, it's not clear what
precisely is supposed to be taken as "evidence" supporting the view
that a man in first century
Dusman wrote:
Uargued philosophical bias and arbitariness.
Oh, it's been argued alright, Dusman. GA Wells
is a good place to start. You might also want to consult Earl Doherty, Robert
Price, James Still, and many, many more.
Of course, you could just dismiss them all on the basis of your own unargued philosophical bias and arbitrariness. But you
won't be able to say that my points have no argumentative support.
I wrote:
A claim does not serve as its own
evidence.
Dusman wrote:
Well then stop using logic.
Can you cite me one logic text which states that a claim validly serves
as its own evidence? For instance, if I make the claim "the moon is made
of green cheese," do you think I can point to this claim as evidence
supporting it?
I wrote:
And if
there is no evidence . . .
Dusman wrote:
This is neither Bahnsen's nor the
Christian's claim. There's plenty of archaeological evidence. You'll just
reinterpret it to fit your no-god world view.
Can you cite for the record what you believe constitutes archaeological
evidence for a dead man rising from the grave in first century
I wrote:
After all, the bible makes it
clear that faith is the intentional operation by which these things are
"known."
Dusman wrote:
1. How do you *know* the falsity
of that statement given your atheism?
The falsity of which statement? I don't
think that a statement recognizing that the bible makes faith an intentional
operation (cf. act of will) is false. Do you think that the bible's heroes
listed in Hebrews 11 and hoisted up as examples of faith in action acted
against their own will?
Dusman wrote:
2. How is Christian faith reduced
to mere "intentional operation" per the Bible and . . . .
Who said anything about "mere"? Either faith is intentional or
it's unintentional. I understand it to be intentional, and I think there are
plenty of examples in the bible to support this. But if you want to argue
otherwise, I'm willing to consider your points. Since I don't claim knowledge
on the basis of faith, I am happy to concede to the experts on the matter.
Dusman wrote:
3. Since you've admitted that
Christians believe you have to have "the glasses" on (i.e., worldview)
to understand spiritual things rightly, then by your own admission, how do you
rightly make a judgment against Biblical faith if you can't "see" it
spiritually so as to rightly understand it?
You seem to be confusing what I have acknowledged (some) believers to
believe, and what I hold to actually be the case. Since this confusion is vital
to your question, it invalidates it. As for seeing things
"spiritually," until someone can explain to me how such a mode of
perception can be clearly distinguished from simply imagining something to be
the case, I really "see" no difference between the two. :)
_________________
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:51 pm
Dusman wrote:
You do not know you are a
reprobate until you've died in unbelief
How does someone know something after he's died? After he's died, he'll
be dead.
_________________
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:40 am
I wrote:
How does someone know something
after he's died? After he's died, he'll be dead.
Dusman wrote:
He knows because his soul stands
before God whereas his flesh is decaying in the dirt.
But he'll be dead, right? Or is there really no such thing as death?
Quote:
You think I'm gonna
assume your no-god, die-like-a-dog, burn-out-like-a-candle, no afterlife
worldview to answer a question directed to me? (Pro. 1:7)
I suppose that, in the safe zone of an exchange on the internet like
this, one could carry on as if he believed anything. One could even deny the
reality of death. But the real truth of what you actually believe to be the
case would come out in your daily activity, which I am supposing is generally
similar to mine. Every day, I take those actions which I need, on account of my
nature as a biological organism, in order to achieve the values which my life
requires. If I don't do this, I will die (since in my worldview, death is
real). I could pretend that my consciousness will survive after I die, but that
would be dishonest. Now, I have heard believers claim that man's consciousness
survives in spite of his death, as if consciousness could somehow obtain
independent of the neural activity of a biological organism. However, I have
never seen any good arguments for this, and I cannot dismiss ample scientific
evidence to the contrary, either. But if you have some kind of evidence (and by
"evidence" I mean more than some unargued
claim written in a story book), I'm certainly willing to examine it.
I wrote:
Yes, I know that Christians want
to speak for others. However, notice that all I've done is allow the Christian
to speak for himself.
Dusman wrote:
And who's to say I should trust
this information given what you've done to Bahnsen's material on your blog? ???? Mr. Manata
has done an excellent job pointing out how you fail as Bahnsen's "interlocutor"
par excellance here: http://presstheantithesis.blogspot.com/2005/12/greg-bahnsens-self-appointed-internet.html
. . . . y
numero dos aqui: http://presstheantithesis.blogspot.com/2005/12/greg-bahnsens-self-appointed-internet_28.html
I question your reliability in
presenting info and facts due to the self-incriminating evidence above for all
to see.
Yes, Paul Manata indeed has an ax to grind
against me. It's clear he thinks there's a need to discredit me personally.
However, discrediting me personally is not the same as interacting with my
arguments. It's clear that he's frustrated with my work, but noteworthy that he
ends up doing precisely what he accuses me of having done. As for being
"Bahnsen's 'interlocutor'," a title I have never claimed for myself,
it is remarkable that no one has come to rescue Bahnsen from my interaction.
For instance, where is the argument that Bahnsen is said to have presented in
his opening statement? From what premises does the conclusion "therefore,
the God of Christianity exists" follow? No apologist that I've asked has
shown me. My own analysis shows that Bahnsen only presents a poof, not a proof.
A poof is worthless, and cannot double as a proof. But this does not prevent
those who want to believe in Christianity's teachings from confusing the two.
Quote:
Therefore, I take the Fernandez
comment as (1) moot, and (2) I didn't say it, so I don't have to defend
it.
I would not expect either you or anyone else (save perhaps Fernandes himself) to defend his admission. But I don't
think it's moot since, as an apologist who engages in public debates, he is a
spokesman for Christianity - one of its more visible defenders from what I have
seen - and such admissions are far from "moot" since they are clearly
relevant to the antithesis lying at the center of the debate. If the debate is
between "belief and unbelief," as many apologists have told me, and
it's admitted by at least some of the spokesman for the belief side of the
fence that they are good at lying to themselves and governing their
interpretations by their wishes and preferences, then it would be amiss to take
such admissions into account. Indeed, such admissions are simply consistent
with the metaphysical subjectivism which lies at the foundation of religious beliefs,
among them Christianity's own teachings.
Dusman wrote:
Actually, from what the BIBLE
says, it's like this: "you unbelievers cannot and will not EMBRACE the
Christian *worldview* in its entirety so as to avoid being intellectual and
moral fools."
I wrote:
Let me get this right. Are you
saying one should not avoid being an intellectual and moral fool?
Dusman wrote:
Naw, read it
again
By repeating what you had earlier verbatim, you really don't offer any
new information here. The emphases are also unhelpful. Perhaps you need to
rewrite what you wanted to say, Dusman. The way it
reads now, it sounds like you're saying "unbelievers won't embrace
Christianity *in order to* avoid being intellectual and moral fools." In
other words, if our intention is to "avoid being intellectual and moral
fools," we recognize that we should not "embrace the Christian worldview."
(And I agree with this.) I take it that his is not what you intended to say
(which is why I asked in the first place), and am supposing that the phrase
"so as to" is a point of ambiguity which needs to be clarified.
Anyway, unless you think this is an important point, why don't we drop it and
move on?
Dusman cited two verses from the
bible. They are:
Proverbs 1:7:
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise
wisdom and instruction."
And
Psalm 14:1:
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no
God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that
doeth good."
In the case of the first quote (Prov. 1:7), we
have what comes closest in the bible (from what I can find) to a statement
identifying the believer's fundamental starting point, which is said in this
verse to be a form of fear. In other words, the believer begins with an emotion
(apparently a deep sense of dread) as his starting point and upon this
"foundation" he surrenders his mind to whatever the bible might say
and to whatever his religious mentors tell him to think. This view itself rests
on a false understanding of emotion; emotion is not a primary, but a reaction
to new knowledge and its contextual implications for one's values. Thus the
mind cannot begin with fear or any other emotion, for there is no content to
inform it at that level. In essence, I take Proverbs 1:7 as a clear admission
that Christianity rests on a stolen concept (i.e., the affirmation of a concept
while denying or ignoring its genetic roots). It's as if one were
to say "I begin with calculus" and later in his philosophy it turns
out that he rejects basic arithmetic.
The latter part of this verse says that "fools despise wisdom and
instruction." Unless this is definitional, it's hard to see how the author
could say with any certainty what someone else despises or doesn't despise. But
the value of pat maxims like this is not in their intellectual validity, but in
their handy use as come backs when nothing else comes to mind. But it very well
may be the case that many fools despise wisdom and instruction. Look at how
believers in supernatural conscious beings react to my writings. Perhaps that's
a confirming instance.
Psalms 14:1 is another example of a pat maxim which can be employed, not
for its actual truth value, but as simple means of discrediting those who are
essentially religion's spoilsports - i.e., those who point out that all these
beliefs are literally and intellectually nonsensical.
I wrote:
I don't think I've read that one.
Am I really missing out?
Dusman wrote:
It's a real dandy. Here it is: http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html
Can you tell me what you found most impressive on this link? Perhaps
there's a specific passage that struck you as somehow "dandy" that
you could share?
I wrote:
So, are you saying that if
someone is not preached to, the Holy Spirit cannot operate on
non-believers?
Dusman wrote:
No, I said preaching is one of
the *PRIMARY* means that God uses to bring His elect to faith in Christ.
Yes, many of the world's religions rely on some means of indoctrination
in order to promulgate their agenda. Most religions tend to survive by
indoctrinating its members when they are young, impressionable and
philosophically defenseless. I find that Christianity is certainly no different
from other religions in this respect. But if I thought it were actually true
that a "holy spirit" were going around and "indwelling"
human beings' minds and hearts, I'd think that preaching would be unnecessary,
far from being "the *PRIMARY* means that God uses to bring His elect to
faith in Christ." If we look at the story of Saul's conversion on the road
to
Dusman wrote:
The word preaching (in the
original Gk. kerusso) doesn't *only* entail standing
behind a pulpit or yelling at a crowd of people. It simply means proclamation,
hence can be done in any conversation/dialogue.
Tell you what, Dusman, if you think you have a solid argument which supports the
conclusion "therefore the Christian god exists" or something along
these lines, how would it go? What would be your argument's premises?
I wrote:
John Frame gets a lot closer to
the truth when he states “A person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the
road to belief.” (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p.
37.) Sort of says it all, doesn't it?
Dusman wrote:
I don't know,
I don't have the book in front of me (not at home). Given your treatment of
Bahnsen, I'll have to check it myself.
Did you check? What did you find?
I wrote:
Oh, it's been argued alright, Dusman. GA Wells is a good place to start. You might also
want to consult Earl Doherty, Robert Price, James Still, and many, many
more.
Dusman wrote:
So all those men don't have
philosophical biases? Hmm....nice pick with Doherty and Still....these guys are
seen as loons in the world of NT scholarship.
I did not say that these men do not have philosophical biases. I simply
said that my view that the New Testament contains legendary invention has ample
arguments to support it. Recall that your incomplete sentence response to me
was simply "Uargued philosophical bias and arbitariness." So I perceived a need to correct you on
this misunderstanding. And yes, I know that many people have not yet received
the verdicts of many of these thinkers, but that's not surprising. In
Dusman wrote:
LOL.
Above, Dusman, you cited Paul Manata's blog attacks against me.
Did you notice that he cited a logic text pointing out that use of
"laughter as a diversionary tactic"?
I wrote:
Can you cite me one logic text
which states that a claim validly serves as its own evidence?
Dusman wrote:
You missed the point Dawson. Here
it tis' again:
I take this as a no - you cannot cite one logic text which states that a
claim validly serves as its own evidence (which was the point).
Dusman wrote:
You said:
Quoting me:
A claim does not serve as its own
evidence.
Dusman wrote:
. . to
which I replied . .
Well then stop using logic.
The Law of Noncontradiction
is argued for in a circular fashion. In order to demonstrate the validity of
this law you end up using this law and all attempts at avoiding it cause you to
USE it. This is one example of a foundational principle that is not testable
through the procedures of natural science. In your worldview it's just a highly
confirmed induction.
Your response here is not unlike what I would expect from someone who
does not have a good understanding of how the mind forms concepts. Hence your
admission that you think you need to base elementary laws of logic on informal
fallacy. The truth of the law of noncontradiction
does not rest on prior argument; we can know this because we need this law in
order to assemble any arguments to begin with. Since the law of noncontradiction is a corollary of the axiom of identity,
its proof is perceptual in nature, not argumentative. Without a good
understanding of how concepts are formed on the basis of perception, however, a
thinker might be prone to accepting not only the circularity but also the
stolen concepts integral to your initial statement here. The implicit
assumption in your statement is that the only way to validate elementary laws
of logic is by means of an application of those laws, which, as you yourself
admitted, is circular. What you have is a form of rationalism, which is
essentially deduction without reference to reality. And finding Christian
apologists repeating these kinds of mistakes should not come as a surprise
given the fact that they have no native theory of concepts. The bible nowhere
teaches a theory of concepts, which means its adherents need to seek elsewhere
for such a theory. But what theory of concepts is going to validate their
commitment to metaphysical subjectivism, if not a theory which assumes a
subjective basis?
To say that, according to my worldview, the law of noncontradiction
is "just a highly confirmed induction," is to confess deep ignorance
of my worldview's fundamentals (and probably my worldview's
understanding of induction as well). I would encourage you to be open to
learning more about what my worldview teaches, and not be guilty of what
Proverbs 1:7 accuses against fools.
At any rate, the original issue here was whether or not a claim like
"the moon is made of green cheese" serves as its own evidence. I
asked Dusman if he thought the claim that the moon is
made of green cheese serves as evidence supporting that claim. He has not
spoken to this, so I await his reply.
I wrote:
Can you cite for the record what
you believe constitutes archaeological evidence for a dead man rising from the
grave in first century
Dusman wrote:
Just one? The
Greek New Testament!
I take this to mean that you have only the claim that a dead man rose
from the grave in first century
_________________
Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 1:13 pm
Dusman,
I wanted to come back to you with some of my thoughts in response to
what you had written several days ago. You mentioned at one point that you are
very busy, and so likewise am I. So I hope you
understand the delay in my return to you. I tried to cover every point so that
I am not charged with evading some point of our discussion.
Dusman wrote:
We believe that death is real too
(you already know this).
Of course you do, and my point was that to the extent that you act on
the assumption that death is real and that life is important, you are borrowing
from my worldview.
Dusman wrote:
As far as our physical persons,
we take care of ourselves not for selfish reasons (although as sinners we're
selfish), but because our bodies are not our own (1 Cor.
Since you think you cannot claim ownership over yourself in this world
(since anywhere you go here, you are in your body), then I'm supposing that you
would essentially agree with TreyFROG when in this
thread he said:
"As to slavery, i believe you are correct: slavery is perfectly
biblical--always has been, always will be until Christ comes again and sets up
a society that is free of all work, hardship, suffering, and servitude of any
kind."
Is that right, Dusman?
I wrote:
However, I have never seen any
good arguments for this, and I cannot dismiss ample scientific evidence to the
contrary, either. But if you have some kind of evidence (and by
"evidence" I mean more than some unargued
claim written in a story book), I'm certainly willing to examine it.
Dusman wrote:
With all sincerity, I don't think
you'd honestly look at the evidence because:
1. Evidence is interpreted
according to the interpreter's philosophy of fact.
2. You've already blown off the
archaeological evidence of the manuscript evidence of the NT text. This is gush
in text critical circles when dealing with any historical document, regardless of
the genre.
3. Presuppositionalists do *not*
claim that the soul is detectable through the procedures of natural science,
therefore, we'd not expect empirical detection (soul = immaterial entities).
Before going through this short list of complaints, I'm trying to find
where you support your charge that I have not "honestly look[ed] at the evidence." This charge is not supported by
either 1 or 3. Perhaps you think 2 supports this charge, but I answer this
below. I think I’ve been honest on these matters, Dusman.
The outcome of my honest inquiry and consideration of these things is not only
that I don’t believe, but also that I cannot see how someone else could be
honest and yet believe them at them at the same time, had they given these
matters the same kind of inquiry and consideration that I have given them. With
that, I will proceed through your bullet points:
1. This indicates that something prior to evidence (a point of view, for
instance) is the governing factor here, and not the evidence that is presumably
said to be in hand. This is where the debate over "presuppositions"
supposedly comes in, but since it's clear that you cannot think or do anything without the truth of my worldview's axioms,
this is an area where you'll have no choice but to concede the matter to my
side. At any rate, if you have any evidence to offer in support of the claim
that a dead man was resurrected in first century
2. You accuse me of having "blown off the archaeological evidence
of the manuscript evidence of the NT text," but this is both premature and
uncharitable. I'm perfectly willing to accept the text of the New Testament as
evidence showing what some ancient people *believed*. But this is far from
supporting the claim that what they believed is true, which is what I've called
you to support. I'm not disputing against the view that there were people in
the first and second centuries who believed writings found in the New Testament.
3. You only say how the soul is NOT detectable. Can you present any
objective method by which the soul IS detectable and how the claim that it is
immortal can be validated? Or is this simply a claim that is supposed to be
accepted on someone's say so? (Just be honest if that's what you think, Dusman.)
I wrote:
Will we be seeing milk cartons
with Paul's picture on it with the caption "Have you seen me?" or
"Missing since 10/14/05"? Perhaps it would include details that might
give a clue as to how to locate him. For instance, it could say "Ht.
6'1", Wt. 190 lbs. Last seen embarrassing himself on non-Christian blogs trying to defend belief in invisible magic
beings," or something along these lines.
Dusman wrote:
C'mon guy, was that really necessary?
Nevertheless, I'll *not* continue with such issues, but rather press on with
interacting with your arguments/assertions.
Was my statement "really necessary"? Of course not, and nowhere have I affirmed that it was. Playful
badinage has frequently colored my interaction with Paul, both on my part and
on his, and this has served to “spice up” our exchanges. I would say of course
that it pays to have a sense of humor in these things. I could dig up a bundle
of similar examples from Paul as well. Would you then think to ask him
"was that really necessary, Paul?" After all, as a Reformed
Christian, he claims to be "thinking God's thoughts after Him," so
I'd expect that any explanation he or other Christians give for behavior
considered objectionable when enacted by non-believers take this kind of claim
into account.
I wrote:
If the debate is between
"belief and unbelief," as many apologists have told me . . .
Dusman wrote:
Actually we both have a kind of
faith (although very different), hence I'd argue from
the standpoint of worldview considerations.
Are you then correcting what other apologists have told me? Or, does the
argument "from the standpoint of worldview considerations" also
eventually boil down to the antithesis between "belief and unbelief"?
Earlier you demonstrated that you are not very familiar with my worldview, so
I'm wondering, if you were to honestly and charitably consider what my
worldview affirms and teaches, what would you find objectionable, and why.
I wrote:
Indeed, such admissions are
simply consistent with the metaphysical subjectivism which lies at the
foundation of religious beliefs, among them Christianity's own teachings.
Dusman wrote:
And this is mere assertion on
your part dear sir. Of course we all do this now don't we? However, you'll
disagree when I make assertions and I'll disagree with yours, so what shall we
make of all this?
The admission in question here was Fernandes'
own admission to the effect that he is good at lying to himself and
interpreting evidence as he would like to. My statement above points out that
such confessions are consistent with the foundation of religious belief -
including Christianity - which is subjective in nature. Your reaction here is
to dub my point as "mere assertion," thus insinuating that it is
unsupportable. But this is not the case; my recognition that Christianity has
its basis in metaphysical subjectivism is in fact supportable:
P1: If Christianity presupposes
the primacy of the subject over the object of cognition, then Christianity
affirms metaphysical subjectivism.
P2: Christianity presupposes the
primacy of the subject over the object of cognition.
Conclusion: Therefore,
Christianity affirms metaphysical subjectivism.
Even Mr. Manata was unable to make a dent in this
proof. (When he tried, it was pointed out to him along the way that he was
assuming the truth of the very principles whose implications he was trying to
refute.)
In a prior message, Dusman had posted the
references of two verses in the bible, namely Proverbs 1:7 and Psalm 14:1. He
offered no explanation of the verses he referenced, and did not even elaborate
on whatever relevance he may have thought they had to our discussion. When I
offered some cursory thoughts about those verses, Dusman
apparently didn't like what I had to say and offered the following complaint in
response:
Dusman wrote:
Again,
nothing of substance here.
Therefore, I'll not take the time
to correct this as it won't further this discussion.
I suppose at this point I’m supposed to say “Pardon me for having an
opinion.” But I won’t do this because I don’t think it’s wrong for a person to
have an opinion on these things. You say that I am “not interested in actually
interacting with the biblical text in an honest and scholarly manner so as to
find the original intent of it’s [sic] author.” It’s
true that I do not claim to know the original intent of the passages’ authors;
I am not omniscient, and since they are no longer alive, I won’t bother speculating
on what they might have been. I was merely considering what the verses do say
as well as how they are employed by many believers I have known personally. If
what the verses themselves do not clearly convey what their authors originally
intended to say, this is not my fault and it may be the case that they were not
very careful writers to begin with.
Your objections to my points referencing the very passages that you
yourself cited stem essentially from my alleged unwillingness to consider what
the authors of these statements wanted to say (which, this suggests, is
presumably somehow different from what is actually stated in said passages).
You then say that I “have absolutely no understanding of what neither Solomon
nor the Psalmist was declaring,” though it is not clear how you have
established this. In fact, such a charge comes somewhat as a surprise given
that when you posted the references to these verses, you made no attempt to
pre-chew them for me in order to safeguard the understanding that you prefer.
You also say that I “have read [my] atheistic assertions into the text,” which
of course is just another charge of prejudice, a handy, ever-ready out availed
by those who seek an alternative to interacting with what has been provided.
