In the last year, I've devoured numerous books on religion. My ranking are based on their relevance to the question “but is it true?” In order of best to worst:
1. Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity – John Loftus
Head. And. Shoulders. Above. All. Others. If your book shopping is based on my recommendations, stop reading my blog and go buy it right now.
2. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion – John Beversluis
3. Beyond Born Again, chapters 5-7 – Robert Price
4. The History of God – Karen Armstrong
5. Incarnation and Inspiration – Peter Enns
Two through five were all excellent, and highly recommended if you are interested in the particular topic.
6. The End of Faith – Sam Harris
I'm not filling stockings with this one, but it was worth my time.
7. The Problem of Pain – C. S. Lewis
8. Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris
These last two were complete lemons.
In more detail:
1. Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity – John Loftus
“Why I'm not Evangelical” would be a more appropriate title, as the focus is not a rejection of any concept of a god, but rather a rejection of the Bible and Evangelical theology. Its target audience is theologically and biblically informed evangelical laypeople/college students.
Rather than bashing the reader over the head with how ridiculous the whole thing is, Loftus patiently covers Christianity from start to finish. He begins with explaining why people should believe things based on actual reasons, and why Christianity must pass the outsider test to be a defensible belief. The rest of the book shows that not only is Christianity not required or suggested by reason, but it doesn't even come close to possessing the slightest shred of reasonableness.
Most of his arguments are a one-two punch of philosophy and biblical analysis. The first hit shows how (insert doctrine of choice) is meaningless/contradictory/impossible and the second hit undercuts the support for the idea actually being true. His philosophical analysis is consistently stellar – he dismantles all the little things in theology that you are supposed to learn but not think about. His biblical arguments switch between the rifle and shotgun approach – he spends the better part of a chapter on a few individual problems, and with others issues his gives a long lists of problems with little elaboration. The contents of the book could probably be divided into 50-100 articles, each of which addresses enough problems in the Bible/theology to justify deconversion or a least a major theological shift.
I don't think the book offers any new arguments that scholars haven't seen before, but that's not its goal. The goal is to communicate to evangelicals ideas that are already out there but are not usually phrased in ways that have a good chance of penetrating through their intellectual defense mechanisms. Pure-bred atheists, or unbelievers coming out of nominal religious backgrounds simply can't do this because it takes a former preacher to really understand the evangelical mind, and not just evangelical beliefs.
60% philosophical/theological, 40% biblical
2. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion – John Beversluis
This book is meant to be a complete rebuttal to all of Lewis' primary arguments for faith. After reading this book, I feel the intellectual pull of none of his reasons. The main targets are the argument from desire (If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world), the Trilemma, the moral argument, the argument from reason (without God why think our thinking leads to truth?), and a series of rebuttals to Lewis' changing answers to the problem of pain/evil.
The book is heavy philosophically – I didn't make it through a couple of the chapters with understanding. However, Beversluis does an excellent job writing to the more philosophically inclined while allowing more left-brained people like me to listen in profitably. For instance, in one chapter he discusses how Lewis' life and books fit into the discussions of the philosophy of religion that were raging in his generation. Beversluis doesn't assume the reader is up on the philosophical developments of the '50s, but manages to transform what sounds like an extremely esoteric tangent into a highly informative lesson on the modern history of thought.
This book played a major role in pushing me from deist to atheist, but I imagine that many other books would have been better at accomplishing this particular goal, especially one that's a bit easier.
50% philosophical, 50% rebuttal
3. Beyond Born Again, chapters 5-7 – Robert Price
The topic here is rebuttals to the standard historical arguments for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. It's written at an extremely accessible level and online for free. My top two books take 50-100 pages to fully get started – this one takes about 3. If you aren't sufficiently convinced by the possibility that Christianity might be false to think skeptics' arguments are even worth taking seriously, this is a great place to start because the time investment is low. This book is my first recommendation to Christians.
However, I do have a couple criticisms. Price takes apologists seriously in that he accurately represents their arguments and provides serious rebuttals. However, he doesn't take them seriously rhetorically. While he doesn't cross the line out of civil discussion, I'd bet it takes a bit away from it's persuasiveness to those who don't agree with him. However, it's not more insulting than, say, a typical partisan editorial or the way C. S. Lewis talks about skeptics.
Price was some sort of liberal Christian when I wrote it, but it's not at all surprising that he's now an atheist. His left-handed concessions to apologists that Jesus might still have been raised even if it's not historically defensible are distracting at times, but that's where Price was at at the time – thinking it might be true, but that apologists use bad arguments.
100% rebuttal
4. The History of God – Karen Armstrong
This is the history of man's concept of God as it has changed from paganism to Judaism to Christianity to Islam. I'm only 1/5 the way through, but this alone is an eye-opener. As the book is chronological, I don't think finishing it will be important to my evaluation of the beginning.
