Instead of continuing with the reasons that pushed me from disillusioned Christian to unbelief, I'm going back to a factor that brought me to disillusionment in the first place. The one goes all the way back to ninth grade when I memorized I Timothy 2 for Bible quizzing.
First, I would like to draw a distinction between two easily confused words: irrational, and non-rational. By non-rational I just mean anything that isn't logic. By irrational, I mean things that try to make sense and fail. “I believe in the Trinity” is non-rational. “I'm convinced the Trinity makes perfect sense” is irrational. While there are of course problems with being non-rational, I should note that to begin thinking one must make the non-rational assumption that one is capable of thinking and logic is in some sense true – non-rationality is often necessary. Of course, I consider “more” non-rationality to be bad, but that's not what I'm going after here. I'm going after irrationality in Paul. In the context of instructions on worship, he writes
I Timothy 2:11-14 “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”
I'll suppose for the sake of argument that Paul's command for women not to speak or have authority over a man [in church] is not unfair and merely critique the logic behind the command. If Paul had just said “do it this way, because I'm Paul, and God is speaking through me – do what God says” as he does in I Corinthians 15:34-37, this would be non-rational. (This is a rational argument for why you should obey, but a non-rational argument for why is it commanded.) This would cause all the usual gender role issues, but I wouldn't have had this particular problem with the chapter.
The problem here is that Paul tries to explain the rationality of the instruction, and it doesn't work. His first reason given is that Adam was formed first. What does that have to do with anything? In the second creation account at least, animals were formed before Eve, but this would make a horrible first step in arguing that animals should rule over women. 35-year-old women were formed before 34-year-old men, but seniority still makes for a poor argument that the latter should not be permitted to have authority over the former. Even this seniority argument is better than Paul's because at least the person who is older was actually formed first. Women alive today were not formed after men who are alive today. At best, Adam having been formed first justifies why Adam should be over Eve, not why men should be over women.
The second reason Paul gives is that Eve was the one who was deceived. This is a very strange accusation. Paul is implying that Adam wasn't deceived, or was at least less deceived than Eve. If they both sinned, this would mean that Eve's sin had more to do with being innocently wrong, whereas Adam's sin had more to do with willfully choosing wrong in the face of knowing what was right. If Eve was the one who was deceived, does this not mean Adam's sin was the greater one? I'd prefer a leader who is sometimes wrong to a leader who sees the right thing to do and doesn't do it.
Next, Eve wasn't deceived in Genesis 3. She knew what God said and chose to disobey – she even recites her specific instructions right before sinning. The only talk of deception is in her excuse – which should be taken with more than a grain of salt, even when assuming Genesis is inerrant.
(Update, 11/1/08: As has been pointed out to me, Eve was deceived. A recap should be 1) Eve understands what actions are sin. 2) The snake deceives her into thinking that sin pays. 3) Eve sins knowing full well she is sinning but while deceived into thinking the results will be favorable.)
Furthermore, Paul doesn't even mention that fact that Adam had anything to do with what went wrong. He talks of Eve being deceived and becoming a sinner and just leaves it at that – as if Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden due to Eve's sin alone. Genesis 3 provides a different picture. Eve eats the fruit, brings it to Adam, and only after they both eat does the narrator tell us their eyes were opened. Adam ate the fruit before Eve's eyes were opened – it's like Genesis is going out of its way to make them share the blame. But Paul merely takes up Adam's banner of “blame the woman.” From this perspective, “Eve was the one who is deceived” is a perfectly logical accusation. It's her fault. Paul argues as if Eve's “I was tricked” and Adam's “stupid woman” excuse is correct. If I believed Genesis and was still deciding about I Timothy, I might reject I Timothy for this reason.
Perhaps Paul is not trying to make his own argument regarding the reason for gender roles, but is merely referring back to Eve's curse in Genesis 3:16. If so, this is quite a clumsy reference. Also notice that this curse is Adam over Eve. Taking this to husband over wives is not explicit, but is one reasonable interpretation. Paul takes this one step further by saying men over women. Furthermore, men could be over women without revoking women's right to speak. Elders are over younger men and yet younger men still get to talk. What is his justification? He merely fakes an answer by giving the justification for the lesser command of Adam over Eve.
