I’m not quite ready to give up on my plan to resume blogging something here daily, even though the year is nearly three days old already. Seems like much longer than necessary to keep any new year’s resolution going, but maybe it’ll be a good habit to try and maintain.
Not that I have a great deal to say for myself today. The skeptical blogosphere at the moment seems to be abuzz mostly with news about the new Doctor Who being announced, which isn’t something I can get particularly worked up about myself. It’s going to be a while before I have a new Skeptictionary article ready, mainly because I’m a really, really slow writer. Maybe I need to better define the theme or goal of this blog in between those posts, so I have more of an idea what I should be blathering about on a daily basis.
One option is to pick on other wordpressers who’ve been posting Jesus-y stuff lately, and see if any minor but useful points can be made in looking at whatever rubbish they’ve come up with. Like this guy, whose most bitchslap-worthy crime by far is actually the sentence which employs the word “Argument’s” as a plural four consecutive times.
He brings up the common skeptical claim that God’s existence should be more obvious from simple observations in the world – at least, for a lot of the common images of God, the Biblical variety included – and points out what he sees as the argument’s1 two fatal flaws.
[F]irst, it presupposes and assumes how a free willed being would act, which no one can assume this.
Syntax aside, this isn’t entirely unreasonable to bring up. How do I justify assuming that I know how God would or should behave? Well, I’m not. It’s important to note the difference between an assumption and a deduction – or in the mathematical terms I’m more used to thinking in, an axiom and a theorem. I’m not just starting from scratch with no foreknowledge and assuming a priori that God works in this particular way. I can’t totally rule out the existence of a God with such characteristics that he does exist but without “seeming to” in the way I’m expecting – but the God of the Bible isn’t a totally blank slate to me. A number of claims have been made about him, such as that he is omnipotent and loves everyone, and by starting from these axioms, I can arrive at a theorem: a new fact, which wasn’t initially given simply to be true, but which was derived from previous knowledge by applying rules of logic.
In this case, there are plenty of axioms available to us, provided by the Bible and various Christians who speak authoritatively about the history and nature of God. (Almost all of these are in dispute to some degree or another, but that’s fine so long as we take this potential disagreement into account.) The God of the Bible gets involved in the Universe in some pretty direct ways – like creating it – and proclaiming something like “God is love” seems to give us a good starting point for drawing further conclusions about how he might behave.
When we say that God’s existence ought to be more evident, this is drawn from precedent on his supposed documented behaviour. If things that have been said about him are true, then we’d expect to be able to tell from the way the Universe looks. If we can’t observe any trace of his previous impact on it, there ought to be a reason why his behaviour has been so inexplicably convenient as to leave no fingerprints.
My target’s second rebuttal is less comprehensible. I really don’t think I see what he’s getting at. The idea seems to be that one’s opinion of how evident God’s existence really is in the world depends on how convinced one is by various other arguments for God – cosmological, ontological, and so forth.
If one responds to these arguments in a positive way, they see God, if one responds negatively they will not. If held true, the various revelations of the Bible would show a non-invisible God.
I love the word “non-invisible”, but that’s beside the point, which seems to be: if you’re convinced by logical arguments or the evidence of the Bible that God exists, then you’ll find it evident that God exists. Well… yeah. This seems to ignore the entire issue, which is that the arguments aren’t convincing, and artefacts like the Bible don’t make God’s existence evident, because their existence is easily reconcilable with a godless universe and a species capable of prolific myth-building. He goes on and on about “God’s physical appearance on earth”, but he’s already admitted that “God hasn’t made a universal appearance to everyone” unambiguously declaring his existence. We only “have” God’s physical appearance and the revelation of Jesus Christ in the form of millennia-old stories of dubious reliability.
It looks like a human-invented legend. God himself is still hiding.
Wow. Turns out I had quite a lot to say.
[...] Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Truth Well my latest entry has become a target from another blogger. First, he zero’s in on my grammar skillz (and I do mean “skillz”). Normally I proofread [...]
Hey, come on over to my site and pick on my grammar, Rube.
You know full well that bad grammar doesn’t constitute a weak argument. Sounds like someone’s fronting with some fierce trash talk to hide a glass chin.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you really think that “we only “have” God’s physical appearance and the revelation of Jesus Christ in the form of millennia-old stories of dubious reliability,” then I’m sure you’ll have no problem answering the evidence for the historicity of Jesus Christ and His Literal, Physical Resurrection over at:
http://siriusknotts.wordpress.com/2008/02/06/resurrection-apologetics/
You should know that I’ll be posting this challenge over on my site.
–Sirius Knott
Hi Sirius,
I pick on bad grammar for fun, and because I’m the type of uptight grammar-Nazi who gnashes his teeth at a misplaced apostrophe. It’s entirely for my own edification, and I do indeed know full well that it’s a matter unrelated to the validity of any argument. I don’t think I really go far enough with it to constitute “fierce trash talk”, though – some other people on the internet can be really quite vulgar at times, you know. I was aiming more for the level of “jocular prodding”. I’m also not sure about this glass chin metaphor you seem keen on, but never mind.
All the arguments for Jesus’ historicity and divinity are definitely worth examining and responding to, and I’ll try and do this to some extent – I’ve just written another sort-of response to Brooks’ post, which turned into a meandering series of thoughts about the distinction between the kind of analysis of evidence you’re talking about, and the issue of God’s “obviousness”, or lack thereof. It’s not great, and I’m using lack of sleep as an excuse, but possibly my thoughts will be clearer in the morning.
I thank you for picking up my gauntlet.
A few remarks.
The Christian position on God’s obviousness is typically based on Romans 1:18-25 and to a lesser extent on Psalm 19:1-6 and Acts 17:27. The general assertion that the evidence for God is there.
Here I must note that by God’s “obviousness,” the Christian cannot mean His utter undeniability. We may deny Him. We may ignore Him. Why? Because we must approach Him by faith. Hebrews 11:6 states “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
It is a valid qustion to ask why this should be. Why should there be, as Pascal lamented, too much evidence to ignore but too little to be sure?
The answer lies in the concept of free will, specifically free will to choose and love God. The Christian concept of God is not such that you could deny Him worship if He made Himself undeniable. In fact, the Bible states that in the End, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord [Isaiah 45:23; Romans 14:11; Phillipians 2:10-11], regardless of whether they are saved or not. At that point in history, God will reveal Himself in His full glory, the Books will be opened and the world will be judged.
Until the consummation of history, God seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth [John 4:23] and assures us that we shall find Him if we seek him with all of our heart. [Deut 4:9; Jeremiah 29:13; Matt. 7:7; Acts 17:27].
Yet again the evidence strongly suggests that there is a God, so it behooves us to determine if the evidence is compelling and, if so, what sort of God there is and what He expects of us. A man lost in a dark forest may reject the bit of light given him, but he should not expect that another light source more to his preferences should be offered instead. He should respond to the light given him and follow it to its source if he expects to find greater light!
Again, this God cannot reveal Himself in all his undeniable glory or free will would be impossible. He does not want the “worship” of automatons. But He has stacked the deck in his favor and it is to this “obviousness” that Brooks Robinson refers. He has revealed himself in nature [in its complexity, order, existence, intelligent design, et cetera], by written revelation [the Bible] and by robing Himself in flesh in the incarnation [Jesus Christ]. It is the latter that I have asked you to examine, since it is the lynch pin of Christendom. No other argument need be considered if Christendom’s central belief cannot be shown to be logically consistent.
–Sirius Knott
[...] was apparently answered by a mockstar calling himself Cubik’s Rube who attacked Robinson’s grammar insteadof his argument in a base attempt to undermine his [...]