Armstrong explains with great clarity how Judaism developed out of paganism. The opening points come from some pre-biblical archaeological finds of pagan religious writings. This includes a creation story that is suspiciously similar to the Genesis creation story. The name of the Canaanite high god was El. Abraham begins by worshiping El Shaddi (El of the Mountain). It's not until Exodus 6:3 that Yahwah is reveled to be the same God as El Shaddi, the God of Abraham.
The Bible is chock full of stories and theology that doesn't quite add up. Armstrong goes through the Bible's history and explains what is really going on. At numerous points, I had noticed the discrepancy she was talking about (has anyone seen God's face, for instance?) Rather than just leave it as a contradiction and walk away in biblical debunking victory, she does something with the discrepancies. They are clues for learning the history of the writing of the Bible and the changing of man's concept of God along the way. In the end, you see that the God of the Bible does not appear paradoxical because he actually is paradoxical, but because of the jamming together of different concepts of God that were not meant to go together.
This book is informative rather than persuasive. In many places I have questions about how we know something that Armstrong claims. When how we know is not important to understanding what her position is, the reasons are usually a reference in a footnote. Seldom are dissenting views given a hearing or rebuttal. So while the book is excellent background on what secular/liberal scholars think is really going on in the OT, it's not a great source for arguments that these secular/liberal scholars are correct.
Had my criteria been best-written book in a literary sense, this would probably be number one.
The part I have read is 50% historical, 50% biblical.
5. Incarnation and Inspiration – Peter Enns
Surprisingly enough, a book by an evangelical scores highly on my list. Enns professes acceptance of “inerrancy”, but IMO, the way in which he describes this term is sufficiently different from traditional definitions that he should use a new word.
The premise of the book is an analogy between Jesus and the Bible. Just as the incarnation resulted in a fully human person the inspiration of the Bible involves a book that was fully written by human but is also more. Enns three primary topics are the influence of the surrounding cultures on the OT, the theological differences within the OT, and the NT's use of the OT. In each case, he first argues that the problems are not just surface misinterpretations, but real issues. Next he argues why this doesn't undermine God's role in inspiring the Bible.
Anecdotal evidence supports my opinion that this book could easily shake the faith of a conservative Christian, and could easily cause a conservative losing their faith to settle on a more moderate theology. This book unofficially led to his peaceful removal from Westminster Theological Seminary.
90% biblical, 10% historical
6. The End of Faith – Sam Harris
Harris picks up the political side of the case against faith. It's extremely quotable, but not all that relevant to my questions of if religion is actually true. He is trying to shake up moderate and liberal believers and to answer the question “So religion is false – what now? To what degree should it be tolerated and to what degree should it be actively opposed?” While I slowly liberaled out a number of opinions before deconverting, I was always theologically conservative at heart, so most of his criticisms miss my prior positions.
His primary target of criticism is Islam. His secondary targets are liberals with an unhealthy respect for Islam, Christians, and religious moderates because any concept of faith that isn't based on evidence serves to perpetuate a culture that empowers the extremists. Ironically enough, I agreed with more of his criticism of liberals than of Christians – he rarely (never?) expresses awareness of the concept of people believing because they think the evidence supports their belief. I often thought his case for just how bad religion is was overstated by means of going after all the worth instances of religion rather than after a representative sample, but it was well-worth reading while keeping in mind that there is another side.
Harris's opening story is so memorable that I cannot resist a lengthy quotation. Harris begins with a narrative about the last minute in the life of a suicide bomber. After describing the explosion, he then writes:
“These are the facts. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Is there anything else that we can infer about him of the basis of his behavior? Was he popular in school? Was he rich or was he poor? Was he of low or high intelligence? His actions leave no clue at all. Did he have a college education? Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer? His behavior is simply mute on questions of this sort, and hundreds like them. Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy – you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy – to guess the young man's religion?”
Other brilliant quotes include,
“But faith is an impostor. This can be readily seen in the way that all the extraordinary phenomena of the religious life – a statue of the Virgin weeps, a child casts his crutches to the ground – are seized upon by the faithful as confirmation of their faith. At these moments, religious believers appear like men and women in the desert of uncertainty given a cool drink of data.”
And,
“The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not 'cowards,' as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith – perfect faith, as it turns out – and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.”
30% political, 30% historical, 30% philosophical, 10% rant
7. The Problem of Pain – C. S. Lewis
I read this several years ago and was a bit confused by it, but I liked it. I re-read it early 2008 and realized that much of my confusion was the result of assuming the soundness of Lewis' less-than-stellar reasoning. The central thesis is this “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Given that many consider the problem of evil/pain to be the most common reason for modern Christians to lose their faith, I dare say that God's megaphone appears to be malfunctioning.