Indeed, the same school of apologetics makes the charge that we all have
biases, prejudices and assumptions slanting our worldview in one direction or
another; this presumably applies not only to non-believers, but to believers as
well. So if this is the case, I can easily say in return that you have read
your theistic assertions into the text,” and I would be surprised if you would
contend against this, but it would put us both at the same disadvantage.
Apparently the apologetic routine here consists of first dismissing the rival’s
position as being comprised of “mere assertion,” and if this is expected not to
fly, charge the critic with prejudice (which applies just as well to the
apologist). The goal here seems to be establishing the critic’s “unreliability
as a critical commentator and scholar.” Perhaps you, Dusman,
are supposing that no opinions are to be considered unless they proceed from
the lips and pens of lettered academicians whose publications line the shelves
of the Ivy League. If that’s the case, then it’s not clear why such apologists
pursue discussion with those deemed to be of lower esteem. The underlying
message here is that apologists allow themselves to post bible references
without any explanation or elaboration (as if merely the reference to a passage
were sufficient to convey some unstated message), and any points of criticism
raised against those referenced passages will be dismissed without interaction
on the basis of unargued charges and a pat
discrediting of those criticisms’ source (who are said to be so uninformed on
the matter that their points are consequently contentless).
This is a common tactic among those who carry on as if they had a direct line
to omniscient and infallible wells of knowledge (“thinking God’s thoughts after
Him”) and as if they had the best interest of “lost souls” in mind. But they
come across as thin-skinned know-it-alls who couldn’t spare the time to engage
the matter and make the necessary corrections.
Regardless, since you have dismissed them wholesale, it’s unclear what
specifically you find objectionable in my points. I mentioned in regard to
Proverbs 1:7 that “we have what comes closest in the bible (from what I can
find) to a statement identifying the believer’s fundamental starting point.” If
there is a verse in the bible which comes closer than Proverbs 1:7 to
identifying this, well, you have not taken the opportunity point it out. I also
pointed out that this starting point is explicitly stated to be *fear*, which
is a species of emotion. Perhaps you think that fear is something other than
emotion, but again, you did not take the opportunity to correct this if you
think I’m mistaken here. I also pointed out that Proverbs 1:7 implies that the
believer’s whole frame of reference, which is based on fear, is an outcome of
the sense of dread which he takes as a primary, and that the philosophical and
practical expression of this is the believer’s own surrender. (I’m reminded of
the gospel passages which make self-denial a precondition to Christian
discipleship – cf. Mt. 16:24.) Do you object to this understanding of what is
stated in Proverbs 1:7 and supported by other passages in the bible? If so, I’d
be curious why. I also pointed out that a position which takes emotion as a
starting point rests on a false understanding of emotion and its relationship
to knowledge and essentially commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. If you
think this is wrong, you haven’t told us why. I’d suggest that, if the meaning
you get from these passages is significantly different from the meaning I get,
then perhaps the bible needs to be rewritten altogether in order to make the
“apologetically correct” interpretation more clear and
readily accessible to lay readers.
Similarly, it’s not clear what you found objectionable in my other points
in consideration of the bible passages that you cited, but rest assured, it’s
all apparently due to my insufficient ability to read the mind of the divine.
Anyway, if I cannot understand something, I cannot rightly claim to know it’s
true, can I?
You referenced an article by Richard Dawkins and I asked you to pinpoint
a passage that impressed him for some reason. You offered the following
quotations from that piece:
Dawkins wrote:
Retribution as a moral principle
is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour.
As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the
same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics.
When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem
and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or
software.
But doesn't a truly scientific,
mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of
responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in
principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't
judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility
make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty
car?
I’m glad that you quoted the passages you had been reacting to, and I
can understand why you would find these points objectionable. The problem
Dawkins has here is his denial of the faculty of volition, apparently not
understanding the fact that volition is a type of. By doing this, he commits
himself to a form of determinism, not unlike the determinism implicit in
religious worldviews which posit a ruling consciousness which pre-conceives and
directs all outcomes, which reduces human beings to puppets with no real
volition of their own. (Here I’m reminded of a quote by Bahnsen: “God controls
all events and outcomes (even those that come about by human choice and
activity) and is far more capable and powerful than modern machines.” Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 489n.43.) Since behavior is both
learned and chosen, however, misbehavior does not necessarily indicate a
“malfunction” on the part of the individual who is misbehaving. If one chooses
to act immorally (i.e., to act against one’s principles and/or values), there
is no “malfunction” taking place; a person can knowingly regulate his own
choices, and if everything is operating correctly, his actions will proceed
accordingly. Since volition is in essence cognitive self-regulation and since
this understanding is in no way in conflict with the discoveries of science (in
fact, we need volition to begin any scientific inquiry, since such activity is
a chosen activity and does not happen automatically), I disagree profoundly
with Dawkins’ view that “a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous
system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility.”
Of course, by characterizing Dawkins as “the archbishop of atheism,” you
suggest that the views Dawkins expresses are shared by all atheists. This of
course is not at all the case. I’ve often noted a tendency among apologists to
pin all non-believers with errors made by other (sometimes only one or two)
non-believers. To make this tendency seem more palpable, apologists like to
position “atheism” as a uniform philosophical perspective, calling it “the
atheist worldview,” as if all non-believers were united in their metaphysical,
epistemological and moral affirmations. This is not only naïve, but highly
misleading. Regardless of how apologists might seek to lampoon non-belief in
their religious confessions, Dawkins is not my spokesperson. I’m thankful to Dusman for making this opportunity to point this out.
I wrote:
Yes, many of the world's
religions rely on some means of indoctrination in order to promulgate their
agenda. Most religions tend to survive by indoctrinating its members when they
are young, impressionable and philosophically defenseless.
Dusman wrote:
I agree, but Christianity doesn't
qualify as "most" religions. I was an atheist, loved Sartre and Neitzsche, and read other philosophers before becoming a
Christian. There is no question that in whatever venue people find themselves in, whether secular or sacred, indoctrination
does indeed take place. I indoctrinate my little girl with the truth claims of
Christianity, and the public school system indoctrinates the masses therein in
secular humanism. There is no question that indoctrination is taking place, the
question is which system of indoctrination best explains reality and contains
the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of experience?
I’m not surprised to find defenders of Christianity trying to put some
distance between their religious worldview and other religious worldviews. But
it is true – Christianity is one species of religion and it shares with other
religions the same fundamentals in terms of essentials. It’s not surprising to
find a thinker who, prior to his conversion to Christianity, was impressed with
a philosopher like Sartre. I have found nothing of value in his thought; if I
were at one time enamored with Sartre’s nauseating worldview, I too would
probably have a tendency to retreat into deeper subjectivism. Also, I agree, at
least to a large extent, that the tendency to indoctrinate young, impressionable
and philosophically defenseless minds is very common. I see this more as a
result of the influence of religious thinking in the world rather than an
unquestionable primary that cannot be avoided. I’m truly sorry for your little
girl, but her mind is in your hands to shape or destroy.
I wrote:
But if I thought it were actually
true that a "holy spirit" were going around and
"indwelling" human beings' minds and hearts, I'd think that preaching
would be unnecessary, far from being "the *PRIMARY* means that God uses to
bring His elect to faith in Christ."
Dusman wrote:
Then you'd be disobedient to the
Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20), and you'd not understand the purpose of
preaching the CHRISTIAN gospel.
This just underscores the deep irrationality that afflicts Christian
god-belief. It also confirms my suspicion that Christians are just pulling our
legs (since such positions are compatible with the state of affairs in which
Christianity is false and its adherents are seeking ways to rationalize their
beliefs with their actions).
I wrote:
If we look at the story of Saul's
conversion on the road to
Dusman wrote:
Well, Jesus is not obligated to
appear to anyone at their own whims, much less you.
And my point nowhere depends on the assumption that anyone is obligated
to do anything. I take it that you don’t think Jesus was obeying Saul’s whims.
Am I right on this? If so, then there’s nothing illicit about my point here.
Dusman wrote:
He's not your own personal magic
show.
And my point nowhere depends on the assumption that anyone is my “own
personal magic show,” either. Was Jesus Saul’s “own personal magic show”? If
not, then there’s no conflict here.
Dusman wrote:
His appearing to Saul was
preordained as the fulfillment of His eternal decree to save Saul/Paul and use
Him mightily.
This is irrelevant since, unless you’re the Christian god, you don’t
know whom else your god intends to visit in the manner it allegedly visited
Saul of Tarsus, and, unless you’re the Christian god, you don’t know whom else
the Christian god intends to use mightily.
I wrote:
So if this god really wanted me
to believe, why doesn't it appear to me as well instead of relying on such lame
arguments which are so easy to refute?
Dusman wrote:
1. Who's
to say that God wants you to believe?
Presumably your god is the one to make this decision. Nothing I’ve said
is in conflict with this.
Dusman wrote:
2. God isn't obligated to appear
to you visibly anymore than He's obligated to appear to anyone else at their
personal whim.
And I’ve nowhere affirmed that anyone is obligated to do anything, and
my question does not assume that your god is obligated to do one thing as
opposed to anything else. My question simply assumes the validity of the
principle of final causation, which is a rational principle stating that the
desired end plays a formative role in determining the best means to achieve it.
I have simply asked the following: If your god really wants me to believe (a
desired end), why doesn’t it appear to me like it did to Saul of Tarsus (the
means)? Your god does have desired ends, does it not? It does apply rational
principles, does it not? It did want Saul of Tarsus to believe, did it not?
Appearing to Saul of Tarsus affected the outcome that he ended up believing
after all, did it not?
Dusman wrote:
You wouldn't believe even if you
saw Jesus Himself dragging Noah's
Statements like this simply underscore the relevance of my question.
Apologists seem personally offended that non-believers do not buy into their
religious beliefs. The truth of the matter is that I have not seen anyone
dragging an ark down
Dusman wrote:
You'd either write it off as an
unexplainable, yet natural event, or a work of demons (or some other
silliness).
How do you know what I would do? Do you think I have any control over
this? You just said it’s up to your god. So if you think I’d be wrong for
“writing off” the spectacle of your god dragging Noah’s
Dusman wrote:
The Pharisess
and Sadducees denied Christ despite His signs and some of those who saw the
resurrected Christ doubted as well (Matt. 28:17).
Yes, according to the legends in the gospels, that’s what we read. And
according to the Christian worldview (confirmed by statements like Bahnsen’s
“God controls all events and outcomes (even those that come about by human
choice and activity),” the Pharisees and Sadducees had no choice in the matter
(since on this view, we’re nothing more than puppets anyway).
I wrote:
Tell you what, Dusman,
if you think you have a solid argument which supports the conclusion
"therefore the Christian god exists" or something along these lines,
how would it go? What would be your argument's premises?
Dusman wrote:
In classic TAG form:
Let X = all that exists.
Let Y = The
existence of the Christian God.
(1) For X to be the case, Y has
to be the case because Y is a precondition for the intelligibility and
existence of X.
(2) X is the case.
(3) Therefore Y is the case.
It looks like you’ve been reading Michael Butler. Of course, as you
inform the argument here, it clearly commits the fallacy of the stolen concept
(since it assumes that existence has its precondition in something that exist). Moreover, to the extent that one wants to believe it
is free from conceptual fallacies of this sort, the template offered here can
also be employed to “prove” the existence of any invisible magic being. For
instance, the Lahu tribesman could argue:
Let X = all that exists.
Let Y = The existence of Geusha
the Supreme Being
(1) For X to be the case, Y has to be the case because Y is a
precondition for the intelligibility and existence of X.
(2) X is the case.
(3) Therefore Y is the case.
There’s also the matter of *how* one makes the discovery that something
is the precondition of “all that exists,” and even though this is the key issue
for those who want to defend the claim that a god exists (“how do you know?”),
it’s the one apologists have the most trouble addressing. Suffice it to say, there’s lots more that one could say in response to this
kind of argument as it is defended by thinkers like
I wrote:
John Frame gets a lot closer to
the truth when he states “A person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road
to belief.” (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37.)
Sort of says it all, doesn't it?
Dusman wrote:
I don't know,
I don't have the book in front of me (not at home). Given your treatment of
Bahnsen, I'll have to check it myself.
I wrote:
Did you check? What did you find?
Dusman wrote:
Here's what Frame says in
context:
"I suspect that many who
profess unbelief nevertheless wish that something like that were true. It is
the work of the apologist not only to argue for the truth, but to portray it as
it is, in all its beauty, and not ngelecting its dark
tones. As we thus descrbe its attractiveness, but
also its challenge, we perform as apologetic service. For very often, before
someone confesses the truth, he or she comes to the point of wishing it were
true. That is all to the good. Wishing does not make anything true or false,
and it is slander to claim that Christianity is mere wish fulfillment. But a
person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to belief. A consistent
unbeliever does not find the biblical worldview appealing; he turns from
it." Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, 37.
Okay, stop right there. Above I had quoted one of the sentences in this
paragraph. Did I misstate it? No, I did not. Did I take what Frame says “out of
context”? No, I didn’t. Did I insert words into Frame’s mouth? No, I did not.
Now, I ask these questions because earlier you had the suspicion, sewn in you
by someone who has an ax to grind against me personally, that I was doing
something dishonest. But you see that turns out not to be the case. Be careful,
Dusman. Your animosity for non-belief may have a
tendency to cloud your judgment if you’re not careful.
Okay, go on.
Dusman wrote:
First, notice that in the
underlined portion, Frame makes it very clear that it is slander to call
Christianity mere wishful thinking.
Let’s not over-inflate Frame’s words here. Frame makes *his opinion
clear* that it is slander to call Christianity mere wishful thinking. In fact,
one could make a solid case for the fact that Christianity is much more
dangerous than mere wishful thinking. A subjective worldview taken seriously
and practiced consistently can have lethal affects. The history of Christianity
stands as witness to this fact.
Dusman wrote:
In context, Frame is describing
the work of an astute apologist who brings out the truthfulness of both the
grace and the wrath of God, and through the means of this proclamation, God
uses that authoritative message to draw people to Himself by making the truth claims
of the gospel sweet vs. formerly repulsive (John 6:44; 2 Cor.
2:14-16).
Here I’ll offer a little side note: The apologist’s job is not unlike
the evangelist’s job in that both are conscious of presenting Christianity in
attractive packaging. However, from my experience, evangelists are more skilled
at this because they deal more on the emotional level, and concealing the
bait-and-switch of Christianity is easier to do on this level. Apologists have
the real uphill battle because they want to carry on as if they can debate
issues, but their arguments are so miserable that most non-believers simply
shake their head in amazement that someone could be so messed up.
Dusman wrote:
This is what he means when he
refers to people starting to actually have the hope and "wish" that
eternal life is truly found in Christ. However, notice that the very last
sentence states, "A consistent unbeliever does not find the biblical
worldview appealing; he turns from it."
So, did Frame write what I quoted, or not? Your concern to explain his
words here is rather ambiguous. What are you attempting accomplish? Do Frame’s
words here need your explanations? Are they not clear already? Certainly you
cannot charge me with misrepresenting Frame, since all I did was quote what he
wrote. Are you trying to somehow paint Frame’s words as saying something they
don’t, or something other than what they clearly do say? Whom are you trying to
convince, Dusman?
Dusman wrote:
That last sentence is speaking of
you Dawson. I pray that you'll consider the condition of your own heart as you
read Frame's quote.
By writing this statement in your message, you suggest that you want
this to announcement to have some kind of effect on me. But you already know
that I don’t accept your premises, Dusman. Your
prayers should be directed to your god in murmuring under your breath, not in
statements to people who know your worldview is not true.
I wrote:
I did not say that these men do
not have philosophical biases.
Dusman wrote:
I understand. I didn't expect you
to have to state this. I was merely pointing out that these men are not viewed
as being credible in the world of NT scholarship nor are they professional NT
scholars. Not to mention that NT scholars rightly recognize that their assertions
are viewed as mere manifestations of their antisupernatural
biases.
It must be nice to be able to speak for an unspecified number of unnamed
scholars as if they were all in uniform agreement on these matters. In fact, if
there were no debates among these scholars on these issues, then seems there’s
nothing much to be learned from them, and this suggests they don’t engage the
issues very seriously. So perhaps what you consider good NT scholarship
consists of unquestioning acceptance of a religious dogma couched in
highfalutin jargon and deceptive casuistry.
I wrote:
I simply said that my view that
the New Testament contains legendary invention has ample arguments to support
it.
Dusman wrote:
Which
said arguments are developed through the grid of an unbelieving mind that has a
non-neutral methodology at work.
This just tells me that you’re not interested in whether those arguments
are sound or cogent. What concerns you is whether those sources will assume the
fake environment of Christian god-belief. As for whether “arguments are
developed through the grid of an unbelieving mind that has a non-neutral
methodology,” I understand why you find this to be a threat. By “unbelieving
mind” I understand a critical mind, one that is not prone to accepting dogma
unthinkingly, but willing to question, probe and trace claims back to their
roots and consider the validity of their assumed starting points. I certainly
do not claim “a non-neutral methodology.” Reason is not ‘neutral,” neither is a
pro-reality worldview.
I wrote:
Recall that your incomplete
sentence response to me was simply "Uargued
philosophical bias and arbitariness."
Dusman wrote:
Sir, my incomplete sentences are
not meant to be disrespectful or impolite, but I have a family, I'm a pastor,
and I work a secular job 40 hours/week. Therefore, I was curt because I'm
slightly short on time due to other pressing responsibilities. Thank you for
your understanding.
I understand, Dusman. I would think that your
family is more important than squabbling with people whom you resent for their
non-belief in your imaginary paradigm. Consider what you have to gain here vs.
what you have to lose with respect to your family.
I wrote:
So I perceived a need to correct
you on this misunderstanding. And yes, I know that many people have not yet
received the verdicts of many of these thinkers, but that's not surprising. In
Dusman wrote:
Well, the best that NT
scholarship has to offer laughs at the convictions/teachings of said men
because they are indeed laughable.
Well, perhaps when they stop laughing and start applying critical
thinking skills, this unspecified number of scholars who so far remain
anonymous might want to take a look at some recent trends in New Testament
scholarship rather than dismissing them out of hand because they do not go
along with a predetermined party line. Indeed, Dusman,
I’m not so naïve as to think that all New Testament scholars agree with each
other on everything. Check out a book by Wells – any one of them – he quotes
the finest scholars in the field and there are some real choice quotes you
might want to pay attention to. In fact, he bases his assessments and
conclusions on much of what these professional New Testament scholars have
discovered, affirmed and concluded. The bibliographies to
Wells’ several books on Christian origins read like a who’s who of New
Testament scholarship, and includes F.F. Bruce, B.M. Metzger and H.
Greenlee among many, many more. If these authors want to dismiss Wells’
conclusions on the basis of, well, whatever suits their fancy, perhaps it’s
because they don’t like to have their positions criticized, or they don’t like
having other thinkers coming along and making explicit the implications of
their own verdicts and admissions. I know that many choose to bury their heads
in the sand, but can you find one serious New Testament scholar who thinks that
the author of Matthew was an eyewitness to the virgin birth, Jesus’ temptation
in the wilderness, his prayer at
What do your preferred NT scholars do with all the silences in Paul?
In my blog Reckless
Apologetic Presumptuousness, for instance, I list the following gospel
details which are not even hinted at in any of Paul’s early letters:
-
- a
place called '
- a
Roman census
- parents
named Mary and Joseph
- angelic
visitations to both Mary and Joseph
- the
Virgin Birth
- the
Slaughter of the Innocents
- the
Magi (they were magically summoned to meet the baby Jesus)
- John the Baptist
- Jesus' baptism
- Jesus' career as a carpenter
-
- Jesus' itinerant preaching
ministry in
- that
Jesus was a teacher of morals
- that
Jesus taught in parables
- Jesus' prayers
- Jesus' many miracles (Paul
nowhere has his Jesus turn water into wine, stilling storms, feeding 5,000 or
walking on lakes)
- Jesus' healings and cures (no
mention of the blind receiving their sight, for example, after Jesus spits into
dysfunctional eyes)
- Jesus' exorcisms
- Jesus' temptation in the
wilderness
- Mary Magdalene
- Nicodemus (mentioned only in
the gospel of John)
- Judas Iscariot (a key player in
the lead-up to the passion story)
-
- a
trial before Pilate
- Peter's repeated denials
- Jesus' flogging
- Jesus' crucifixion outside the
walls of
- a
place called "
- the
two malefactors condemned with Jesus
- Jesus' words from the cross
- the
spear thrust in Jesus' side
- the
darkness over the earth
- the
earthquake
- the
rising of the saints mentioned only in Matthew 27:52-53
- Joseph of Arimathaea
-
- female
witnesses
- an
empty tomb (Paul never even mentions an empty tomb!)
- Doubting Thomas
There are more holes in the New Testament than a whole battalion of New
Testament scholars can plug up. It’s spilling over with internal discrepancies,
unexplainable silences and clues of legendary elaboration. Paul’s Jesus, for
instance, is nowhere portrayed as having led an earthly ministry in which he
performed miracles and magically healed the lame, blind and infirm. Paul
nowhere mentions a virgin birth. Neither does Mark, the earliest gospel. The
earliest gospel has Jesus’ sonship begin at his
baptism, another gospel element which is nowhere mentioned by Paul, the
earliest NT writer. Then we have the gospels of Luke and Matthew, which are
obviously modeled on Mark’s gospel which serves as a basic template; these
gospels sought to give Jesus more of a supernatural feel and claim he was born
of a virgin. The latest gospel, that titled John, makes no mention of a virgin
birth, but associates Jesus with the Philonic idea of
the “logos,” which is foreign to other New Testament texts on Jesus. The legend
grows with each retelling. The problem is that Christians are in the habit of
reading the gospel Jesus into the Pauline and other New Testament epistles,
missing the fact that they might very well be talking about different savior
personalities.
