Month: December 2013

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 5

What do I will to say about the topic of freedom in Carrier’s book? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I’ll go ahead and say that this is one debate I tend to not take a side in. I believe in the freedom of the will and that’s about it. How far does that go? I’m not going to say. If there’s one debate I can’t stand in Christian circles, it’s the Calvinism/Arminianism debate. It’s particularly bad when I have seen some people say “Calvinism is the gospel.” Thankfully, I do have some Calvinist friends who do not go to that extreme and we never discuss it.

So when I look through this section, I am not going to be critiquing on the points. Carrier is taking on J.P. Moreland in this part of the book and I am not going to be Moreland’s defender either. He can fight his own battles, though it’s a wonder why anyone would think he should take a challenge such as Carrier’s seriously. Still, what did I find in this section that concerned me?

For one thing, Carrier says Moreland’s meaning of freedom doesn’t correspond to actual human practice. We are told on page 105 that if you ask people on the street whether freedom is “getting to do whatever you want” and they will wholeheartedly agree.

The first problem is, when using philosophical terminology, it is not best to get the terminology from the man on the street, but from those who have most often done the serious thinking on the issues. This would include a good philosophical dictionary or encyclopedia.

Second, no one has this kind of freedom also. I can’t do whatever I want. If I want to murder my neighbor and then follow through on that, the police will have something to say about my use of freedom. If I want to jump off the roof of my house and fly, gravity will have something to say about what I want.

It’s noteworthy that later on this page, Carrier says Moreland gets a definition from the antiquated medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. (Yet we saw in the last post that perhaps Carrier should have listened to this antiquated medieval philosopher) We are told Aquinas uses a definition of source that is not employed in normal conversation.

I wasn’t aware Moreland in giving a philosophical defense was engaging in “normal conversation.” In saying all of this, there is not a reply to Aquinas. (In fact, I find most people who want to reply to Aquinas redefine what he said, such as a modern notion of motion from Newton rather than the one Aquinas was working with.)

Carrier does the same thing on page 111 when he says “In the real world, hardly anyone brings up the acausal metaphysics of the soul, much less do they actually try to determine where and when such a strange substance was or was not involved in any given case. So the libertarian defense of free will is irrelevant to human and social reality, while the compatibilist definition fits it like a glove.”

Which pretty much says our words define our time fairly well so anything that disagrees with our understanding is wrong. In fact, I could even give another reply.

“”In the real world, hardly anyone would spend a whole chapter in a book talking about the meaning of words. So Carrier’s emphasis on the importance of words is irrelevant to human and social reality while modern ignorance of it fits it like a glove.”

The last point to bring out is that Carrier then goes to court cases to see how they understand the definition of freedom. Again, why not go to philosophical dictionaries and encyclopedias? Why should I think the modern courts definition of a philosophical topic is correct?

There’s not much in chapter 5 to really comment on so I plan on skipping that. I will next time then cover a short portion in chapter 6 on the nature of the mind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 4

Does metaphysical naturalism account for the existing of the universe? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

We’re continuing our review of Sense and Goodness Without God (SGWG) by Richard Carrier and we’re on the chapter about the nature and origin of the universe. I wish to give a caveat right at the start of this chapter.

I have made it a point to not talk about science as science. Why? Simple reason. I am not a scientist. I do not like Richard Dawkins and others speaking on theology, philosophy, history, Biblical interpretation, etc. without showing they’ve done any serious study on the matter. I, in like suit, will not comment on science as science.

Does that mean I don’t have opinions? Of course I do, but my opinions are not authoritative in any way on that issue. For instance, I do hold that the Earth goes around the sun, but I could not begin to tell you a reason why other than that seems to be the accepted position. Now I do enjoy commenting on the history of science, but for the science itself, no. I leave that to scientists.

Therefore, when it comes to the scientific theories discussed in this chapter, insofar as they are scientific, I will not be saying anything. Now when these questions do get to something I have studied, I will comment. At the outset, I can say that if Carrier wants a multiverse or an eternal universe or some combination thereof, I would be willing to grant any of those. They don’t damage my theism or the case for the resurrection.

Also, I can say that I am somewhat skeptical of the ID movement. I have a problem with scientific arguments for theism in general in that they tend to be more inductive than anything else and frankly, most of us don’t know the language. It also has us often implicitly buying into the idea that science is the highest field of knowledge. It is a great one. It is an important one. It is not the only one.

And as for evolution, which will be discussed later, I have no opinion either. I will even grant macroevolution just for the sake of argument because I could not make any argument pro or con in regards to that. I do not doubt it’s an important question, but one cannot have the time to study all important questions. I have chosen my field and I will stick with it.

Anyway, on page 71, Carrier makes a statement about what would be the case of the most plausible theory.

“So after meeting the criteria of plausibility, the most plausible explanation will be the one that has the greatest explanatory scope and power. A hypothesis with ‘explanatory scope’ explains many facts, not just one or two, and thus would explain a great about why this universe exists rather than some other, why the universe has the properties it does rather than others.”

I find no problem with this. In fact, I agree. We do want to find the best explanation. We are also seeking to study this universe. We can postulate other universes, but as far as I know, we have no hard evidence of other universes, just a theory. The only universe we can treat as a certainty is this one.

Carrier on the next page starts calling into question the God hypothesis. I wish to state at the start that I have a problem with just saying “God did it.” I have no problems with seeking out means considered “natural” for lack of a better term. None of these would dispense with God. Still, I find some of Carrier’s criticisms lacking.

For instance, Carrier says on this page that

“Worse, the idea that there was a god around before there was a universe–in other words the idea that something existed when there was no place for it to exist, that something acted when there was no time in which it could act–done not make much sense.”

To say something is difficult to comprehend is different from saying it does not make much sense. The problem I see here is that it assumes God is a material entity. I’m sure Carrier knows that in Christian theology, God is not material, but why bring up the idea that God is to exist in a place, as if any place could contain God? Why think He exists in any time, as if any time could contain God? The Christian doctrine is that God is omnipresent and eternal. He exists in place but is not bound by it, but rather sustains it. The same with time. God eternally exists and is not bound by a timeline any more than He is bound by the physical universe.

For the sake of argument, this could be false. It could be this is what Christian theology teaches, and it does, and still be wrong, but let us make sure that we are representing Christian theology accurately. I do not see any reason why anyone who has studied Christian theology or philosophy would be troubled at all by the sort of argument Carrier makes.

Next we have the question of why didn’t God just create Heaven at the start? This assumes a more modern view of Heaven that it’s that nice place in the sky that you go to when you die. Heaven is in fact the place where the presence of God is made manifest to the delight of His servants. I contend that Heaven actually comes to Earth. (Strangely enough, so does the Bible. See the Lord’s Prayer and Revelation 21) I also contend the same with Hell and that Hell is where God’s presence is made manifest to the agony of His enemies.

So why not make Heaven right at the start? Because Heaven is a choice. The love of God is chosen and if one is created in the manifest loving presence of God, there is no choice, and God values choice enough that He lets us have it.