In a similar passage, I Corinthians 14:34-35, Paul gives another reason “The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says.” Where in the Law does it say women are to be silent?
(Update, 11/21: As has been pointed out to me, "as the Law also says" likely refers to "subject themselves" and not also to being silent. Genesis 3 is part of the Law, and "he shall rule over you" is close enough to "subject themselves" that my criticism is not justified.)
Why not just say “thus sayeth the Lord” in I Timothy 2? That's really all that's going on anyway. Why must Paul use irrational arguments to try and defend the rationality of his view of gender roles?
(“Why I reject” instead of the more natural “why I rejected” is intentional. I was never a true insider into presuppositional apologetics, so I am making no attempt to refer to what changed historically.)
Presuppositional apologetics are an attempt to show that Christianity is rationally defensible in a unique way, namely, without providing evidence.
The approach is this – take every (or at least many) worldviews, and then show the inconsistencies present in all but Christianity. As the last man standing, Christianity must be true, or at least has been shown to have a rational defense in that it has been shown to be better than all others.
The debate typically comes down to the difference between “apparent contradiction” and “true contradiction,” which means that the vaguest position usually has the advantage. As the phrase “apparent contradiction” suggests, they often look just like real ones. When suggesting a resolution to an apparent contradiction, there is no difference between an explanation whose validity is highly probable, and an explanation that is remotely possible – both prevent the collapse of the worldview, and that's all that is needed. “What you think is really a contradiction” is the only standard. This is an approach which is just screaming for both sides to dress up their positions in as much rhetoric as possible in an attempt to push an apparent contradiction into an actual contradiction. I think the approach is fundamentally flawed, so I am much better off just arguing that, instead pretending that the presup rules of debate can lead anywhere worth going.
I'm not at all saying that presups have nothing worth saying. My arguments here do not refute any particular presup argument used as a complement to an evidential approach. I'm making a very narrow point: a pure presup approach is fundamentally flawed.
The first problem is that it is really easy to craft a logically consistent position, so logical consistency proves very little. The easiest way to do this is to have a built-in catch-all rebuttal that does not have to deal with the substance of any dissenting argument. Here, I will be listing several positions that are internally consistent and consistent with Christians' observations.
1. I am somewhat certain that no one can be more than somewhat certain about anything, because reality is merely what we perceive it to be.
2. The Matrix, plus religion X. Religion X is true. Your brain is locked in a vat. Scientists or sentient computers are experimenting with how your mind will react when presented with an imaginary world in which Christianity is apparently true.
3. Christianity's evil twin. Every miracle in the Bible is literally true, and God inspired the Bible. Christians' perceived relationship with God/answers to prayer are all based on real experiences are real evidence. The only way this differs from Christianity is the after-life, and one of the hidden attributes of god. Namely, god is a cosmic prankster, and after lying to us in the Bible, he's decided to send all Christians to hell and everyone else to heaven.
For contrast, Christians think unbelievers are “spiritually blind” or “unable to comprehend the things of God.” Presuppositionalists think that no true common ground of reason is held between non-Christians and Christians. Presuppositionalists [usually?] view evidence much like the extreme post-modernists view reality. The way they would say it is that evidence is always interpreted in the framework of the observer; the corollary I see to this both logically and in practice is the idea that evidence does not say anything in and of itself. Thus, when it comes to the question of what evidence says, there is no absolute truth, only what you perceive. The convenience of these ideas rivals that of my three examples.
Of course, it doesn't mean that Christianity is wrong or ridiculous. My agnostic cop-outs of “I don't know” are even more convenient – I don't pat myself on the back for not losing when I don't compete. What it does mean is that Christianity contains the sort of fail-safe mechanisms that make logical consistency count for very little. (Not that I'm conceding the consistency of Christianity...)
The other major problem is that the presuppositional approach rejects brilliant ideas if they still contain flaws whose solutions are not yet known. Right before the discovery of the special theory of relativity, observations made about the speed of light were contradictory, or at least no scientist could explain how they were not. At this point, should scientists have rejected the concept of observation as a means to learning about science?
One of Einstein's assumptions was that because the preceding theories had been built up from observations, while they were technically “false,” they were accurate enough that they would be an extremely useful source of knowledge in crafting a new theory. And sure enough, they were useful. Although his discoveries lead to the rewriting of nearly everything in physics, the early theories were not embarrassed, but rather shown to be a useful level of knowledge that helped lead to the next level of knowledge. A presuppositional approach cannot distinguish between insanity and a good idea that that is not yet finished. Right before Einstein, “the universe is irrational” could have beaten “the universe is comprehensible” in a debate under the presuppositionalists' terms. Evidentialists rule the day in science, which is why it advances.
The alternative approach is bottom-up, not top-down. Don't start with a grand theory and evaluate its coherence. Start with observations and evidence, and build up from that – experiential evidence of a relationship with God is not excluded a priori, nor is the possibility that a miracle was observed, or that prayer changes things. If two pieces clash with each other, don't instantly decide to reject one – if both were built up from evidence, they are useful pieces of knowledge, even if one or both is not technically true. This is how knowledge has advanced in every area of thought for the last several centuries.
(It's worth noting that to be consistent, I must reject a few common arguments against the Bible. In particular, if there is evidence that Bible is inspired by God, and the Bible really teaches the Trinity, then I am forced to accept the rationality of believing in the Trinity. Similarly with God is love/God commanded genocide, Jesus is God/man, the Bible is 100% written by man/inspired by God, etc. All of these are relevant problems, but to an evidentialist, they should not be fatal to faith. Granted, they raise the bar higher regarding how much evidence should be needed, but they are not the main point. That was my justification for years, and I still consider this justification to be valid. But everything rests on the claim that there is evidence for the inspiration of the Bible and/or resurrection, and everything crashes very suddenly without it.)
Consider two people who are arguing over the color of the sky. One of them believes that the proper way to determine the color of the sky is to look at it. The second presuppositionally supposes that the sky is green and that he should look down. All he sees is grass, and this grass is green. So based on all the evidence available to him, his position is internally consistent. He also notices that sometimes the first person thinks the sky is black or gray or blue, and the first can't really explain why – this is inconsistent because truth is absolute; the sky cannot be all black, all gray, and all blue. The second one then notices that both of them are equally bound to their conclusions by their presuppositions. Everyone who looks up comes away believing the sky is many colors (usually blue), and everyone who accepts his own manner of thinking comes away believing the sky is green. Next, he reasons as follows: “The sky is green. Looking at it causes one to think it is not green. Therefore, one should not trust their eyes to tell them the color of the sky, and thus I am even more certain I should look down.” The second person may be assuming the color is green, but the first person is assuming that their eyes are a useful tool for discovering truth – both sides have assumptions that effectually force the conclusion.
It's not that I'm stacking the deck against presuppositionalists by making them be the side that is wrong. I'll reverse it. Suppose two people have lived their entire lives underground without seeing or hearing about the color of the sky. The first one just assumes a priori that the sky's color is not fixed, but changes for some reasons but is usually blue or black – he doesn't know what the reasons are. The second goes outside for the first time at midnight, looks at the sky, decides that the sky is black, and then goes back underground. The next day a third person runs outside, concludes that the sky is blue and runs back inside. The presuppositionalist points out that evidence has clearly led one or both of them to a false conclusion, so he concludes that his approach is correct, as the last one standing. Here, the presuppositionalist is the one who is right, and the evidentialists are the ones who are wrong. And yet, common sense still sides with the evidentialist as the one whose approach is wiser as it has a chance of eventually leading to the truth and learning about weather and the rising/setting of the sun; the presuppositionalist is right due to luck and cannot progress further.
The difference is an ontological presupposition versus an epistemological presupposition. An ontological presupposition makes specific claims about reality, an epistemological one describes a means of learning about reality.
There certainly is the imperfection that an evidential approach assumes the usefulness of reason and observation. But I'm not claiming an epistemology with no assumptions – I'm doing what I can with what I have. However, note that the presuppositionalist must also assume a human capacity for reason when arguing for/against internal consistency. Also, centuries of science make it strange that this should be suggested as a weakness. An evidential approach put a man on the moon. Satellites don't stay in orbit because people's philosophies say they should – they actually stay in orbit. Nuclear power plants keep working not because scientists want their philosophies to be validated – they actually work. Maybe the pioneers of science made an unjustified assumption in trusting their capacity for reason, but that should no longer be a question in the twenty-first century.
One of the most politically significant Evangelical beliefs in modern America is that life begins at conception, and therefore abortion and creating embryonic stem cells for research are forms of murder. Whether or not this is biblical is a question with which I will not be concerning myself.
In particular, I will be making the case that for at least several days, the embryos have no soul (assuming there is such a thing). This will not directly lead to any conclusion about abortion, but it will lead to very definite conclusions about stem cell research and contraceptives that work after conception.
For the first several days after conception, the embryo is a growing mass of stem cells. Nature performs for us the otherwise morally questionable experiments needed to establish its non-humanity.
First, identical twins provide a challenge for the Evangelical view. For the first several days at least, the mass of stem cells can split in two and eventually result in two identical twins. Spiritually speaking, what just happened? Did God create two souls at conception that both inhabited the same cell and later split apart? Did God create one soul to begin with, and then a second soul due to the geographic change of half the mass splitting off from the other half? Pro-lifers rightly argue that if a seven-month old fetus was outside the womb it would be a constitutionally protected person. In other word, God clearly doesn't just create a soul for a baby due to geographic changes. It is equally ridiculous to believe God creates a soul when half of the cells change their geographic location.
But the much more severe problem is human chimeras. Not only can a mass of stem cell split apart, two different masses can fuse. This can result in an apparently normal individual, known as a chimera. Some things about chimeras are a bit odd, like different body parts having DNA that doesn't match, or a mix of different blood types. But someone could be a chimera and not know it. If a soul is created at conception, and two different embryos merge, what happened to the extra soul?
This is a continuum v. discrete problem. The question “is it human?” is yes or no. But the change from sub-human sperm/egg to a fully human baby is gradual. No matter where you choose to draw the line, looking very closely at the line will leave one wondering why the line is here and not there. Even if you say life begins at conception, this problem is only swept under the rug through not thinking about it. Suppose you take a microscope and record the process of conception, and then look at a series of photographs separated by nanoseconds. Can you look at one and honestly say “it's not human here, but in the next one, you can see that God has created its soul?” Even if you could, then take 100 pictures between these two frames and try again. I'm not just being difficult – the way this question is answered determines which forms of birth control are acceptable and which forms are murder. To use a tired analogy, it's like lining up a million shades of gray spanning the spectrum between white and black, and being forced to put them in two categories. Drawing the line is above all of our pay grades.
Ironically, one objection many Christians have to evolution is the way it blurs the line between man and beast. This difficulty is far less severe than reconciling a concept of the soul with embryonic development.
The only reconciliation I found requires the concession that whatever “in the image of God” or “possessing a soul” means, it's not a property of our physical body. Thus, God draws the line, and perhaps at different places for different people. But this accidentally surrenders every single pro-life argument I have heard and more. If “human” is something we cannot determine through physical properties, then why argue “medical fact: life begins at conception?” Why argue that abortion stops a beating heart? Why insist that American Indians have souls based on the fact that they no different? Playing the we-can't-know card in one place is a slippery slope to playing it in other places – quoting Acts 17:26 merely begs the question who is part of a “nation.” The fact is, every position is standing on a slippery slope to horrible atrocities – the safer positions are the ones that realize this and hence step carefully.
This posed an even greater challenge for my faith when I stepped back and looked at what was going on. I was scrounging for the slightest possibility that both reality and my beliefs were true and upon finding one, I was clinging to it for dear life. Nowhere in this line of reasoning had my beliefs been useful for understanding or accurately describing the world, and all throughout they had held me back. I was beginning to believe not because of evidence, not in the absence of evidence, but in the very teeth of evidence to the contrary.
If the way to learn about reality is to look at it, then it's clear that whatever is going on later, there is no soul immediately after conception. In India, sacred cows roam at will while people starve rather than violate the religion over there. In America, medical advancements go undiscovered because experiments with sacred blobs of stem cells violate the religion over here.
The primary skeptical alternative to apologists' arguments from the Gospels is that the stories of Jesus were legends that may contain an ounce of truth, but have grown enough to be unreliable.
Here, I will continue to make this case, again with a purely biblical argument. In particular, I will be comparing two stories that I believe to be parallel, although Christians will certainly disagree.
The first is Luke 16:19-31. This is a fictional story Jesus told. (I've heard Christian and skeptic alike argue that this was meant to be a true story. For the sake of this particular argument, it matters little.) It concerns Lazarus, a beggar who dies and goes to heaven, or somewhere similar. While in heaven, he has a dialog with an evil rich man who has died and is in a place similar to hell. The main point, or at least a main point of the parable is the final piece of dialog, where the rich man pleads to Abraham for Lazarus to be sent back from the dead and warn his brothers. Abraham replies that they have the Scripture, and if they are not convinced by the Scripture, they will not be convinced by Lazarus returning from the dead.
The second is John 11:1-53. This is presented as a true story, and contains the Bible's only other [mention of] Lazarus. Lazarus dies but is then brought back from the dead. Despite this, the chief priests who know the Scripture better than anyone do not believe in Jesus, but instead try to kill him.
There are three ways to look at this:
1. It's a coincidence that Luke has a hypothetical Resurrection of a Lazarus and John has a Resurrection of a real Lazarus.
2. Some other non-coincidental explanation.
3. Lazarus' Resurrection is a fish story that grew out of Jesus' parable.
At a glance, it would make sense to suggest that Jesus intentionally used the parable to foreshadow a real event. Until you consider what this would imply about Luke and his research.
This would mean that Jesus actually raised a man from the dead, many people believed because of this, this was the key event in Jesus life leading the chief priests to their murderous rage, and yet somehow Luke couldn't find a single witness to justify writing about this! And yet somehow, he found a witness who remembered the details of Jesus parable, all the way up to the name of the character Jesus used in his parable.
Furthermore, Luke 19:45-47 suggests that the chief priests wanted to kill him after he drove out the money changers. This suggests that Luke would have disagreed with what John thought the reason was. John also mentions that the money changers were thrown out in John 2:13-21. Do you see what John just did there? In Luke the key reason was the cleansing of the temple and in John the key reason is the resurrection of Lazarus, so John moved the temple cleansing to the beginning of the story.
Of course, Jesus could have cleansed the temple twice, and I'm not suggesting that anything is implausible about that. What I'm suggesting is that the Gospels fit together better from the perspective of “how are these stories changing with time?” rather than “how can I make these events fit together?”
A misconception apologists often have is that skeptics discount biblical miracles simply because they are naturalists. That is not the case. Here, I have given a purely biblical reason to think the resurrection of Lazarus never actually happened.
Matthew 21:2-5: “[Jesus said] to them, 'Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, 'The Lord has need of them,' and immediately he will send them.' This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
'SAY TO THE DAUGHTER OF ZION, 'BEHOLD YOUR KING IS COMING TO YOU, GENTLE, AND MOUNTED ON A DONKEY, EVEN ON A COLT, THE FOAL OF A BEAST OF BURDEN.''”
The first thing to notice is that Matthew is telling us about a colt and donkey, while Zechariah 9:9 mentions a colt and donkey as well. That's probably not a coincidence.
However, Zechariah was actually talking about one animal, not two. The first part of the prophecy shares the surprise that their king would ride a mere donkey rather than a horse. In the second part, the word “even” is adding to this surprise; the extra detail of its age makes it even less majestic.
The authors of Mark, Luke, and John seem to have figured this out, as all three refer to the one animal on which Jesus rode. Mark 11:2-7 and Luke 19:30-35 say it was a colt. John 12:14-15 says Jesus found a “little donkey” and then paraphrases Zechariah 9:9 to say that a donkey's colt was to be ridden. This is a double affirmation, as John used little donkey and donkey's colt interchangeably, and also thought that a paraphrase of Zechariah involving one animal was accurate.
So if Zechariah was talking about one animal, and it's not a coincidence that both he and Matthew mention a colt and donkey, what are the alternatives?
One possibility is that the author of Matthew was intentionally describing Palm Sunday in a way that made Jesus look like a fulfillment of prophecy as much as possible. He wanted people to believe that Jesus fulfilled prophecies, and this was more important to him than limiting the details of his story to things that actually happened. The beginning of Matthew is already sufficient to reveal that convincing people was more important than not saying false things about the OT. Here, I'm suggesting that convincing people was also more important than not saying false things about the events in Jesus' life.
Another possible source of the story is poor reasoning that does not involve intentional deception. Suppose Jesus actually rode on a colt, and an early Christian heard this story. But then they looked at Zechariah, and mistakenly thought that it spoke of two animals. Here's their train of thought: “Zechariah is true, Zechariah prophesied about a colt and a donkey, therefore Jesus' triumphal entry involved both a colt and a donkey.” And so when the story was retold, a second animal was added. With this possibility, the person who made up the detail sincerely believes it to be true, and the author of Matthew need not be the one who misunderstand Zechariah.
This is a concern whenever a prophecy's fulfillment is only reported by people who were already certain that the prophecy was true. The prophecy itself is enough to convince a true believer that its fulfillment occurred. This results in a story that the teller honestly believes, despite that fact that they observed nothing.
In the book A Ready Defense: The Best of Josh McDowell, an argument is made which demonstrates all the worst aspects of apologists. If you read his argument uncritically, it sounds really, really good. But not only are the rebuttals to it effective, they refute McDowell with a thoroughness that shocked even post-Christian me.
About half of the general arguments I make come from someone else's post on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board. The details and examples are my own work.
Daniel 9:24-26 "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined."
McDowell's Argument
Artaxerxes gave the decree to rebuild Jerusalem on March 5, 444 BC in Nehemiah 2:1-8. The sixty-nine weeks are "weeks of years." A year in the Bible means 360 days. For instance, in Revelations 12:6 and 12:14, 3.5 years = 3.5*360 days = 1260 days. Sixty-nine weeks = 173,880 days after this decree was Monday, March 30, 33 AD, the day Jesus was presented to Jerusalem as Messiah the Prince.
(You can read the argument in full here, by searching for "seventy weeks." Amazon will let you look at five pages: the page hit by the search, two forward, and two back. The relevant pages are 57-59.)
At a glance, this looks unbelievably impressive. Surely, the faith it takes to believe this is a coincidence is greater than the faith needed to believe Daniel was a prophet. But there are issues with his start day, the length of time, and the end date. When taken together, this is merely a demonstration of a determined seeker not discovering the meaning of a prophecy but creating one.
Time Interval
For starters, "69 weeks of years" is an interpretation, not a quotation. What Daniel 9:25 actually says is "seven weeks and sixty-two weeks." I haven't thought too hard about the given reasons for a day = a year, so I'll grant it and move on. What's more of a stretch is to count a year as 360 days. This lines up with neither common sense nor the Hebrew calendar. They used a lunar calendar, with one month being one lunar cycle, and a "leap month" 7 years out of 19. Just as now, 73 years meant 73 cycles of seasons, not 73*360 days = about 72 cycles of seasons. Imagine someone in 500 BC saying that someone is 73 years old. Would their friend ask in reply "solar years or biblical years?" or just effortlessly understand what "year" means?
Concerning Revelations 12, notice that 1260 days = 3.449 solar years. So if in Revelations, "year" just meant ... well, year ... then John rounded by 1.7%. He nearly got two significant figures right, which compares favorably with several other biblical authors. In 1 Kings 7:23, the mathematical pi is rounded to 3.0, which is a 4.7% change. Matthew 12:40 says Jesus would be dead for three nights, a "rounding" of 50%. (I'm not suggesting that Matthew thought Jesus died on Thursday. Matthew 27:62 makes this clear. I'm suggesting that he was intentionally loose with numbers to make Jonah and Jesus look parallel.) Also, Revelations doesn't even say the time period is "three and a half years" but "a time and times and half a time."
"Week" could just as easily mean 7 days, 7 solar years, 7 biblical years, or really seven of just about anything. It could be "weeks of weeks," or "weeks of months." It could be seven years, where year = 365.25 days as on the Julian calendar and not 365.2422 days. I mention the imperfections of having a leap year every four years as a serious objection, because over the course of 483 years, this is several days which could make or break an "exact day" prediction. Or maybe "years" means different things in different contexts. Maybe "year" meant 360 days for the first 488 years, and then started meaning 365.25 days once the Julian calendar started being used in 45 BC. Or maybe 46 BC is the correct date for the switch, because the calendar was introduced then but not in common use. Or maybe "year" meant 365 1/3 days, because of the messed up way leap year was used at first. Or maybe from 45 BC on, "year" doesn't have a fixed meaning, but just counts however it was that they counted back then, regardless of if mistakes were made. This means that the leap years were 44, 41, 38, 35, 32, 29, 26, 23, 20, 17, 14, 11, 8 BC, 4 AD, 8, and 12 etc. Keep in mind that every little detail determines whether or not it was to the exact day, and every little detail is a fudge factor at the disposal of the apologist.
Suppose that exactly 483 solar years later, Jesus came. Would not Christians say the Bible was correct to the exact year? If a skeptic then said that a year = 360 days, so 483 OT years = 476 solar years and thus the Bible is wrong, Christians would have a good laugh over how dumb atheists are. Similarly, if Jesus came 483 days later, Christians would laugh if a skeptic of the Bible said it really meant 483 years.
Next, once you have the day count, do you count both the day of the decree and the day of completion, only one, or neither? Personally, I think McDowell would have a better case if he used this fudge factor, so that the target would be Palm Sunday, rather than "Palm Monday."
The Starting Time
The starting point is not clearly labeled but is described as "the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem." McDowell wrote that the potential starting points are 539 BC (Ezra 1:1-4), 519-518 BC (Ezra 5:3-7), 457 BC (Ezra 7:11-16), and 444 BC (Nehemiah 2:1-8). I haven't checked if these are valid or comprehensive – I'm just taking his word for it here. But how do we know the exact day of the year of the decree? All Nehemiah 2:1 says is "And it came about in the month Nisan."
The Ending Time
Next, the prophecy doesn't clearly describe what event will come at the end. It says "until Messiah the Prince." There are quite a few events in Jesus life that could be the fulfillment of this. (His birth, coming out of Egypt, the arrival of the magi, in the temple at age 12, Luke 4:21, his baptism, the sermon on the mount, the last supper, his crucifixion, his resurrection, etc.) In fact, pretty much any event could be justified. Or even no event would be sufficient; if the time period terminated on some nondescript day of Jesus ministry, it would still satisfy sixty-nine weeks until the verb-less "Messiah the Prince." Also, why is "until Messiah the Prince" the ending point? Maybe that phrase is just being general, and the ending of the sixty-nine weeks was really supposed to be Daniel 9:26 "Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing." (Which could be either good Friday or the Saturday afterward.)
I also find it very strange that McDowell gives a Monday as the ending day and describes it as "the presentation of Christ Himself to Israel as the Messiah as predicted in Zechariah 9:9." Zechariah is talking about the Messiah riding a donkey, which happened on Palm Sunday. While there is an easy fix, what this shows is how willing he is to bend the truth to make it line up with the Bible.
The Total Fudge Factor
Next, I will measure the total room for fudging. There are at least 10 meanings for "week" comparably plausible to 7*360 days, 5 possible start years, 30 possible start days of the month, and at least 20 possible ending events. This gives a total of 10*5*30*20 = 30,000 different interpretations of the prophecy that all line up with McDowell's general framework. And there are even more if different things are fudged, such as finding different historians with different dates for particular decrees, doing something with the sixty-two weeks without the seven weeks, or adding a gap between the seven and sixty-two weeks.
Like McDowell, I do not consider the accuracy of the prophecy to be a coincidence. Unlike McDowell, the reason is that I use the word coincidence to describe things that are improbable.
Dissenting Opinions
At least six different interpretations of prophecy and history line up exactly. While googling seventy weeks daniel is hardly a stellar research technique, it brings up some interesting results. The top five hits are all different Christian sites explaining how well the historical events line up with the prophecy:
http://www.truthnet.org/dan70.html gives the starting point as somewhere in March/April 444 BC without claiming to know the particular day and gives the ending point as Palm Sunday, March 29, 33 AD. This is one day away from McDowell, and is by far the closest any two of these six will come.
http://endtimepilgrim.org/70wks1.htm gives the starting point as "very early in the month of Nisan in 445 B.C." and the ending point as Palm Sunday, April 9, 32 AD.