Dusman wrote:
LOL.
I wrote:
Above, Dusman,
you cited Paul Manata's blog
attacks against me. Did you notice that he cited a logic text pointing out that
use of "laughter as a diversionary tactic"?
Dusman wrote:
Well, (1) I don't qualify for
breaking this debate rule since I didn't make a cartoon caricature of your
worldview (it does a good enough job itself without my help), and (2) you still
qualify because you *did* make a cartoon caricature of Christianity. So Manata's argument still stands.
(1) You qualify since you saw fit to pepper your remarks with laughter
(“LOL”) rather than interact directly with the issue under discussion.
(2) I do not qualify for breaking this debate rule for I did not resort
to using laughter, like you have (e.g., “LOL”), and I do not make a cartoon
caricature of Christianity. On the contrary, Christianity is clearly cartoonish on its own. In fact, Christianity assumes what I
call the cartoon universe premise, since its conception of the universe as a
creation of a ruling consciousness is directly analogous to a cartoon in the
hands of an illustrator. See my blog The
Cartoon Universe Premise of Theism.
In my blog I argue that the cartoon analogy is
much stronger than Paul’s analogy of the pot and the potter in Romans 9, since
a potter cannot make a pot speak, but a cartoonist can make anything speak. The
god of the Old Testament, for instance, enables a snake and a donkey to speak
in human language. According to Bahnsen, the Christian god can make stones cry
out (Always Ready, pp. 109-110). So it is ironic that a Christian would
think that a non-believer would need to caricaturize Christianity in order for
its cartoon universe premise to become apparent.
(3) It wasn’t Manata’s argument! Manata cited McInerny, Dusman. Your claim that “Manata’s
argument still stands” doesn’t follow from anything written here.
I wrote:
I take this as a no - you cannot
cite one logic text which states that a claim validly serves as its own
evidence (which was the point).
Dusman wrote:
1. This qualifies as a red
herring.
Actually, it’s quite the opposite of a red herring; it's an attempt to
get the discussion back on track. A red herring is an attempt to divert
attention away from a topic. The topic was whether or not you could name one logic
text which affirms that a claim validly serves as its own evidence. Since you
avoided this question, I needed to make sure to follow-up and show that you did
not cite one logic text which supports the view that a claim validly serves as
its own evidence. So no, my statement here does not in any way qualify as a red
herring. Now, if you want to go find a logic text which affirms that a claim
serves as its own evidence, keeping in context the kinds of claims that are
under discussion (e.g., “Jesus died and rose on the third day,” etc.), I’ll be
willing to review the rationale given for such affirmations. But if you cannot
cite a logic text which affirms this, why not simply admit it?
Dusman wrote:
2. I demonstrated that in order
to prove logic you have to use it in order to prove it. Hence, using logic to
prove logic causes logic to serve as its own self-attesting evidence.
And I pointed out that your procedure results in resting the truth of
the elementary principles of logic on informal fallacy. As you yourself
admitted, the outcome of your “proof” of the law of noncontradiction
was a circularity. At any rate, not only was your
example a demonstration of your own mistaken understanding of concepts as well
as logic, it also suggests that you are unable to interact with the topic of
our discussion in its own context. As I pointed out above, the issue was
whether you could find a logic text which affirms that claims like “Jesus rose
from the dead” can validly serve as their own evidence. By pulling out the
notion that the law of noncontradiction is proved by
statements which incorporate it as supposedly an example of a claim which
serves as its own evidence, you suggest an affirmative view of the question of
whether or not claims serve as their own evidence. Hence, if we suppose that
the claim “Jesus rose from the dead” can itself be taken as evidence that Jesus
rose from the dead, then we would also have to suppose that the claim “the moon
is made of green cheese” can itself be taken as evidence that the moon is made
of green cheese. Your attempts to neutralize this in the case of the claim
about the moon being made of green cheese will be shown to backfire using your
own methodology (see below).
Dusman wrote:
3. God is not just some other
*fact* of the universe that has to be proven through direct, linear
argumentation.
If there is no god, then I would expect such reservations to be put in
place for sake of apologetic expedience. After all, if something one wants to
defend is not factual, one could list all kinds of ways in which we should not
expect to prove it.
Dusman wrote:
No, God is the only precondition
for the intelligibility of any and all facts.
Shall I dismiss this as “unargued
philosophical bias” or as “mere assertion”? Perhaps it’s an example of both?
I wrote:
Your response here is not unlike
what I would expect from someone who does not have a good understanding of how
the mind forms concepts. Hence your admission that you think you need to base
elementary laws of logic on informal fallacy. The truth of the law of noncontradiction does not rest on prior argument; we can
know this because we need this law in order to assemble any arguments to begin
with. Since the law of noncontradiction is a
corollary of the axiom of identity, its proof is perceptual in nature, not
argumentative. Without a good understanding of how concepts are formed on the
basis of perception, however, a thinker might be prone to accepting not only
the circularity but also the stolen concepts integral to your initial statement
here. The implicit assumption in your statement is that the only way to
validate elementary laws of logic is by means of an application of those laws,
which, as you yourself admitted, is circular. What you have is a form of
rationalism, which is essentially deduction without reference to reality. And
finding Christian apologists repeating these kinds of mistakes should not come
as a surprise given the fact that they have no native theory of concepts. The
bible nowhere teaches a theory of concepts, which means its adherents need to
seek elsewhere for such a theory. But what theory of concepts is going to
validate their commitment to metaphysical subjectivism, if not a theory which
assumes a subjective basis?
Dusman wrote:
Whose native theory of concepts? Rand's, Locke's, James's or Mill's?
If we’re talking personal ownership, then I would be inquiring about
Jesus’ theory of concepts, since the question I raise here was where the bible
presents its own theory of concepts. You seem to be in agreement with me that
the bible does not offer one; rather, it takes its view of concepts completely
for granted. You shouldn’t resent me for this, for I did not write the bible
and thus I am not responsible for this state of affairs.
Dusman wrote:
I believe I "smell" Randriodism.
I don’t know what you mean by this term “Randroidism,”
though it appears to be deliberately derogatory and suggests the view that
Now, you could say that there’s a difference here in that Bahnsen’s god
is said to be omniscient and infallible and thus its word should be taken as
unquestionably true (thus conceding the essence of my point), but this would
also miss my point (while simultaneously granting it) since, if it is accepted
that Rand’s word is unquestionable, then such details become irrelevant.
Indeed, the “Randroid” could at least say that
Dusman wrote:
So you want to attack the
doctrine of Sola Scriptura
on the basis of a lack of specificity on concept formation? Well then if that's
the case you demonstrate a few things here:
1. You have no clue as to what
the doctrine of Sola Scriptura
entails.
2. You assume that we must have a
*biblical* method of concept formation, which is absurd from a presuppositional
perspective.
I had no intention of attacking “the doctrine of Sola
Scriptura,” Dusman. I
simply pointed out that the bible does not present its own theory of concepts.
In addition to pointing this out, I mentioned that believers would have to look
outside the bible for a theory of concepts if they wanted to understand how the
mind forms them. But I don’t know what source they would choose for this, and I
would not expect them to be uniform in making such choices, either. Moreover, I
do not “assume that [Christians] must have a *biblical* method of concept
formation”; on the contrary, I thought I was pretty clear in pointing out that
there is NO *biblical* method of concept formation. You do not seem to be
disagreeing with me on this, since you do not deny this and you do not point to
book, chapter and verse where such a theory can be found. But I would agree
that many presuppositionalists have indicated to me that they believe the need
for a theory of concepts is absurd, which simply serves to seal my case that
Christian apologists are lost when it comes to understanding conceptual knowledge.
I wrote:
To say that, according to my
worldview, the law of noncontradiction is "just
a highly confirmed induction," is to confess deep ignorance of my
worldview's fundamentals (and probably my worldview's
understanding of induction as well). I would encourage you to be open to
learning more about what my worldview teaches, and not be guilty of what
Proverbs 1:7 accuses against fools.
At any rate, the original issue here was whether or not a claim like
"the moon is made of green cheese" serves as its own evidence.
Dusman wrote:
And I don't bite because you're
trying to hook and reel me by asking a question about the moon that *can be*
confirmed through empirical methods whereas the law of non-contradiction can
not be examined through said methods.
I can certainly agree that “a question about the moon that *can be*
confirmed through empirical means” makes sense on my worldview’s
“presuppositions,” but in the fake environment of Christian god-belief which
drives a wedge between appearance and reality (cf. Bahnsen, Always Ready,
p. 181f.), and which dismisses so-called “naturalistic epistemology” out of
hand, this makes little sense. But your statement here begs the question
against the man who believes the moon is made of green cheese. In response to
you, he could – in a manner paralleling yours – come back with the following
rebuttals:
(1) You have no clue as to what the doctrine of sola
fromage vert entails
(2) You assume that we must have an empirical method of confirming
whether or not the moon is made of green cheese, which is absurd from a
green-cheese moon perspective.
Do you see how easy it is to use your own methodology to defend rival
arbitrary positions?
Dusman wrote:
You can't empirically examine the
law of noncontradiction by using the 5 senses.
Not only are you apparently assuming that my 5 senses work in the same
manner as do yours, even if our senses do work the same (which I would expect
to be the case if we are member of the same biological species), it’s unclear
how you would set about proving this without resting on an argument from
silence or incredulity.
Dusman wrote:
You can't cut it open to see if
it is made of green cheese,
Exactly my point – since you cannot empirically confirm that it is made
of something other than green cheese, how would you prove that it is not? My
worldview supplies rational answers to such questions. But on your worldview
which posits a ruling consciousness capable of creating its own objects ex nihilo and manipulating those which already exist at will,
it’s hard to see how could have any confidence in the claim that the law of noncontradiction is not made of green cheese.
Dusman wrote:
nor can you
assume with certainty (other than probabalistically)
that these selfsame laws are going to work tomorrow lest you argue circularly.
Which just underscores your own ignorance of
what my worldview teaches. I surmise that my worldview has
been dismissed before it’s even been examined. Moreover, if what you say here
were true (that I cannot be certain about the applicability of the laws of
logic), then your claim that “questions about the moon’s supposed green cheese
composition doesn’t [sic] apply” misses the point, since the lack of certainty
in this area can easily be used as a means of wedging in any set of arbitrary
premises (which is essentially the ambition behind Christian apologetics).
Dusman wrote:
Hume has so carefully pointed
such out centuries ago, yet it is ignored or missed by my atheist friends.
Here’s confirmation: that you think Hume was “careful” especially in
regard to matters pertaining to induction only tells me that you, like Bahnsen
(who appealed to Hume repeatedly), are seriously behind the times. I don't say
this to denigrate you personally. But I suspect you're following the queue of
thinkers like Bahnsen who find it hard to resist the temptation to suppose that
Hume's views are authoritative for all atheists. I have news for you: they
aren't.
I wrote:
Can you cite for the record what
you believe constitutes archaeological evidence for a dead man rising from the
grave in first century
Dusman wrote:
Just one? The
Greek New Testament!
I wrote:
I take this to mean that you have
only the claim that a dead man rose from the grave in first century
Dusman wrote:
I’ve read some of Bruce and Metzger, but not much of Greenlee. However,
I have also read some of their critics’ writings as well. Have you? Or, did you
not know that they had critics, or do you simply dismiss their critics as being
biased?
Dusman wrote:
Also, I'd suggest you also stop
dismissing evidence just because you don't like it (This is what Bahnsen
identified as Unargued Philosophical Bias!).
I have not dismissed anything simply because I “don’t like it.” And to
be quite frank, I don’t know what *in principle* Bahnsen would find
objectionable about doing so, since his worldview (Christian theism) reduces to
the same metaphysical basis to which the view that things are untrue on the
basis that they are disliked reduces, namely the primacy of consciousness
metaphysics. Both Bahnsen’s theistic view and the view that something is untrue
because someone does not like it grant metaphysical primacy to a consciousness
over its objects such that those objects conform to the intentions of a ruling
consciousness. In terms of fundamentals, there is no difference here. So to
object to the view that something is not true because someone does not like it,
is to borrow from my worldview, which affirms the primacy of existence
metaphysics – that the objects of awareness exist independent of the means by
which we are aware of them.
Dusman wrote:
NT manuscript evidence *is*
considered archaeological evidence.
Yes, I understand that, and agree that the New Testament is
archaeological evidence in that it indicates what certain individuals may have
believed at one time in the distant past. However, this is far from serving as
evidence that what those individuals believed is true. Do you understand this
distinction? Your attempt to use the New Testament as evidence seems to rely on
blurring such distinctions.
Dusman wrote:
There's more than this,
Please, don’t hold back.
Dusman wrote:
but this examples suffices to
show that you're not willing to accept what God has provided for you and you
continue to reject the normative means that God uses to convert people (Luke
16:27-31).
This of course just begs the question for it assumes precisely what’s in
question. Really, you should see this, Dusman. It’s
pretty elementary.
I wrote:
I'd say you're really in a pinch
here, for you're not only affirming the view that historical claims serve as
their own evidence
Dusman wrote:
And you don't get to dictate to
me what can and cannot serve as evidence, especially when I have no higher
authority to turn to than the Triune God of Scripture.
As I said, if the bible is archaeological evidence, it’s
evidence of what ancient people *believed* and recorded. That is different from
evidence supporting the claim that what those ancient people believed is
*true*. That takes additional evidence, which you have not supplied. But since
you have already affirmed that you take this alleged truth on the alleged
authority of an alleged ruling consciousness which inhabits some other
dimension or realm, then the claim to have evidence for your position that it’s
all true is really moot, for you’re essentially saying that evidence is
superfluous.
I wrote:
. . .(which
means that the claim that Mithras was resurrected
would thus serve as evidence supporting that view as well),
Dusman wrote:
Which view is silly and has no
bearing upon the historical narratives found in the gospels (http://www.christian-thinktank.com/copycatwho1.html).
I’ve read other articles by Miller, and never
found them very impressive (just very longwinded). If I
find I have time to kill (which is unlikely), I might take a look, but unless
he directly interacts with the silences and obvious legendary embellishments
that I alluded to above, then I doubt he’ll have much value to offer on this
topic.
I wrote:
you're also
unable to present any legitimate archaeological evidence which supports the
claims found in the New Testament. Perhaps you believe because, as Frame points
out, you have a wish to fulfill?
Dusman wrote:
Yes, I do have some wishes I'd
like to have fulfilled:
You listed three of your wishes below (keep in mind, I'm not a genie).
While I realize you probably have more wishes on your list, I noticed that all
of the wishes you listed below are for me to change in some way, principally in
order to conform with your perspective of fear and
dread. I wonder if you have some wishes, which you chose not to list, to the
effect that you could have more patience and understanding in interacting with
non-believers such as myself, and perhaps even resist the temptation to dismiss
what someone like myself says as an expression of some evil prejudice that he
can neither detect nor control. Or perhaps that you could apply more charity in
considering another’s viewpoint in spite of his non-belief in the ruling
consciousness that you imagine behind everything.
Dusman wrote:
1. I wish you'd stop fighting
against God and repent lest you perish. I type such because I care about your
soul (whether you believe it exists or not is irrelevant for said point).
I’m not fighting anyone or anything, not even things that do not exist.
I’m simply trying to dialogue with those who think I’m wrong for not believing
their religious claims.
Dusman wrote:
2. I wish that you'd stop
redefining what can and cannot count as evidence when scholars the world over
(both believing and unbelieving) recognize the validity of textual evidence.
I am not “redefining what can and cannot count as evidence,” Dusman. I’m quite willing to accept the New Testament as evidence, however I see it as evidence in a different way.
You accept it as evidence for what it claims (which I have brought into
question and which you have not been able to validate so far), and I accept it
as evidence of what some ancient people *believed*. The two are quite
different, and you seem not to grasp this, or perhaps have not thought of it in
this way before.
Dusman wrote:
3. I wish you'd stop cartooning
Christianity lest you store up more wrath for yourself
on the day of wrath and God mocks you on the day of judgment (Psalm 2).
For one, threats – especially when they are as empty and toothless as
religious threats – will not stop me from using my mind. Your recourse to
threats here confirms my analysis of Proverbs 1:7 (which you sought to dismiss
by discrediting its source rather than interacting with it), that the
believer’s assumed epistemological basis is a sense of dread and that he
believes the proper response to this sense of dread is intellectual, moral and
spiritual surrender. It also suggests that you want to use
_________________
Posted:
I wrote:
. . . . you
are borrowing from my worldview.
Dusman wrote:
An assertion you've yet to prove.
I think you prove it, Dusman, by assuming the
truth of my worldview's foundations, though you probably do not realize this.
Every time you act, whether it's getting out of bed and putting on your
slippers, pouring a glass of juice, talk things over with your wife, watch a
sporting event, put pen to paper, turn on the computer, put your car into drive
or pay the bills, you are assuming that there is a reality, that the objects
you perceive are the objects you are perceiving, that you are aware of them,
and that those objects are what they are independent of your intentional
operations (the primacy of existence principle), all of which my worldview explicitly
affirmed and with which its entirety is consistently integrated. You then
violate these basic foundations when you embrace your god-belief, which is not
at all consistent with these truths as they integrate. You take them for
granted (find one passage in the bible which deals with the issue of
metaphysical primacy), and yet you affirm a worldview which violates them. So
you could not even do the several things that you list (be a daddy, husband,
pastor, sports therapist, and writer) if my worldview's foundations were not
true. I realize that you're not going to allow yourself to see this, since you
are determined to protect a confessional investment, but that does not change
the state of affairs; they are what they are even if you don't like them or seek
to deny them.
I wrote:
Since you think you cannot claim
ownership over yourself in this world (since anywhere you go here, you are in
your body), then I'm supposing that you would essentially agree with TreyFROG when in this thread he said:
"As to slavery, i believe you are
correct: slavery is perfectly biblical--always has been, always will be until
Christ comes again and sets up a society that is free of all work, hardship,
suffering, and servitude of any kind."
Is that right, Dusman?
Dusman wrote:
Yes, slavery is biblical and I'd
agree with my BLACK friend TreyFrog. OT/NT believers
owned slaves and were slaves, the Mosaic law legislated slavery and and the NT gives principles of ownership re: slaves, slaves
were instructed to submit to their masters in the OT & NT, both freedom and
slavery could be considered a blessing, and some form of slavery will continue
till the end of time. Slavery is considered to be neither "here nor
there" by the Apostle Paul and is a recognized social institution in the
NT. What is condemned as sin in the OT, and especially in the NT is the
mistreatment of slaves. I've written a fairly detailed paper on biblical
slavery demonstrating that it was not considered sin in either the OT or NT
eras yet I also demonstrate that it would be sin to practice it in the modern
Dusman, thank you - a double thank you in fact - for making this statement. It is a
keeper. I will have to add it to my files. I've met so many Christian
apologists who insist that slavery is anti-biblical even though they cannot
produce one biblical injunction against the practice and in spite of the fact
that the bible is littered with statements sanctioning it. But internal variances among Christian believers is nothing new. In fact,
it's hard to find two Christians whose positions are uniform throughout. But
again, I thank you for owning up to your worldview's legacy. It would be
refreshing if more believers were as candid in their admissions. Below when we
get to discussing communism, we'll see that both Christianity and communism
share a common essential, namely the view of man as a means to someone else's
ends, which entails the denial of man's right to exist for his own sake and the
individual's life as an end in itself.
I wrote:
Before going through this short
list of complaints, I'm trying to find where you support your charge that I
have not "honestly look[ed] at the
evidence." This charge is not supported by either 1 or 3. Perhaps you
think 2 supports this charge, but I answer this below.
Dusman wrote:
# 2 does support this
"charge" and you've not answered it successfully. Just buy any
handbook on Greek or Hebrew manuscript evidence (especially the Dead Sea
Scrolls), and you'll find them generally referenced as archaeological finds.
First of all, it appears you're agreeing with me that neither of your
points 1 nor 3 support your charge of dishonesty against me. Am I right on
this? For even if we accept both 1 and 3, it would not follow from these that I
have not "honestly look[ed] at the
evidence." So that leaves your point 2, which I did address, and here you
say that I have "not answered it successfully." But I have answered
it "successfully"; what's more, I answered it principally as well.
Observe what I had written in response to your point 2:
I wrote:
You accuse me of having
"blown off the archaeological evidence of the manuscript evidence of the
NT text," but this is both premature and uncharitable. I'm perfectly
willing to accept the text of the New Testament as evidence showing what some
ancient people *believed*. But this is far from supporting the claim that what
they believed is true, which is what I've called you to support. I'm not
disputing against the view that there were people in the first and second
centuries who believed writings found in the New Testament.
As I stated here, it should be clear to you now that, since I am willing
to accept the New Testament as evidence of what some people *believed*, it is
wrong to say that I have "blown off the archaeological evidence of the
manuscript evidence of the NT text." The question which we were originally
pursuing was whether there was evidence to support the New Testament's claim
that Jesus rose from the dead. You seem to have lost sight of this issue by
getting hung up in the trivial matter of whether or not the New Testament
qualifies as archaeological evidence, which I have agreed it does (indeed, it
is evidence that some people probably *believed* this). However, by pointing to
the New Testament itself as evidence for its own claim that Jesus rose from the
dead, you are in effect pointing to a claim as its own proof, which I called
into question and which you have not been able to validate. You advise that I
"buy any handbook on Greek or Hebrew manuscript evidence…" and I will
"find them generally referenced as archaeological finds." But this is
moot, since, as I made perfectly clear, I'm willing to see the New Testament as
evidence. On this issue, I had also stated:
I wrote:
Yes, I understand that, and agree
that the New Testament is archaeological evidence in that it indicates what
certain individuals may have believed at one time in the distant past. However,
this is far from serving as evidence that what those individuals believed is true.