Next comes the problem of the infinite regress, or rather the so-called problem. As Carrier says on page 73 “If everything must have an explanation, then you do not really get anywhere by explaining the universe by proposing a god.”

In some ways, this is the “Who made God?” objection. The problem with the infinite regress is that people confuse infinite regresses. There are two kinds. They are the regress per se and the regress per accidens.

The latter is a temporal chain. Let us suppose that a tragedy happens and my parents and my wife’s parents both die suddenly. Right now, Allie and I are childless. Does that mean that we will be unable to have children now since our parents are gone? No. Not at all. Our being able to continue the chain of humanity through us does not depend in any way on the existence of our parents. This is the kind of regress that Aquinas and Aristotle are both open to. (In fact, in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologica, Question 46, article 2, Aquinas says that by reason alone, you cannot know the universe had a beginning. Christians only know it by revelation. He would disagree then with the Kalam as used today.)

So what is going on in the first way? In the first way of Aquinas, we have a regress per se. This is a regress of instrumental causes. The classic example is of a hand moving a stick. The stick moves the rock. The rock moves the leaf. Remove any part of the chain before the leaf, and the leaf does not move. There is an ontological dependence. This kind of regress is the one that is impossible, because instrumental causes are only secondary causes. They are the means through which an efficient cause acts. There must be some force that acts that is itself not acted upon and that force, everyone knows to be God. (In Thomistic language) For God, the basis for His existence lies in Himself, for He is being by nature with no add-ons. Everything else has the reason for its existing outside of itself. It has a nature that is given existence. God has no nature given existence but His nature is found in what it means to be. (I highly recommend Edward Feser’s “Aquinas” at this point.) In fact, Carrier says on page 81 that an ultimate being has only two properties we can be sure of. It’s nature is to exist and it has a reasonable chance of producing the universe exactly as we see it.

Carrier says there can be no ultimate explanation because there must be something that either just “is” or there is a brute fact. I do not see this argued but rather assumed. Yet my answer is there is something that just is and it is because it is in its very nature to be and that is God. Yet Carrier has a statement that is so brief coming up that many will overlook it, but really think about it. On page 73 he says

“Why should such an infinite series of explanations exist for something as relatively simple as a single universe?”

Does anyone really want to say that they think our universe is simple?

Our universe is in fact one of the most complex things we know of and yet we’re told why should a series of explanations exist for it? The universe has thus become a brute fact and well we grant it and then go on. I would need to show the universe has the principle of its own existing in itself. (Note I said existing and not just existence. What keeps the universe going right now?) This is an argument that will not be scientific. It is metaphysical seeing as it deals with the nature of existence. Carrier asks why not just stop with what we know, the natural world?

And here I thought theism was supposed to be the view that stopped us from asking questions….

On page 74, we get to questions about the Big Bang asking what God needs a Big Bang for. It’s a complicated method to use.

Indeed it is. So what? To say that God did not create by the method I would use does not mean He did not create, and last I checked, Carrier has no qualifications on how to make a universe. Perhaps if he thinks the way was done improperly, he should create his own real universe and show us how it would be done. He can create all the laws and such that hold it in place and present it for comparison.

This will not be done and frankly cannot be done.

God is not limited in his resources nor is He limited by His time nor is He obligated to create everything optimal, especially since in my view He did not create the universe to be the way it is right now eternally. To argue against this methodology one needs more than “I would not do it this way and here’s why.” One needs to show there is no God who did do it this way.

On page 78 Carrier says that “We barely struggle along on this tiny little planet, in brutal competition for scarce resources, on a microscopic island that will be melted by the sun in a relatively short time.”

Oh, and by the way, have a nice day.

It’s amazing that the Big Bang is a slow and long process, but the time it takes for the sun to swallow us up will be a relatively short time. I also wonder what world Carrier is living in. I suspect Carrier lives where he does near grocery stores where he can get food and has refrigeration where he can store it and does not have to go out and hunt the beast. I suspect he’s also never had to go out and struggle in battle just to get a meal. No doubt, this does go on in some places, but we’ve managed to do a good job here on this Earth. Reading Carrier, you’d get the impression we’re caught in the Hunger Games.

On page 82, we are told that the multiverse is a far better explanation. Carrier says something must exist without explanation and if God can do it, so can the multiverse.

Why yes. This makes sense. This would be consistent. If one thing thought of can exist without explanation, why not just tack that ability onto something different? Maybe I could even argue eventually that I exist without any explanation.

Or could it be that God is different from the multiverse in some respects?

To show this, let’s start with looking at what Carrier says on the same page. He says that the multiverse is a much simpler entity than a god.

Unfortunately, He does not show this and I would contend exactly the opposite. I contend that God is the most simple being that there is.

“But God is so hard to understand! He’s omni-everything and invisible!”

Yes, and He’s simple. Simple does not mean in relation to our understanding but rather in relation to His make-up. Simpliciity has long been held in the doctrine of God. Indeed, in the Summa, right after God’s existence, Simplicity is the next topic discussed. An excellent look at it from the church fathers can be found here.

With a multi-verse, one can imagine someone taking it apart somehow and putting it back together again. It is made of several material aspects, and these material aspects within themselves are all composed and come together. The multiverse contains planets, galaxies, solar systems, etc. Add in also that this matter contains no basis for its own existing in itself. It carries no essences in it.

Now let’s look at God. What does He have?

Being.

You cannot take something away from Him. You cannot add to Him. He is not composed of being plus essence. He is not being plus material. He is not being plus essence plus material. He is just what it means to be. Carrier says on page 83 that none of God’s attributes are supported by any science, but he is wrong. A science classically understood is a body of knowledge, and there is a body of knowledge that supports this. That is metaphysics. Does it do so through the scientific method? No. But that is because it is not that kind of science. It does so by reasoning from the evidence that we have.

Carrier does say again in the chapter that God is complex, but until He demonstrates that, I see no reason to take it seriously.

On page 85 Carrier says

“When we cast aside our prejudices, it remains perfectly sensible, and indeed most plausible, that the multiverse just is, and always has been. Everything else follows inevitably from that. There can be no objection to this, for the exact same objections would eliminate god as an explanation too. Think about it. Just as one might ask, for example, ‘why does the multiverse exist?’ one can also ask ‘why does God exist?’ Ultimately, proposing a god gets you no further than proposing a multiverse.”

It takes some great confidence to say there can be no objection to this, but alas for Carrier, there can be. God is altogether simple and is what it means to be. The multiverse is not. This is not some random idea in Christian thinking. This is an idea that has been held for well over 1,000 years and nearly 2,000 years. I would think that for all the time Carrier talks about reading and studying, he would have come across that and given a response.

On page 87, Carrier asks how a complex order could arise and tells us Isaac Newton found the answer. Gravity. Throw planets and stars together and add in gravity and you get something like what we have right now.

Well I have to be straw manning there.

No. Not at all. As Carrier says

“For all you had to do was throw planets and stars together, complete with their gravity, and ‘Presto!’ a solar system pretty much like ours would result.”

Apparently, “God did it!” has been replaced by “Gravity did it!”

