Category: Apologetics

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 2

Did God second guess Himself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was expecting that in a book such as this one, to defend same-sex intercourse, I would come across some interesting ways of interpreting texts like Leviticus and other passages. I figured Genesis 1 and 2 would be interpreted in ways that didn’t rely on a male-female relationship. Unfortunately, I was wrong in all of that. Early on in chapter two, I got this and I was stunned as I read it.

Yet we see here the emergence of a God who is already changing his mind in response to the reality of the world he has created, and especially to humankind. The first indications of this are very subtle, and are easily overlooked; they seem to fall into unspoken seams in the story. In Genesis 2:17, God warns the humans: “You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”1 Of course, they go on to do just that. And yet, they do not die on that day.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 46). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Hays is not a philosopher. He does not understand the ramifications of what it means to say God changes His mind. This means that in some sense, God is limited. By what? God somehow gains new knowledge. From where? How can God be the God of all truth if all truth is not known?

Not only that, but this is on matters of morality. Did God decide that it would be wrong for Him to kill Adam and Eve on that day? If so, then there is a moral standard outside of God that God has to follow. God is not ultimate. God’s goodness is subservient to something outside of Himself. Hays isn’t really arguing about God. He’s arguing about Superman. God is just a really big man.

Still, the passage needs to be addressed. I contend that they did die that day, in that they fail away from everlasting life from being in covenant with God. I do not think man and woman were created immortal because they needed the tree of life to survive. They could have lived forever had they ate of it, but that was blocked off from them.

Yet it was at this point, I had hoped that this would be a one-off thing on the part of Christopher. I hoped I would not see this language often. As I went through the book, I saw that I hoped in vain.

Not only that, it gets worse. Hear what Christopher says when describing the flood.

After the auspicious start to creation, things have not worked out the way they were supposed to. The whole thing has been a mistake.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 49). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God made a mistake?

If these are the lengths you have to go to to defend LGBTQ behavior from a Christian standpoint, then the case should be rock-solid that Scripture cannot be used to defend it. In order to justify man in this case, you have to lower God. That is what is consistently done in this book. God is lowered while the creation is exalted.

In describing the story of Hagar, he says:

The second theme is God’s propensity to relent from punishment, to show mercy even at the cost of changing his mind and bending his principles of justice.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 56). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God bends principles of justice?

If you are part of the LGBTQ community, the Hayses have not done you any favors here. They have shown how much they have to change God for their argument to work. I can only wonder if this is something that Christopher just noticed in his work when he wants to justify LGBTQ lifestyles that he somehow missed all these years.

Something is being widened here, but it isn’t God’s mercy.

And yet this is just the start.

I wish I could tell you it will get better, but no. It will not.

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

 

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 1

Has God’s mercy widened? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This book was made required reading for my first PhD seminar which starts next Monday. I suppose they want us to read something controversial we can respond to. Normally, I don’t try to use class books for my blog, but this was one that was so bad that I just had to say something on it.

Richard Hays wrote this with his son Christopher, hence I will at times be using first names in this blog to make it clear who I am speaking about. In it, they say they have changed their mind on what God has to say about same-sex romantic relationships. I thought for a bit on how to phrase that because I couldn’t say that they changed their mind on what Scripture says. As we go through the book, it will become clear what Scripture says doesn’t really matter much. Christopher takes the Old Testament and Richard the New Testament.

That being said, the first chapter is not really that disagreeable. You are going through and you really don’t see much. That makes sense as this is an introductory chapter. It is mainly introducing us to the character of God in the book and the role of man.

Christopher does talk about Calvinism some, but I’m quite sure not a single Calvinist will like this book. I’ll go further and say that not a single person who holds to classical theism at all will like this book. When writers talk about the nature of God, they should try to tun their ideas by some philosophical friends and ask “Do you think I’m opening myself up to any potential land mines by saying this?”

Unfortunately, this was not done.