http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/weeks.htm bases their starting point off McDowell's starting point, and for the ending point "the dates that I have seen in my review of other people's research is April 6, either April 6, 32 AD, or April 6, 33 AD."
http://www.biblicalstudies.com/bstudy/eschatology/daniel.htm disagrees with the time interval. I didn't read the details, but the bottom line is that they think a biblical year is a normal year, and the appropriate time interval is just the sixty-two weeks. 440 BC was "the beginning of the rebuilding in times of distress" and Jesus was born in 6 BC, giving 434 years = 62 weeks in between. Based on this and some other meaning for the first seven weeks, they conclude: "The dates are too exact to be dismissed lightly, and they stand well as a firm apologetic for the Divine/supernatural character of the prophecy."
http://www.remnantofgod.org/70weeks.htm gives the starting point as "King Artaxerxes decree in 457BC" and the ending point 69 weeks = 483 years later as "Jesus Christ arrives as Messiah in the exact year 27AD."
It reminds me of a joke that I'm adapting:
Jack is accused of borrowing John's pot and returning it cracked, so John sues. The defense produces four witnesses who all attest to Jack's innocence. But the prosecution cross-examines the witnesses to produce the following four stories:
1. Jack never borrowed the pot.
2. The pot was already cracked when Jack borrowed it.
3. The pot was not cracked when it was returned.
4. There is no pot.
The defense persists that while the witnesses disagree on the details, we have four different witnesses who agree with the underlying idea: Jack is innocent. Each of the four stories is believed by three members of the jury. They pontificate over technicalities for a while, but quickly tire. Eventually, they just decide that all that matters is the bottom line of Jack's innocence, so they acquit Jack unanimously.
The influence the moral argument against the Bible had on me was not so much as a positive argument itself, but rather as a rebuttal to the moral and anthropomorphic arguments for the existence of the Christian God. It was through Lewis that I learned about the moral argument for God, so I find his rebuttal quite interesting.
John Beversluis noticed an inconsistency in the way Lewis dealt with the problem of pain and wrote to him about it. The entirety of his reply follows:
"Dear Mr. Beversluis
"Yes. On my view one must apply something of the same sort of explanation to, say, the atrocities (and treacheries) of Joshua. I see the grave danger we run by doing so; but the dangers of believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshiping Him, is still greater danger. The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of Scriptures is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissible.
"To this some will reply 'ah, but we are fallen and don't recognize good when we see it.' But God Himself does not say that we are as fallen at all that. He constantly, in Scripture, appeals to our conscience: 'Why do ye not of yourselves judge what is right?' -- 'What fault hath my people found in me?' And so on. Socrates' answer to Euthyphro is used in Christian form by Hooker. Things are not good because God commands them; God commands certain things because he sees them to be good. (In other words, the Divine Will is the obedient servant to the Divine Reason.) The opposite view (Ockham's, Paley's) leads to an absurdity. If 'good' means 'what God wills' then to say 'God is good' can mean only 'God wills what he wills.' Which is equally true of you or me or Judas or Satan.
"But of course having said all this, we must apply it with fear and trembling. Some things which seem to us bad may be good. But we must not consult our consciences by trying to feel a thing good when it seems to us totally evil. We can only pray that if there is an invisible goodness hidden in such things, God, in His own good time will enable us to see it. If we need to. For perhaps sometimes God's answer might be What is that to thee?' The passage may not be 'addressed to our (your or my) condition' at all.
"I think we are v. much in agreement, aren't we?
"Yours sincerely, C. S. Lewis"
So Lewis would agree with me – the same moral arguments that get one to the existence of a God get one away from the concept of God as revealed in the Bible. Lewis got around this by holding some parts of the Bible to not be inspired.
This quotation comes from pages 295-296 of C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion by John Beversluis, a book which I highly recommend. As Beversluis writes in the introduction:
"C. S. Lewis needs to rescued: not only from the evils of excessive loyalty. His apologetic writings deserve better than cavalier rejection or uncritical acceptance. He believed that Christianity is not only true but rationally defensible, and he was willing to debate it with all comers. An open forum of this kind is rare. In the following chapters, I take up his challenge and reconstruct and critically examine his 'case for Christianity.'"