Amusingly, Newton would not see this as an argument against God. In fact, He would see it as an argument for God. For the medievals and later scientists, the more they learned about how the universe worked and filled in the so-called gaps, the more they were amazed and in awe of the creator.

On page 88, Carrier says “At the very least, there is nothing incredible about proposing that all order has such an explanation. After all, theologians have been wrong every time so far, so why keep betting on them?”

Unfortunately, I saw no theologians cited. Beware the sound of one hand clapping. Furthermore, there are a great number of theologians who are advancing many of these scientific theories. It was a Catholic who came up with the Big Bang Theory and told the Pope to not use it as an argument for God’s existence.

On page 93 Carrier says complex things only arise from simpler ones. We’ve never seen anything to the contrary. I can take this as further support of my position. My beginning ontological point is ultimately simple. It is God. Carrier has given me no argument against simplicity. Carrier prefers to say that it is a fundamental chaos that is the simplest thing we can speak of.

So chaos is simple?

I don’t see an argument for that. I do see an argument for God being simple. It has been presented by theologians from early times.

Once again, I have not said anything about the science behind the theories. I fully support the scientists doing the work here and let each theory be tested. I also add this important distinction. Scientific work should be critiqued scientifically. No one’s worldview should have an authority. The science works the same for an atheist or a Christian, just as in biblical interpretation, the rules of interpretation work the same for an atheist or a Christian and in history, the historical method works the same for both. I encourage that atheists should have their sciences critiqued by Christian scientists and Christian scientists have theirs critiqued by atheist scientists. Of course, atheist scientists can also review the work of atheists and Christians that of Christians, but this methodology would help us keep our biases in check as we all have them.

I object to Christians wanting to use the Bible (Which I do not think is meant to be read in a scientific manner, including Genesis 1) to critique science. If something is true, it is true and if science shows something is true, well we’d best accept it. If we believe the resurrection is true and the existence of God is true, we have no need to fear anything science shows as anything science shows cannot contradict that.

I know today’s entry has been long. I do not suspect the next one will be as lengthy as it involves free-will and the debates around that I have tended to not even want to touch with a ten-foot pole.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/14/2013

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

You all know that on the Deeper Waters Podcast, I strive to bring you the best in Christian scholarship. I also want to share the work of others who are coming up in the field and are quite able apologists themselves, such as when I interviewed my friend Chris Winchester on dealing with Mythicists.

But every now and then I make an exception and get a guy like Eric Chabot to come on.

Naw! Eric is a good friend of mine and his specialty is in Messianic apologetics, which means this week we talked about Jesus and Judaism, something relevant for Christmas time as we talk about the incarnation and the fact that this happened for the Jewish people.

The show was recorded earlier today. It’s not the pattern that I normally follow, but I did it this time to work with our schedules. Therefore, anything I tell you about in the show is something that we already discussed. Unfortunately, this also means we were unable to take your calls, but it is a topic that is important and will be coming up again.

The incarnation is a stumbling block to Jews because they have the idea that God is not to become a man. This gets into for them what they consider to be idolatry and polytheism. Is this the case? Is this what we see in the NT? Do the Jews who wrote it ever think for a minute that they are engaging in idolatry or polytheism? How do we answer the charge that that is in fact what they are doing?

This will get us into the OT interpretation. Does the OT teach the deity of the coming Messiah? If it doesn’t right at the start, does it anywhere? Does the doctrine of progressive revelation play any role in the Jewish understanding of the OT?

Also, what about Judaism at the time of Jesus? How would Jesus have been viewed in light of Second Temple Judaism? What in fact is Second Temple Judaism? What categories did they have for the Word, the Wisdom, and the Shekinah glory of God? Did Jesus make any claims about Himself that would relate to the understanding of Second Temple Judaism of those topics?

Why is it that someone can be an atheist and be accepted just fine by several Jews, but when someone becomes a Messianic Jew who believes in Jesus, they can be rejected? Why is it that to believe in Jesus is seen as being tantamount to denying one’s Jewish identity?

And of course, what role does the OT have to play for Christians today? Is it irrelevant to us, or should we instead view it as the Bible that Jesus, Paul, and the early church all used? How ought we to read the OT today?

It was a fascinating show and I ask that you listen in. I am counting on the CYI staff to be playing it from 3-5 PM EST this Saturday. You could if you want listen to it early and do so here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 3

What’s my opinion on Carrier’s take on method? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Our continuing review of SGWG involves looking at the chapter on methodology next. To be fair, I do indeed think it’s important to show one’s methodology. Usually in a debate on the NT, I will ask someone what their methodology is for determining authorship or the historicity of a text. Usually, they have none.

Carrier says at the start that the end result of any method can never be absolute certainty, but why should anyone think this? It could depend on the claim. Some fields use a more inductive reasoning. Others use a more deductive reasoning.

For instance, consider the following syllogism.

All cats are felines.
Shiro is a cat.
Shiro is a feline.

If the premises are true, the conclusion follows with absolute certainty. I have absolute certainty that tautologies are true and contradictions are false. With other fields, like science and history, one has a more inductive approach. These fields rely more on probability. (It is strange to see the emphasis on science which is inductive and the disregard then of other fields that use more deductive approach, as certain philosophical arguments do.)

Carrier even says a god cannot have absolute certainty. He could be the victim of a greater Cartesian demon. As a Thomist, this argument doesn’t apply to me because whatever is at the end of the chain is ultimate and in fact, it is necessarily good. I will not full flesh out that argument here, though I have written more about it in my review of the Summa Theologica portion on God and on the five ways.

Carrier in seeking a good method starts out with predictive success, but is this not begging the question? Axioms of logic don’t involve predictions. They start with a certainty that a contradiction cannot be true. Logic in fact is not a method of finding truth but rather of finding error. Some methods work less by predictive power and more by explanatory scope.

It’s not a shock that in fact Carrier comes down on the side of the scientific method as the best method we have. As I said last time with pointing to Feser, the method works great with science, but it does not work great with other fields of knowledge. The scientific method has often been made too all-encompassing. As said before, this is not to denigrate science and it is a shame to think that such a claim is a denigration of science. It is to recognize its limitations. Use the scientific method for science. Use a literary method for literature, historical method for history, etc.

The problem that often comes is one has a claim that falls outside of the realm of science, such as miracles or the existence of God and immediately hears “Well do you have any scientific evidence?” You might as well ask if you have any mathematical evidence that Shakespeare wrote his plays. Of course, science can help inform us on these areas, such as showing us the way nature works when there is no interference (Although to be fair, I question the existence of laws of nature seeing as I hold to essences more) or perhaps Intelligent Design arguments. (Which I’m also skeptical of seeing as it treats the universe more like a machine)

Eventually, we get to the historical method. We are told on page 58 about how experts in the field should meet qualifications of reliability. These include genuine qualifications suited to the issue at hand, corroboration by others, and that the bias be controlled. I have no problem with these by and large and of course, the list is not limited to these.

I do think it’s important that we seek experts who have credentials in the field and I would add that we seek them from all sides. Too many atheists are ready to discount a claim in NT history because it comes from a Christian scholar, just as too many Christians could deny a claim in scientific theory because it comes from an atheist. Both are wrong. Look at the evidence. Don’t look at the position.

