Book Plunge: Irreligion — Pascal’s Wager

Should you take the bet? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As it turns out, last night I was listening to Playing with Reality on Audible. The author started talking about Pascal and how he got into gambling as a hobby and then started looking at ways to predict outcomes. This became trying to predict the future. Probability theory began right here. Such an example also was Pascal’s Wager, an argument not really understood today.

Paulos writes about it:

1. We can choose to believe God exists, or we can choose not to so believe.
2. If we reject God and act accordingly, we risk everlasting agony and torment if He does exist (what statisticians call a Type I error) but enjoy fleeting earthly delights if He doesn’t.
3. If we accept God and act accordingly, we risk little if He doesn’t exist (what’s called a Type II error) but enjoy endless heavenly bliss if He does.
4. It’s in our self-interest to accept God’s existence.
5. Therefore God exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 133-134). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

The problem Paulos sees is that this could be used for Islam or any other system.

Okay.

And?

People don’t bother to understand Pascal. Pascal is talking to those who are sitting on the fence between Christianity and unbelief. He is only including two positions because those are the two his audience in mind is wrestling with. He says “You’re already playing the game! Might as well bet on the side where you can at least win something!”

Is that an argument Christianity is true? No. Is it an argument for why you should become a Christian? Yes. Of course, he goes deeper than that addressing questions such as if this is fake and other such matters. If all you know about Pascal is just his wager, you really have no business talking about him.

In talking about God’s existing, Paulos goes on to say that:

But forget probability for the moment. Is it even clear what “God is” statements mean? Echoing Bill Clinton, I note that they depend on what the meaning of “is” is. Here, for example, are three possible meanings of “is” involving God: (1) God is complexity; (2) God is omniscient; (3) there is a God. The first “is” is the “is” of identity; it’s symbolized by G = C. The second “is” is the “is” of predication; G has the property omniscience, symbolized by O(G). The third “is” is existential; there is, or there exists, an entity that is God-like, symbolized by ∃xG(x). (It’s not hard to equivocally move back and forth between these meanings of “is” to arrive at quite dubious conclusions. For example, from “God is love,” “Love is blind,” and “My father’s brother is blind,” we might conclude, “There is a God, and he is my uncle.”)

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 136). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

With the final syllogism, it has four terms so it’s invalid right at the start. Let’s still be generous.

God is love.
Love is blind.
God is blind.

This could work, but we have to ask what is love in each sense. The modern phrase means something very different from the biblical usage.

Love is blind.
My father’s uncle is blind.
My father’s uncle is love.

This time, the fallacy is in the form of the argument. Imagine if I said:

Dogs have four legs.
Shiro has four legs.
Shiro is a dog.

He would beg to differ!

On top of that, the real tragedy is that Paulos asks a great question. What does a “God is” statement mean? Unfortunately, he doesn’t explore that question at all. He just throws it out and ignores it.

He then goes on to say that:

The connections among morality, prudence, and religion are complicated and beyond my concerns here. I would like to counter, however, the claim regularly made by religious people that atheists and agnostics are somehow less moral or law-abiding than they. There is absolutely no evidence for this, and I suspect whatever average difference there is along the nebulous dimension of morality has the opposite algebraic sign.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 139). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Personally, I don’t know people making this claim. That being said, Tom Holland in his Dominion has argued that this is also because we still have a background Christianity. I contend that the further we move away from that, the worse we are going to get. He also cites Japan as an atheistic country as a counter-example, when it is much more complicated than he presents.

There really isn’t much here. He still gives no grounding for goodness whatsoever and he doesn’t bother to understand what he is talking about. Also, considering what he’s said earlier in this book, I don’t think Paulos is the one to talk to us about how to be moral.

Next time, we’ll see what he has to say about “Brights!”

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Irreligion — Morality

What about moral truths? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Since I have been skipping some chapters, it’s now easier to just go by what the subject is. It’s about time Paulos got to the question of morality. As for me, I see morality as a subset of goodness in that in order for the idea of the moral to exist, the good of which it is a part has to exist first.

At any rate, let’s get to it.

1. Across cultures the similarities in what’s considered right or wrong are strikingly apparent.

2. The best explanation for these similarities is that they stem from God.

3. Therefore God exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 122-123). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

This isn’t exactly how I would phrase it. I would simply say that if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. That is because goodness would not exist as goodness is an immaterial reality and not a material one.