100% philosophical
8. Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris
(**Update 2/4/09**: I first read this in May '08 and had a confusing mix of emotions. My December review was based on this sour memory. I have since re-read it and changed my mind. If you grit your teeth and say the truth of Christianity has nothing to do with the behavior of Christians, as I did the first time through, then Harris offers little. But on the other hand, one significant reason many believe is due to the positive effects they think Christianity is having on the world - this is an argument deserving of a rebuttal. As he's taking on Christians' illusion that their morality is helpful, rather than something like a scholarly textual argument, rhetoric with much more bite than I usually provide is both appropriate and needed. I'm not deleting my extremely negative review, but I no longer agree with what follows.)
This is a letter from an atheist telling Christians just how bad they really are. I read this one in one siting in a Border's Books. The coffee I drank while reading it was of more lasting value. The biggest reason I'm glad I didn't buy it isn't the saving of my money, but rather the knowledge that I'm not part of a system that financially supports this approach. In the introduction or foreword or somewhere not worth looking up, he admits this is a rant because more civil approaches have failed. And then he rants. At times, it was hilarious, but if you just want a simple laugh at religion's expense, watch The Life of Brian or Religulous. These are two excellent movies that fully stand up to all the academic rigor we have come to expect out of R-rated comedies. (But seriously, they are good movies. They are also comedies.) The book did help make me glad my faith was gone, but I felt this was done through appeal to baser aspects of my mind. He has plenty of real arguments – I wish his passion didn't get in the way of his expression of them.
The real problem with books like this is that no matter how ridiculous the position being defended, emotional arguments can be crafted that are every bit as compelling as these. Thus, even if he's right, the mud-slinging obscures our vision of if he has really won. Moving the battle into turf like this takes away any debate advantage the truth should have possessed due to being true. I don't want an atheist version of Ann Coulter to exist – we can be better than that. (For the record, Harris is better than Coulter, but he's far too close.)
X% rant, (100-X)% political, where X is large
The Unfinished
I started reading The Design Matrix by Mike Gene, but I lost interest in it with my faith. It's an argument for Intelligent Design that assumes evolution (you read that right.) Science isn't the turning point for me anyway, and ID alone only pushes me toward deism. I might finish it, but not soon.
I started The Case for Christ, but I was unimpressed enough that I couldn't bear to slog through. Basically Lee Strobel starts off as an agnostic journalist, and then interviews Christianity's best apologists and scholars. Through the process, Strobel becomes a Christian. Inspiring stuff, but what you're reading is a bad skeptic losing to Christianity's finest. Mixing in all sorts of narrative detail makes the book psychologically persuasive, but it's irritating when you just want to read the case for Christ. I don't care how much confidence Habermas delivers his arguments with, I want to read his arguments and see how they stack up against skeptical rebuttals and vice versa. I may finish this one, but only as a conversation piece.
I'm still reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis. I have every intention of finishing both and may review them in the distant future.
My Upcoming Religion Reading List:
Unweaving the Rainbow – Richard Dawkins
Who Wrote the Bible? – Richard Friedman
The End of Biblical Studies – Hector Avlos
The Gods of War: Is Religion the Primary Cause of Violent Conflict? – Meic Pearse
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark – Carl Sagan
In the unlikely case that a professor of mine reads this, yes, this is one reason why mathematically speaking, I accomplished so much less this semester than normal...
I am very gratified to hear your recommendation of my book. It means a lot to me. I know it can be bettered though. Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteI quite agree that the Loftus book is misleadingly named.
ReplyDeleteIt is not really about why he became an atheist, because he does not deal with that until the last chapter, and then in a very superficial manner.
He basically argued that he can't figure out how we got here so its all chance.
Thats it, and thats his word, "Chance".
However, the title he gave the book, as misleadingly named as it is, is much better for sales, I admit. LOL!
The book itself deals with over 24 arguments in some 400 pages, leaving very superficial treatments of such subjects as biblical archaeology and the resurrection.
This could give someone the extremely superfical impression that they will know all about these arguments from reading the book.
(And knowing in advance of the famous Loftus temper I will tell you in advance that I don't care what attacks he launches on me...the book is still superficial because of how much it takes on.
Admittedly, he only had a little over 400 pages to do it...but that was his decision to deal with so many subjects in so little space. I think that in itself took a touch of arrogance.)
AdamH I only respond in kind, if I do at all. I did not name the book, BTW. The marketing division did. And it contains many more arguments than 24...that's only the number of chapters, silly. I only was granted 355 pages initially, so I began densely compacting the arguments. They eventually granted me more pages. My goal was to write more than just a book with my arguments, some of which were treated as whole chapters, but to provide a reference work for further argumentation. If you think doing so is superficial then I guess you've never ever seen a journal article or a whole book dedicated to a lenghty bibliography like I have, sometimes they are annotated with the author's recommendations. I think I referenced most of the important works on each argument. Again, how is that superficial? I suspect you do not know what you're talking about, but from reading your comments that's par for the course.
ReplyDeleteRespond any way you want John, or not at all, it doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteI know there are more than 24 arguments, and as I SAID in my post you deal with OVER 24.
Admittedly, you were granted a certain amount of space, but YOU were the one who chose to try and cram as many arguments as you did in that space.