Do you understand this distinction? Your attempt to use the New Testament as
evidence seems to rely on blurring such distinctions.
Given your response above, Dusman, I don't
think you've taken anything I've stated on this matter into account, which
suggests (again) that you're allowing your zeal to defend a confessional
investment cloud your ability to attend to the details of debate carefully and
interact with your opponents in a charitable manner.
Now, if you insist that the New Testament is, archaeologically speaking,
something more than evidence of what some ancient people probably *believed*,
then I invite you to specify in what way it is more than this and to argue on
behalf of this enhancement. You've not done so to date, and I don't know how
you would be able to do so without at least subtly appealing to divine
influence, which would only tell me that evidence is ultimately irrelevant when
it comes to validating your position (for you want to unpocket
and apply the very claims that are ultimately under dispute, which means that
the supposed "truth" of your position ultimately rests on informal
fallacy). Of course, we can comb through the New Testament's claims regarding
the resurrection of Jesus, and I'll be happy to point out all the holes in its
record and the many, many clues of invention and legendizing
that more than probably shaped the biographical narratives which we call
"gospels." I pointed to a list of no less than 40 elements that we
find in the gospels which are not even suggested in any of the epistles which
antedate the gospels by at least a decade and probably several decades, plenty
of time for the legend to grow. (I remember it wasn't at all long after Elvis
Presley died that I began seeing tabloids spreading the rumor that "the
King" was in fact alive and seen all over the globe, from
Yes, Dusman, I have in fact *honestly* looked
into these matters, I have read ample sources both pro and con, I have reviewed
a multitude of apologetic arguments, a multitude of variations of those
arguments, and have considered the accounts that I have read in the New
Testament, and the outcome is, perhaps to your disapproval, very firm: I don't
believe it. And I certainly do not believe that the New Testament or any
worldview that takes it as its foundation "provides the necessary
preconditions of intelligibility." Such claims only suggest to me that
those making them do not have much of an understanding of what intelligibility
is to begin with, and are simply looking for some way to bluff their way though
apologetic debates.
I wrote:
The outcome of my honest inquiry
and consideration of these things is not only that I don’t believe, but also
that I cannot see how someone else could be honest and yet believe them at them
at the same time, had they given these matters the same kind of inquiry and
consideration that I have given them.
Dusman wrote:
I have, that's one of the reasons
I'm no longer an atheist.
Yes, and you already informed us that, before your conversion to
Christianity, you nursed yourself on, among others, the nauseating worldview of
Jean-Paul Sartre. I would be wrong to suppose that this did not have something
to do with your conversion. I would also be wrong to suppose that a life-long
habit of taking the issue of metaphysical primacy, which is vastly common among
even otherwise careful thinkers, did not play a part in this as well, since
that's the real crux of the matter.
I wrote:
but since
it's clear that you cannot think or do anything without the truth of my
worldview's axioms, this is an area where you'll have no choice but to concede
the matter to my side.
Dusman wrote:
More
assertions.
That my responses to your claims take the form of assertions does not at
all indicate that my position is not defensible. My worldview's foundations are
the fact that there is a reality ("existence exists"), that the things
which exist are themselves (A is A), and that consciousness is real. Christian
believers must assume these truths even to deny them. You also have to assume
the truth of the primacy of existence even though the Christian worldview
contradicts it throughout its tenets.
I wrote:
At any rate, if you have any
evidence to offer in support of the claim that a dead man was resurrected in
first century
Dusman wrote:
I don't need any more than the NT
Okay, then just say this. Don't carry on as if you had any more
archaeological evidence to support the claim that Jesus was resurrected from
the dead. If the New Testament is all you can offer, then I'm happy to review
it with you.
Dusman wrote:
and neither
to [do?] you just as Christ indicated (Luke
If that's the case, then I'm right in recognizing that Christianity is
false.
Dusman wrote:
If there was a tomb, a shroud, a
picture, a video tape, you still wouldn't believe because as was said in an
earlier post, you'd run the datum through the grid of your unbelieving mind so
as to explain it in a way that fits your grid.
Ah, so you *do* expect people simply to "just believe" on
someone's say so that these things are true, and thus the pseudo-appeals to
reason and rationality that color modern apologetics is just window dressing
used to cover up the bluff
Dusman wrote:
If not, it's thrown out as a
fluke or as yet unexplainable by natural law.
No, I do not need to resort to "it's a fluke" or "it's unexplaiable by natural law." There's nothing in the
New Testament that tells me that it's anything other than a legend that grows
with each retelling. I ran through a few of the high-level points in my last message,
but you seem to be ignoring them as well as the long list of silences we find
in Paul.
Dusman wrote:
A great example are the various
types of T-rex cells that have been found in unfossilized
bone here yet these people still hold to the idea that these fossils have to be
70 millions years old. Amazing!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
A creationist discussion here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/blood.asp#r3
Thanks for the links!
I wrote:
2. You accuse me of having
"blown off the archaeological evidence of the manuscript evidence of the
NT text," but this is both premature and uncharitable.
Dusman wrote:
You did blow it off and by doing
so you also demonstrated your ignorance of the field of OT/NT textual criticism.
Now you multiply your charges against me. First I am accused of
"blowing it off" as if I had never given the issues surrounding the
matter any serious thought (it should be clear to any impartial reader that
this is not the case; the list of Pauline silences that I provided is my own
assembly - I did not quote this from some other source). I already answered
this above so I shall not repeat myself (since it's
pretty clear that my points are not being considered). Second I am accused of
"ignorance of the field of OT/NT textual criticism." To be perfectly
frank with you, Dusman, this is such a huge field,
with contributions from virtually every perspective imaginable, and a
bibliography that could fill any local library beyond standing room only, that
one will always be able to charge someone else with "ignorance of the
field of OT/NT textual criticism." But I see that, in spite of charging me
with such ignorance, you have not answered the points I've raised against the
New Testament record, even though I'd think that this should be light duty
given your apparent expertise in this field. I will add that, it gets rather
tiresome to be scolded by one's opponents for alleged ignorance while those
same opponents show even less knowledge than has been displayed in passing by
the one being scolded. My experience with you, Dusman,
is not at all unlike the experiences I've had with other apologists who claim
to be defending a worldview of love, spirituality, blessing and hope:
apologists offer more attitude, resentment and even contempt than anything
coming close to enlightenment, as if non-belief were a personal offense
directed at them specifically. Lighten up, Dusman.
It's a fact that I don't believe Christianity is true, so if this bothers you,
get over it. After all, even your own teaching lays this responsibility on your
god rather than on me. So if you want to get after someone for my disbelief,
direct your attitude to your god. He does make the decision on who believes and
who doesn't, does he not?
I wrote:
3. You only say how the soul is
NOT detectable. Can you present any objective method by which the soul IS
detectable and how the claim that it is immortal can be validated? Or is this
simply a claim that is supposed to be accepted on someone's say so? (Just be
honest if that's what you think, Dusman.)
Dusman wrote:
As was said in the former post,
Christian theists would not *expect* for an IMMATERIAL being to be detected by
the procedures of natural science because there is nothing material to detect. Neither
can these methods determine whether the soul is immortal or not but this
*truth* is accepted on the infallible "say so" of the sovereign God
of the universe. There is no higher authority to appeal to in order to test His
propositions as He is the self-attesting proposition Giver.
Okay, so in other words, you can only specify how these claims *cannot*
be substantiated; when it comes to specifying how they *can* be substantiated,
you point to uncritical acceptance of things you have read in an ancient text
written by superstitious primitives who had no clear grasp of metaphysical
primacy, concepts, logical principles, objective values, individual rights,
etc. Got it.
I wrote:
I would say of course that it
pays to have a sense of humor in these things.
Dusman wrote:
Amen!
I take this as enthusiastic agreement, and yet, when I display my sense
of humor, my detractors run to McInerny in order to
accuse me of "diversionary tactics" (even though one of the primary
ambitions of my detractors is to make my position, whose truth they must
assume, look "absurd").
I wrote:
Are you then correcting what
other apologists have told me? Or, does the argument "from the standpoint
of worldview considerations" also eventually boil down to the antithesis
between "belief and unbelief"? Earlier you demonstrated that you are
not very familiar with my worldview, so I'm wondering, if you were to honestly
and charitably consider what my worldview affirms and teaches, what would you
find objectionable, and why.
Dusman wrote:
I am pointing out that you have
faith just like I do!
Yes, I've heard other apologists make this kind of claim as well. It
stems from a lack of firsthand familiarity with the teachings of my worldview
and thus suggests that you will be seriously disadvantaged in any toe-to-toe
with me.
Dusman wrote:
From the standpoint of
revelation, you're an unbeliever and I'm the opposite. You have no evidence
that God doesn't exist
Dusman, sober up for a moment before you continue. No one
has an obligation to prove that the non-existent does not exist. If something
does not exist, it wouldn't leave evidence lying around! Evidence applies to
that which exists, not to the non-existent. What I interact with is the amazing
assortment of claims that Christian apologists make in describing their beliefs
and in defending their worldview. That's enough for me to go on. Now you can go
on.
Dusman wrote:
and I have a
special revelation from Him telling me that He does.
Yes, the over-active imagination of the adult religious mind is fecund
indeed, especially when it comes to deceiving itself. Do you really think I'm
going to find statements like this somehow persuasive? What precisely do you
think they're going to persuade me to believe (if not that you're deluding
yourself)?
Dusman wrote:
You don't like that special
revelation
Where have you established this, Dusman? If by
"special revelation" you mean the text of the New Testament, you
couldn't be more wrong. It's a wonderful set of fictional texts, and I do love
examining it a lot. I like it better than many novels that I've read. I just
don't invest myself into its mysticism as you have.
Dusman wrote:
because it's not
custom-crafted to the idol that your mind creates (whatever that may be)
Something does not need to be "custom-crafted" to my ideals in
order for me to like it, Dusman. Rather, many of my
ideals are influenced and shaped by the craft of others. Ravel is a prime
example.
But suppose the New Testament were the template for any "idol that
[my] mind creates," how is your god-belief different from this? Indeed,
the reason why the gospel stories are so effective is because they captivate
the imagination. That's the primary device of any piece of fiction.
Dusman wrote:
and you'll
continue to write, kick, and shake your fist at the God you believe doesn't
exist all the while demonstrating your rebellion.
You must think you're god then, Dusman, for
I'm interacting with you and your statements. I'm not interacting with
something that does not exist. Indeed, as my interlocutor, you've not
demonstrated yourself to be either omniscient nor
infallible, even though spokesmen for your worldview claim to "think God's
thoughts after Him." You seem just as human as the next guy, Dusman.
Dusman wrote:
Yes, I've been there before,
bought the t-shirt, read the books, and enjoyed my rebellion.
And now you're under submission, right? Your spirit has been sapped out
of you, and like a sheep ready for slaughter, you're just passing time here on
earth until your god, acting on his own pleasure (cf. Ps. 115:3) decides to
remove you in whatever manner it sees fit. Is that right? You really think
this, Dusman?
Dusman wrote:
Well, enjoy it
Again, we have threats being issued when intelligent interaction is
being sought. Let me say, Dusman, that I in fact do
enjoy my life, and will continue acting to enjoy it, no matter who disapproves.
If you do not like this, that is not my problem. If your god does not like
this, it is alleged to be powerful enough to make things otherwise. Ultimately
your worldview must appeal to force, since it affirms its truths on faith, for
faith and force are corollaries. Your worldview teaches that man's natural
state (cf. "the natural man") is one of unearned guilt, a guilt which
he must accept as an innate primary and from which he cannot redeem himself. So
I can understand that you would think misery is the consequent of enjoyment.
I'm glad these are not my worldview's problems.
Dusman wrote:
As to your views, no, I'm not
*exactly* sure of every nuance of your worldview, but to my understanding
you're a Randriod objectivist who gets egg on his
face when he tries to play with a Bahnsen Burner.
It's true, Dusman, at least from what little
you've had to say here, that you are probably quite unfamiliar with
Objectivism. You speak against it before understanding it, which is a symptom
of a desperate mind.
Dusman wrote:
Here's more evidence of this: http://presstheantithesis.blogspot.com/
Dusman, I'm perfectly aware of
Paul Manata's blog postings
which are intended to belittle me. You are probably too closed to anything I
have to say on anything, but I hope eventually you'll be in a position in which
you can weigh these matters impartially. I'm confident that, if that time
should come, you'll see that Paul is deep in over his head when it comes to
challenging Objectivism. Many of us who used to try to show him the errors of
his ways have given up on him. He reminds me of a child who is determined to be
right even when he is wrong, who stops up his ears and shuts his eyes while
shouting "I'm right! You're wrong! I'm right! You're wrong!" After
all, it is Paul's own Christian worldview which seeks to lower adults to the
level of uncritical children.
I wrote:
The admission in question here
was Fernandes' own admission to the effect that he is
good at lying to himself and interpreting evidence as he would like to. My
statement above points out that such confessions are consistent with the
foundation of religious belief - including Christianity - which is subjective
in nature. Your reaction here is to dub my point as "mere assertion,"
thus insinuating that it is unsupportable. But this is not the case; my
recognition that Christianity has its basis in metaphysical subjectivism is in
fact supportable:
P1: If Christianity presupposes
the primacy of the subject over the object of cognition, then Christianity
affirms metaphysical subjectivism.
P2: Christianity presupposes the
primacy of the subject over the object of cognition.
Conclusion: Therefore,
Christianity affirms metaphysical subjectivism.
Dusman wrote:
Here's the dent: P1, & P2 are
not true, :., Conclusion is ~ true.
Metaphysical subjectivism is the
theory that perception creates reality, and that no true, underlying reality
exists independent of perception. Christian theists don't believe this as we
hold to a real existence apart from the space-time-matter universe with the primacy
focused on the object of cognition, namely Yawheh.
This does not address my argument for it does not raise a relevant
criticism against its premises. Basically your criticism does not deal with the
argument on its own terms. This is most clearly evident in the definition of
'metaphysical subjectivism' that you supplied. It's close, but insufficient
since it only specifies one of several species of metaphysical subjectivism,
thus failing to isolate the essential error committed by metaphysical subjectivism.
I quote from my
interaction with Paul Manata, who sought to
tackle my argument:
I wrote:
Metaphysical subjectivism is the
genus of various versions of the fundamental orientation to reality which
affirms that the objects of consciousness conform to the dictates of
consciousness. This orientation is properly called “subjectivism” because it
grants to the subject power over its object(s). (In the case of Christian
teaching, this power is said to be absolute in the case of the Christian god.)
It essentially holds that the world of objects (e.g., the universe) finds its
source in a form of consciousness, or that they obey the dictates that
originate in consciousness.
The opposite view, objectivism,
is the orientation between the subject and object in which the objects of
consciousness exist independent of consciousness – that they are what they are
no matter what one wishes, believes, or imagines. According to this view, the
role of consciousness is not to create and alter the objects it’s aware of at
will, but to discover and identify them by rational means.
The definition of metaphysical subjectivism that you supplied
arbitrarily restricts the error to only one mode of consciousness, namely
perception. Since the definition of metaphysical subjectivism assumed in my
argument is broader than this (it could be perception, emotion, imagination,
intention, wishing, memory, etc.), my argument cannot fail to miss its target
for it covers all points subsumed by the essence of subjectivism: any view in which
the subject of awareness is thought to hold, in whatever capacity, metaphysical
primacy over some or all of its objects. Also, since subjectivism boils down to
the enshrinement of whim (cf. the "God's good pleasure" principle
affirmed in passages like Ps. 115:3), the subjectivist could assert his
imaginative paradigm as the "true, underlying reality" and throw it
out as an object existing independent of perception after it has been created,
similar to what the universe is said to be in Christianity. Of course,
according to Christianity, no object, event or state of affairs exists
independent of "God's will," i.e., independent of the intentional
function of the ruling consciousness which the believer nourishes in the fake
environment of his imagination.
You say that "Christian theists don't believe" the view that
"no true, underlying reality exists independent of perception," and
though I do not want to speak on behalf of all Christians as though they were
in uniform agreement with one another on any issue, I will point out that
Christianity is explicit in affirming the broader essence of metaphysical
subjectivism, explicitly affirming that "God's will" (i.e., a form of
consciousness) holds metaphysical primacy over the world of objects that you
and I perceive everyday. According to Christian teaching, its god
"created" the universe by an *act of will* (i.e., by an act of
consciousness). The objects which populate the universe are said to conform to
what this god wants them to be. For instance, if this god wanted man to have 13
arms instead of only 2, man would have 13 arms. It has the power to do this
just by wishing it to be the case. Thus it allegedly has the power to revise
reality *at will*. This is all an expression of metaphysical subjectivism as my
argument understands it. Indeed, if there were anything consistent throughout
Christianity, it would be its commitment to this orientation between subject
and object in the case of its imagined god.
Here are two choice quotes to support this would include:
"By his counsel the triune God controls whatsoever comes to
pass." (The Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed., p. 77)
"Since non-being is nothing in itself for God, God had to create if
he wished to create at all 'out of nothing'. It would perhaps be better to say
that God created the universe *into* nothing. Creation, on Christian
principles, must always mean fiat creation." (The Defense of the Faith,
3rd ed., p. 26)
Dusman, you also said that
Christians "hold to a real existence apart from the space-time-matter
universe with the primacy focused on the object of cognition, namely Yawheh." That Christians may profess such a belief is
compatible with (in fact anticipated by) the understanding of metaphysical
primacy that my argument assumes. But even this statement is clumsy in two
ways. For one, the object of cognition is any thing or state of affairs that a
subject perceives and/or considers, whether it be a flower, a cloud, a car, a
mountain, a human being, a sporting event, a method of action, a thesis statement,
a set of beliefs, even the subject-object relationship itself (which is the
area of concern covered by the issue of metaphysical primacy). Although your
statement does not stipulate it, it suggests that the god named Yahweh is the
only object of cognition. That of course is not true, and I'm sure you'd agree,
but I think it needs to be pointed out. The other way in which this statement
is clumsy is by ignoring the nature that Christianity ascribes to its god as a
*subject* of cognition. As I have pointed out above, the Christian god is
imagined by its believer to be a kind of super consciousness which rules over
the universe (the realm of "finite objects") by fiat, i.e., by
controlling things through conscious intentions, making things exist and events
take place as a consequence of desiring that they
exist and do what they do. The only way you can get out of this yourself is to
abandon, not only Christianity, but any worldview which affirms the primacy of
consciousness view of reality.
At any rate, you've not been able to bring a sustainable criticism
against either premise of my argument. Part of the challenge believers will
have in attacking this argument is grasping the issues it involves, which are
not addressed in the bible. Another part of the challenge is the emotional
impact an argument proving Christianity's commitment to subjectivism has on the
part of the believer. This emotional investment in a confessional program can
only hinder rational judgment. You can dismiss this as merely my opinion, but
that would suggest that you think emotionalism does not cloud rational
judgment, which would only cause me to question your credibility as a thinker
all the more (which may not matter to you).
I wrote:
Similarly, it’s not clear what
you found objectionable in my other points in consideration of the bible
passages that you cited, but rest assured, it’s all apparently due to my
insufficient ability to read the mind of the divine. Anyway, if I cannot
understand something, I cannot rightly claim to know it’s true, can I?
Dusman wrote:
You've had the ability to look up
the proper understanding of these passages in said commentaries at a local
university library so as to see where you're in error. Sure, I could cut and
paste the information in this thread, but you'd blow that off just like you did
the manuscript evidence for the Greek NT. Therefore, since you'll disagree with
whatever ultimate conclusions the commentaries or I say, I'll not waste my time
continuing with this particular area of our diatribe.
So be it, Dusman. Just keep in mind, you're
the one who posted the biblical references to begin with, so it's up to you if
you want to provide and defend your understanding of them, or to leave them
dangling. I provided my take on them, and you haven't interacted with them. I
even went through some of the points I had originally stated, and you did not
answer any of the questions I asked regarding those points. Instead, you seem
to be miffed, which suggests impatience on your part. As for the issue of
"blowing off" the New Testament text as archaeological evidence, I
have already spoken on this, and I see that my point of view has not been
charitably considered. It is up to you, Dusman, to
explain why.
I wrote:
The problem Dawkins has here is
his denial of the faculty of volition, apparently not understanding the fact
that volition is a type of.
Dusman wrote:
Yes, which
flows nicely from his mechanistic understanding of the universe and all
contained therein. What is sad is when I see Sansone,
a trope, amateur, behaviorist theorist agreeing with
Did you mean "Dawkins'" when you wrote "
I wrote:
not unlike the determinism implicit
in religious worldviews which posit a ruling consciousness which pre-conceives
and directs all outcomes, which reduces human beings to puppets with no real
volition of their own. (Here I’m reminded of a quote by Bahnsen: “God controls
all events and outcomes (even those that come about by human choice and
activity) and is far more capable and powerful than modern machines.” Van Til’s Apologetic, p. 489n.43.)
Dusman wrote:
1. You sir, have confused
fatalistic determinism (Dawkins) with theological determinism (Calvinists).
So far as I see it, determinism is invalid, no matter what label you put
in front of it. The net outcome of Dawkins' determinism is no different from
Calvin's. A difference that is really no difference is no difference.
Dusman wrote:
2. You also demonstrate that you
fail to understand the why of God's punishment of sinners and law-breakers, and
how God's predetermination thereof doesn't negate their responsibility in one
whit.
I understand all that’s needed to be understood, Dusman.
Ps. 115:3 says it all: it's all "God's good pleasure." That's all
that's needed to know. Otherwise, we're not supposed to "lean on our own
understanding," per Prov. 3:5, so your constant complaining about my failure to understand
these finer points is moot.
Dusman wrote:
*Thus, you make a false analogy
between Dawkins' mechanistic, no-punishment universe & Calvinism's
theologically determined justified damnation of sinners.