Still, I will give credit that the first chapter was not entirely wrong. If anything, we could say this part was a more pleasant read than most. Christopher speaks about that it is because of the love of God that we even exist at all. I have no beef with that statement. He does treat Edwards as a negative in church history with the Sinners In The Hands of an Angry God sermon. From it, one would think that God utterly despised humanity and wanted to finish them off. If that is all you know about Jonathan Edwards that would be a shame, much like how I said in a post recently that if all you know about Pascal is his wager, you are misinformed.

He also does remind us in the end that people remember when they feel accepted and loved at a church. They also remember when they do not. While we do not need to go light on sin at all, we need to remember that those people who need healing from sin need to know that the church is a place that they can go to to get what they need. The church should be a hospital for the wounded and not a place where we shoot our wounded.

So everything sounds good. Right?

Just wait….

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

Has It Ever Occurred To That You Might Be Wrong?

Should I listen to your position if you cannot conceive that you could be wrong? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am on a Facebook group for debating with Jehovah’s Witnesses where atheists pop in from time to time also because if there’s anything you learn about atheists, they have to show up everywhere to talk about how they don’t believe in God. Anyway, when I deal with a lot of non-Christians, there is a recurring theme. Sadly, this can also occur in a lot of fundamentalist Christians.

This is the idea that they cannot in any possible way conceive of a world where they could be wrong on anything.

I have a friend who used to say that some people would rather commit seppuku before conceding that maybe the other side had a point. No matter what a belief is, there are likely some things that the belief has right. If you insist that everyone in that position is wrong and doesn’t know what they’re talking about, you will miss out.

Not only that, but too often these people then persist in their beliefs thinking they know everything when those on the outside looking are saying “You’re committing basic errors in looking at what we believe.” How often have you seen someone say “Well who was Jesus praying to in the garden? Himself?!” Yes, that would be absolutely ridiculous, if that was what Trinitarians held to.

Atheists aren’t much better. We recently finished going through John Allen Paulos’s book here where he states the cosmological argument is that everything has a cause. Never mind that there is not a single academic defender of the cosmological argument in history that has ever defended such a thing.

Some might say to me, “Well you’re out here teaching stuff on a blog. Do you think you could be wrong?” On some things, I no doubt am. Why? Because knowledge in the area of theology, philosophy, history, biblical studies, etc., is extremely broad. I would have to be extremely arrogant to think that I was the one person around today that has it all right. That is why when I teach something here, if I am not as sure of it, I let you know. If I am sure of it, it is because there has been a lot of study on that topic.

And even then, I could be wrong. The difference is the more I have studied it and not come to it lightly, it will take a lot more to change my mind. This is also why I read books that disagree with me. I’m not talking about books just by atheists and other non-Christians, but books by Christians that hold to different positions than I do.

There are also areas I do not comment on just because I have not studied them. I will not give you an argument for why evolution is right or wrong. I often write with the assumption that it is true because my opponents will often hold to it and I will grant it for the sake of argument, even though I have a lot of questions I consider hard questions about the subject. I know that science is one area I do not have the time to put in all the study needed.

That is also okay. No one has to know everything. No one can.

Personally, it has got to the point where nowadays, I make jokes about these other groups have to avoid contrary thought. If you really care about truth above all else, reading the other side won’t bother you. If you are wrong, you can learn it that way. If you are right, you can be better informed as to why. If you are more concerned about ego than you are about truth, you will not do such.

In closing, I have another saying I often use. If I meet a person who cannot conceive that they could be wrong about anything, I have no reason to think they are right about anything. Being willing to consider you are wrong and reading what disagrees with you is part of being a sound thinker and showing you care about truth.

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

Introducing My Substack

Where can you find the latest on gaming and Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As many of you know by now, my PhD research is going to be on video games and Christianity and on man’s need for a story, quest, and purpose. I chose this because many of the common apologetics topics have already been done by everyone. It was when I was in my systematic theology class hear that I heard about someone who did his PhD on video games and Christianity and I thought, “I could do that?!” I knew I needed to do something unique, so I have centered it on how we all have a need in us given by God for story, quest, and purpose.