Count on Paulos to think he can easily deal with the first two claims. Let’s see how he does.

Of course, proponents of the argument don’t say much about the blasphemers, disobedient sons, homosexuals, Sabbath workers, and others who, the Bible demands, should be stoned to death. Happily, even most believers today don’t believe this. Nor do they expatiate on the similarities of the draconian constraints on women—single, married, or widowed—sanctioned by Christian, Muslim, and Hindu theology. The general point is that, contrary to Assumption 1, the similarity of moral codes across cultures is either somewhat dubious except on the broadest level—murder, theft, child care, basic honesty—or else not something proponents wish to herald. Assumption 2 is even weaker than Assumption 1. There is a compelling and irreligious alternative to it: an evolutionary explanation for the similarity of moral codes. Humans, even before they were humans, have always had to deal with a set of basic requirements. How will they get food, keep warm, protect themselves from predators and other humans, mate, and reproduce? Any group that doesn’t meet these basic requirements doesn’t last long.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 123-124). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

The first paragraph is just an appeal to emotion and saying “These people did stuff I don’t like.” What of it? You can only complain about that if objective moral values exist. If they don’t exist, there’s nothing fine with celebrating same-sex attracted people or stoning them to death. Both of those just are.

For the second, Paulos is confusing ontology with epistemology. I could grant him entirely that we came to know moral truths through an evolutionary system and yet the question is not how do we know morality, but how is there a morality to know. For evolution to get us to know truths, those truths have to exist prior to evolution. If all he says is “These work” then we have to ask “For what end?” which assumes that that end is good.

If He chose the laws capriciously, then it makes little sense to say that God is good, since He arbitrarily concocted the very notion of the good Himself. On the other hand, if God chose the laws He did because they are the correct ones and encapsulate the good, then their correctness and the good are independent notions that don’t require God. Furthermore, He is presumably Himself subject to the preexisting moral laws, in which case there’s once again little reason to introduce Him as an intermediary between the moral laws and humans.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 124-125). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Classical theism deals with all of this. We define good as that at which all things aim and God is the epitome of that, the ultimate actualization. Goodness is based on what a thing is. Without God, goodness has no meaning. Not only that, no. God is not subject to moral laws. That’s a nonsense claim.

Of course, don’t count on someone like Paulos to seriously study what he’s talking about. He might be too busy helping women trick men out of money.

He later can’t help another potshot when he says:

Throughout the world, for example, pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, is the same number, approximately 3.14 (except in the Bible, where inerrancy apparently extends to only one significant figure and it’s stated to be 3).

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 127). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Last I checked, Purple Math is just simply a math site and yet, they dealt with this objection. Paulos is the guy who just looked up something and jumped up and down like he had found buried treasure. He is totally unaware that people have been examining these claims for thousands of years.

Next he deals with a similar argument about math. Why is it that math explains the universe when it would seem to be just ideas in our heads?

He says:

But is the usefulness of mathematics, although indubitable, really so mysterious? It seems to me that as with the argument from moral universality there is a quite compelling alternative explanation. Why is mathematics so useful? Well, we count, we measure, we employ basic logic, and these activities were stimulated by ubiquitous aspects of the physical world. Even such common experiences as standing up straight, pushing and pulling objects, and moving about in the world prepare us to form quasimathematical ideas and to internalize the associations among them.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 129). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

And then says that:

The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. Evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought were consistent with the workings of the universe. The aforementioned French mathematician Henri Poincaré, who came within a hairbreadth of discovering special relativity, agreed. He wrote, “By natural selection our mind has adapted itself to the conditions of the external world. It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient.” The usefulness of mathematics, it seems, is not so unreasonable.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 131-132). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

But this is the exact same problem he has with morality. He confuses epistemology and ontology. Well, of course it works! We couldn’t do our measurements without it! No one is disputing that! We want to know why it works.

Tomorrow, he’s going to take a look at what he calls gambling in dealing with Pascal’s wager. Spoiler alert: He doesn’t understand it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 13

Does complexity require complexity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

John Allen Paulos is a thoroughly dishonest individual.

As we saw when discussing the design argument, he argued that complex things need a complex designer. One would hope an honest individual would keep that standard. Alas, they might, but Paulos is not such an individual.