In one system, everyone's predetermined to escape punishment, and in the
other everyone (save for a statistically insignificant minority) is
predetermined to endure punishment. On either system, however, there's nothing
that the individual can do to change his own standing.
I wrote:
If one chooses to act immorally
(i.e., to act against one’s principles and/or values), there is no
“malfunction” taking place; a person can knowingly regulate his own choices,
and if everything is operating correctly, his actions will proceed accordingly.
Dusman wrote:
Here's where your relative
opinion and definition of what morality is falls flat on it's
face.
I did not offer my definition of morality, Dusman.
So your retort here premature.
Dusman wrote:
*How about if my moral principles
and/or values dictate that I kill your nephew, cut his head off, and bore a
hole in his head so I can have sex with it? (i.e., Dahmer)
First of all, if someone has determined to do this kind of act, he's not
going to be stopped if everyone, including his intended victims, adopts the
view that it is right to "resist not evil." Also, if one adopts the
view that he does not belong to himself, then he
pretty much leaves himself defenseless against those who would seek to do him
harm. I think one needs to assume that there will
always be people who seek to destroy the values of others, whether it is their
property or their very lives. Because of this, I think it's important to adopt
a pro-reason philosophy which recognizes man's right to exist for his own sake
(i.e., he does not need to seek someone else's permission in order to live, or
to constantly seek forgiveness for having the desire to live) and which does
not in any way compromise this principle. Only then would the development of a
society governed by objective law be possible. But on the whim-worship of
religion, anything is permissible, and history attests to this.
Dusman wrote:
Given your definition, no
"malfunction" has taken place!
I did not give a definition of 'malfunction', Dusman.
I was simply offering a general reaction to Dawkins' determinism. Did you think
anything I stated was wrong?
Dusman wrote:
C'mon guy, given your definition,
we can justify doing anything and nothing!
How did you get this? I did not give a comprehensive overview of my
system of ethics, so either you're reading something into my view that is not
there, or you just want to be able to discredit my position by means of
shortcut. A desperate man who knows he's on the ropes would probably think he
needs to do this.
I wrote:
Since volition is in essence
cognitive self-regulation and since this understanding is in no way in conflict
with the discoveries of science (in fact, we need volition to begin any
scientific inquiry, since such activity is a chosen activity and does not
happen automatically), I disagree profoundly with Dawkins’ view that “a truly
scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very
idea of responsibility.”
Dusman wrote:
And Skinner, et.
al. would say, "You idiot, don't you know that
the man's volition and self-regulation only operates in accordance with his
previous historical antecedent path?"
Perhaps all I'd need to say in response to Skinner would be "thou sayest." Would that not be sufficient?
Dusman wrote:
In other words, it's just your
relative opinion vs. another unbeliever's relative opinion.
I know of no way to prevent a person from saying what he wants to say, Dusman, and, perhaps unlike religionists, even if I did
know of a way to prevent people from saying what they say (even if it were
erroneous), I wouldn't try to stop them. Individuals have a right to their
opinion; they also have a right to ignore facts and retreat into the world of
imagination.
Dusman wrote:
However, God says,
1 Corinthians
Answer: We're just about everywhere you look.
Dusman wrote:
25 Because the foolishness of God
is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
More assertions. One can
claim anything in the fake environment of the imagination. But if you want to
say your god is real and is powerful, then I await a demonstration. But we
won't get one because there's going to be some problem with expecting to see a
demonstration, right? If I say I expect a demonstration, then I'll be accused
of allegedly thinking the Christian god is going to do what I want it to do
(which of course is not the case); and if I say I don't expect a demonstration,
then I'll be accused of presupposing that such a demonstration cannot happen
(which is not necessitated by the lack of expecting something). However, no
matter how the apologist attempts to explain the lack of a demonstration, the
net outcome remains the same: no demonstration was forthcoming, and this
outcome is certainly compatible with the supposition that our leg is being
pulled.
I wrote:
Of course, by characterizing
Dawkins as “the archbishop of atheism,” you suggest that the views Dawkins
expresses are shared by all atheists.
Dusman wrote:
Good point. I should've been more clear by saying, he's the "supreme pontif of unbelief." The term "archbishop"
is way too low an un-eccesiastical
position for him.
See, Dusman! You are capable of a little humor
after all! It's good to see.
Dusman wrote:
**Seriously, you're right, I could've used a better term and been less
pejorative by not indirectly labeling all atheists as subscribing to his
extreme views. Thanks, your constructive criticism is well recieved.
You're welcome, Dusman. I'm always happy to
correct.
I wrote:
To make this tendency seem more
palpable, apologists like to position “atheism” as a uniform philosophical
perspective, calling it “the atheist worldview,” as if all non-believers were
united in their metaphysical, epistemological and moral affirmations. This is
not only naïve, but highly misleading.
Dusman wrote:
Very good
point.
Thanks!
I wrote:
I’m not surprised to find
defenders of Christianity trying to put some distance between their religious
worldview and other religious worldviews.
Dusman wrote:
Of course Christians do this!
We're *commanded* to do so.
Yes, I'm reminded of Van Til's "full bucket" dilemma. On the
one hand believers are taught to believe that their god is perfect and complete,
lacking nothing, a "full bucket" to which no water can be added. Yet
on the other hand, believers are commanded to "give glory to God" (as
if a perfect being would be pleased with the offerings of imperfect and bespotted creatures worthy of eternal death), which is
likened to adding to a bucket that is already full. Even though Van Til spills
some ink on this issue, he offers no satisfactory answer to it.
Dusman wrote:
So you (an atheist) can distance
yourself from Dawkins (an atheist), but I can't distance myself from other
theists? This is special pleading my friend.
I do not share Dawkins' worldview, Dusman.
It's clear to me that he is not an Objectivist. But when two persons both claim
to be Christians, and Christianity is a worldview which claims its believers
are supernaturally enhanced in some way (they are said to have become "new
creatures in Christ" and all that), and even go so far as to intimate that
they "think God's thoughts after Him," then I would wonder why one would
try to distance himself from the other, given such affinities. It may be the
case that one is lying; it could also be the case that both are lying. Perhaps
they're both deceived. This would probably come out in the discussion if the
right questions were asked; but some persons are better than others at faking
their character, and others are pretty good at lying to themselves (remember Fernandes' admission?).
I wrote:
But it is true – Christianity is
one species of religion and it shares with other religions the same fundamentals
in terms of essentials.
Dusman wrote:
You are pontificating upon your
ignorance of the distinct and major difference between these
"fundamentals."
The so-called "major differences" between Christianity and
other theistic religions do not lie in essentials.
I wrote:
It’s not surprising to find a
thinker who, prior to his conversion to Christianity, was impressed with a
philosopher like Sartre. I have found nothing of value in his thought;
Dusman wrote:
I have, he was consistent with
his atheism (like Dawkins) and in my estimation, you are not.
Saying that one is "consistent with his atheism" is like
saying his views of anthropology are consistent with his non-belief in
unicorns; any view that does not endorse belief in unicorns is thus "consistent"
with a-unicornism. My views of ethics, for instance,
are consistent with my a-Zeusism. You see, Dusman, how empty such statements are, don't you? Atheism
is simply the absence of a specific kind of belief (namely god-belief); it only
tells us what someone does *not* believe. It does not tell us what someone
*does* believe.
I wrote:
if I were
at one time enamored with Sartre’s nauseating worldview, I too would probably
have a tendency to retreat into deeper subjectivism.
Dusman wrote:
I'm not a subjectivist so this is
a very strawy man.
Sure you are. Your whole worldview is subjectivist since it enshrines
the whims of a ruling consciousness that you imagine behind everything you
perceive. Your worldview begins with emotion (Prov.
1:7), your means of knowledge is a form of wishing (faith), your metaphysic
grants primacy to the subject of awareness (God controls everything by fiat),
your ethics is full of self-sacrifice (you don’t own your bodies,
you are expected to be willing to die for the sake of others, etc.). These are
all telltale elements of a worldview whose basis is subjective in nature.
I wrote:
Also, I agree, at least to a
large extent, that the tendency to indoctrinate young, impressionable and
philosophically defenseless minds is very common.
Dusman wrote:
Just like you do with your
website, just like the public schools do, and just like the secular media does
on various socio-political issues ranging from abortion to gay
marriage.
My website in no way seeks to abuse the trust of youngsters, Dusman. Anyone who comes to read my site is free to stop
reading, to have his own opinion with what he reads there, to question what I
write, to ignore or deny its truths, etc. No one who visits my blog and website is a captive audience, as a child is in a
family run by mystic-headed religious zealots (consider Mormon families if you
don’t want to think this way about your own). And no one who visits and reads
my writings is threatened into believing what I say on pain of punishment if they
do not believe what I say. My material does not appeal to the stick, if you
know what I mean.
I wrote:
I see this more as a result of
the influence of religious thinking in the world rather than an unquestionable
primary that cannot be avoided.
Dusman wrote:
Well, since my original point was
that indoctrination takes place in *all* venues (whether secular or sacred), I
fail to see how your likening the indoctrination of "religious thinking in
the world" somehow means that indoctrination is *not* taking place in
secular situations. Man, have you ever heard of the
Therefore, you quote above fails
to deal with (1) the fact that indoctrination is taking place in all venues and
with varying worldviews, and (2) that *not* all of these worldviews can provide
the necessary preconditions for the intelligiblity of
reality.
I never affirmed the view that “indoctrination is *not* taking place in
secular situations,” Dusman. You have the habit of
reading too much into your opponent's statements without really understanding
what I have stated; you interact with things I have not affirmed and yet ignore
the things that I have affirmed. Paul Manata has this
selfsame problem, a problem I call terminal presumptuousness. Many apologists
have this (see my blog on Roger Wagner). I have
nowhere denied that indoctrination takes place in secular contexts, and I’m
aware of it probably as acutely as you are. Maybe even more
so since I was trained at an early age to detect it by a very concerned and
enlightened parent who started a home business on this very issue when I was
still in elementary school. Have I heard of the
I wrote:
I’m truly sorry for your little
girl, but her mind is in your hands to shape or destroy.
Dusman wrote:
Don't be sorry for my little girl
my friend, for she'll learn about Darwinism (as I've taught it in college),
atheism, secular humanism, she'll read about Ayn
Rand, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and other
various worldviews.
She'll also learn that she's
created in the image of God with a mind that is capable of rational thought and
critical thinking. She'll learn that the only worldview that provides the
preconditions for the intelligibility of reality is the Christian worldview and
that to deny that worldview is to be a biblical fool.
As I said, she is in your hands, for now at least. I leave the matter to
your conscience.
Dusman wrote:
No, Dawson, feel sorry for
yourself my friend, for your eyes are blinded such that you can't even *see*
that you're blinded. May God have mercy on you.
For one, I do not feel sorry for myself. Also, you say that my
"eyes are blinded such that [I] can't even *see* that [I'm] blinded."
And although I do need corrective lenses, my optometrist has assured me that I
am not blind. Whom should I trust on this matter, Dusman?
A medical professional, or some guy on the internet
who can't piece together a proof for the god he imagines exists? Oh, you
probably mean "spiritual sight" here, right? Well, according to your
worldview, this is not in my control. It's up to your god. So if you're going
to get frustrated, you're only getting frustrated with your god, and I'm just a
stand-in proxy, a scapegoat for your angst against what your god has allegedly
determined to be the state of affairs of the day. As you say below, "God
must reveal it to you…" Again, this is not my problem.
I wrote:
This just underscores the deep
irrationality that afflicts Christian god-belief. It also confirms my suspicion
that Christians are just pulling our legs (since such positions are compatible
with the state of affairs in which Christianity is false and its adherents are
seeking ways to rationalize their beliefs with their actions).
Dusman wrote:
Nice hermeneutical method for Matt.
28:18-20. Man that's a great interpretation! Did you learn that from Ayn Rand?
Actually, from what I can gather from her writings,
I wrote:
I have simply asked the
following: If your god really wants me to believe (a desired end), why doesn’t
it appear to me like it did to Saul of Tarsus (the means)? Your god does have
desired ends, does it not? It does apply rational principles, does it not? It
did want Saul of Tarsus to believe, did it not? Appearing to Saul of Tarsus
affected the outcome that he ended up believing after all, did it not?
Dusman wrote:
Well, all you're doing here is
demonstrating that God has not been pleased as of yet to reveal Himself to you
by pointing out the sad condition of your depraved soul.
No, that is not all that I'm doing, Dusman.
I'm asking a question, and after correcting you several times (you had mistaken
my questions for claims which I did not make), you still do not address it. I
don't think you have a good answer, and instead of simply saying "I don't
know" (which I would accept), you use this as an opportunity to attack me
personally (calling my soul "depraved").
I wrote:
Apologists seem personally
offended that non-believers do not buy into their religious beliefs. The truth
of the matter is that I have not seen anyone dragging an ark down
Dusman wrote:
This is the point! You can't
"just know" because you don't have the epistemologal
foundation for such knowledge!
I do not claim an epistemology that grants validity to the notion of
“just knowing” or any other form of automatic knowledge. This is what religious
faith is all about when it comes to pseudo-epistemology – the claim to “know”
something because one wants it to be true. Since what they claim is not true,
they cannot point to a method by which their claims can be validated. For this would allow for fallibility, and the religionists don't
want to be seen as anything but infallible.
Dusman wrote:
God must reveal it to you through
the Holy Spirit working through the primary means of gospel preaching and
teaching.
Which just means you don’t have an epistemology – i.e., a theory of
knowledge which explains how knowledge is *discovered* and *validated*. Since
“knowledge” has to be “revealed” to you, that means
there’s nothing you can do to discover it in the first place. You need to have
it spoonfed to you. And yet you claim to have a
worldview which “provides the preconditions of intelligibility.” It couldn’t be
further from the truth.
Dusman wrote:
You've reject this, so *no
evidence* would matter either way.
You miss the point. Since your whole epistemology rejects the very need
for evidence to support what is claimed as knowledge, you have to rationalize
your inability to offer any evidence on behalf of your worldview claims to
begin with. That’s why you can list all the ways that an “immortal soul”, for
instance, *CANNOT* be detected, but you offer no explanation of how such
alleged things CAN be discovered and identified. Your whole epistemology
consists of wiping out.
Dusman wrote:
You've already demonstrated this
by your rejection of NT Greek manuscript evidence as archaeological evidence
that provides eyewitness testimony to the resurrection of Christ.
I already spoke to this and you seem to be unable to integrate what I
have affirmed regarding the evidentiary value of the New Testament. On your
view, you’ll have no choice but to special plead your own implicit standard
(namely the standard that accepts the content of ancient manuscripts as
unquestionable truth) when it comes to non-biblical texts originating from
ancient times. My principle, however, is compatible with any ancient text
uncovered from archaeological digs. My principle allows that such texts serve
as evidence that some people in those ancient times from which they originated
may have actually believed what those texts say.
I wrote:
It looks like you’ve been reading
Michael Butler. Of course, as you inform the argument here, it clearly commits
the fallacy of the stolen concept (since it assumes that existence has its
precondition in something that exist).
Dusman wrote:
"The stolen concept fallacy
consists of invoking a concept while denying the more fundamental concepts on
which it depends." (Wikipedia)
A good article on this often-overlooked fallacy is Branden's
The Stolen Concept.
Dusman wrote:
I'm not invoking the Christian
God and then denying the more fundamental concepts upon which the Christian God
depends (as you claim) because the Christian *worldview* teaches that no such
concept is more fundamental than the Christian God. The Christian God *is* the
fundamental entity upon which everything else builds upon and there is NOTHING
at the back of Him to which He is dependent upon (Pro. 1:7;
Of course, in the fake environment of one's imagination, one could say
anything, such as you say here. But to say that Christianity teaches that there
are no concepts "more fundamental than the Christian God" implies a
self-conscious understanding of concepts, which of course we do not find in the
bible. Recall that I had earlier asked where the bible presents an
understanding of concepts, and you apparently agreed with me that it does not.
And yet here you speak as though you were knowledgeable about concepts,
intimating that there are no concepts more fundamental than the Christian god.
Again, you point to Proverbs 1:7 (and with it vs.
Dusman wrote:
If anybody is committing the
stolen concept fallacy it is *you*, as you deny that you must begin with God's
existence as the precondition for the intelligibility of reality all the while
invoking your own atheism in an attempt to prove that my belief rests on your
own sandy foundation of unbelief.
Even here, this objection could only work if "God" were a
concept (note the definition of 'stolen concept' that you provided above). A
concept is an integration of two or more units which is formed by omitting
measurements and retained by a common definition. So if "God" is a
concept, what units is it integrating? Blank out. Again, we find among
Christian defenses a faulty understanding of concepts. Besides, since (a)
'existence' is the widest of all concepts (it includes everything that exists
and is applied to anything postulated as real), (b) the truth of the concept
'existence' is perceptually self-evident (whereas the Christian god is said to
be invisible - cf. I Tim. 1:17 - and thus not accessible by man's direct means
of awareness), and (c) you must use the concept 'existence' when asserting what
you say is most fundamental ("God"), you are in effect
concept-stealing all over again since you are denying the fundamentality of the
concept 'existence' while asserting it at the same time.
Also, look again at the argument as you have informed it. X is supposed
to stand for "all that exists." Since you say that your god exists, X
would necessarily have to include it. And yet, the whole course of the argument
assumes that X (the totality of all that exists taken as a whole) needs
something prior to it to serve as its precondition. When you come along and
assert Y (the existence of the Christian god), you are asserting an existent
prior to the totality of "all that exists" (i.e., something that
exists distinct from the totality subsumed by X). You're essentially treating
the totality (X) as a whole which could only mean that there is nothing that
exists prior to that totality, then you assert
something prior to the totality in order to explain it. So essentially, the
argument as you have formed it contains an internal contradiction.
Why not just begin as I do in my non-Christian worldview, with the fact
that existence exists, and move on from there? My fundamental axiomatic
concepts are 'existence', 'identity' and 'consciousness'. You're going to have
to assume the truth of these concepts to say anything else anyway, so what's
wrong? My axioms along with the primacy of the object metaphysics are the
preconditions of intelligibility, so positing a worldview which contradicts
these won't "provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility"
as if a fundamental contradiction could serve as a precondition of intelligibility.
_________________
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 9:51 am
Dusman wrote:
So, according to the list above
it seems that:
1. Paul was supposed to repeat in
his epistles almost *EVERYTHING* that the gospel writers focused on in detail.
No, and I did not say that Paul or anyone else was supposed to do this.
Dusman wrote:
2. This list is designed by you
to show some type of error or contradiction in God's word.
The list is simply a compilation of important gospel elements which are
completely absent from Paul's epistles. It is most curious, for instance, that
Paul does not mention that Jesus was born of a virgin (as two of the gospels
claim), or that he was baptized by John the Baptist. Paul never associates
Jesus with a place called
Dusman wrote:
3. Apparently you think God's
Word needs to repeat itself like a broken record because the people in Paul's
day were just uneducated whits who couldn't remember
anything.
I don't think it needs to do this. But then again, if the bible does not
need to repeat itself, why do we find four gospel narratives in the New
Testament? Why does the book of Acts describe Paul's conversion twice (chap. 9
and 22)? For that matter, there are numerous passages in the Old Testament
which are verbatim repetitions, some of them quite dubious.
Anyhow, since the harmony of the NT documents is such an important issue
for believers, it seems that, were I a believer, the marked difference between
Paul's threadbare treatment of Jesus and the fairytale-like depictions of Jesus
in the gospel narratives would concern me quite a bit.
I wrote:
Paul nowhere mentions a virgin
birth. Neither does Mark, the earliest gospel. The earliest gospel has Jesus’ sonship begin at his baptism, another gospel element which
is nowhere mentioned by Paul, the earliest NT writer. Then we have the gospels
of Luke and Matthew, which are obviously modeled on Mark’s gospel which serves
as a basic template;
Dusman wrote:
Oh yes, this is so obvious...it
is sooooo obvious that they all copied from the
"Q" document, to which NO evidence whatsoever exists of this silly
claim. It is an old German higher criticism teaching that is still being kicked
around by some scholars yet has no hard manuscript evidence to back it up.
"NO evidence whatsoever"? The evidence is found in the gospels
bearing the names of Matthew and Luke. After all, the New Testament is supposed
to be accepted as evidence, is it not?
I wrote:
these gospels
sought to give Jesus more of a supernatural feel and claim he was born of a
virgin. The latest gospel, that titled John, makes no mention of a virgin
birth, but associates Jesus with the Philonic idea of
the “logos,” which is foreign to other New Testament texts on Jesus. The legend
grows with each retelling. The problem is that Christians are in the habit of
reading the gospel Jesus into the Pauline and other New Testament epistles,
missing the fact that they might very well be talking about different savior
personalities.
Dusman wrote:
This is an argument from
ignorance.
Actually, it's not. We can trace a clear progression from a relatively
more mundane Jesus to a relatively more supernatural Jesus through the gospel
accounts themselves, and this progression parallels the dating that most NT
scholars have assigned to the texts (e.g., Mark being the earliest, followed by
Matthew and Luke-Acts, and then John). This is not a speculation based on
ignorance, for there is clear evidence of just such an evolving tradition. As I
stated, the legend grows with each retelling. When it comes to the early
epistles, Christians are in the habit of reading the gospel details into what
those letters say so that they seem to all be part of the same tradition.
However, this is where the argument from ignorance comes in: the believer
ignores the vast and unexplained silences in the early epistolary record,
simply assuming that the letters and the gospels are all part of a single,
uniform tradition. He also ignores the possibility that these traditions are
the result of embellishments that are commonplace in milieux
in which mystical visions are taken seriously.