I also agree that one should seek corroboration from other experts. This is why I find it important to look for works that are by writers who have undergone peer-review. In history, we recently had the case of Joseph Atwill and “Caesar’s Messiah.” Atwill did not put his opinion to scholarship first to have it tested. Nope. He went straight to the media. This is sensationalism.

It’s also important with books to see who published the book. Most academic publishing houses want to protect their reputation and not publish material that will be embarrassing to them. This doesn’t mean everything by a non-academic publisher is false as its harder and harder to get published today, but in today’s age, self-publication is easier and easier, meaning one must be quite careful.

Also, biases need to be controlled. We all have them. That’s also the purpose of peer-review. You submit your work to those who are of a different mindset and see if you can defend your view. It doesn’t mean you will prove your view, but it means you do defend your view.

All of this is well and good but I found myself wondering, “Does Carrier’s Christ myth idea pass this criteria?” The answer is no. This is one of many reasons I can’t take such an idea seriously.

The next section we will go through in our review will be discussing the origins of the universe. We’ll cover that next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Sense and Goodness Without God Part 2

Are there any words to be said about words? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Our review of Sense and Goodness Without God (SGWG from now on) continues with a look at the importance of philosophy and of words. Having been a Master’s student before I left the Seminary I was at studying in philosophy, I do agree it is important. It’s also why on my own podcast I’m working to bring in more philosophers to talk on important topics in philosophy.

But I do not think Carrier is the one to be telling us about philosophy. As I’ve said, those wanting a more thorough philosophical analysis of the material of Carrier are invited to see the work of David Wood, who is in fact a credentialed PH.D. philosopher. I invite others skeptical of my stance on Carrier here to by all means go check with those who are more authoritative in whatever field and see what they say as well.

So getting to what we have, Carrier has a revealing line saying “This is a little known secret of thinking like a genius; it doesn’t matter where your ideas come from, or how many turn out to be harebrained, so long as you only trust the ones that are soundly proved.”

My first thought in reading this is what kind of way must a person think about themselves to think that they can tell us the secret of thinking like a genius. For saying that there is not much in the Bible, it would have been well to have gone to Proverbs 27:2 and read about how you should let another man praise you and not your own lips.

My second thought is how far does this go? I should only trust that which is soundly proven. Okay.

Is that proven?

I figure I could keep going on and on. Part of the problem is that if we just go by what is proven, we have to at some point reach some claims that are unproven, but that we think would be absolute nonsense to deny. “The universe did not pop into existence five minutes ago with false memories in our minds and false foods in our stomachs.” No way you could prove this, but only a fool would think the universe if five minutes old.

There are also statements that you do not prove or disprove because they are tautologies and contradictions.

“At this time, my wife either exists or she does not.”

This statement has zero predictive power and in fact it would be bizarre to think about proving it. It is entirely true regardless of which one it is! (She just went up to my mother’s to wrap Christmas gifts, but I am certainly hoping the former is the case and no mysterious sink hole has swallowed her or something of the link.)

Now here’s another statement.

“Right now, my wife is married and not married.”

This statement could not be proven at all as it is nonsense. Someone cannot be both at the same time. Of course, you could say that she is married to me and not married to any other man out there, but that requires adding information to the claim.

And finally, we can ask how a statement is proven. Too often in the book, Carrier holds to a mild form of scientism that places science on the highest level. Science is great for scientific predictions. It’s not for everything else.

For instance, if I am studying Shakespeare and I am being told that when saying X, Shakespeare is really making a comment about Y in his day, how should I verify this? Do I do so scientifically? No. I go and use literary methodologies including asking literary experts who know the field far better than I do.

There is a great danger we have in our day and age of thinking science works so well where we apply it that it just has to work everywhere else and if we do that, we will end up missing out on other truths that could, for the sake of argument, be out there. Let’s consider it with the metal detector analogy of Edward Feser. In this short section of that post, Feser presents the common view and then responds with the analogy.

1. The predictive power and technological applications of [post-Galilean, post-Cartesian, mechanistic] science are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.

2. Therefore we have good reason to think that [post-Galilean, post-Cartesian, mechanistic] science can explain everything that there is to explain.

And that sort of argument is no better than this one:

1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has.

2. Therefore we have good reason to think that metal detectors can reveal to us everything that there is to be revealed.

For those interested, Feser also deals with an objection to that here.

Thus, I wish to warn my readers about a mild scientism coming up in the future in the book. The sad reality is too many readers will think I am anti-science. Not a bit. I am for using a proper methodology in its right field. A table knife is a just right tool to spread peanut butter on a sandwich for lunch. A chainsaw doesn’t work as well, but that says nothing about one’s overall view of table knives or chainsaws.

On page 26 Carrier says “Above all, I have a clear sense of always improving myself and my worldview, a sign that I am indeed approaching the truth, and am with every step closer to it.”

It is a wonder to read this and see how this could be known. An obvious problem that should leap out to anyone is there are numerous Christian philosophers who would say the same thing. There are Christians in history who would all say the same thing. We all think we’re approaching the truth and we all think we’re improving ourselves and our worldview. Does that mean we’re all closer to the truth? Carrier is getting deeper and deeper in his atheism. Okay. Mike Licona is getting deeper and deeper in his Christianity. Are both of them approaching the truth? How could they both be when both of them are diametrically opposed?

There are other steps one would take. One would want to read that with which one disagrees. One would interact with disagreement. One would seek to get the best scholarship in any field. There would definitely be any testing and living out of one’s ideas to see how they apply in the schoolhouse of life.

After all, everyone thinks they’re approaching the truth. I can say I have refined my view drastically in all my years of study. I would certainly say I am closer to the truth, but I am constantly reading to see where I am at and interacting with others who disagree. Does that mean I’m necessarily approaching the truth. I would hope I am, but it could be tomorrow I will make a discovery that leads in the opposite direction. What then? Will I then turn and say the same thing after a few years?

As we move on to the chapter on words, there’s really not much to critique here. I will instead pull out a few points to consider.

On page 29, Carrier writes that

“Naturally, applying this first principle to itself, it follows that if we can find any proposition that has meaning but does not make any predictions, or that makes predictions that does not have any meaning, or that can be confirmed as true or false without any reference to what it predicts, then this principle would have to be revised, and my entire philosophy reconstructed from the ground up (unless the revision has no other consequence than to expand or qualify what was already established). So it is important to see if I’ve got it right here, and equally important that I help you grasp what I am talking about. In the process, you will get a taste of different aspects of my whole philosophy, on which I expand in later chapters.”

But as David Wood has said, these statements do exist. Tautologies and contradictions. See the examples above.

I suppose it’s time for a total overhaul.

Carrier also goes against Plantinga’s idea of Warranted Christian belief. I’d leave it to Plantinga to defend it, though I doubt he’d even bother. My own position is more of a common sense realism. Yes. The world outside of my mind exists. How do you know?

You tell me why I shouldn’t.