We are skipping chapter 12 in case you are wondering as there is nothing really in there counting as an argument that needs to be addressed. Before we get to this point, let’s look at something amusing Paulos says:

The obstinate blindness to contrary facts that confirmation bias induces in some religious people always reminds me of the little ditty by William Hughes Mearns: As I was sitting in my chair, I knew the bottom wasn’t there, Nor legs nor back, but I just sat, Ignoring little things like that.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 109). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

I can’t help but be amused when someone who makes basic mistakes about the other side and doesn’t address any scholarship at all talks to us about confirmation bias. Confirmation bias works both ways. I regularly engage with Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and atheists. I also ask them when the last time they read something that they disagreed with was and usually, I get absolutely nothing.

But moving on:

The last cognitive distortion I’ll discuss is a form of primitive thinking related to the availability error. It is best characterized as “like causes like.”

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 111). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Got it, so it is a form of primitive thinking to say in order to cause something, the cause must be like the effect. Good to know.

It is perhaps not surprising therefore that people have long thought the complexity of computer outputs was a result of complex programs.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 111). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Okay. So you can have a complex output, and yet that doesn’t mean that the program that produced it was complex. Does that mean it could be simple?

Although it’s not a new idea, no one has treated the notion of simplicity leading to complexity with the thoroughness of Stephen Wolfram in his book A New Kind of Science. The book is twelve hundred pages, so let me focus on Wolfram’s so-called rule 110, one of a number of very simple algorithms capable of generating an amazing degree of intricacy and, in theory at least, of computing anything any state-of-the-art computer can compute.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 112). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Okay. So here Paulos is talking about the idea that simplicity can lead to complexity. Not only that, but apparently this is something scientific. Let’s keep going.

Simple programs, he avers, can be used to explain space and time, mathematics, free will, and perception as well as help clarify biology, physics, and other sciences. They also explain how a universe as complex-appearing and various as ours might have come about: the underlying physical theories provide a set of simple rules for “updating” the state of the universe, and such rules are, as Wolfram demonstrates repeatedly, capable of generating the complexity around (and in) us, if allowed to unfold over long enough periods of time. The relevance of the “like causes like” illusion to the argument from design is now, I hope, quite obvious. Wolfram’s rules, Conway’s Life, cellular automatons in general, and the Mandelbrot set, as well as Kauffman’s lightbulb genome, show that the sources of apparent complexity needn’t be complex (although they usually are).

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 114-115). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

And this is how the chapter ends.

So apparently, a complex program can come about from something incredibly simple.

Unfortunately, when he talked about the design argument and the complexity of the universe, Paulos said the exact opposite. None of this simplicity stuff was there. There was no correction of Richard Dawkins at all.

Keep in mind as I pointed out, we have already observed that Paulos will lie for fun to trick people out of money. Paulos is not just ignorant of what he writes about. He is dishonest about it and has confessed to dishonesty for pleasure that leaves real victims before.

Have nothing to do with this individual. Do not buy his book. I am going through it so you won’t have to. If you meet anyone interested in his work, send them here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 11

What about Jesus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, we will see the exact same in-depth research Paulos has given to every other section in this book.

Which is none.

Let’s just dive into it.

As noted, the occasion for these observations is Gibson’s gory movie and an underreported fact about its basis: there is little, if any, external historical evidence for the details presented in the somewhat inconsistent biblical versions of the Crucifixion. Unless we take literally and on faith the New Testament accounts of Jesus written many decades afterward (between 70 and 100 c.e.), we simply don’t know what happened almost two millennia ago, at least in any but the vaguest way. This, of course, is part of the reason that Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which purports to fill in the details of the story and its aftermath, was No. 1 on Amazon for so long, selling millions of copies to date.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 92). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Of course, there are no scholars here cited.

So let’s see what some say.

“The fact of the death of Jesus as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable, despite hypotheses of a pseudo-death or a deception which are sometimes put forward. It need not be discussed further here.” (Gerd Ludemann. .”What Really Happened To Jesus?” Page 17.)

Christians who wanted to proclaim Jesus as messiah would not have invented the notion that he was crucified because his crucifixion created such a scandal. Indeed, the apostle Paul calls it the chief “stumbling block” for Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Where did the tradition come from? It must have actually happened. (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Third Edition. pages 221-222)

 

Jesus was executed by crucifixion, which was a common method of torture and execution used by the Romans. (Dale Martin, New Testament History and Literature. Page 181)

 

That Jesus was executed because he or someone else was claiming that he was the king of the Jews seems to be historically accurate. (ibid. 186)

 

Jesus’ execution is as historically certain as any ancient event can ever be but what about all those very specific details that fill out the story? (John Dominic Crossan http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-d…_b_847504.html)

Also, none of these are Christians.