I wrote:
I list the following gospel
details which are not even hinted at in any of Paul’s early letters
Dusman wrote:
Now, at this point, if I'm a
textual scholar and I read the epistles in the original Greek, I don't need to
see if Paul mentioned every jot and tittle of the
details listed in the gospel accounts, I would very simply ask if Paul preached
the fundamental gospel message of Jesus Christ.
Luckily many New Testament scholars are a little more thoroughgoing and
critical in their examination of the NT texts. They don't look only for general
similarities and then close the books, prematurely satisfied that the
confessional points have been met. Rather, they conduct intensive
investigations into the many strands of details that weave in and out of the
epistles and narratives in the NT, treating it almost like a crime scene in
which no detail is to be ignored or misplaced.
Dusman wrote:
I will use pieces from some old
research that I did years ago in order to answer your assertions:
You might want to update your research, Dusman.
Then again, if you don't want to give your god-belief a challenge, then you
probably won't want to do this.
Dusman wrote:
The objection you raise has
always seemed like an odd objection to me, even when I was an atheist, because
NONE of the non-gospel writings have much to do with Jesus life either!
It's not so much an "objection" that I am raising; rather,
it's more like a glaring hole in the record that Christians are prone to
ignoring, often quite innocently (since they tend to become familiar with the
gospel stories and the personalities portrayed in those stories before they get
to the more or less "theoretical" aspects of the NT which are
concentrated in the epistles, both Paul's and others). But you’re getting a
little closer to the point, Dusman. If the stories of
Jesus’ earthly life were later inventions that sprang up after (or independent
of) Paul’s ministry, the New Testament record would look very much like it does
now. If Paul's and other earliest Christians considered Jesus to be an ethereal
figure
“If we can remove the Gospel
overlay from the epistles, the religion of Paul emerges as something closely
related to the salvation cults of the time. Seen in such a light, Christianity
is the great surviving mystery religion, with the exception that its theology
was not kept secret, and the ‘mystery’ revealed through its rites was God’s.”
(Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle, p. 115)
“In the epistles, Christ’s act of
salvation was not located in the present, or even in the recent past, and
certainly not within the historical setting familiar to us from the Gospels.
Christ had existed from before time began, and it was in a non-historical time
and place, in a supernatural relam, that this Son of
God had undergone a redeeming ‘blood’ sacrifice.” (Ibid., p. 95)
Dusman wrote:
Why would anyone single out Paul?
Because there are more of his writings?
Paul was not only the most prolific writer of NT documents,
he was for all we can tell also the earliest. He is also arguably the most
influential as well. If we want to discover the truths of Christian beginnings,
we have to look at the earliest writings we can find that bear on the matter.
Hence, we look to Paul's letters. But there is no driving motivation, as you
apparently assume, to ignore other early letters found in the NT. When we get
to those, we find that they only corroborate the view that what we have in the
NT is a growing legend marked by internecine conflicts, sectarian disputes, etc.
Dusman wrote:
Consider the references to the
details of the life of Jesus in the non-gospel writings (non-Pauline sections):
In Acts we have the very general
comments of Peter about Jesus' earthly life:
1. Jesus was a man attested by
God via miracles and signs (Acts 2.22).
2. Jesus was delivered by God
into the hands of those who crucified Him (2.23; 3.15; 4.10; 5.30; 7.52), both
Jews and Gentiles (ch. 4, verse twenty-eight).
3. God raised Jesus from the dead
(2.24, 32; 3.15; 4.10; 5.30).
4. Jesus was the Davidic
descendant of the prophetic OT (2.29-31).
5. Jesus ascended to heaven, to
the right hand of God (2.33-34; 5.31; 7.56).
This is a quite meager amount of
historical information, and none of it is detailed and none of it is from Paul!
Yes, it's quite a lot of information that echoes the biographical
narratives of the gospels. And this is to be expected in the case of Acts,
since the author of Acts was also an author of one the gospels (Luke). What's
interesting is that, although Acts includes many yarns about Paul's missionary
travels, you could never tell from Acts that Paul wrote any letters, which is
what Paul is most known for. G.A. Wells points out that "whether the Paul
of the Pauline letters is compatible with the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles
is a problem that has exercised theologians for generations." (The
Historical Evidence for Jesus, p. 145) On the same page, Wells quotes Vielhauer's admission of "crass contradictions between
Acts and the Pauline letters, concerning both historical fact and theological
doctrine," which remain unexplained by more conservative commentators.
(Ibid., quoting Vielhauer, "Franz Overbeck und die NT Wissenschaft,"
in Aufsatze zum
NT, p. 246)
Throughout his chapter, titled "The Lucan
Documents in Relation to the Pauline Letters," Wells documents, not only
many discrepancies between the record we find in Acts and Paul's letters, but
also points out the Lucan author's tendency to rely
on Septuagint (Greek) translations of the Hebrew scriptures in speeches given
by the apostles when addressing Jewish crowds, even though the Septuagint
"distorts the Hebrew original… Conservative theologians (anxious to regard
the speeches of various apostles in Acts as 'echoes' of genuine and early
apostolic preaching which survived as oral tradition from which Luke drew) have
resorted to desperate expedients to explain away the difficulties. For
instance, [F.F.] Bruce supposes that James knew the Septuagint and quoted it
out of courtesy to Paul and his companions who were present on the
occasion." (Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus, p. 149; Wells
is citing F.F. Bruce's The Acts of the Apostles. The Greek Text with
Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed., p. 298.)
Later Wells notes:
"I have said repeatedly that
the author of Acts had not read Paul's letters. He would surely have hesitated
to set aside so much of what he must have known (had he known it at all) to be
authentic tradition merely to write something edifying. Yet Paul's letters
undoubtedly existed when he wrote, although they may not have been circulating
as a collection at the time. Luke's ignorance of Paul's letter probably means tht documents which were prized in some Christian
communities were unknown or ignored in others. Although Paul is mentioned more
often in the Christian writings of the second century than any Christian
personage than Jesus, Justin Martyr, who wrote as late as about 150, never
quotes Paul, nor even mentions him." (Wells, The Historical Evidence
for Jesus, p. 164)
So yes, we can look at the book of Acts, but this will only serve in
opening the box of difficulties we have in the NT record even further. I'm not
sure you want to do this, but if you wish to pursue the matter, there's a lot of very troublesome details we can get into.
Dusman wrote:
But let's try the General
(non-Pauline) epistles (and Revelation) for information about Jesus' earthly
life:
1. Hebrews has many, many
references to Jesus, but all are contrastive to various other servants of God
(e.g. angels, Moses, Melchizedek). Most of the references have to do with His
ministry of the New Covenant (7.22; 12.24), and the only earthly life detail
given is that He was crucified outside the city (Hebrew 13.12).
2. James, the brother of Jesus,
has NO discussion (or even information) about the earthly life of Jesus
whatsoever in his epistle! (However, Paul does!)
3. I Peter only makes reference to the sufferings, death, resurrection, and
exaltation of Jesus (nothing about the pre-Passion events).
4. 2nd Peter gives us one major
piece of historical detail--the miracle at the Transfiguration. Peter recounts
that he was an eyewitness of His Majestic transfiguration on the Mount (2 Peter
1:16: "For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to
you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of
His majesty. 17 For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such
an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is My
beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased"- 18 and we ourselves heard this
utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain."
referring to the events of Luke 9.28ff). Other than this, there is no reference
to earthly details.
5. The Epistles of John only
speak of the reality of Christ's human nature (they didn't have much of a
problem with His deity in those circles--He was obviously God; they just
couldn't accept that He was a man also!), and a reference or two to His death
(as noted above).
6. The epistle of Jude has no
data either.
7. The book of Revelation has no
data either.
You mention the non-Pauline letters, such as those attributed to James,
Peter and John, as well as the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, and indicate
that they, like the Pauline letters, tend not to include many of the details of
an earthly life of Jesus. (For instance, we do not find any hints to any of the
gospel elements included on my list, save perhaps for a few very scant asides.)
And this is true. However, this in no way repairs the silences in Paul’s
letters, and in fact instances of parallel silences in other early letters are
what we would expect to see among some of these letters (2 Peter is probably
the latest of the NT documents according to most NT scholarship) if the gospel
picture of Jesus were a growing legend. If a letter was written after at least
one of the gospels had come into circulation and accepted as at least somewhat
authoritative, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see some elements of the
gospel picture meriting mention in later letters. And as you showed us, this is
what we find in 2 Peter, which, again, according to NT scholars, was most
likely written decades after the first gospel.
Even in the case of 1 John, the silence on the gospel Jesus is
deafening, as Doherty points out: “For all its focus on ‘eternal life’, the
epistle 1 John has nothing to say about the resurrection, and even the specific
concept of the cross is missing.” (The Jesus Puzzle, p. 67)
Dusman wrote:
**
Again, you miss the point (which suggests to me that you are not truly
up on your NT scholarship). I am not leveling any "accusation against
Paul" for anything, Dusman, since I don’t think
Paul grew the legend of an earthly life of Jesus that we find in the gospels.
This came later, in the form of gospel narratives which were written not only
well after Paul’s letters, but also after many other early letters as well.
Nothing I had stated precludes non-Pauline letters from showing the same trend
of silences that we see in Paul. Paul, however, is the best example since he
wrote most of the NT outside the gospels (including Luke-Acts) and, from what
we can tell, was the earliest writer of any NT text.
Dusman wrote:
But, consider something else.
Consider Paul's usage of Jesus' words or teachings.
Thank you for raising this point. If I could find a teaching of Jesus in
Paul’s letters that Paul attributes to Jesus, how would we know that it's
really Jesus' teaching, and not something Paul authored and which someone later
put into Jesus' mouth? You see, your assumption, which you take for granted,
that the teachings we find in Paul are Jesus', is a result of "reading of
the epistles through Gospel-colored glasses" (Dogherty,
Challenging the Verdict, p. 171.) We should not be so anxious to read
details into Paul's letters when those details are absent from those letters to
begin with.
Dusman wrote:
So, if that is the case (and this
is a frequent objection levied against Paul) is there indeed no evidence that
Paul knew and/or used the words of Jesus?
If the gospel picture of Jesus as a teacher were a later invention (Paul
doesn’t even hint that Jesus taught in parables), we would not expect to find
Paul attributing any teachings to Jesus. And what does the Pauline landscape
look like? Well, Paul typically does not attribute the teachings he gives to
Jesus (see below). You seem to be getting it, Dusman.
Dusman wrote:
What we are looking for here are
allusions to, or echos of, Jesus' teaching in the
Gospels. We are NOT looking for quotes (with numbered chapters and verses,
before they appeared half a millenium later!), but echos and word-choices and similarities of teaching that
make sense as having come from Jesus (ultimately).
What I would be looking for is not just echoes of Jesus' teachings, but,
along with those echoes, some indication that Jesus taught those same teachings
while he was on earth, if in fact the epistle writer knew this. What I would
not expect to find if the Christian party line were all true, is that these
early epistle writers presented moral teachings while never crediting Jesus with
authoring them (let alone retaining the context in which he would have taught
them), and never indicating that Jesus had even taught on the subject in the
first place.
Dusman wrote:
Are there any in Paul?
There are TONS of allusions and
quote!
Exactly! That’s one of the telltale smoking guns, Dusman.
You stumbled right onto it without realizing it. Paul gave numerous teachings,
but nowhere attributed them to an earthly Jesus conducting a ministry in and
around
Consider what G.A. Wells' points out here:
"Paul gives it as his own
view (Rom. 13:8-10) that the law can be summed up in the one Old Testament injunction
"You shall love your neighbor as yourself." According
to Lk. 10:25-8, Jesus himself taught that love of
neighbor (together with love of God) ensures salvation; but one could never
gather from Paul that Jesus had expressed himself on the matter. In 1 Thess. 4:9 it is not Jesus but God who is said to have
taught Christians to love one another. And in the injunction not to repay evil
for evil but always to do good to all is given in the same epistle (5:15)
without any suggestion that Jesus had taught it (as according to the gospels he
did in the Sermon on the Mount). In his letter to Christians at
We need to ask the question: If all one had were Paul's early epistles,
for instance, and he wanted to give Paul's teachings the stamp of divine
authority, what would keep him from writing a narrative in which some of Paul's
teachings were inserted into the mouth of a walking-talking man-god that lived
on earth? The answer is: Nothing would stop someone from doing this if he
wanted to.
Dusman wrote:
On one scholarly extreme is
Alfred Resch, the German author who early in this
century found 1, 158 Pauline allusions to Jesus (this is in slightly over 2,000
verses of Pauline writings!).
Did Resch find in any of Paul's letters even
one of the gospel elements I listed? If not, then this needs to be noted. As
for "Pauline allusions" to Jesus, this could be anything with the
name "Jesus" attached to it. No one is disputing that Paul wrote
about a mythical figure named Jesus, so unless Resch
has uncovered one of the silences noted on my list, then there's really no
substance to be found in citing him.
Dusman wrote:
On the other end of the spectrum
is Victor Furnish who can only find eight air-tight cases (Rom 12.14, 17; 13.7;
14.13-14; 14.14; 1 Thess 5.2, 13, 15)--although his
search was focused on the ethical teaching of Paul only.
And what's noteworthy is Wells' answer to Furnish, which I gave above.
Dusman wrote:
This wide disparity between the
extremes shows how speculative this search for direct dependence can be, but at
the same time, shows how close in teaching content Paul and Jesus are!!!
This comment of yours was so ripe, Dusman,
that I wanted to speak to the three points that I think stand out most
dramatically in what you stated:
1) Disparity in opinions: You mention "wide disparity" among
NT scholars, which only confirms a point I was making earlier in this thread
that treating NT scholars as if they were all in uniform agreement with each
other on these and other matters is not only misleading, but also very
irresponsible.
2) Speculation vs. "just the facts, ma'am": Yes, I admit that
there is much room for speculation, but these speculations should not be
mistaken for certainties, and certainty is what the conservative view of
Christianity (i.e., "the Bible is Truth!") requires. What's most
important is to get the facts right first, and my list of silences in the
Pauline record represents an effort to document those facts.
3) Closeness in teaching: Sure the teachings are close, and that's what
we would expect to find if the gospel traditions put the teachings of Paul and
other early writers into Jesus' mouth! Keep in mind the historical context that
we know is true: Paul was the earliest writer. In his letters, he does not
present the portrait of Jesus that we find in the gospels (see my list of
silences for starters), and yet he presents many moral teachings without
crediting Jesus as their author (see the Wells quote above). We also know that
Paul was not a companion of a Jesus who conducted a ministry in and around 1st
century
You, Dusman, then quoted Dunn:
Quote:
"Nevertheless, the very fact
of the debate and the range of opinion arising from it are of significance. For
the character of the debate is itself a reflection of the character of the
evidence; the inconclusiveness of the debate reflects the inconclusiveness of
the evidence. All are agreed that Paul does cite or refer to dominical tradition
at two points at least (1 Cor
Wait a minute! Hold the presses! Did you read the first sentence here, Dusman? Dunn points out that there is a "debate"
which involves a "range of opinion" which must be pretty vast to be
considered "of significance"! But earlier, when you pointed to NT
scholars, you treated them as if they all spoke with one voice, as if they were
all "in one accord" with one another, a picture that Acts wants us to
have of the early church (when in fact Paul's letters suggest quite the
opposite was the case). Dunn says that this "debate" (how there could
be a debate among NT scholars if they all agreed with each other is not
explained) is colored by "the inconclusiveness of the evidence."
Well, if I were a Christian bent on supposing that the NT was a divinely
inspired and infallible witness, such an admission would worry me quite a bit,
especially given what we know so far (see above). Dunn finds only two points
(both in the same letter) where "Paul does cite or refer to dominical
tradition," and he acknowledges an unspecified number of "passages in
Paul which look very much as though they contain allusions to or echoes of
Jesus tradition." Dunn may in fact be reading Paul with gospel-colored
glasses if he is reading gospel details into Paul's letters. Rather, it very well
may be the case that the gospels, written well after Paul's letters, contain
"echoes" of Paul's writings. Dunn seems anxious to conclude that
"there is a degree of consensus" among scholars here, but this is too
vague and too mediocre to bank anything on. Meanwhile, my list still stands
intact. What more can be said? What more needs to be said?
Dusman kindly offered a list of
parallel teachings, between Paul's letters and statements which the gospels put
into Jesus' mouth. Where Dusman and I differ is in
that he assumes the gospel story is true and that Paul was teaching what Jesus
taught (in spite of the facts that Paul does not attribute his teachings to
Jesus, the gospel narratives were written long after Paul wrote his letters,
and Paul nowhere places his Jesus in the historical context we find in the
gospels); while I see a marked progression in the development of a tradition,
beginning with Paul's letters which speak of Jesus as more as a spiritual being
which has always existed, lived on earth in the distant past (if in fact it
lived on earth at all), and growing in detail as the story was retold and
reworked to incorporate an ever-increasing range of material such as numerous midrashic treatments of OT passages, Hellenistic elements
which were common to contemporary mystery religions, mythical parallels (such
as the slaughter of the innocents, virgin birth, escape to Egypt, visitation of
the Magi, etc.), sayings literature such as that attributed to the hypothetical
Q source, and a wealth of recent historical elements and personalities (such as
John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, etc.) to assemble what comes close to what
today we would call a historical novel: a fictional account placed in the
context of actual history. I think the data that can be combed from the NT
record far more supports my view of the Jesus story than Dusman's
party-line view which is, given what I have come to learn, impossible to
reconcile with what we find in the NT's documents. Even in the list of
parallels that Dusman provided, the versions of the
teachings given in the gospels read as if they were lifted from Paul's and
other early letters and attributed to Jesus as the legend of his earthly life
was composed and redacted.
Dusman tells us that he could
add "scores and scores (and probably hundreds and hundreds) of other
examples" to his list of parallels or "echoes," and I do not
doubt this one bit. The question I am raising is: what is echoing what? Is Paul
echoing the gospels (which were written well after Paul's letters), or are the
gospels echoing Paul (which is most suggested by the evidence we have)?
Dusman wrote:
But not only did Paul know (and
repeat) Jesus' teaching--often almost verbatim!--he constantly pointed his
readers to the life of Christ as an example to follow.
Since this is precisely one of the matters in contention, it does not
suffice simply to affirm it. Paul does not even credit Jesus as the source of
many of his moral pronouncements, certainly not a Jesus like the one we read
about in the gospels. Of course, if the authors of the gospels took the
teachings found in the early epistolary record and put them into the mouth of
the Jesus they were concocting in their narratives, it
could certainly look like Paul was repeating what Jesus taught. By giving those
teachings a historical context, this would be the impression of any uncritical
reader. But this historical context is missing in the early epistolary record,
and the overall record shows many signs of a developing tradition that grew in
detail and embellishment as it was reworked and refined. So the "large
amount of verbal and thematic overlap between Jesus and Paul" that Dusman mentions, is not denied by my list and accompanying
points. Rather, that overlap now has a most plausible explanation which, to the
chagrin of anxious apologists, does not bode well for orthodox Christianity.
Let's also not forget that, in Galatians 1:6-7, Paul warns us that there
are competing gospels circulating abroad. He writes: "I marvel that ye are
so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would
pervert the gospel of Christ."
Who is to say that the traditions that eventually became what we now
know as the gospels were not what Paul had in mind when he was concerned that
some in his flock "would pervert the gospel of Christ," or that they
might come under the influence of such a perversion?
Dusman offered some brief
concluding points to summarize his case:
Dusman wrote:
Under this point, then, we see
that Paul:
1. Did preach the same
"gospel" of Jesus and didn't need to provide every gospel narrative
detail so as to prevent being blackballed 2,000 years later by an atheistic
skeptic.
2. Paul manifests the same
"lack of interest" in the pre-Passion Jesus as did the other NT
writers.
3. Paul manifests a tremendous
amount of common verbal forms and teaching content with Jesus (some grammar
exactly the same in the original language!)
4. Paul refers his readers to the
example of Jesus' life and character.
Accordingly, the data above is
QUITE STRONG--Paul is not as renegade as our atheist
friend would like try to present him as! I pray that our hubris-filled friend
will turn his fists into open palms in adoration of the King lest it be too
late!
And my response:
1. Since the Jesus which Paul speaks about in his letters lacks the
historical context that the gospels give in their portrait of their Jesus, it
is by no means a cut-and-dry case that Paul is preaching the "same
gospel" that we find in the four biographical narratives Mark, Matthew,
Luke and John. The record we have in the NT not only indicates legendary
concoction, it is also best explained as such.
2. If the gospels are later inventions, we would expect that documents
by other early Christian writers would be similarly silent (which, Dusman admits, they are).
3. If the later gospel writers were in effect seeking to give the
teachings found in the early epistolary record Jesus' divine stamp of approval,
then it would not be surprising to find them putting Paul's (and other early
writers') words into Jesus' mouth in the narratives they composed. The outcome
of this would be a picture of Jesus which shows a lot in common with what Paul
wrote, especially if certain passages were quoted without attribution.
4. When Paul refers to Jesus' life and character, he does not refer to a
Jesus which lived in the historical context that the gospels give him.
Here are some high-level points for you to consider on this matter, Dusman.
1) You do not provide one reference in any of Paul's letters which
points to any of the gospel details that I listed as silences. This suggests to
me that you do not deny the findings I uncover in this list. So my list, at
which you giggled earlier, stands intact.
2) You point to other early epistle writers are silent on many of these
details as well, which does not contradict my list or anything I had stated
about that list. It does not, for instance, uncover references in Paul's letters
to gospel elements that I listed as silences, nor does this explain Paul's
silences. On the contrary, it only serves to buttress my point: early
Christians did not - at least in their writings - teach a Jesus as we find
portrayed in the gospels.