As soon as I accept the claim that I need to demonstrate this, I am no longer a realist. I see no reason to deny the reality of the material world any more than I see a reason to think the universe popped into existence five minutes ago with false memories in my mind and false food in my stomach. Carrier could say could exist anyone why they believe in the material world and they’d point to evidence. I wouldn’t. Every bit of evidence could be assumed under an idealist system. Kicking a rock done not refute Berkeley. (Berkeley was a bishop who was an empiricist and held to the non-existence of matter. While I disagree, it would be difficult for many of us to refute the arguments he puts forward in his dialogues.)

Eventually, the idealist path gets us to where Carrier arrives, and I’m not surprised, and that is the place of the Cartesian demon. Maybe it’s really an evil power outside of me that’s causing everything and just leading me to think my beliefs are true.

And again, I do not take such an idea seriously since I do not hold to any idealism. Could it be that such a power exists and is tricking me? Perhaps, but it would be up to my opponent to demonstrate that. Note also in my Thomistic arguments for God, His goodness is entailed as well in the arguments, hence many atheistic arguments against God really don’t even touch the arguments that I prefer to use. To critics out there, I also do not prefer to use most arguments used by Christian apologists today, such as the Kalam argument or the design argument. Part of that is also realizing my limitations. I have no study in science and therefore would not comment on the scientific aspects of such arguments.

In our next review, we will spend time looking at Carrier and method. There will not be much, but I hope it will provide some fun and informative interaction. For those wanting to get to the heart of the issues, be patient and wait. We will. (Though I will be regularly interspersing with posts about the podcast and some Christmas post as the holidays draw near.)

Book Plunge: Sense And Goodness Without God Part 1

Does Carrier really provide a good defense of metaphysical naturalism? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Carrier’s book is Sense and Goodness Without God, but it looks like it doesn’t deliver on either account. Going through this book will in fact be extremely laborious for anyone else who tries to do so. (I think of Allie’s repeated question of “You’re not finished with that yet?!” No love, I’m not.) The writing is entirely dry. There is apologies for that saying it will apply at the start, but it never picks up.

Of course, the real meat of a book is found in the arguments that it gives, and in this case, they’re not good at all. We get the sound of one-hand clapping largely, meaning there is often total neglect of arguments for the other side. For instance, in the long chapter on why there is no God, I was hoping I’d see the Thomistic arguments, my favorite ones, interacted with since so many people leave those out. Indeed, they weren’t. In fact, no theistic arguments were interacted with.

Another problem is that Carrier is too much of a polymath. He wants to write a little bit on everything, some of which the reader wonders what it has to do with metaphysical naturalism. Do I really need to know what Carrier’s views are on politics in order to defend metaphysical naturalism? Does it really matter what he thinks about abstract art?

If I’m to take what’s in this book seriously, I am to believe that Carrier is an authority on linguistics, philosophy, morality, free-will debates, cosmology, evolution, theistic arguments, history, economics, art, interpretation of court cases, etc.

We could grant for the sake of argument that Carrier should be seen as an authority on one or two of the issues perhaps, but on all of them? Not a chance. Now there could be some basic study in other issues, but not enough to really be taken as an authority.

No problem! That’s what footnotes are for!

Except there aren’t any.

In fact, he explicitly says there aren’t any! On page 5 he says “I use no footnotes or endnotes.”

Hardly ever will you find a book and page number as a claim for where an argument came from. Instead, at the end of a section Carrier will list books you can read on the topic with the idea that if you read these books, somewhere in there you will find what backs what is being argued. Excuse me if I don’t want to order a dozen books and read through them to verify one claim that will be found somewhere in all of that.

When he does also mention someone he is arguing against, it is a wonder why he thinks that person should take him seriously. Why should Moreland or Plantinga really be interacting with what Carrier says? Does anyone think these credentialed philosophers are going to be listening to the words of someone like Carrier at this point? Now he’s free to make critiques of them, but if anyone will get the benefit of the doubt in this case, it will certainly be these credentialed philosophers. Of course they could be wrong, but I highly doubt that Carrier has shown the case from what I’ve read. For those wanting to see more on the philosophical issues, I recommend reading David Wood’s review.

Because there is so much problematic with this book then, I am not going to have a full review in one post. I am going to handle this as a multi-part process.

Carrier starts with the praise of philosophy. No problem with that! Yet too often in this book one will often find philosophy somehow morphs into science. That is something indeed problematic, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

Of course, I wonder if he has a right understanding of philosophy. Philosophy is not just thinking about stuff. It’s a rigorous process which is why one needs to be interacting with those who have best shown themselves to be authorities and to interact with those who have studied it on an academic level. Hence, while I am a Thomist, I will give a basic defense of my position, but then point to others who know far better than I do, like Edward Feser.

Carrier describes his religion as philosophy and says the following:

“Every hour that devout believers spend praying, reading Scripture, attending sermons and masses, I spend reading, thinking, honing my skill at getting at the truth and rooting out error. I imagine by most standards I have been far more devout than your average churchgoer. For I have spent over an hour every day of my life, since I began my teenage years, on this serious task of inquiry and reflection.” (page 4)

It’s nice to begin a book with a bit of hubris. Readers of Carrier’s book will not learn much about metaphysical naturalism, but they will learn much about Carrier.

On page 5, we find that he says “For all readers, I ask that my work be approached with the same intellectual charity you would expect from anyone else.”

I want readers to keep this in the back of their minds for now. If this is so, then when we get to Scriptural interpretation, we should see this intellectual charity. We won’t. He goes on along these lines on the same page and the following page to say:

“If what I say anywhere in this book appears to contradict, directly or indirectly, something else I say here, the principle of interpretive charity should be applied: assume you are misreading the meaning of what I said in each or either case. Whatever interpretation would eliminate the contradiction and produce agreement is probably correct. So you are encouraged in every problem that may trouble you to find that interpretation.”

I have no problem with this kind of idea. I have a problem with it not being consistent. Again, when we come to Scripture, will we find the same thing? Will we find a desire to try to work out supposed contradictions between events, or will we find there is not even an attempt. You don’t need a crystal ball (Which Carrier doesn’t believe in any way) to know the answer to that.

So since that was short and all of that in the first chapter, I’ll move on to the second for today as well.

This one deals with how Carrier got where he was. Carrier grew up in a background that had this idea that the text should clearly say something. Granted his church was not conservative. Still, there is this hang-up in most American churches today that the Bible should be clear to modern-day Americans. I always wonder why clear to us? Why not clear to 16th century Japanese or 19th century Germans or 13th century Chinese or 11th century Frenchmen or 9th century Italians or 1st century Jews?

You get the picture.

What hubris our culture has!

Carrier also asks why the Bible wasn’t saying much that seemed to be about what was on his mind. Why does it not talk about science or about Democracy? It never seems to register that these were not issues the biblical writers were wanting to talk about. That does not mean they’re unimportant to them. You won’t read hardly anything on my blog about nutrition or medical care, but that does not mean I find them more important. It simply means the focus is elsewhere.

On the other hand, gender equality was there as well to which I can’t help but wonder why Carrier wasn’t paying attention to the first chapter of Genesis? Man and woman are both created in the image of God.