But hey, reading is hard for people like Paulos. He might have to step outside of his bubble and encounter contrary thought.

Next, he goes on to talk about obvious biological absurdities like the virgin birth (Which I do affirm) and the resurrection. He says we will set those aside, but apparently thinks saying they’re biologically absurd is sufficient.

Paulos. I hate to tell you this, but ancient people knew how babies were made and they knew dead people stay dead. You go on though and pat yourself on the head and say you know so much more than they did.

Assume for the moment that compelling historical documents have just come to light establishing the movie’s and the Bible’s contentions that a group of Jews was instrumental in bringing about the death of Jesus; that Pilate, the Roman governor, was benign and ineffectual; and so on. Even if all this were the case, does it not seem hateful, not to mention un-Christian, to blame contemporary Jews?

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 92). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Yes.

I’m sorry. Does Paulos think I think were are to hold all Jews accountable for what some Jews did 2,000 years ago?

He then decides to take on Lewis’s trilemma.

Aside from its alliteration, Lewis’s question is not compelling in the least. Did Jesus really say he was the Son of God? We don’t know. Could he have meant it metaphorically rather than literally? We don’t know. Could he be an amalgam of various real and mythic figures? We don’t even know this. (Such untestable speculations about Jesus and other figures remind me of the classics scholar who published a seminal breakthrough. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, he asserted. They were actually written by another blind Greek poet of the same name.) In any case, there are many ways out of this trilemma that commit one neither to abandoning admiration for (at least a good chunk of ) Jesus’ teaching nor to accepting his divinity.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 94). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Never mind that this is all said and done after Lewis has established his case already for the historical Jesus. Paulos is too busy with an agenda to care about facts. He also says “We don’t know” but I am unsure who this “we” is since Paulos never cites biblical scholars and has apparently never read them.

So again, a chapter where Paulos ignores all the scholarship and expects us to take him seriously.

Don’t.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 10

Do you believe in miracles? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter is on evidences from miracles, prayers, and witnesses. Well, he has certainly done his homework. He has a grand total of TWO miracle claims. Wow. That’s certainly impressive isn’t it?

Let’s suppose I said this to someone like Paulos.

“Today, I am going to examine the case for evolution. My cases are going to be built around Piltdown Man and the Archaeoraptor. Both of these were accepted by some and yet turned out to be frauds. With a history like that, we can obviously say evolutionary theory is a bunch of garbage.”

I suppose a reply to that by someone holding to evolution would be, “But if you’re going to examine evolution, you need to examine all the evidences for it, and not just the ones that you think you can easily show to be frauds. True research requires much more than that.”

They would be absolutely right.

Of course, I’m not trying to argue against evolution with any of that. I have no stance on the issue and I don’t care about it. I am simply saying two cases does not really count since you can pick ones you think you can easily demonstrate to be false and then move on thinking you have done everything.

At any rate, the two stories he chooses are the accounts of a Mother Drexel in 1955 and the Fatima sightings of 1917.

After saying these are what he’s going with, he tries to define a miracle. So far, so good. I do agree with him that a miracle is not just an unlikely event. Paulos is of the position that if someone seemingly being rescued is a miracle, then what happens with those who died? If someone recovering suddenly of a disease is a miracle, is contracting it in the first place also one?

For the former, I would be hesitant to say a miracle had necessarily taken place just because someone survived or was found alive. For the second, if someone has a spontaneous recovery in a religious context after something specific such as prayer, I am inclined to say a miracle has taken place. He asks why it isn’t a miracle if a parapet cracks at 3:06 AM and falls on the head of the only person walking on the street below. (Never mind why are you walking on the street at 3:06 AM?) My answer is sufficient for that.

For the Mother Drexel case, he says two children prayed to her after she died and experienced spontaneous recoveries. He says that such can happen anyway, and that’s true, but that doesn’t demonstrate his point here. Coming up with an alternate explanation does not disprove one explanation or even show the alternate is likely. For Fatima, he says the prophecies were vague. Maybe they were. At any rate, it doesn’t look like he did any real study on the matter and there are plenty of other miracles throughout history and in our present time he could have pointed to.