3) You provide a long list of your own, one that shows parallel
teachings in both early epistles and in the later gospels. What's noteworthy is
that these teachings as they appear in the early epistles are not attributed to
Jesus by the writers of the epistles. This is most remarkable - in fact
difficult to explain - if the epistle writers were writing about the same Jesus
portrayed in the gospels.
4) Paul warns us of competing gospels and variations of the Jesus story.
He does not elaborate much on this, so it's not easy to rule out the
possibility that the traditions found in today's gospels represent what Paul
considered disingenuous.
For more info, see my blog Reckless
Apologetic Presumptuousness.
_________________
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2006 8:39 am
Dusman,
I have read your responses and have been careful to interact with them
comprehensively. In doing so I did my best with the short time I have to give
your statements fair consideration before composing and submitting my replies,
allowing myself to confer with sources and to keep th larger picture in focus. I find your replies to me
increasing incoherent, for it's nowhere clear what you're trying to argue for
or against, or that you even truly grasp the issues at hand in a serious and
sober manner. I understand that you do not like the points I have drawn out and
the sources which I have quoted (dismissing them as non-scholarly and
pretending to be a spokesman for all genuine scholars, as if they were all in
uniform agreement with you), but I have yet to see any relevant and sustainable
criticism raised against what has been presented. Much in your rebuttals
consists in simply repeating what you said earlier without adding any important
content. You linked to Robert Turkel's treatments,
which I read some time ago and found very disappointing. Given your apparent
concern for scholarship, it would be puzzling to me if you were not embarrassed
by Turkel's writings, but apparently you aren't. You
want to dismiss the work of Doherty and Wells (and probably a whole list of
others, perhaps simply because they do not tow the party line) whose work is
very solid, drawing from a plethora of scholarly sources on the matters which
they touch, and yet point to someone like Turkel as
if he somehow represented a superior intellectual resource. Perhaps you had
nothing better than the grumblings of a man who is full of attitude but little
acumen. Do you know of any published books refuting Wells, Doherty, Price and
other critical thinkers who have engaged these topics?
Since much of your posting included repeated statements of yours to
which I have already responded, I will focus only on a few choice bits that I
found in some of your recent messages:
Dusman wrote:
It is *impossible* for the
post-mortem appearances of Jesus to have been hallucinations. Hallucinations
almost always occur to neurotics and psychotics, of which the disciples and Paul
were neither.
Statements like this are really amazing. Spokesmen for religious
worldviews tell us that natural phenomena which we know are possible are
impossible, just so that they can tell us that their myths and legends are, not
only possible, but true – so true that we should allow them to govern our
lives. Here's what we're told to swallow: hallucinations are impossible, but a
ruling consciousness which wishes the universe into existence, enables snakes
and donkeys to speak in human language and dead men to rise from their graves
and show themselves to others (cf. Matt. 27:52-53), is *not* impossible. And
once we accept this, we are then told to accept the premise that “all things
are possible” (cf. Matt.
Of course, everything you said in your digression about conditions for
hallucinations takes the alleged truth of the gospel accounts for granted,
assuming all along that it is an accurate historical record,
that the events described in it not only actually happened, but happened
just as they are described. That’s the tallest assumption of the day, one which
arbitrarily disallows consideration of alternatives which are clearly obvious,
such as that the New Testament is record of a
unfolding, growing legends that are further embellished with each restatement.
As Wells puts it,
“It is sad to think how much ingenuity has been expended to authenticate
what is obviously a legend.” (Wells, The Historical Evidence for Jesus,
p. 190)
But the list of silences that I presented still has not been adequately
dealt with. Dusman's approach is remarkably flat,
pointing out that these silences are not unique to Paul, thus supposing from
similar absence of references to gospel elements in non-Pauline letters that
the trend of silences among several letter writers excuses all of them from any
occasion to mention anecdotes and personalities found only in the gospels (such
as John the Baptist, the virgin birth, the women visiting the tomb, the rising
of unspecified number of dead persons in Mt. 27:52-53, etc.). All this misses
some serious points:
"When significance is
ascribed to these discrepancies between the earliest Christian literature on
the one hand and the gospels and later epistles on the other, some Christian
commentators react with barely disguised scorn, saying for instance - I quote
Graham Stanton - that 'as every student of ancient history is aware' (What an
ignoramus that fellow Wells must be!) 'it is an
elementary error to suppose that because something is unmentioned it therefore
did not exist or was not known about'. Of course silence does not always prove
ignorance, and any writer knows a great many things he fails to mention. A
writer's silence is significant only if it extends to matters obviously
relevant to what he has chosen to discuss. Apart from being much concerned with
ethics, Paul was not indifferent to miracles: on the contrary, he believed in
their importance as a means of winning converts. It is, then, striking that he
never suggests that Jesus worked them, and even declares - in a context where
he is resisting demands for (miraculous) 'signs' - that he can preach only
'Christ crucified', and that he knows only "Jesus Christ and him
crucified' (I Corinthians 1:22-23; 2:2). Again, Paul and other early Christian
writers were very concerned about Jesus' second coming, his 'parousia': would it be preceded by obvious catastrophes, or
occur without warning? On these points, 2 Thessalonians (probably not written
by Paul, although it claims to be from him) contradicts the doctrine of
genuinely Pauline 1 Thessalonians - I give the relevant details in HEJ, p. 50 -
but neither appeals to any teahing
of Jesus on the subject, such as that detailed in chapter 13 of Mark. This is
very hard to understand if Jesus had in fact given such teachings, and
supposedly only a decade or two before Paul wrote.
What is even more striking is the assumption, common among many orthodox
literalists, that the stories we find in the gospel narratives were already in
common circulation by the time Paul wrote his letters. For instance,
Dusman wrote:
YOU MISSED THE POINT! Paul didn't
have to mention all these things any moreso than did
James or Peter. In other words, Paul, Peter, or James didn't mention them
because they were already PROCLAIMED as part of the apostolic message which
Christians would've already been familiar with.
Dusman, just so I’m clear on
what you’re saying here (since, if I read you correctly, you have some serious heavy
lifting to do to make this fly), are you saying that, before the budding
congregations at Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, etc., received any letters from
Paul, someone had already gone to those congregations and taught them the
stories we find in the gospels? Is this what you’re saying? That’s the only way
I can make sense of your counter-point here. You say that “all these things...
were already PROCLAIMED as part of the apostolic message which Christians
would’ve already been familiar with.” So, if you’re not saying that someone had
already gone to these locations and taught the content of the gospel narratives
(for that is what is in question here) to these congregations, I ask you to
revise your statement here to clarify what it is you’re trying to say.
Now, if you ARE saying this, who was it that went to these
congregations, before they received Paul’s letters,
and what specifically did they teach those congregations? What is your evidence
for a) who went there, and b) what they taught? Earlier you made a lot of
commotion about archaeological evidence, and insisted that the NT texts
themselves be accepted as such (which, as I have explained, I'm more than
willing to do). What evidence do you have for your responses to these
questions? (You yourself were concerned about "HARD MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
FROM FIRST CENTURY
Also, I’m curious about something else. Your whole reaction here, one
that is not at all uncommon among apologists, is to construe it as unnecessary
for letter writers like Paul to mention any of the gospel details in their
letters on account of the supposition that these details had already been
taught to the intended audiences of those letters. Tell me, have you ever
visited a church and heard a sermon in which the pastor giving the sermon
deliberately left out gospel elements which would have supported his points and
given his message Jesus’ authority simply because these details had already
been “PROCLAIMED”? After all, everyone’s heard about these things before, so
why repeat them? That’s essentially what you’re saying, and yet I don’t think
I’ve ever attended one sermon in which the pastor giving it ignored all the
anecdotal material in the gospels.
Your reaction to the Q hypothesis itself suggests that your sole
familiarity with NT scholarship is with that steeped in conservative leanings.
I say this, not only because my points about the silences in Paul and other
early writers in no way depend on the reality of an independent Q document, but
also because your reaction overstates what those who have postulated the
possibility of a Q source have supposed in proposing the idea. Those who have
proposed the idea of a source of sayings from which the authors of Matthew and
Luke drew in order to construct certain parallel passages in their narratives
(for instance, the Sermon on the Mount, apocalyptic pronouncements, etc.), tend
not to be too married to the idea from what I can tell. The situation in which
the need arises for an explanation of non-Marcan
material common to Matthew and Luke is pretty clear: It is obvious that both
Matthew and Luke are modeled on Mark’s template, which is by comparison to the
former two narratives less developed and less refined. But in addition to this,
Matthew and Luke have material in common which is not found elsewhere, and much
of this material is identical not only in content but also in phrasing.
“There would be no need to posit
the existence of Q if one could explain the non-Marcan
material common to Matthew and Luke by supposing that Luke drew it directly
from Matthew (or Matthew from Luke). But there are well-known
difficulties in supposing that either of these two evangelists had the gospel
of the other. Nevertheless, the view is gaining ground that Luke is
dependent on Matthew. See, for instance, the article by M. E. Boismard, “The Two-Source Theory at an Impasse” in New
Testament Studies 26 (1979), 1-17.” (Wells, The
Historical Evidence for Jesus, p. 238n.5)
“There are scholars (notably M.D.
Goulder) who explain the overlap [between Matthew and
Luke] without positing Q at all, by supposing that Luke took the relevant
material from Matthew. But the majority accept that
these two wrote independently of each other, both drawing on Q as one of their
sources... There is strong evidence that Q existed in written form, not merely
as oral tradition. First, about half of it is verbally identical in Matthew and
Luke, and differences in the other half can be explained as due to one or the
other evangelist – sometimes both – adapting the source so as to improve it
stylistically or theologically.... Further reasons for supposing that Q existed
in written form are given by Kloppenborg: 1. It
contains a number of unusual and peculiar phrases; in oral transmission these
would surely have been replaced by more common expressions in at least one of
the synoptic versions. 2. There is considerable agreement between Matthew and
Luke in the sequence of the units when there is no logical relation for them to
occur in that particular order. 3. There is doubling of some Marcan and Q material: an incident in Mark may be included
by Matthew or Luke (or both) in the Marcan sequence
and in what appears to be its relative position in Q. If Q traditions had been
oral, they could easily have been conflated with the single Marcan
version. Finally, 4., Q is without the mnemonic
devices – important in Homer and in rabbinic traditions – which would be
required as an oral basis for verbatim or near-verbatim agreements, and there
is no evidence for mnemonic practice in the early Christianity of the time.”
(Wells, The Jesus Legend, pp. 162-163)
Dusman wrote:
Since you presuppose that the
gospels are fairytale as a result of your a priori philosophical assumption
regarding the impossibility of miracles, you surely will be *concerned* that
Christian yahoos could believe this stuff. And given your axioms, you are being
consistent therewith. Yet the Christian believer operates under different
assumptions, namely, that the Christian God exists and has decreed to operate
in time using signs and wonders in the ANE through the message of His Christ
and His apostlic representatives. So, starting with
the existence of the Christian God presents no problem for your fairytale
argument.
This is just another charge of prejudice. But at least you admit that I
am being consistent with my axioms (i.e., with my "ultimate
presuppositions"), which many apologists have told me would lead to
absurdity. Apparently the absurdity they have in mind is non-belief in ancient
tales and legends. If that's considered "absurd," then so be it. You
then say that "the Christian believer operates under different
assumptions," but I don’t really think that's completely true. Like me,
you assume that there is a reality ('existence exists'), that the objects which
you perceive have their own identity (they are what they are), and that they
exist independent of your consciousness (i.e., they do not conform to your
wishing), and yet these truths are basic to my worldview, and are explicitly
affirmed at its very foundation. It would quite amazing if you did not think
there was a reality (i.e., that there is no existence), and that the objects
you perceive do conform to your wishing (for already you'd be contradicting
yourself on several levels). The assumptions which you specify as distinctive
to your position are "that the Christian God exists and has decreed to
operate in time using signs and wonders in the ANE through the message of His
Christ and His apostolic representatives." Yes, I know you *assume* these
things are true, but they are not conceptually irreducible nor
philosophically basic since they assume innumerable prior truths. Indeed, my
axioms would have to be true even for you to assert these notions as either
truths or anything less.
So when you say things like
Dusman wrote:
we're still
left with the fact that the unbeliever takes said evidence and runs it through
the grid of his unbelieving axioms, only to be still unconvinced despite what
the best NT scholarship has to offer. This is where the presuppositional
apologetics comes in.
I can only suppose that there is a serious disconnect going on in your
mind. For one, you admit that I am being consistent with my axioms. Second,
it's clear that you have to assume the truth of my axioms to make any of your
statements intelligible; they'd have to be true even for you to deny or reject
them. Then you scoff when I point out that the NT reads like legends and myths growing as the story is reworked and retold. You
suggest that presuppositional apologetics is going to come to your rescue, but
since presuppositionalism itself is unable to avoid the primacy of the subject
metaphysics (i.e., subjectivism), it too is doomed.
Again Wells' succinct analysis of the situation is spot on:
“Scholarly defense of belief in
miracles comes today only from those who make religious beliefs their
fundamental premise for interpreting their whole experience. (Wells, The
Historical Evidence for Jesus, p. 210)
Dusman wrote:
No, that's absurd, because in the
1st Century ANE, legends took at least 150 years to develop and that is exactly
what you see with Christianity (i.e., the existence of the gnostic/docetic
gospels (non-orthodox) appearing @ 180-200 A.D.).
I thought I had heard everything, but I realize I’m dealing with people
who are guided by imagination rather than facts. Dusman,
your statement here has put yourself in the dubious position of having to
defend a universal negative. How do you prove that there were no legends at the
time that developed over a period of time less than 150 years? Also, how would
you go about proving that the Jesus legends (and there are many) were not
brewing for over a century already by the time Paul came on the scene? What’s
happening is what I already anticipated: you’re assuming the truth of the
gospel traditions (specifically that Jesus was real and that he died ca. 30 AD)
and that the record we find in the gospel narratives is historically accurate.
You seem not to realize that this is precisely what the overall New Testament
record itself brings into question. The net result is you end up begging the
question throughout your responses, while making crass assumptions along the
way. For instance:
Dusman wrote:
1. The Apostolic Fathers never
embellish or create new miracle traditions of Jesus.
Even if we assume that the authors of the gospels were in fact the
apostles named in those narratives (an enormous assumption that believers tend
to take for granted), how do you know they didn’t do this? Even if the
evangelists themselves did not embellish or create new miracle traditions about
Jesus, how could you rule out the possibility that someone else had and that
these authors didn’t know any better and consequently incorporated them into
their histories? Or, another possible scenario is that various
of the NT authors did not originally intend for their writings to be taken as
literally historical, but used the backdrop of history-like features when
showcasing their religious allegories. None of this seems to have been taken into
account, or if they had, it appears they’ve been dismissed out of hand in order
to protect a confessional investment.
Dusman wrote:
2. The 2nd-century Apologists do
not heighten or create new miracle traditions of Jesus.
Again, we find you saddled with another burden to prove a negative. The
gospel record itself shows a marked progression from relatively mundane to an
ever more powerful and impressive Jesus. The tale of the virgin birth (which
could not have been eyewitness reporting by either Matthew or Luke, which are
the only sources which present it), is one of the steps in that progression.
Dusman wrote:
3. The 2nd/3rd -century writers
of the Apocryphal Gospels (surprisingly) do not heighten or create new miracle
traditions of Jesus.
Same problem here. You’re
just asserting your way to the position you are called to defend without
providing sufficient factual or argumentative back-up.
Dusman wrote:
4. What few cases of
semi-embellishment occur are in literary elements (e.g. how sick the person
was, what their name was) and NOT in the miraculous element.
This ignores that sicknesses were often exaggerated in reworked stories
in order to make the miraculous healing more impressive.
Dusman wrote:
5. The
miracle-accretion/legend/embellishment theory would predict a more homogenous
group of narratives in this period, with 'transitional forms'--our extant texts
do not manifest this character, and therefore do not support that theory.
They in fact do manifest this character, but keep in mind that it was
not the only factor that shaped the gospels, for instance. We also have
theological issues which played a significant role in motivating a reworking of
the literature, and this would not tend to generate a homogenous outcome.
Anyway, Dusman, I'm supposing you'll come back
with yet another question-begging response which assumes the position that
you've been called to prove and which again does not adequately address the
issues that I have raised. That's fine, you are
welcome to believe what you want. If you want to believe that a legend cannot
develop in a period of time under 150 years in order to protect your god-belief
from criticism, that's fine. What's important has already been conceded: I am
consistent with the foundations of my view of the world, and you have not been
able to show that any of those foundations are wrong or untrue. Beyond that,
perhaps we have to simply agree to disagree.
_________________
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 8:30 am
Hello Dusman,
Thank you for quoting some of my choice statements. I am gratified that
you are starting to examine my work! I encourage you to continue examining my blogs and to question what you read there. They help to
strengthen my position.
In your response to Prof, you quoted my work and charged me with the
following:
Dusman wrote:
If that is not an a priori
assumption that dismisses the existence of the supernatural through reducing
religious thoughts about God to mere "imagination" and wishful
thinking, I don't know what is!
I think the latter is what we have. That is, you apparently don’t know
what an a priori assumption is; either that, or you're trying to find a way of
discrediting my position without really engaging it or showing why you might
think it is wrong. So-called "a priori knowledge" is knowledge
alleged to have been acquired apart from experience. I quoted from this article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"'A priori' and 'a
posteriori' refer primarily to how, or on what basis, a proposition might be
known. In general terms, a proposition is knowable a priori if it is knowable
independently of experience, while a proposition
knowable a posteriori is knowable on the basis of experience. The distinction
between a priori and a posteriori knowledge thus broadly corresponds to the
distinction between empirical and nonempirical
knowledge."
Since none of the truths which I specified in the two paragraphs that
you quoted from my blog are known (or even claimed to
be known) "independently of experience," they do not qualify as a
priori assumptions. On the contrary, since their basis is sense perception,
they qualify as a posteriori knowledge – that is, based on firsthand
experience. So your charge that I have dismissed your religion on the basis of
an a priori assumption (or set of such assumptions) is false.
What’s noteworthy, Dusman, is that you do not attempt to challenge any of the truths
that are stated in the two paragraphs that you quoted from my blog. The issue to which my blog
is intended to draw the reader’s attention is the question of the proper
relationship between a subject and its objects. I find no discussion or even
mention of this issue in the bible, so I am inclined to suppose that its
authors took this matter completely and unknowingly for granted, just as most
thinkers do today. And to confirm this supposition is the fact that their
pronouncements are all over the place when it comes to which orientation
between subject and object the bible’s statements
assume or reduce to. Since knowledge is knowledge of objects by a knowing
subject, the proper relationship between subject and object is an extremely
important issue in philosophy. And yet, many thinkers do not realize this,
don’t consider this, ignore it, maybe even pretend it does not exist. My goal
has been to bring this issue into the open, to show why the primacy of the
object metaphysics (objectivism) is true and why the primacy of the subject
metaphysics (subjectivism) is false, and to show how religious worldviews
(particularly Christianity, since I am most familiar with it) assume a
subjective basis.
If you like, we can go through the statements I made in the two
paragraphs you quoted and together work toward a better understanding of the
issue that is central to my thesis. Without a better understanding, however,
you will probably not understand the nature of my argument against Christian
theism, and thus you will not be able to attack it effectively.
Now let’s consider the points in your list – which are supposed to be views
that atheists are apparently “stuck with” as a result of their non-belief in
religion's ruling consciousness:
Dusman wrote:
1. Everything came from nothing
and by no one or from an eternal, endless universe.
Since I *begin* with the fact that there is a reality (that existence
exists), my worldview *nowhere* proposes that “everything came from nothing.”
If your position were truly defensible, Dusman, I
don't see why you would need to insert words into your opponents' mouths. But
let's examine the statement for a bit. The call to explain existence as such
only makes sense if non-existence is our starting point, but I have no idea why
one would begin with non-existence. Even Christians tend to recognize that this
is absurd. At any rate, since existence is a primary, it is incoherent to ask
for an “explanation” of existence. To what – if not to something said to exist
– would such an explanation refer? The only alternative to existence is
non-existence, and appealing to non-existence does not explain anything. So I’m
on safe grounds with my worldview’s starting point, one which even the
Christian has to take for granted. As I asked in a prior message to Dusman, why not begin with the fact of existence, which we
know to be true and fundamental, and move on from there? The Christian,
however, finds this unsatisfying for some reason, and although he may concede
the need for a starting point, he wants his starting point to be some form of
consciousness - a ruling *subject* whose "word" is divine and whose
*will* is omnipotent. Which means: the world of objects conforms to its
commands (cf. creation ex nihilo, miracles, etc.). So
just by starting with the Christian god, the believer is already in the grips
of metaphysical subjectivism. It should not be a surprise that apologists are
unable to prove the existence of their god and that their arguments cannot
resist committing the fallacy of the stolen concept at the most fundamental
level of cognition.
Dusman wrote:
2. Order came from chaos through
self-directed natural law.
My view on statements like this may be a little different from other
atheists’ views (again, non-belief does not imply a uniform worldview among
those who are non-believers). First of all, the statement implies that order is
a metaphysical concept. In my worldview, that is not the case. Order is an
epistemological concept, and since this statement plays on treating it as a
metaphysical concept, I can reasonably reject it. Again, it helps to have a
good understanding of concepts, but you won’t get this from the bible. The
concept ‘order’ pertains to how we know and understand things as well as to how
we organize them once we begin to know and understand them. This means that the
application of the concept 'order' applies to states of affairs involving the
interaction of a subject with the objects it perceives and/or considers. (For
instance, I can say that I bring order to my desk, which has been a mess for
weeks, but I would not say that the trees in a forest grew in an orderly manner
- they simply grew.) But the statement ttreeats the concept as if it could be
applied without such a relationship being involved, and in so doing the
statement commits the fallacy of the stolen concept – since it applies a
concept while ignoring its genetic roots, which are the subject and the object
which must interact in order to instance to qualify.