I have spoken with numerous professors here and there is a lot of excitement about this topic. When I have shared it with scholars in the field on the outside, I also get that excitement. A wonderful aspect of all of this is that whenever I share my research topic with people, they always have something to say about it. No one ever says “Oh. That’s interesting.” They want to say more.

Recently, we had the Defend conference here and I spoke to MaryJo Sharp on the advice of Robert Stewart about how to get the word out about what I’m doing. She said I needed to start a substack. I have blogged several times here on gaming and Christianity, but by and large, I’m now going to be carrying most of those over to my substack. It is the Gaming Theologian and you can find it here.

Also, some material will be behind a paywall. I really don’t like to do that, but I’m working on a PhD and I need the income. I have made it as inexpensive as possible. I can also make it so that if you become a donor to me on Patreon, I will automatically grant you all access to my substack. I don’t want you to make a donation in one place and not get the full benefits of that donation or think you have to donate again elsewhere.

That is only some material. A lot of that material will also be material that is related to plots in stories that could be spoilers for some people. A recent post I made was about the Sonic The Hedgehog 3 movie and that is behind a paywall so that people will not accidentally read what could be a plot point they don’t want to have spoiled.

Also, I went to see that movie with a professor of mine who is excited about my research and about the research paper I wrote for his class last semester on video games and school shootings and the alleged link. He praised the research that I did and said that it could easily be turned into a book if I wanted. When I find time, I might do that and I could share some tidbits of what I am writing at that substack.

Please do come over and please also be a donor either there or on my Patreon. Friends. Even if you donate just $5 a month for example, several people doing that goes a long way and every person who does that makes what I do all the easier and more bearable here.

Also, if anyone is interested in being a YouTube editor, please get in touch with me. I’ve been looking for awhile.

Enjoy the reading!

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

Book Plunge: Irreligion — Atheists, Agnostics, and Brights

Have the brights got dim? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Unintentionally, Paulos starts off this chapter with a howler.

Given the starkly feeble arguments for God’s existence, one might suspect—that is, if one lived on a different planet—that atheism would be well accepted, perhaps even approved of.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 142). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Of course, we have seen in this review that Paulos has not even begun to understand the arguments he is critiquing. Given the shoddy nature of his argumentation, one might suspect, if one lived on a different planet, that atheism would not be a position held by people claiming to be intellectuals today. And yet, here we are….

There is an irony in this chapter in that Paulos is writing about why Americans don’t seem to trust atheists. Then he has an issue with the idea that atheists are calling themselves Brights. Could the two possibly be connected in any way whatsoever?

Many atheists have set themselves up as champions of reason and evidence when they are anything but. Paulos has been an excellent example in this book. He does not really look at the evidence probably because in his mind, it is somehow beneath him. This is all silly nonsense believed by people who just can’t handle life and so they make up something to help them cope.

I am a member on Facebook of a group for debating with Jehovah’s Witnesses and we have some atheists in there. Some of them are ex-JWs and they do have a chip on their shoulder. What’s amazing is that atheists in the group have just as much a cult mindset as the theists they condemn.

It is becoming clearer to me that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an atheist to agree to read a book that disagrees with him. I have normally recommended this book to them. It’s an academic book and it is free on Kindle. How many atheists have I had agree to read it? None.

If you come to me and tell me about a book that challenges my position, I will likely be hunting it down on Amazon as soon as I can. If it costs too much, I will be checking the seminary library and the local library system. If I still can’t find it, I will likely be checking Interlibrary Loan.

Many atheists also engage in groupthink and send out the same old tired arguments, such as Jesus never existing or the canon being decided at the Council of Nicea or most anything else. They will not wrestle with serious arguments against their position. Then they go around and act like they’re better thinkers than everyone else.

Let’s also not forget that America is still a very theistic country and atheists are often seen as wanting to knock that down routinely. I realize many atheists likely have a live and let live attitude and some could even agree that we need to honor the morality that this country was founded on. Too many though think they are brilliant just by virtue of being an atheist.

I consider Paulos such an individual and as I have shown earlier, I have moral concerns with some of the behaviors he has practiced. Simple conclusion. If a large population of people thinks you are the problem, it’s worth considering they might be right.

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

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)