Then he says this:

In all these cases, believers always have an out in the “God of the gaps,” whose performance of miracles, although consistent with natural laws, exploits the ever-decreasing gaps in our scientific knowledge.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 87). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

But this could be just as easily turned around on Paulos. I could say he has a naturalism of the gaps. If there is a gap in the reasoning, well, we know it can’t be a miracle because miracles don’t happen because naturalism is true. God of the gaps with theism is weak reasoning, but it is just as weak with naturalism.

Of course, he also points to David Hume, completely unaware for instance that umpteen responses and more have been written in reply to Hume. There were plenty Paulos could have looked at, but that would require that he seriously engage with contrary thought, and we just can’t have that. He could have even read the agnostic John Earman.

Tomorrow, we’ll see what he has to say about Jesus and other figures.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 9

How do you know? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Christian music nowadays is often so terrible with how someone knows that Christianity is true. As important as Easter is, I dread going to a church and having to hear “He Lives.” I can’t imagine the disciples in the first century saying “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart.” A Jesus that lives in your heart would not be a threat to the Roman Empire.

Or consider Toby Mac who sang a song called “Feel It.” How does he know Christianity is true? He feels it. That’s it. This is the kind of nonsense that is being sent out to young Christians and I fear young Christians hearing that will think that’s how you know and then go off to college to be destroyed by an atheist professor.

Not only will they think that Christianity is false, they will think this is what Christianity is. Christianity is all about how you feel. Sadly, most adults in the church will give that exact same kind of mindset to them.

That’s the kind of argument that Paulos is presenting in this chapter. Again, Paulos goes for low-hanging fruit consistently and doesn’t do any real interaction with the material at its best. The only possible exception is the ontological argument and even with that, he doesn’t look at modern defenders of the argument.

I recently had someone contact me asking about the claim that what they experienced in their faith could be explained by brain studies. I said that this isn’t an argument I would use as I would point to the existing of God and the resurrection of Jesus, but I did tell them, “So what if brain studies do show there is a correlation between the two?” If God is behind something, is He always to work in miraculous means?

Generally, that’s the approach I take. Enjoy experiences that are good that come to you, but don’t make them the foundation.

Surprisingly, he says something I agree with:

It’s repellent for atheists or agnostics to personally and aggressively question others’ faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 79). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, Paulos often doesn’t follow his advice here. He hasn’t done any real research on the material he is writing on. Where are these academics who say the first cause argument is that “Everything has a cause.”? Part of treating a position respectfully is trying to treat it at its best. It means not giving out trite arguments for atheism like

I’ve often wondered why adherents of a particular religion and its associated figures and narratives claim to be incapable of understanding atheists and agnostics. As has often been noted, they generally have some relevant experience that they can call on. Their religion teaches them to deny the figures, even the God(s), of other faiths and traditions—Zeus, Osiris, Woden, and so on. Atheists and agnostics simply do them one better, extending this denial one God further to make it universal.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 80). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

An argument like this is not against God. It’s against Superman. It’s assuming the God of the Bible is just like the gods on Mount Olympus. People like this do not have the basic understanding of Christian theology necessary to argue against God. Yes, atheists. You need to read Christian theology to argue against Christianity.

My analogy I use for this is to imagine a defense attorney making a closing argument in a case. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We all agree that there are plenty of people in this room that did not commit the murder. I ask that you just look at my client and go one person further.”

I actually found amazing his use of Ambrose Bierce with The Devil’s Dictionary.

(Relevant is Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “pray”—“to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”)

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 81). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

I actually found this definition quite amazing. Sometimes, we are asking that and sometimes, the answer can be yes. God does amazing things for we who are unworthy.

Finally, Paulos says

My own feeling derives in part from the realization, mentioned in the preface, that I had when I was ten years old and wrestling with my brother on the floor of my family’s house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In an important sense, I mused, there was no essential difference between me and not-me; everything was composed of atoms and molecules, and though their patterns differed, the rug below our heads and the brains inside them were made of the same stuff.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 81). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

With this, I wonder why he is an atheist. Why is he not a pantheist? Besides that, has he not thought about any of this since he was ten years old?