On page 15, we read Carrier say that “In general, no divinely inspired text would be so long and rambling and hard to understand.” He goes on to say:

“The Bible is full of the superfluous–extensive genealogies of no relevance to the meaning of life or the nature of the universe, long digressions on barbaric rituals of bloodletting and taboo that have nothing to do with being a good person or advancing society toward greater happiness, lengthy diatribes against long-dead nations and constant harping on a coming doom and gloom, I asked myself: Would any wise compassionate being even allow this book to be attributed to him, much less be its author? Certainly not. How could Lao Tzu, a mere moral, who never claimed any superior powers or status, write better, more thoroughly, more concisely, about so much more than the Inspired Prophets of God.”

This boils down to an argument one sees repeated often in the book.

I would not do X if I was God.
God does X.
Therefore, this claim cannot be a claim of God.

Never does it occur to Carrier that the Bible is the story of the people of Israel and all of this information is indeed relevant to Israel. The genealogies matter greatly as for the ancient mindset, who you came from spoke volumes about who you were and your history. The judgments against nations that were long-dead would remind the Israelites of God’s faithfulness in doing what He said He would do, which would mean He could also be trusted in to do what He promised He would do through them. Finally, if the Christian claim is true, it means God has interacted to deal ultimately with the problem of evil in Christ. How can that not be towards the advancing of society?

Of course, I would not deny that one should read the great philosophers. I certainly think so. They comment on many issues the biblical writers did not comment on. I happen to enjoy going through the Golden Sayings of Epictetus for instance. Yet why should I think the Bible is written largely with the idea of telling me how to be a good person? That is in there, but that is not the main point of Christianity. The main point is how God is dealing with the problem of evil in Christ. Being a good person is part of that, but not the whole of the situation.

It’s not a shock also to find on page 16 the complaints about the God of the Bible. The picking up of sticks in Numbers 15, the idea of judgment through war on those who were opposed to Israel, genocide and fascism, slavery, etc. All of these have been seen numerous times before, but it’s nice to see that intellectual charity disappeared so quickly. No. You won’t find Carrier responding to responses to these. They’re just asserted.

Be wary always of the sound of one-hand clapping.

Carrier in fact on page 16 says “It does not good to try in desperation to make excuses for it. A good and wise man’s message would not need such excuses. It follows that the Bible was written neither by the wise nor the good.”

So let’s see what we have here.

A good and wise man’s message does not need excuses. (I’m sure Socrates would have liked to have known this when he was on trial. However, we see no defense of Carrier’s claim whatsoever.)
The message of the Bible needs defending. (No problem here.)
It follows then that the Bible is not from a good and wise man and certainly not God.

But it doesn’t! The first claim is not backed at all! How many good and wise men in history have had to give account for their actions? How many have written defenses of their own message? If Carrier ever has to defend himself from his critics, does that mean that he is not good and wise since if he had a good and wise message, it would not need defense?

It’s furthermore just a way of saying to avoid looking at the evidence on the other side. Why should someone not want to do that? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, especially if we are to follow the path of intellectual charity?

On page 17, Carrier says when he finished reading the Bible, that he declared that he was an atheist.

Really? The most you could declare is you think the Bible’s message is false. You certainly can’t get to atheism! There are so many more arguments for theism than just the Bible. Did Carrier not interact with them?

On page 18, Carrier talks about what the experience was of declaring himself an atheist in the society around him.

“For the first time, rather than being merely consistently pestered, I was being called names, and having hellfire wished upon me. It was a rude awakening.”

I am sure right now Christians in Sudan faced with death constantly are thankful they do not have it so rough. There’s real persecution. Carrier was called names and had hellfire wished on him.

This is amusing considering how just before he talked about the awful history of Christianity. He talks about the terrible things they’ve done and are still doing such as “trying to pass blasphemy laws to murdering doctors, from throwing eggs at atheists to killing their cats, from trying to dumb-down science education to acting holier-than-thou in pushing their skewed moral agenda upon government and industry alike.”

For murdering doctors, I suppose he’s talking about abortion doctors. If so, the huge huge huge majority of Christians stand outside abortion clinics and protest and offer help to those considering an abortion. This is entirely within their legal rights to do. For those who are bombing clinics and murdering doctors, we certainly condemn those, but this is the rare rare rare exception to the rule.

Of course, there’s always the great danger of having eggs thrown at someone and having their cats killed. I know I regularly go out and meet with my evangelical brethren. We get together at the grocery store and buy a mass of egg cartons and look for atheist houses and let loose! When we find their cats, we kill them and bring the corpse to church giving thanks that we tormented the atheist.

Of course, there are some legitimate problems in all of this. I have no desire to dumb down science education for instance and think Christians make a mistake when they treat the Bible as if teaching about science. At the same time, if someone wants to present evidence for a view like ID, for instance, a view I’m somewhat skeptical of as a Thomist, then let them do so. I’m open to it. As for holier-than-thou types, I have zero patience whatsoever with them. If Carrier thinks he finds Christians annoying, he’s not the only one.

Well Carrier certainly does show how he views the opposition. As he says on page 19 when writing about the Christianity he faces, “So great is the threat of this superstition against individuals, against society, against knowledge, against general human happiness, that it would be immoral to not fight it.” He later describes it as a crusade. (So apparently Carrier doesn’t condemn all Crusades.)

Sometimes people wonder why I speak in the language of battle. This is why. I believe the stakes are high and ironically, I see holding to an atheist system as a threat to society. Of course, to be sure, my idea of combat is only intellectual though I do use physical metaphors to explain the picture. I don’t doubt that Carrier has no desire to use physical violence either in this kind of debate, but I wonder if atheists in history have thought the same way.

We’ve only gone about 20 pages through and already there’s a lot to deal with. We’ll deal with even more next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Christmas is Pagan and Other Myths

Are we honoring paganism when we celebrate Christmas? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, my ministry partner, J.P. Holding of Tektonics, released a Kindle Ebook called “Christmas is Pagan and Other Myths.” One of the benefits of being the ministry partner is getting to get copies of a book like this so I can personally review them.

Holding does say up front he’s not much of a holiday person. I, on the other hand, happen to love the Christmas season, but I’m also a guy heavily into traditions. Still, my desires have changed over the years. Normally as children we look forward to all we’re getting. Now, I look forward to all that I’m giving. Frankly, I have no real idea of what I’m getting this year. My wife and I went to the mall and looked at several items and took pictures and of course, I have an Amazon wish list, but other than that, no idea. I’m fine with that.

What I’m not fine with is that there are several who wish to hold over the heads of others that Christmas is something pagan. Now I have a great resource that they can all use. That’s the book by Holding on this topic.

A benefit of this book for several of you is that it’s a short read. You might think that this is right before Christmas and you don’t have time to read something like this. You do. I started it one night and had it easily finished the next day and that was even with just reading a little bit here and there.

Holding easily dispenses with much of the hype and hysteria on this issue and one that needs to be addressed considering how many horrible sources I see being cited by the opponents of Christmas. (Alexander Hislop anyone?)