And that is what gives them their superficial quality. As far as your referencing is concerned, it too is weak and there is not even an index. (The fact that is can be referenced through Amazon in a convulted way is only a band aid on that problem; a major problem in fact for a book that purports to be a reference book.)
What I do find useful about that book is your testimony, although probably not in the way you think. And I appreciate your admission that two of the three reasons you "devonverted" were emotional or emotionally related and not intellectual at all.
As another book on anti Christianity it is just more of the same; as a book on atheism it is less than adequate.
By the way, for a "reference" work your book was decidely one sided.
ReplyDeleteAdamH: "I quite agree that the Loftus book is misleadingly named."
ReplyDelete"Misleading" is a far, far stronger word than I used. I said another title would have been more appropriate, and the mildness of the phrasing was about truth not just civility.
If I wrote a book about why I became an atheist, 95% would be about evangelical Christianity rejected. I rejected the Bible/the resurrection while kicking and screaming. My belief in a god died with a muffled whimper. More liberal beliefs deserve much more of a hearing in the general topic of theism v. atheism, but not for why I became an atheist. Loftus seems to have shared my experience of how little is offered emotionally and intellectually by belief in a god after the exclusion of evangelical Christianity. You can disagree with our dismissal of other views, but it doesn't change the fact that a 95% role was played by evangelical Christianity rejected in why I became an atheist.
A title of "why you should be an atheist", would be misleading. Or if a former liberal wrote a book titled "Why I Became an Atheist" and focused only on evangelicals, this would be misleading. But "Why I became an Atheist" is completely true when I = Loftus regardless of how well it informs the reader of what to expect.
If the title raises sales, then that's awesome.
Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you lost your faith. From the reading list you give, I can't tell how closely you looked into the historical case for the resurrection. You describe your leaving it behind as a "kicking and screaming" matter; out of interest, what did you read and to whom did you speak in trying to work this through?
I've read Mere Christianity and Letters from a Skeptic. I've read the short version of N.T. Wright's case, namely his article “Can a scientist believe in the Resurrection?” I've seen Michael Pattons' lectures on the case for the Resurrection in The Theology Program, and a number of Josh McDowell lectures. Missing from this list is a book-length argument written by a top apologist for the Resurrection. However, as of when I deconverted, this list was vastly longer than what I had read from skeptics, so while at the point of deconversion I was not comparing the absolute best on each side, it was heavily weighted toward Christians.
ReplyDeleteI had to strain to teach my mind to accept the reasoning of apologists – accepting the reasoning of skeptics just came naturally, because they just make more sense. I deconverted while reading this page. I could read the arguments one time, understand them, remember them, and reopen my Bible and see how Babinski constructed his arguments straight from the text and not through sly reasoning.
The biggest problem is that positive arguments for the Gospels as an evolving legend preempts any arguments for the Resurrection from the Gospels/I Cor. 15 by undercutting the reliability of these documents in their original form. My “Which Resurrection Account” post is followed by a very lengthy discussion. (This was my first discussion of the Resurrection in detail from the skeptical side.)
The competing ideas are which perspective makes more sense of the Gospels: “how are the stories changing” or “how do the differing perspectives complement each other?” I find that the former perspective produces a coherent picture while the latter perspective is explaining away the evidence. The Gospel contradictions are not just about refuting inerrancy. They are about making the case that true contradiction is a conclusion more plausible than the reconciliations offered by apologists. Because these contradictions are prevalent in the Jesus-sighting stories, they show that not trusting their accuracy is a more natural conclusion than to consider them to be reliable evidence.
Of course, there still could be an ounce of truth in the Jesus-sightings without the details being accurate. But take away the details, like Thomas putting his hand in Jesus side, Jesus eating, etc. and all of a sudden it's a vision like any other and it would make sense for the disciples to sincerely be wrong and die for what they didn't know was a lie.
Suppose one applies a ridiculously low standard of needed evidence and makes the ideas of Jesus did/didn't rise start at 50/50. This overlooks the fact that Resurrections are not ordinary events needing only ordinary evidence. Even here, I see skepticism winning.
Also, other problems with the Bible are relevant to the Resurrection. For instance, Galatians 3's use of “seed” (or any other biblical problem) makes it difficult to accept some kind of biblical reliability. If belief in the Resurrection leads people to believing in some kind of biblical reliability (and most/all apologists believe this), then biblical problems hit back at the Resurrection and raises the level of evidence needed to justify belief in it in the first place. Apologists often seem to take the approach that the Resurrection should be considered by itself – I do not accept the validity of this approach unless the apologist sincerely does not think that the Resurrection leads to some bold claim about the nature of the Bible.
Tim, nice to see you're still around!
ReplyDeleteAdamH, I got to thinking about the charge of superficiality when it comes to the arguments. Bill Craig wrote that he considered J.L. Mackie's argument against miracles to be "superficial." When I read Alvin Plantinga's review of Mackie's book I thought to myself that Plantinga's treatment was superficial too!