Sadly, it looks like he hasn’t.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: Irreligion: An Anecdote on Emotional Need

Why don’t I trust John Paulos? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I hated reading this section. I suspect Paulos wrote it to show that he is an understanding guy. If anything, it showed me that he is the exact opposite. It showed me Paulos is willing to engage in lying that intentionally harms others and do so for pure enjoyment.

He starts with talking about being in Thailand in an internet cafe. In the cafe are three girls and they are being coached by another woman who was their English expert. The women are communicating with men online and going from man to man playing someone who is totally lovesick each time.

The women see that Paulos is interested in what they are doing and so he starts explaining to them the phrases that they are using and what they mean. They would say these things to these men and then laugh hysterically and thank Paulos. He kept on helping them to learn what they needed to say to these men.

Am I justifying what these men are doing? Not a bit. These men are being suckered by women overseas and getting their money taken from them. However, I have a much bigger problem with what Paulos is doing. Paulos himself says:

It was great fun helping them dupe farangs on three continents out of their money via a Western Union office down the block. (Perhaps “dupe” is the wrong word since I think the bargain was a fair one and inexpensive at that: a Christmas fantasy for a few dollars.)

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 72). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Paulos enjoyed this. He knew he was tricking people ouf of money and enjoyed it. Not only that, but these women could have been part of sex trafficking for all we know. Paulos was enabling what they were doing which could mean that he was unknowingly participating in sex trafficking.

Paulos says he tells this story because of how so many people want to believe in God despite what he describes as gaping holes in their arguments. (Unfortunately for Paulos, the gaping holes are all in his understanding of them.) He says these people want to believe in God just like these men overseas want to believe these women desperately love them.

And what of my role, which, despite my rationale above, remains slightly problematic? I was doing the opposite of what I’m attempting to do in this book. I was facilitating an illusion, albeit an emotional one with which I have more sympathy than its religio-intellectual analogue.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 73). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

So Paulos has now written a book where he explicitly talks about coaching women in lying to dupe men out of money, and then he expects us to trust him on anything? Not going to happen here. Paulos is the kind of guy based on this that if he told me it wasn’t raining outside, I would get an umbrella.

I encourage the new atheist movement to distance yourself from people like this who will openly confess to lying to dupe others and enjoy it. Accept him and you have no grounds upon which to condemn the person you view as the lying televangelist. I condemn both of them. Paulos apparently only condemns if it’s the other side.

Have nothing to do with people like this. When someone tells you who they really are, believe them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

A Visit To Bourbon Street

How does a community respond to evil? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Last Sunday, I went out with some students to meet people who worked on Bourbon Street here in New Orleans. Two things New Orleans is definitely famous for are Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras. Sadly, neither of those are usually for good reasons as far as Christianity is concerned. Of course, we are famous for other things, like Jazz, but Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras are hardly associated with holiness.

For me, when New Year’s Eve rolled around, I stayed up and watched a ball come down on YouTube in Dallas-Fort Worth while playing Animal Crossing to get the New Year’s Eve achievement. Around midnight, being a good Baptist at a Baptist seminary, I popped open a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling White Grape Juice. Within an hour, I was in bed.

I could have no way of knowing that while I slept that night, people would be celebrating in my city and have their celebrations destroyed by an evil man driving a car into them.

Let’s start with that. Many times when a great evil happens, we often jump immediately to the idea that the person was mentally ill. We need to stop that. It’s this sort of idea that anyone who had their rational mind in order would not do that. Unfortunately, they do. People have within them the capacity for great evil.

At one of our first stops, I remember one of the students I was with talking to the owner of a store about how we were coming by to visit people after the accident took place. After we left, I told him to not say accident. Losing your car keys is an accident. Punching your wife in the face is a direct evil.

One lady we talked to spoke about how she remembered the event and said that she thought it was tragic for everyone. She wasn’t directly involved in losing someone, but it sure must be hard for everyone else.

Until someone she knew was the last person to be identified among the victims. Her name was Tasha. At that point, I talked about being divorced and gave the talk that someone else gave me about it. Today is horrible. Tomorrow will also be horrible, but it will be a little bit less so.

She told us to be sure to go down to the vigil, which we did.

It’s amazing how many people make crosses when death occurs. Here on a street known for wickedness, the cross still stands out. The emblem of shame in the past is now that of victory and triumph. People think of the cross when death occurs. The Romans used it to shame. We now use it to honor. Jesus has changed that which was shame into that honor.