However, it is interesting that, according to the first chapter of
Genesis, even after it was initially created, "the earth was without form,
and void." And from there it took the god of the Old Testament to bring
order to it (i.e., through actualizing the wishes of the ruling consciousness).
Not only is the assumption of the primacy of the subject metaphysics here hard
to miss, but it certainly comes closer to the view expressed in Dusman's statement than anything my worldview teaches.
Dusman wrote:
3. Life came from non-life.
Statements like this are intended to make the position they’re
describing appear dubious or depressing. But notice what’s happening here. The
statement bears on the general method which could be used in explaining the
phenomenon we know as life. Does pointing to something that is *alive* (or
allegedly alive) explain life? Well, as MasterZap
pointed out, no, it doesn’t, for you’re simply pointing to what you’ve been
called to explain. To suppose that life as such “came from” anything is to
suppose, at least implicitly, that it came from something *other than life*,
otherwise we never make progress toward an explanation. So did life come from
non-life? I really don’t know, and more importantly I really don’t think it
matters very much to be quite honest. No matter how life got here, or if it has
always been here, this fact is primary: Life exists. However we try to explain
the emergence of life (supposing it emerged in the first place, which of course
would have to be validated), it would not change the facts that life does
exist, that it has certain conditions which must be met (otherwise living
things die), and that we (human beings) must act in order to live (unlike a
being which is said to be immortal, indestructible and lacking nothing). If I
go on, we’ll see how the metaphysical basis of moral values is biological in
nature when for so long we’ve been told that it is religious in nature. But
this can be pursued in later exchanges.
One last point on this: I certainly do not believe that life came into
being as the result of the wishing of an invisible, omnipotent consciousness.
To ascribe consciousness to any entity is to confer life to it already, and as MasterZap pointed out, this is fruitless if our goal is to
find an explanation. Also, since such a view affirms a subjective orientation
of metaphysics, it cannot offer a reliable position even if it is conceded that
an explanation is not really being sought after all (and when it comes to
religion, I don't think an answer is really being sought), since subjectivism
can only invalidate itself.
Dusman wrote:
4. Intelligence came from
non-intelligence.
Same principle applies here: if our goal is to offer an explanation of
where intelligence “came from,” it would not do to appeal to something that is
already said to be intelligent.
Dusman wrote:
5. Moral nature came from amoral
things.
Actually, if moral nature “came from” anything, it came from the first
choices a man makes, namely the choices to live and to think. But this point is
squarely premised on an objective understanding of morality, which conceives of
morality as a set of rational principles which guide an individual’s choices
and actions. (I did not get this understanding of morality from the bible -
none of my bibles even has the word ‘morality’ in it.) So the statement Dusman offers here betrays an understanding of morality
that is quite superficial.
Dusman wrote:
6. Personality came from
non-personality.
This characterization is similar to Dusman's
points 3 and 4 above. The primary response to any objection to the general
procedure of seeking to explain "personality" by reference to things
that do not qualify under the rubric "personality" is to point out
that, without such a procedure, no actual explanation will be produced for
appealing to what needs to be explained doesn't explain what needs to be
explained. Simple as that. So, Dusman,
your Christian commitments have put you in an intellectual pickle here, and the
result is a worldview in crisis.
Now, to further compound things, it needs to be noted that you did not
present any arguments regarding these points that you listed, Dusman. For one, you did not argue for the claim, which is
implicit to your characterization, that all atheists
ascribe to the positions you listed. Also, you did not present any argument
against those views either. All you said about the six points you listed was
the following:
Dusman wrote:
If you want to believe in that
"fairy-tale" then have at it.
Apparently we're all supposed to think, not only that non-believers are
saddled with these views as you phrase them, but also that you have finally
exposed their absurdity and that the alternative you promote - Christian theism
- somehow offers a more stable and defennsiible position. Well, as we can see, no
arguments have been provided, and it appears that you're relying on the current
of emotion to accomplish what arguments might do if you had any. A retreat to
emotions, however, is probably all you have, and this would only be a mark of
consistency within the paradigm of your mystical beliefs. For not only is the
basis of your world subjective in nature, so is your methodology.
_________________
Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 8:41 am
MasterZap wrote:
You are forgetting about the
"law of the inevitable exclusion".
When you take the "law of
the inevitable exclusion" into account, the statement changes like this:
- every
event has a cause, except of course (at minimum) the first event
Similarily:
- life
comes from life, except of course (at minimum) the first item of life
Nowhere does it say that this
first item of X must be "God". It simply has to be first.
I mean, either you have an
infinite chain (and don't need God) or you have a first item (and don't need
God). Either way, God isn't necessary. This goes for your entire list.
Very good point, MZ. I've
always wondered why Christians in modern times would buy into the notion that
their god, which is said to be incorporeal, immaterial, non-physical, etc., is
a "living" god, since -given its negating descriptors - it could not
be biological. All examples of life in nature are biological organisms of one
kind or another, and I have never discovered a living thing that is not
biological. When asked, Christians don't seem able to explain how I can
discover what they call a living god. I can't perceive it (it's invisible and
non-physical, inaccessible to the senses), and I see no unambiguous
demonstration of the power they attribute to their god (either it is hiding,
impotent or non-existent). From what Christians *do* tell me, I have the strong
suspicion that we're supposed to simply take their word for it, for they offer
nothing more.
The question "how do you know?" is never adequately answered
by Christianity. Their "method" of discovery and validation is
impossible to distinguish from emotions and imagination. (And that's an
assessment borne on firsthand experience, and thus not an "a priori
assumption." So there!)
_________________
Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 5:42 pm
Dusman wrote:
God is *by definition* eternal,
endless, changeless, and is not preceded by any other.
Definitions pertain to concepts, not to specific entities; in fact,
definition is the final step in concept-formation. So I’m trying to make sense
of your claim here, since it assumes a premise which I would have to reject.
Recall that earlier you had claimed
Dusman wrote:
The Christian God *is* the
fundamental entity upon which everything else builds upon and there is NOTHING
at the back of Him to which He is dependent upon (Pro. 1:7;
There you affirmed that your god is an *entity* - i.e., some specific
existent with its own unique identity as opposed to a class of entities which
are grouped by virtue of shared similarities. However, above you imply that
your god is a *concept* by saying it “is *by definition* eternal, endless,
changeless,” etc. So which is it? Is your god a concept, or a specific entity?
Or, do you not think there’s a difference? For instance, when you look at an
object on your table, such as a drinking glass, do you think you’re looking
directly at a concept?
If “God” is a concept, how did you form it, and what units is it
integrating? If “God” is an entity, by what means did you discover it, and on
what basis can you give it definitions?
Dusman wrote:
However, it has been demonstrated
by secular scientists and Christian scientists that the universe had a
beginning.
What was the definition of ‘universe’ that they had in mind? Can you
tell us? Let’s find this piece of information out, and then explore whether or
not it “makes sense” (a favorite presuppositionalist term) to suppose that the
universe had a beginning or not.
Speaking of his god,
Dusman wrote:
It explains everything and
provides the preconditions for this conversation!
How does “God” explain “everything” and how does it “provide the
preconditions for this conversation”? The Lahu
tribesmen told me the same thing with respect to their supreme being Geusha. If I don’t believe there’s a Geusha,
why would I believe your god is any different? Am I supposed to have a bias
that presupposes that your god is real?
Dusman wrote:
1. How can I have a "first
event" if I don't have a cause for that first event? (BTW, God is not an
"event" so this doesn't backfire).
The universe is also not an “event,” nor is it an *effect*, so the call
for a cause of the universe is mistaken. On the contrary, the universe is a
precondition for any cause and effect. As I had indicated
earlier, if we begin with existence (as my worldview does explicitly), we wouldn't
have these problems (since they arise as a result of failing to identify an
objective starting point).
Dusman wrote:
If today has an infinite number
of days (or time) before today, then today could have never arrived. However,
today is *here*, therefore there wasn't an infinite number of days before
today.
The error in this kind of reasoning, which is common in Christian
apologetics, is that it treats time as if it were metaphysical. It’s not. Time
is epistemological since it is a form of measurement. The “infinite days”
hogwash ignores this, and it also ignores the obvious fact that it *is* always
*now*. Again, we have a serious misunderstanding at the basic conceptual level.
Dusman wrote:
Also, if you want to believe that
material objects exist without causes (namely, the biggest space that contains
all the matter known to man - the universe), then the
theist and some skeptics (like David Hume) will write this off into the sea of
absurdity.
How can there be cause without something that exists to do the causing?
Again, we find the tendency to affirm stolen concepts without recognizing them.
This is doubly confirmed by the reference to David Hume, whose understanding of
causality – which was central to his thesis on induction – is not only false,
but also riddled with stolen concepts that the Scottish thinker accepted
uncritically. Hume assumed an event-based view of causality (where causality is
considered to be a relationship between “events”), which is laden with errors
and yields no necessary certainties. On an entity-based view of causality
(where causality is the relationship between an entity and its own actions,
which is a necessary relationship), Hume’s errors are avoided (both
conceptually and inductively) and certainties are now accessible and veritable.
Since universe is the sum total of all that exists, you cannot posit a source
of causality outside of the universe, for there’s nothing that exists outside
the universe (by virtue of the definition of ‘universe’) to do the causing. In
this way, it is seen that theistic arguments asserting a cause of the existence
of the universe rely explicitly on flagrant stolen concepts.
Dusman wrote:
Thanks for showing us that the
Christian presuppositionalists are right when we say that you have a priori
assumptions about the cosmos that are determinative for your conclusions.
Presuppositionalists say this, not because it is true that all
non-believers “have a priori assumptions about the cosmos,” or that such a
charge is demonstrable, but because their apologetic bluff couldn’t survive
without such baseless accusations. I showed above that my premises, which you
dismissed as a priori assumptions out of your own ignorance, are not affirmed
apart from the firsthand experience that makes their recognition possible. I
see that you have not responded to this. I don’t think you can.
Dusman wrote:
the
revelation of the Bible can be *TESTED* through the transcendental method
This I’d like to see. I’d like to see, for instance, how “the
transcendental method” can be used to “test” claims like
a) Jesus was born of a virgin;
b) an
unspecified number of dead people rose out of their graves and showed
themselves unto many (mentioned only in Mt. 27:52-53);
c) Lazarus was raised back to
life after his corpse had already begun to stink;
d) Jesus died on the cross;
e) Jesus was buried in a tomb;
f) Jesus was resurrected on the
third day.
To show how “the transcendental method” can be used to “test” these
“revelations,” first please explain to us what *you* mean by “the
transcendental method,” detailing the steps that must be taken to apply it.
Then, use the method you describe in “testing” the “revelations” above to show
they’re absolutely and indubitably true.
Can you do that for us?
Be careful to check your premises along the way, for they will be
scrutinized.
_________________
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 8:13 am
'sucks
wrote:
Frankly, this is rather silly way
of seeing things. There is such a thing as a definition of a dog. Is that to
say that it isn't an entity either?
What's "silly" is the tendency to miss the distinction between
a concept and its referents. The result of this tendency is to confuse a
concept with the objects and attributes which it subsumes. We do indeed have a
definition for the *concept* 'dog', but the concept is not limited in its scope
of reference to one specific dog. For instance, Fido
is a bull terrier weight 35 lbs., with short, tightly compact and mostly white
hair, is very muscular and energetic, and measuring approximately 18 inches
from nose to rear. Fido is a specific entity with
specific attributes and measurements. The concept 'dog', on the other hand,
does not specify any of these measurements, and for
this reason neither does its definition. When we look up the definition of the
concept 'dog' in our dictionaries, we do not find that it stipulates a specific
breed, color, weight, hair length, muscle mass, energy level or overall body
size. On the contrary, since the concept 'dog' is an abstraction, its
definition rightly omits these specifics. This allows us to class Fido with other specific dogs, such as Spot (a beagle),
Nippy (a dachshund), Fluffy (a poodle) and Bowser (a German shepherd) by
integrating them into a single unit which includes all their particular
attributes and measurements (Van Til erred by supposing that the process of
abstraction was a process of *excluding* particulars; cf. The Defense of the
Faith, 3rd ed., p. 26) without specifying the quantity or quality in which
they must exist. The unqualified concept 'dog' has an infinite scope of
reference in this respect since it includes every specific dog, whether it
exists now, has existed in the past or will exist in the future. Thus the
concept, by virtue of the process of abstraction used to form it, has a
universal scope of reference. So to address the question "is that to say
that it isn't an entity either?" we need to correct the tendency of
'sucks' prior statement to confuse a concept with its referents, as I have done
above, and thus we can say: The specific dog named Fido
is an entity, but the concept 'dog' by which we class it with other specific
dogs is an abstraction.
Now, the question I posed to Dusman is for him
to clarify for the record whether 'god' is a concept or a specific entity.
Since there is clearly a difference between a concept and a specific entity,
this is something that Dusman needs to consider and
make clear. For on the one hand, he claims that his god is an entity, which I
understand to be something specific (i.e., one thing as opposed to something
else - for instance a good supernatural being as opposed to the evil
supernatural being known as 'Satan'), but on the other hand he treats 'god' as
a concept since he gives it a definition. Because I know that definitions
pertain to concepts (definitions isolate the essential(s) shared by the units
classed under the scope of reference of a concept without specifying their
particular measurements), and not to specific entities, I cannot accept both of
Dusman's points here, for they are in terminal
conflict with one another. My suspicion is that Dusman
simply does not have a very good grasp of concepts and the nature of their
relationship to the constituent particulars they subsume, which is the same
relationship that algebraic symbols have to the specific numbers that can be
plugged into their place. Of course, I did not learn these things about
concepts from the bible, for its authors show a profound ignorance of the
nature of concepts and the process by which we form them. And this is what I
would expect to find if the bible were exclusively a human document
representative of the relatively primitive state of cognitive development
demonstrated in other texts which date from the same general period, and
precisely what I would not expect to find if it were in fact a document
supernaturally inspired by an omniscient and infallible ruling consciousness.
So, since Dusman claims that his god exists
and apparently expects me and others to "believe" this claim, I'm
hoping he clarifies this point and addresses the set of questions that I asked
in conjunction with it. Those questions were:
Is your god a concept, or a specific entity? Or, do you not think
there’s a difference? For instance, when you look at an object on your table,
such as a drinking glass, do you think you’re looking directly at a concept? If
“God” is a concept, how did you form it, and what units is it integrating? If
“God” is an entity, by what means did you discover it, and on what basis can
you give it definitions?
I'm also hoping that Dusman will come back and
elaborate on how "the revelation of the Bible can be *TESTED* through the
transcendental method." I'd really like to learn what he means by this.
_________________
Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2006 8:05 am
Dusman wrote:
I had said several pages ago on
this thread that I would not take the time to respond to you re: the Bible and
Evidence because it will be to no avail. Therefore, you'll get no response from
me.
I’m sorry to hear this, Dusman, for I believe
there is some unfinished business. Specifically, you charged me with making
what you called “a priori assumptions,” and I think that either you need to
back this up, or take it back. Prof pointed out that he nowhere saw where I had
made any “a priori assumptions,” and I pointed out that the truths which you
cited from my own writing as instances of or stemming from a priori assumptions
were in fact not a priori assumptions on account of the fact that they were
acquired by firsthand experience. Likewise you had early on charged me with “unargued philosophical bias.” I answered that by showing
that the position I had indicated was amply argued. But rather than taking back
your accusation or interacting with the points that I presented, you sought to
discredit it by pointing to unspecified numbers of NT scholars who considered
my sources "laughable," even though you did not quote one of those
anonymous scholars. Neither does this show that any of the points that I
presented are wrong or misguided. Anyway, you apparently don’t like being
corrected. I really don’t know what else to conclude from your statements and
choices.
Dusman wrote:
However, (1) it is interesting to
note that you indeed see a distinction between concepts and their referents.
I'm curious as to how you account for immaterial concepts given your
materialism.
If it is the case that you think “it will be of no avail” to “take the
time” required to discuss these matters with me, why
do you now find this point interesting? I had as far back as page 4 of this
discussion pointed out the need for a good theory of concepts (it answers,
among other things, your impression that elementary principles of logic can
only be established on the basis of fallacious argument), and have repeatedly
emphasized the importance of our understanding of concepts as one of the keys
to the debate (this along with metaphysical primacy). This is just to say that
there’s already been plenty said on this matter by myself,
and I’m certainly more than willing to engage the matter, even though you
showed little interest in the matter up to now. Add to this my question to you,
which remains unanswered, whether or not you think your god is a concept or an
entity. I asked this because various statements of yours showed a marked
inconsistency on this very point, which I would think is pretty basic (since it
has to do with the nature of your god).
At any rate, just as an initial pointer, I don’t think the term
‘immaterial’ applies to concepts any more than term ‘material’ does. For not
only am I *not* a “materialist” (as you apparently but incorrectly assume),
concepts are a *method* (whereas presuppositionalists, following the lead of
apologetic theorists like Bahnsen, tend to treat concepts as if they were *entities*,
which they aren’t). Beyond this, it’s not clear what you might mean by “account
for,” for this expression is used in many ways, most rather imprecisely, so the
content of your interest here needs clarification. I believe that I’ve already
given a few pointers on the nature of concepts as it bears on the discussion.
However, if you’re looking for a presentation of a full theory of concepts, I
don’t think this is the proper venue for that, nor do I have the time to give
you a play-by-play of how the mind operates (though I wish I had, as it’s quite
fascinating).
Meanwhile, since you’re interested in how one might “account for
immaterial concepts,” can you tell us what the Christian theory of concepts
might be, and where one would turn to find it? How, for instance, did Jesus
answer your question? Or did he? I hope that whatever you can offer will be
better than what Michael Butler offered in his response to Martin when he
wrote:
"That the Christian
worldview can account for the principles of logic is readily demonstrable.
Christianity allows for abstract and universal laws. Abstract because the
Christian worldview teaches that more things exist than material objects. Thus
it makes sense for there to be abstractions." (TAG vs. TANG)
If
The only thing
Dusman wrote:
(2) It is interesting that you
don't appear to have a good understanding of what transcendental proof is given
your statements above.
Can you be specific? What statements of mine suggest to you that I do
not have a good understanding of "what transcendental proof is," and
what specifically do I get wrong? You are willing to help me understand, right?
Are you an expert on these things yourself, Dusman?
If so, I'll have a lot of questions for you. And I believe I mentioned earlier
in the thread that I am quite willing to learn.
For instance, we can take a look at Bahnsen's opening statement in his
debate with Gordon Stein. Bahnsen seems to get a lot of praise from other
apologists for his performance in this debate. I don't see how they could have
his opening statement in mind, for even though he would have been most prepared
to give this portion of his presentation, I can't find any argument in it.
Instead of a "proof," Bahsnen seems to give
only what I would call a poof, as my own analysis of it concludes. Many have
told me that I simply don't understand. But if that's the case, why don’t they
tell me what exactly Bahnsen's argument in his opening statement is? None have
done so. Perhaps apologists think I'm just too stupid to understand. But
consider my reasoning on this: since Bahnsen claims to have an argument for the
existence of his god, I would think that his intended conclusion might be
something along the lines of "therefore God exists." But from what
specifically does this conclusion follow? What are his premises? How does he
infer his way to such a conclusion? If Bahnsen actually presented an argument,
it shouldn't be hard to assemble it from his statements. Unfortunately,
however, Bahnsen dwells more on Stein's alleged errors, even though Stein
hasn't even had a chance to speak yet!
Anyway, Dusman, I'm quite willing to review my
understanding of "what transcendental proof is," and I'm willing to
examine yours as well. I hope you are, too.
Dusman wrote:
If you simply read Van Til's Apologetic - Readings and Analysis you'll find
your answer regarding the transcendental method there (p. 496ff.).
Well, I have this book, and I’ve done more than “simply read” it,
including the section to which you refer (where section 7.4 “The Transcendental
Nature of Presuppositional Argument” begins). After examining countless
expositions of TAG, I’m pretty convinced that TAG is nothing more than a bluff
mechanism.
For instance, when you presented a slightly modified version of
“For X to be the case, Y has to
be the case because Y is a precondition for the intelligibility and existence
of X.”
I pointed out that such a scheme could be used to “prove” the existence
of rival gods. Your response to this was essentially to say that whatever was
proved by this scheme “is nothing more than Yahweh called by another name.” But
that’s not the case, for the “argument” certainly works (to the extent that it
is an argument that establishes an intended conclusion) in “proving” the
existence of Geusha, and yet Geusha
did not have a son, while the Christian god is said to have a son. They
certainly aren't the same being. So either the argument is simply too
insufficient to be of any reliable use (except as a bluff to those who don't
examine it critically), or there are more assumptions going on here that need
to be fleshed out and validated. Perhaps it's both.
I pointed out a number of other errors in the scheme, most notably that
positing an existent as the “precondition” of everything that exists is
incoherent to begin with. But you’ve chosen not to speak to these criticisms,
so I won’t list the others that I have against it. My work seems to be done on
that matter.
Moreover, I’d tell you just as I’d tell any presuppositionalist that all
of this quibbling about alleged “transcendental arguments” (which seems to be
taken as license to assert one’s way to his desired conclusions) could be
avoided if we simply identify our respective starting points. I have done this
(the axioms), and you yourself admitted that the position I have argued is
consistent with my starting point. Furthermore, I pointed out how your very
assertion of your worldview’s positions requires that my starting point be
true, which goes against the basic program of presuppositional apologetics; for
we are told that "the unbeliever is not consistent with his or her
presuppositions" (Wentzel, Circling
on God Part 3). You'll find that such campaign slogans are not at all
necessarily true.
Dusman wrote:
And no...these comments
are not designed as ad hominems.
That’s okay, Dusman. I realize that there’s
probably not very much you can say in response to my points.
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