Wow, what different intellectual universes we live in, eh? That's why I argue at length for the fact that control beliefs control how we see things. It's all about seeing things differently. Although, some people on the other side can at least recognize the force of the other side's arguments.
Evangelical philsopher, Dr. Mark Linville said that "Evangelicals cannot afford to ignore" my book. Now you can just take that up with Linville if you disagree, okay?
Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. You write:
I've read Mere Christianity and Letters from a Skeptic. I've read the short version of N.T. Wright's case, namely his article “Can a scientist believe in the Resurrection?” I've seen Michael Pattons' lectures on the case for the Resurrection in The Theology Program, and a number of Josh McDowell lectures.
Mere Christianity does not even purport to give an argument for the resurrection, and Letters from a Skeptic gives only the barest outline of such an argument. Wright’s book The Resurrection of the Son of God contains more material and would be worth reading; I have not seen his shorter article, nor any of the lectures you mention.
Missing from this list is a book-length argument written by a top apologist for the Resurrection. However, as of when I deconverted, this list was vastly longer than what I had read from skeptics, so while at the point of deconversion I was not comparing the absolute best on each side, it was heavily weighted toward Christians.
It is not clear to me how you move from having read more works on one side than on the other to having your reading weighted toward that side. Testes non numerantur, sed ponderantur: these things should be weighed rather than merely counted. Aside from reading, did you try anything else? Did you talk to your pastor? Did you try emailing Gary Habermas or William Lane Craig or Craig Blomberg?
One may agree that Pascal’s Wager does not provide a cogent reason for believing in God (or in Christianity) and yet acknowledge that if Christianity is right there is a great deal at stake. I do not mean to be unkind, but it does seem that, when you still held to some form of Christianity, it would have made sense to give that position the best run for its money that you could. It is not too late to do so, though now you must perforce approach it as an outsider.
I had to strain to teach my mind to accept the reasoning of apologists – accepting the reasoning of skeptics just came naturally, because they just make more sense. I deconverted while reading this page. I could read the arguments one time, understand them, remember them, and reopen my Bible and see how Babinski constructed his arguments straight from the text and not through sly reasoning.
I think you are seriously overrating Babinski’s argument here; it is not difficult for someone who has seen this sort of thing before to give a good response to it. We can discuss this further if you are interested.
The biggest problem is that positive arguments for the Gospels as an evolving legend preempts any arguments for the Resurrection from the Gospels/I Cor. 15 by undercutting the reliability of these documents in their original form.
If the “evolving legend” theory could be substantiated without circularity, it would make it more difficult (not necessarily impossible; that would depend on the details) to make the argument from the gospels. I am persuaded, however, that the case for the evolving legend view is rather weak unless one begs the question. How it would undermine 1 Cor. 15 as a very early testimony to the resurrection is completely unclear to me.
My “Which Resurrection Account” post is followed by a very lengthy discussion. (This was my first discussion of the Resurrection in detail from the skeptical side.)
I’ve just read it.
The competing ideas are which perspective makes more sense of the Gospels: “how are the stories changing” or “how do the differing perspectives complement each other?”
That is fair if your purpose is only to evaluate the texts of the Gospels. If you mean to arrive at a reasoned judgment regarding them, however, you should take into account a wider range of evidence, including the ecclesiastical evidence regarding the origins, dates, and authors of the gospels.
I find that the former perspective produces a coherent picture while the latter perspective is explaining away the evidence. The Gospel contradictions are not just about refuting inerrancy.
I appreciate that you recognize this issue as a red herring in this argument. Not enough people today see this, though it was widely recognized in the older apologetic literature.
They are about making the case that true contradiction is a conclusion more plausible than the reconciliations offered by apologists. Because these contradictions are prevalent in the Jesus-sighting stories, they show that not trusting their accuracy is a more natural conclusion than to consider them to be reliable evidence.
If you’ll forgive me for saying so, this comment is historically naive. The apparent contradictions in the resurrection narratives are no more striking than those found in independent accounts of many events in secular history, yet no one doubts the common elements of those accounts. Have you ever compared the accounts of the death of Julius Caesar or of Caracalla?
Of course, there still could be an ounce of truth in the Jesus-sightings without the details being accurate. But take away the details, like Thomas putting his hand in Jesus side, Jesus eating, etc. and all of a sudden it's a vision like any other and it would make sense for the disciples to sincerely be wrong and die for what they didn't know was a lie.
Granted, if the vision was sufficiently realistic, they might have been thus deceived. But you have exchanged one difficulty for another; how did they come to be persuaded that it was Jesus himself they saw? This is more difficult to do, I think, than you believe it is.
Suppose one applies a ridiculously low standard of needed evidence and makes the ideas of Jesus did/didn't rise start at 50/50. This overlooks the fact that Resurrections are not ordinary events needing only ordinary evidence.