If you zoomed in on that bottom right picture (At least that’s how it looks to me as I type here), you will see that it is a picture of Tasha. Remembering that, I took a close-up.

 

This is what happens when you put a face also on evil. To many of us, these are people we have never met and in most cases, likely never would have met. For some people, these are people who played an important part in their lives and now there is a great emptiness there. Tasha probably had a good long life ahead of her. She probably went to the celebration of the New Year looking forward to a year of promise and hope, not realizing that she would be taken from the world in the first few hours of that year.

I thought about the city with that as we walked back to our stop. I did get amused when we passed the Larry Flynt Hustler shop with magazines decorating the doorway. These weren’t full pornographic, but they were certainly risque. I saw a little boy saying to some adults he was with “Look!” and pointing at the business only to be told by one older lady there, “Don’t look! Cover your eyes!”

Had I thought of it at the time, I would have likely said something to him that a woman is the most beautiful sight of creation, but she is not to be treated as mere eye candy. Her beauty is to be held in awe and is only to be beheld by those who are worthy of it. Such a person is the man who marries her. Strive to be that man.

One of the people with me ending up talking to some guy on the way back who was talking about the history of jazz. We went to the Armstrong Park then where we were going anyway and saw a little bit of a jazz event going on. People gathered around on Sundays and just played jazz music.

I remember one of the guys with me talking about how inclusive the event seemed to be, and it was. Sometimes conservatives like myself get told we are opposed to inclusivity and diversity. We are not. We are opposed to forced diversity and inclusivity. When it happens organically with people coming together on their own, it is a beautiful thing. When it is forced on people, it is actually reverse racism.

As we drove back, and I was doing the driving, I was asked about my PhD work. I was told I was doing mine on video games and Christianity and the need for a story. Something I love about telling people that is it seems most everyone has something to say about it. Very few people are, “Ah. Okay.” They always want to say more.

One of the guys told me that gaming was how he bonded with his friends. He was involved in a lot of Super Smash Brothers tournaments and came to see a community of people who had a common love, but also needed Jesus. He said there was too little being done to help them. I agreed and hopefully, we’ll be doing some work together soon in that area.

Also, something we can learn from this is evil is certainly evil, but somehow, nothing pulls a community together often like suffering does. This is also a great time to be doing ministry. Bourbon Street needs the Gospel just like anywhere else does. Mardi Gras should be a holy celebration and not a sinful one.

We have work to do. Let’s do it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 8

Is there a code? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Whoa. What happened to chapters 6 and 7? I actually consider both of those esoteric and really there wasn’t anything on there worth commenting on since I don’t think those are arguments that are really used anyway. When we get to eight, we get to see arguments based on prophecy and Bible Codes. The former in Scripture I take seriously. The latter, I never do.

Now boys and girls, picture this. Suppose you are an atheist and you want to write a chapter in a book about Bible prophecy and how it’s all bunk. If you are an intelligent sort of person, what do you do?

Well, odds are you would consult some scholarship and find out what prophecies are used as the best indicators of appeal to prophecy. Maybe you would go with Isaiah 53 or the 70 weeks of Daniel or with the Olivet Discourse. Maybe you would go with the idea of the Bible predicting Jesus entirely period. You would show how these are not accurate readings of the text and thus demonstrate the Bible has a fallacious record as far as you’re concerned.

Unfortunately, Paulos is not such a man.

Paulos states the argument like this:

1. A holy book makes prophecies.

2. The same book or adherents of it report that these prophecies have come true.

3. The book is indubitable and asserts that God exists.

4. Therefore God exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 61). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

He also says the argument from prophecy is held in low esteem by philosophers. Unfortunately, he doesn’t tell us who these philosophers are. Also, were I to use this argument, I would not say it this way. I would say this book got things down extremely accurate centuries in advance and only a being with advance knowledge could do that.

He goes on to talk about how the narrative in Scripture has meaning, but lacks a referent. Then he says

You would think that the obvious irreligious objection would come to almost anyone’s mind when reading a religious tome or holy book. What if you don’t believe the holy book’s presuppositions and narrative claims and simply ask for independent argument or evidence for God’s existence? What if you’re not persuaded by the argument that God exists because His assertion that He exists and discussion of His various exploits appear in this book about Him that believers say He inspired?

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 63). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

First off, this ignores that the argument from prophecy is evidence still. Perhaps it’s not the best, but it is evidence. Second, I would be glad to present the Thomistic arguments, which Paulos never deals with. I guess those didn’t come up in his google search research.

Yet the most amazing part of this section is that Paulos does not cite a single Bible prophecy!

Imagine if I made a claim that I was going to totally destroy the argument for evolution from the fossil record and never once cited the fossil record. Imagine if I said I am going to demonstrate the Book of Mormon is a hoax and never once cited the Book of Mormon. Imagine if I said that I am going to take down the Qur’an and never referenced it one time.

That would be ridiculous.

That is also exactly what Paulos does.

Somehow, some atheists out there will still think he’s done an excellent job. Once again, I remind you of my rule for these kinds of atheists. They honor reason and evidence with their lips, but their heads are far from it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Final Thoughts (for now) on Persona 5 Royal

Can your heart be stolen? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently finally finished Persona 5 Royal. Technically, I had to go through the first part twice seeing as I got a bad ending the first time. Why? I didn’t focus enough on relationships. That has to be done to make sure you get a good ending. Quite counter-intuitive for a JRPG.

The Persona series is made by a company called Atlus. This is my first step into the game. Why start here? This is the one I had heard the most about and when a friend gave me a gift card, this is the one that was on sale at the time. Fortunately, it’s like Final Fantasy in that all the games are stand-alone. You don’t need to have played the others.

The story starts with you being a teenage boy on probation for a crime that you were wrongfully accused of and having a kind coffeeshop owner take you in and give you an attic room. You go to school and see a guy who you learn is the volleyball coach being quite nasty with some of the students. You also meet a friend who tells you about the coach.

Not too much later, it’s still your first day and you suddenly find yourself in this dark castle with your new friend. The coach is there and he’s not just a coach, but he’s a king, and you and your friend are hostages. It is in this situation that you find that you awake to your persona, which is where the mask comes off in the game and you see who you really are. That is where you enter into combat and through another friend you meet in the metaverse, a humanoid type cat, you learn more about this world.

The goal of the game then becomes finding people who are criminals and have highly distorted desires. Their view of themselves becomes so distorted that it becomes a palace. Your goal is make a route to the treasure at the heart of the palace, but before it can be stolen from them, you have to send them a calling card in the real world. After that, the final battle with that person’s shadow begins and when an appointed time has past, they have a change of heart and confess their sins and accept what comes their way.

Put all of this on hold.

So first off, the music I find in it to be simply incredible. I can easily put the main battle theme on extended and just keep listening. It is that catchy. A player really gets jazzed up with excitement when a battle starts.

Overall also, it’s not much of a challenge, though granted I was playing on normal difficulty. The mechanics aren’t too over the top to learn. It’s gentle in how it guides you.

As someone on the spectrum, the way relationships work I find incredible. As you build relationships with characters, including party members, you start to form bonds and you get abilities that can be used to help you on your quest. Answer the way the person prefers and you build up your bond better with them. As someone on the spectrum, I found this engaging. For instance, I learned when I talk to a female in the game, focus on how she feels when I choose a response before giving “advice” to help her. It was a joy to me to see the indication I had given the correct response and now in the real world, I often think about how I interact with people I know and can picture my own relationship with them improving.

Speaking of the characters, they are all really fleshed-out. You see a close-up of their face when you communicate with them and you get to know them and their stories. Finishing the game can be like wrapping up an adventure with some friends. I also liked interacting with the therapist figure. In some ways, it would be like my own counseling sessions.

There is a lot of psychology and philosophy and even theology in this game. Jungian thought plays a big role and the personas come from pop culture and religion. There are even Christian figures. If that is a problem to you, i understand. I just came to understand this is how some people see things and I want to understand their view.

Now to go back and get to the best part of all, the story. The more I played, I was in the mood of “I want to see what happens next.” There were so many flashbacks that too place that I thought “I can’t believe I didn’t notice that then.” The story is by far the biggest draw. I even used a skill from building up bonds to have battles finish automatically for me just so I could get more of the story. It’s that good.

Yet now I am wondering “Why can’t Christians make games like this?” We have a story to tell as well. We need Christian game developers to rise up and tell that story in a way that the world can enjoy. We need a new C.S. Lewis who has a heart for games.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)