This includes dealing with passages like Jeremiah 10 supposedly being about Christmas trees, Santa being pagan, and when Jesus was born. (Would shepherds really not be in the fields if Jesus was born on December 25th? The answer might surprise you.) He also deals with supposed NT contradictions on the nativity. Now this last section is not exhaustive, but it does deal with important material.

There are a number of reasons why I think this is important for the church today.

First, if the church throws around ideas that are foolish based on a cursory examination even, we show ourselves to be making claims that indicate we have not done the historical homework that we’re supposed to. I’m not talking about something that’s just somewhat controversial as there are no doubt disagreements in history. I’m talking about something that has no historical basis whatsoever.

This includes our use of sources. If we consistently use sources that are not reliable, we show that we have no criteria whatsoever for choosing a source except to say that the source is one that agrees with us. (Personally, I enjoy going through books by non-Christian scholars about the historical Jesus and highlighting points of agreement. Nothing like enemy attestation!)

Second, when we do this, we leave ourselves wide open for the pagan copycat hypothesis. “So you think Christmas is stolen from pagans? It gets worse! The whole system is stolen from pagans? Haven’t you ever heard of Mithras?!” (Holding rightly points to his own work “Shattering the Christ Myth” here where these views get demolished.

Third, we keep having a fear of paganism over and over. Excuse me, but isn’t the church supposed to be spreading the Kingdom of God? Why are we afraid of the enemy? I have been told, as an example, that wedding rings are pagan. If I found out this was true, you know what I’d do? Absolutely nothing. Why? Because I don’t wear a ring to honor a pagan deity. I wear it to honor my wife and show my covenant with her to the world. The God who set about to redeem the world and redeem fallen sinners can just as much redeem pagan customs and such that we still use today. (Anyone stopped saying Wednesday because the days of the week come from paganism?)

Finally, enough Christians struggle with guilt trips from self-righteous types. Why take one of the most joyous times of the year and use it as an excuse to bring about another guilt trip? If someone does not want to celebrate Christmas, fine, but they need to give a good reason why I shouldn’t as well, and so far they haven’t.

I highly recommend this book then in preparation for the Christmas season in dealing with the “Christmas is pagan!” crowd.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/7/2013: Christmas Beginnings

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Christmas is coming and so it’s time to have a series of shows where we’re going to talk about just Christmas! As has often been said about stories, the most important part of them is to begin at the beginning. Thus, we’ll start with looking at the birth narratives!

But aren’t those confusing? Look at what’s in them? We have the slaughter of the infants at Bethlehem that is recorded by no other historian at the time! We have these genealogies that can’t even seem to get themselves straightened out! What on Earth is going on with this census here? Can that be historically verified in any way? And of course, all of this centers around a virgin birth! What’s going on with that?!

And to discuss such issues, we need a scholar who really knows his stuff. Fortunately, I have just such a guest. Now he’s only able to give an hour of his time and that will be the second hour of our program, but what a guest we have for you!

My friends, Ben Witherington will be our guest for the Deeper Waters Podcast!

Ben Witherington is one who has contributed much to biblical scholarship and is a force to be reckoned with. Mike Licona has in fact told me that Ben Witherington has an excellent memory for the many materials that he has read. Of the books that I have read by Dr. Witherington, they are lively and engaging. He has well surveyed the field and has a serious devotion to Christian truth.

As something that makes it especially important with me, Witherington is very well familiar with the social context that the NT was written in and many of his writings have been centered around looking at the NT from a socio-rhetorical perspective. It is my understanding that this is in fact what he talked about at the recent ETS conference that was built around the topic of Inerrancy.

For those who are not familiar with the work of Witherington, I hope this will surely open your eyes to a scholar who is someone that you must read in the field. The birth narratives are an excellent way to demonstrate this as these are some of the accounts that are the most challenged in the life of Christ. Our look at these chapters will be brief and cannot be exhaustive, but I hope it will give people a little taste of how the Christian can answer the challenges that are given.

The show will be at our usual time from 3-5 PM EST on Saturday, December 7th. Our call-in number is 714-242-5180. As I’ve said, Dr. Witherington will only be joining us for the second hour of the program so I ask that if you do decide to call in tomorrow, that you try to be as brief as you can as we have much to discuss and little time to do it in.

I hope you will join us!

The link can be found here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

A View On Heaven and Hell

What is the basic nature of the afterdeath? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Recently, an atheist told me of how they left Christianity and one large problem was Hell and ethics. A Christian has asked me about why it is that the Christian system of rewards and punishment seems arbitrary. These two are connected.

Let’s start with the second one. Is it being arbitrary? Let’s consider that the idea is that someone can repent on their deathbed and get eternal life whereas someone who does good all their life and never comes to Christ gets eternal death. Why is that?

God’s standard in righteousness is we must match up to Him. We must be seen to be on His side entirely. When we declare Jesus to be Lord, we are in essence siding with God and God declares us to be in the right then based on that. This meets his standard of perfection. That’s not an arbitrary standard. Holiness has always been required and one must have the perfect holiness bestowed on them from God.

What if one does not have that?

Well God is fair then. What does He do? He judges them by their works. Those works have to add up perfectly.

Let’s consider that the idea was simply more good than bad. This is vague and in fact arbitrary. If you have to do so much good, how much? Is it a point system? How many points do you have to have? How many points does each good act give? How many points does each bad act deduct? The whole idea would be entirely arbitrary!

What about the deathbed conversion? Yes. God will grant someone eternal life, but not the same eternal reward. There are degrees of Heaven and degrees of Hell based on how one responded to God overall. Yet the problem is those who say they will come to God in the end have no guarantee that they will do so. The more they live in rebellion against God, the harder it will be for them to bend the knee because each action is affecting the way that they will live their life.

We know this from experience. If you treat women as objects, you will be more likely to engage in watching pornography. If you watch pornography, you will be more prone to sexual behavior outside of marriage and with an allure of risk to it. This could even lead to greater evils like rape. No one becomes a rapist or a murderer or some great evil overnight. They start on a continuum. No one also becomes a saint overnight. They start with doing good in their own lives.

This is also why we have to act contrary to our feelings and desires at times. We all know if we all acted according to our feelings and desires we would live in a world of chaos. Road rage would be abundant as we all have strong feelings about “that idiot behind us and that idiot in front of us.” Wives would have to fear constantly being raped by their husbands since by and large, men have a much higher sex drive than women do. Dieting and exercise would be unheard of. Suicide would go through the roof when depression strikes. Part of being a person of virtue is learning to foster in oneself proper emotional responses (Insofar as its possible) and proper desires. Christianity also helps with this.

I do not want to give the impression that Christianity is determined by how Christians live or even that the great message it was meant to give us was an ethical system. Jesus is King and ethics is part of any Kingdom, but it is not primary. Being good persons will not restore creation or destroy the problem of evil. Yet we are told to be subjects of King Jesus and work to eliminate evil and that means fostering virtue in ourselves.

But what about the nature of Heaven and Hell? Well my view is a bit unique.

The view I hold at this point though not sold on it entirely, is that much of the language is apocalyptic in describing the nature of Heaven and Hell in the Bible. That part is not so controversial. The next part will be more so and what the end point view I see of Heaven and Hell is.