I am not sure that I follow you, but I agree that resurrections are, by definition, extraordinary events and that if they are to be made credible the evidence must be proportionately stronger than that for, say, appendectomies.
Even here, I see skepticism winning.
To the extent that I understand your previous comment, I understand the assertion. But I cannot see the argument behind it.
Also, other problems with the Bible are relevant to the Resurrection. For instance, Galatians 3's use of “seed” (or any other biblical problem) makes it difficult to accept some kind of biblical reliability.
Why make that sort of argument at all? The issues of the quality of the evidence for the resurrection and the quality of Paul’s exegesis seem largely independent. (I say this without taking any particular stand on the use and import of midrash and pesher in a first century Jewish text; that is a separate issue. Paul is unquestionably a man of his time in this regard.)
If belief in the Resurrection leads people to believing in some kind of biblical reliability (and most/all apologists believe this), ...
Many living ones, perhaps, but hardly all. There is a history of these debates that predates Norm Geisler. C. S. Lewis himself did not make that general connection.
... then biblical problems hit back at the Resurrection and raises the level of evidence needed to justify belief in it in the first place.
Fair enough. But then what is being defended is not simply the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead but the rather stronger claim that Jesus rose from the dead and that his rising confirmed the exegesis of his later followers as well as all other sorts of details. I am familiar with the 2 Timothy 3:16 approach to arguing for this, but the inference hardly seems inevitable.
Apologists often seem to take the approach that the Resurrection should be considered by itself – I do not accept the validity of this approach unless the apologist sincerely does not think that the Resurrection leads to some bold claim about the nature of the Bible.
How could the validity of the approach be affected by someone’s attitude toward it? Either the two issues are linked or they are not. If not, then the fact that apologist X thinks they are should not undermine X’s arguments regarding the resurrection, so long as those arguments do not depend on any assumptions you do not share about the general reliability of the Bible.
Tim, I have had good discussions with Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, and Craig Blomberg. In fact, on Monday I'm posting an essay written just for my Blog by Blomberg called, "Why I am a Christian." I'll be doing this without initial comment, so look for it and chime in if you want. But I see nothing coming from them that makes me even pause for a second. That's why I'm posting what he's written. What Christian site do you know of that would allow me to write something without initial comment? I link to Christian sites, some of the best on the web. What Christian sites link to this one or to mine? You see, we are not afraid of dealing head on with the opposing arguments. Why is it that Christian sites do not do this if they claim to meet our arguments head on?
ReplyDeleteTim said...I do not mean to be unkind, but it does seem that, when you still held to some form of Christianity, it would have made sense to give that position the best run for its money that you could.
Tim, you seem bothered by this, and right you should. After all, if you can conclude Jeffrey did not consider what you think are the best Christian arguments you can have a sigh of relief. You can say his understanding was, well, "superficial," and say to yourself "no wonder he left his faith." Try me on this line of questioning, okay? Would it matter to you anyway? What if some dim wit pew sitter who never learned to read but who had the faith of an angel walked away from her faith because her child died a slow death from some illness? You can say she just didn't understand all you want to...that if she just learned to read, and then read a good book, or talked to the right person that she wouldn't have left, or that she left for emotional reasons. But will you actually think about this for a minute? You would be saying that only educated people or intelligent people or thoughtful people can maintain their faith...that faith is dependent on intelligence and learning. Even Dr. Craig rejects in toto such a view and maintains an inner witness of the Holy Spirit to counter such a blatantly snobbish viewpoint. Didn't Jesus come for the poor, the downtrodden, and by extention the illiterate? Why would he then turn around and only save the learned and the intelligent? So even if you apply salve to the wounds of Jeffrey's leaving the faith because you want to find fault with his understanding, this will do nothing to solve THAT whole issue. In the case of that pew sitter wouldn't God already know in advance that she would leave the faith if such a thing were to happen? And doesn't your God know what it takes to get our attention? Yes or no? No excuses, okay? To say God is using you here right now is fine, if you want to think this way, but then if you don't succeed will you then make the proper conclusion that God didn't send his best, or do something more to help Jeffrey, or will you instead blame Jeffrey?
Tim said..It is not too late to do so, though now you must perforce approach it as an outsider.
I understand your concern here, which expresses a much greater concern for Jeffrey's eternal state than God has ever shown. For you wish and pray that you had arguments that could convince him otherwise, don't you? You study the best that Christian scholars have written so that you can help others like him, right? Well then, where's your God in this? Shouldn't he be more concerned than you are to help Jeffrey? Shouldn't he want to provide you with the knock-down-drag-out arguments that would convince all rational people? Shouldn't he provide staggering evidence to Jeffrey that he exists? You would do that if you were God wouldn't you? Then why doesn't your God share the same concern?
Still, if Jeffrey's faith didn't stand up to insider's testing what gives you even the slightest hope such a faith can be accepted by him from an outsider's perspective, especially after having already rejected it as an insider? You have probably never been a Mormon, or a Hindu, or a Muslim, but from an ousider's perspective do you even consider their religions might possibly be true?
It's been a while since we crossed swords. I miss it. ;-)
John,
ReplyDeleteI'm inviting Jeffrey to a conversation. If he wants to have it, I'm willing; if he doesn't, that's his choice.
As for your attempts at amateur psychoanalysis, I think you should keep your day job. I do appreciate the adroitness of your attempt to wrest the discussion away from the evidential matters raised by Jeffrey's post and response here. But I will forbear to speculate on your motives.
Early April, the one and only reason I had for believing at all was evidence for the Resurrection. I was completely disillusioned with everything about Christianity. In apologetic (and academic) burn-out I wanted to be able to stop thinking about everything and "just believe." But just believe who? This is one of the many problems with the radical theological differences within Christianity – if problems emerge in the version you started with, if you still want to believe there is no clear place to turn. Every denomination/group of Christians I knew about either was conservative enough that they believed things that I had already looked into and rejected, or liberal enough that I didn't know what was left to believe.
ReplyDeleteIt was part of a long process spanning my entire life of learning that things I had believed by faith were wrong. Highlights include things where you are likely agree my faith was wrong, like thinking that rock music and dating are evil, Tim LaHaye's take on Revelations, young-earth creation (and ID in general), and the validity of the NT's hermeneutics as apologetic arguments. Of course, all of these are less sophisticated versions of Christianity and their weakness doesn't necessarily translate into weakness in Christianity as a whole, but there is a limit to how many times you can change your interpretations of the same document and still believe it is inspired and that the Holy Spirit is helping you understand it.
Also, there are plenty of times I thought I was following God's leading with the faith of a child when in reality, I was just acting like a child. The clarity with which faith led me to wrong conclusions surpasses the clarity with which faith has ever helped me with anything – if a relationship with God is supposed to be foundational, this alone should be sufficient. (Biblical arguments are just easier to tell someone who hasn't met me because it doesn't require you to believe the truth or objectiveness of a claim I make about my life. I blog about the part of the argument which doesn't require people to take blogger X's word for it.)
Thus, I have absolutely no problem admitting that my knowledge of both sides of the Resurrection debate was less than stellar at the point of deconversion (and still is). This was the point where I said “I don't believe anymore.” This wasn't the point where I stopped seeing myself as on the fence – due to Pascal's Wager, I did try for quite a while. (By now, an honesty-loving deity seems more likely than a faith-loving deity.) I even tried after giving up on the idea that the answer could come through my mind. After screaming to the Great Cosmic Indifference and being ignored, I just had to let go. I refuse to base even the most trivial of decisions on faith in a God who is indistinguishable from no God at all.
>It is not clear to me how you move from having read more works on one side than on the other to having your reading weighted toward that side.
What I know with certainty is that I spent 10 times as much effort seeking Christian arguments than seeking skeptical arguments.
>Aside from reading, did you try anything else?
In February/March, I tried to start meeting with an acquaintance to discuss apologetics (he had been organizing apologetics discussion groups for years.) I found our only two meetings to be extremely discouraging. It highlighted how differing theologies have mutually exclusive answers to the same objections (including the problem of pain most notably).
I did meet with one of my pastors – my email to him before we met was mostly cut and pasted into my opening post on “Jesus' False Prophesies.” He's a premillennialist, and I just couldn't see any basis for his interpretations, besides what he wished Jesus had said. To him, the main point is “this is the Gospel – do you believe it?” Pause. Me: “No. That's why I'm here asking specific questions.” Christianity at that point felt like one enormous fraud, and walking out of that meeting was when I realized that I wasn't coming back.
Btw, John wasn't psychoanalyzing me, although I can see why you thought that. I had emailed him the long version of my deconversion story, which until now has not appeared on this blog.
I'm quite willing to discuss this more, but none of our posts so far make good discussion-starting posts. We've both just approximated our position and left out the details, which is where ideas stand or fall.
Other than reading "The Resurrection of the Son of God", which I won't exactly be able to finish soon (but should be on my reading list), do you have a suggestion for a starting point?
Jeffrey,
ReplyDeleteThanks once again for that informative note. I think it says a lot about the contemporary Christian community -- and none of it very good -- that you weren't able to get better answers to your specific questions.
What I objected to in John's previous note was not his attempt to psychoanalyze you but rather his attempt to psychoanalyze me.
I'll drop you a note and we can correspond about these topics if you like.
Well Tim, I quoted from your own words, didn't I? Besides, what you seem to be doing is what many other Christians try to do, so it fits in with what I've found others to do with stories like these. I suppose you could simply tell us what your motivation is for being here, then we'd know what it is (nothing disengenuous, okay?). And then you could also tell us your reasons for adopting the Christian faith in the first place. What books and what arguments first led you to put your Christian blinders on in the first place, eh? That would be interesting to me. How well read were you when you were led to see things the way you do now. Seeing things differently. That's what I maintain is the difference between us, not education, and not intelligence. We interpret the evidence in light of beliefs that control how we see the evidence. So please tell us the reasons you had considered that led you to adopt your control beliefs, okay? If it was the design argument what authors on that topic did you read that led you to believe? Or was it a simplistic awareness or feeling that would easily fall by the wayside upon your own considered evaluations today?
ReplyDeleteIt's your right to have a discussion with whomever you wish though. I wish you well.
Good Choice on the Carl Sagan book. I really enjoyed it, as well. It doesn't explicitly delve into religion, but it discusses many different supernatural occurrences from a skeptics viewpoints, using a skeptics toolkit.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the reading and writing.
Jeffrey, I know this is an old post. I have been reading Peter Enns' book this year. Your summary is very good. I find his arguments against traditional inerrancy compelling, though I went into the book convinced already so that is not really saying much. I read the book to see how he puts faith back together again. I think if I had read it a year or two (or 3 or 4...) prior to leaving the faith, maybe I would have held onto things.
ReplyDeleteBut I still really don't get how he puts faith back together. I guess at the end of the day on can choose to believe the bible is all true in some form of myth, and then faith stems from that? Ultimately I think there is a lot more that goes into faith, like seeing God as divinely hidden, etc. If the actions of God lined up with the mythical message Enns presents, maybe faith would make more sense to me.
Curious as to your take on it (if it isn't too long after the fact for you).
I see my blog as a collection of essays rather than a blog, so my posts are never too old.
ReplyDeletePrivate email posted with permission. (I asked for it while writing “Seed and seeds”, but I edited around it a couple days before receiving permission to post it.)
9/28/08
Peter Enns,
I grew up evangelical, and for the last several years have never shied away from asking the difficult questions and seeking the answers. The more I looked, the more I noticed that intellectually honest Christians tend to drift away from more traditional beliefs and to have clearer and better reasons for not being a traditional evangelical than they have for being a Christian at all. (I suppose you would agree you are not exactly "traditional?") I finished losing my faith for primarily academic reasons last spring while Inspiration and Incarnation and was in the mail, although I read it anyway. While I'm probably not the sort of person from whom you want compliments like this, I found it to be an excellent read.
My question is this: Where is God in the Bible? To use your incarnation analogy, if I lived in the first century and saw the biblical Jesus, his body would be no different from a man. He would
walk, eat, and sleep like anyone else. But if I watched him long enough, I would see a perfect life that I couldn't explain. Or at the very least, I would see a life of love and justice surpassing anything that I had seen in a man before. If he let me, I would see a miracle. From your analogy, I'm assuming that you are seeing something in the Bible that doesn't look like a work of man. It may not be proof, but it should be more – something – than other books. What are you seeing? I'm not looking for a theological description of how this inspiration process could have worked, but why you think God was at work at all.
Jeffrey Amos
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9/29/08
Jeffrey,
A good question, and one that follows naturally from the whole discussion.
With Jesus, one could interpret the miracles as tricks, etc. His acts don't prove anything. Moreover, one could not discern a perfect life, since we cannot se inner motives. What we would have seen is what others said, "A great prophet is among us." Actually, it is Jesus who had to tell them that he and the Father are one.
With the Bible, I would say it's deity is seen in the effects it has had, by the power of the Spirit, in the church. Without question, the analogy with Christ is not consistent here (but it doesn't need to be consistent). Still, don't sell this point short. The only other texts to have a lasting impression on the world are the Jewish corpus (Talmud, etc) that stem from the same Bible.
Another mark, though, is how the grace and love of God jumps off the pages, and how it tells of how God in Christ shared in human suffering. I don't think there is another text that does this.
That's a beginning at least, but an important one. In a way, WE are the proof that this Bible is of divine origin. Scary and sobering thought.
Pete
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I was asking him as an OT scholar and not as an apologist, so I didn't ask follow up questions.
I suppose it goes without saying that I think that if Christians are the proof of inspiration of the Bible, then it's clearly not inspired. To be fair, this is “the beginning” and not his entire case, but I'm not seeing it at all.
Thanks, that's a great response. I'm with you in not seeing it. What I do see is it a response that makes some form of evangelical faith possible for some because it doesn't ignore facts about the bible. At that point fine, it's just faith, rather than the unassailable and obvious truth and proofs presented by fundamentalism.
ReplyDelete>What I do see is it a response that makes some form of evangelical faith possible for some because it doesn't ignore facts about the bible.
ReplyDeleteExactly! Conservatives believe the verifiably false. Liberals believe the unverifiable.
I too wondered if I would have believed longer had I read the book sooner - even had I received it a single month sooner.
But I'm really glad that I didn't. Christian moderate living among conservatives is a horrible place to be. Of course the far right (religiously and politically) still drives me crazy, but at least now I don't think they are corrupting a message of eternal importance. Now they're just wrong, and while I still care, at least no one's going to hell for it.