I actually think that God rules on Earth entirely in the end. We don’t go to Heaven. Heaven comes to us. For the unbelievers, I don’t think they go to Hell. I think Hell comes to them. How is this so?

Because the two are the exact same place.

What?

Yep. We will all live on an Earth filled with the manifest presence of God.

Those who have been building in us the character of God and living as subjects of the King Jesus and seeking to serve Him will adore being in His presence. We will love it. We will be ecstatic. We will be around the greatest good in existence that we have sought all our lives!

That is Heaven!

And the others?

These are the ones that have been resisting God all their lives by not submitting to King Jesus. They may have done good works, and indeed all people do some, but they have not done the ultimate good of bowing the knee to Jesus. They have resisted God’s desire for them to reflect His image. In the end, they will be surrounded by the manifest presence of Him who they have sought to resist and avoid all their lives and there will be no escaping from His presence.

That is Hell!

Note that none of this means this system is true. Whether or not the question of Heaven and Hell is true depends on if Jesus rose from the dead. As I said to the non-Christian, the abandonment of the faith should only rest on the question of the resurrection. The only reason to not be a Christian is because you are convinced Jesus did not rise from the dead.

I understand people have a lot of ethical problems with Hell and there are a number of good works that can help with that, but let’s remember that it is not a primary question. N.T. Wright recently on Unbelievable? said that it is strange that America seems so obsessed with the devil and hell. Paul talks so much about righteousness and new creation and this is what we focus on. Most amusing was hearing him say “Come on people! Get a life! A biblical life!”

Heaven and Hell are important, but these questions are secondary and only matter after the primary question, the resurrection. Answer that first.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Being Informed

Are we forgetting how to argue in our society? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Max Andrews at Sententias.org has written a post on the culture of memes that can be found here. Andrews is talking about these images on Facebook that have a little caption meant to make an argument. Now he’s not opposed to all of them, such as the cute little ones you might see on LoLcats or something of that sort, but he is opposed to ones that make an argument.

Now I don’t go as far as Andrews does. There are times I will create a meme to share with friends and such, but at the same time I can back an argument. I think a visual presentation can be powerful, but it should not be something done that is devoid of an argument.

In the sense of being devoid of argument, I oppose such memes just as I oppose soundbite sayings that have been passed around and on the internet, spread faster than internet viruses. The Christian community sadly has many of its own slogans and such that work to suspend a lack of thinking on our part. After all, we’re concerned with being holy and righteous. Of course, we should be, but part of that is loving God with our minds. You cannot further holiness in the Christian life by bypassing the life of the mind.

The atheist community is largely concerned with being rational, and would that the Christian community for the most part had the same concern. Unfortunately, there is a belief that any time someone believes in God or something outside of the world of science, then that person is being irrational. A theist could obviously be an intelligent person, but they just check their brains at the door when they start thinking about religion.

What is sadly missing is a desire to truly be informed.

Now to be sure, there is no way any one of us can be informed on everything and that is a mistake with many today who wish to be polymaths and think that they are an expert on everything. Consider science. I have made it a stance that I will not argue science as science. I do not have the necessary training. Do I have opinions? Sure. Yet there’s no way that I could really justify my opinions scientifically. I do hold that, for instance, the Earth goes around the sun, which is fairly uncontroversial today, but I could not begin to tell you how that would be scientifically established. Now I can discuss the history of scientific ideas and I find that fascinating, but not the subject matter itself.

And you know what? I’m cool with that. It’s not a problem. As a result, I simply don’t argue it. I don’t even really think it’s that fruitful to do so but if a fellow Christian disagrees, well let them and God bless them in their endeavors.

Mainly I have stuck to the existence of God, using the Thomistic arguments, and the resurrection of Jesus, which largely encompasses much of the reliability of Scripture. I have sought to inform myself on those areas and am still informing myself. None of us should ever stand up and say “I’m informed” and therefore stop studying. We are all to be students learning for the rest of our lives.

Yet what I see is a sad state of intense misinformation. For instance, yesterday I am arguing with someone over the definition of faith. I was told the definition was belief despite lack of knowledge.

You might think that that is what faith is, but the question is, when we find the word pistis, the word translated as faith, in ancient Greek literature, is that what they had in mind? There is a simple way to check this out. You go do the research.

What I advised this person to do was to go to their local university or seminary and get out some lexicons and be looking up the word and seeing what the definitions are. Get the definitions from the Greek scholars of the language. After all, the NT did not make up this word. (Yes. Some words are coined in the NT, but some are not) This was a word that was used commonly in the time. I had also referred to the Handbook of Biblical Social Values edited by Pilch and Malina.

“Faith/Faithfulness

These terms refer to the value of reliability. The value is ascribed to persons as well as to objects and qualities. Relative to persons, faith is reliability in interpersonal relations: it thus takes on the value of enduring personal loyalty, of personal faithfulness. The nouns ‘faith’, ‘belief’, ‘fidelity’, ‘faithfulness,’ as well as the verbs ‘to have faith’ and ‘to believe,’ refers to the social glue that binds one person to another. This bond is the social, externally manifested, emotionally rooted behavior of loyalty, commitment, and solidarity. As a social bond, it works with the value of (personal and group) attachment (translated ‘love’) and the value of (personal and group) allegiance or trust (translated ‘hope.’) p. 72 Pilch and Malina Handbook of Biblical Social Values.”

And yes, I referred to my own blog post on Hebrews 11 that can be found here.

The main reply I got back was bias. Now I will not dispute that I have a bias. Everyone of us involved in this debate has a bias. The way we check our bias is by looking at the opinions of leading scholars, including those who disagree with us. A Christian wanting to debate the NT should be reading Ehrman, Crossan, Ludemann, Borg, etc. An atheist wanting to debate it should be reading Wright, Licona, Keener, Evans, etc.

The fact that there are people who are treating it as a serious claim to say that Jesus never even existed shows how far this ignorance has spread. Scholars of ancient history do not take such a claim seriously. Such people who claim such will not find teaching positions at academic institutes. For most NT scholars, it is lucky if it gets even a footnote in a work. Yet on the internet, resurrection is certainly a reality as dead arguments rise again with a new life in them.

The solution to this problem is better informed debates and realizing that you are not an authority simply on the basis of having an opinion. To be an authority, one must be doing the necessary reading and study. You are entitled to have an opinion. You are not entitled to be taken seriously if that opinion has not been rooted in serious study. My opinion that the Earth goes around the sun would be said by scientists today to be accurate, but don’t take it seriously because I said it! I’m not the authority! Take it seriously because of the evidence and because of reading the scholars in the field.

Those who want to go on arguing out of ignorance can go on and keep embarrassing not only themselves, but their cause as well, which sadly happens too often in the Christian church as well. The arguing from ignorance is why I don’t even bother replying to all comments on this blog. If I see no serious interaction with the subject matter, expect me to pass on by. My time is better spent elsewhere.

Inform yourselves everyone, including me. If we are truly seekers of truth, we should have no problem. We should welcome it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters