Illogic of the Garden of Eden Story (2 of 2)

Last updated on: June 26, 2013 at 8:50 am By Bob Seidensticker

Let’s look closer at the details of the Garden of Eden story (part 1 is here). As history—or even a coherent story—it doesn’t stand up.

Omniscient God isn’t very knowledgeable when he goes into the Garden and doesn’t know where Adam and Eve are (Gen. 3:9). Omnibenevolent God isn’t very benevolent when it comes to delivering their punishment. This is another parallel with the Atra-Hasis epic—those gods didn’t know everything and weren’t always benevolent either. As one commenter noted, “God’s powers can’t be that amazing if you can get them from a fruit tree.”
As crimes go, this one was a misdemeanor. Admittedly, God did say to not do something and they did it, but how about just a scolding? This was the first bad act in their lives. Isn’t the trans-generational punishment out of proportion to the crime?
Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they didn’t know good and evil. Why blame them for doing something wrong when they couldn’t know it was wrong? It’s like punishing a two-year old for a moral infraction. In fact, Adam and Eve might not even have been two years old themselves.
If Man understands good and evil today (we possess the knowledge of the Tree), why are we so bad at figuring out good and evil? Okay, let’s assume that selfishness and other base desires muddy the waters. Let’s assume that someone could know the right course of action but choose the easy or pleasurable over the right. Shouldn’t we all at least agree on what’s good? How could post-apple humans be divided on abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and capital punishment?
Getting wisdom is a bad thing? The Bible makes clear that it’s not: “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!” (Prov. 16:16).
Could an omniscient God have been surprised at the result of the Garden of Eden experiment? And if he knew the outcome, why go through the charade? (Or might this all just be mythology … ?)
Tertullian said of women, “You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.” But read the story—Adam was with her the whole time. Why give Eve extra blame?
Why are their descendants cursed for all time—women with labor pain and men with difficult toil—when the descendants didn’t do anything? We see the same thinking in the second commandment (“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”), which probably also came from the J source. It’s nice that things lighten up in later centuries (see Deut. 24:16 or Jer. 31:30), though this doesn’t put God’s unchanging moral law in a good light.

At this point in the Bible, Jesus wasn’t even a twinkle in God’s eye, but it is worth noting that while Jesus provides forgiveness of one’s sins, Christians are still punished for Eve’s sin.

This is an aside, but it is curious that Christian Creationists who object to humans evolving from bacteria have no problem with God making Adam from dust (Gen. 2:7). Indeed, the word Adam comes from the Hebrew adamah (dust).
The NET Bible comment on Gen. 2:17 (“for when you eat from [the Tree,] you will surely die”) makes clear that this phrase means that death will happen almost immediately, as if the fruit were coated with cyanide. But, of course, the serpent was right, and they don’t die. Indeed, Adam dies at 930 years of age.

Apologists respond that this instead means that they will die eventually, that this introduced physical death and they would no longer be immortal. But the text makes clear that they never were immortal. They were driven from the Garden so they wouldn’t eat from the Tree of Life. That’s what makes you immortal.

Apologists try again: they say that “die” meant spiritual death. First off, that’s not what the text says. Second, the animals were driven from the Garden as well, so there’s no reason to imagine that their death was any different than Man’s. If the animals’ death was physical and not spiritual, what’s to argue that Man’s is any different?

Christian theologians tell us that the serpent was Satan in disguise, but (yet again) that’s not what the text tells us. It was a serpent, not Satan, and that’s what Jews today will tell you. And why is the serpent the bad guy? He told the truth! He was a Jewish Prometheus.

I’ll close with comments from Ricky Gervais, who imagined the snake having this to say in response to God’s punishment that he crawl on his belly for the rest of his life.

“But I already.… Oh no! Oh yeah, you’ve done me, yeah. No, we’re even now. I asked for that. Okay, cheers. Oh—how does this work again? Owww—I’m being punished. This is rubbish—I wish I could fly, like normal.”

And the Son of God died;
it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.
And He was buried, and rose again;
the fact is certain, because it is impossible.
— Tertullian

Photo credit: Paul Hocksenar

The Long, Strange Story of the Trinity

Last updated on: June 12, 2013 at 1:24 pm By Bob Seidensticker

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity claims one God in three persons. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it: “In the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.”

Unity but also distinct? Three but also one? That makes no sense, so let’s go to the source and read about it in the Bible.

And the Bible says …

Though the Trinity is one of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Bible says nothing about it directly. Did Paul and the apostles define God in a trinitarian fashion? If the Trinity is essential to a proper understanding of Christianity as the modern church claims, the ancients’ silence on the matter suggests that it is a later invention.

That’s not to say that one can’t use the Bible to form arguments in favor of various relationships between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Several interpretations competed in the early centuries of the church.

Was Jesus merely a good man, adopted by God (Adoptionism)?
Are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just labels for the different roles of one being (Sabellianism or Modalism)?
Was Jesus created by God and subordinate to him (Arianism)?

These are all plausible interpretations, justifiable with Bible passages, but they are heresies today. It took about two centuries for the doctrine of the Trinity to enter the debate (through Tertullian), and it took almost two more centuries of haggling for the doctrine to mature into its present form and sweep away its competitors at the First Council of Constantinople (381).

While still a cardinal, the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI was asked if he was bothered by many Catholics ignoring papal dictates. He said that he was not, because “truth is not determined by a majority vote.” But a majority vote is exactly how doctrines like the Trinity came into being.

Comma Johanneum

You know how I said that the Bible says nothing directly about the Trinity? For completeness, we should address this:

For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. (1 John 5:7)

The part in italics is called the Comma Johanneum (a “comma” is a short clause). The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not show the Comma. It appears first in a few 7th-century Latin manuscripts and only centuries later in Greek manuscripts. Unlike much of the rest of the New Testament, it doesn’t appear in the letters of early church fathers, many of whom would’ve delighted in supporting their position with such a quote.

It is agreed by scholars to be an addition to the original.

What is the Trinity?

Lots of analogies have been proposed for the Trinity. Maybe it’s like water, which has the three states of solid, liquid, and gas. Or like a person who can be spouse, parent, and employer. But this is modalism—God acts in different modes at different times.

Okay, then maybe it’s like an egg, which has shell, white, and yolk. Or like time, which has past, present, and future. Or like the Borromean rings in the picture above that only compose a linked whole when all three rings are present. But this is Partialism, the claim that the three persons of God are three separate parts.

Given the clear history of conflict on this question and the many discarded explanations, you’d think that heretical analogies wouldn’t be offered.

Most Christians simply say that it’s a mystery and admit that we can’t understand it. Contrast that with the monotheism celebrated by Islam. The shahadah, the basic creed of Islam, says, “There are no deities but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”—simple and unambiguous.

A few questions raised by the Trinity doctrine

Instead of the convoluted and unintelligible Trinity, why not simply embrace the polytheism? My guess is that first-century Christians so valued Jewish monotheism that this tenet couldn’t be dropped. As the stature of Jesus increased over time, from a good man adopted as messiah by God (as told in Mark) to a being who was there at the beginning (John 1:1), they were stuck with fitting the square peg of the divinity of Jesus into the round hole of monotheism.

Why not then have a duality, Yahweh + Jesus? The problem is that two is the number for male and female, which was not the symbolism they were going for. Perhaps the Holy Spirit, initially just a bit player or merely a synonym for God, was elevated into the Trinity. And even this is flexible. While the idea of Mary as Co-redemptrix is not Catholic doctrine, it has threatened to become so at various periods in the church’s history.

And now let us close …

The typical Christian response to a contradiction is to find a way to make both claims true. This is never clearer than with the Trinity. The Bible says that there is one god, but it also says that Jesus existed since the beginning of time. So they must both be true! But what first-century Christian would rationalize this with the doctrine of the Trinity?

Or, take this from the other direction. Explain the Trinity to first-century Christians and ask if they buy it. If you imagine that they do, you have a new problem: why the vitally important doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t explained in the New Testament.

The Trinity is a Christian mystery—something that can’t be explained by reason alone. A supernatural explanation is necessary. (This raises the question: If it doesn’t make sense, why accept it? But let’s set that aside.) Apologists often admit that they will just have to ask God about it when they get to heaven.

That humility is laudable, but how about some of that in other areas? If you don’t trust yourself to make sense of the Trinity, why imagine that you correctly understand God’s position on polygamy, slavery, and genocide when the Old Testament gives clear support for them? Why imagine that your evaluation of abortion and gay marriage is correct when the Bible doesn’t address these topics directly?

If only the Trinity were a frequent reminder for Christians to be humble in their claims, it would be valuable for everyone.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity
to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism
that three are one and one is three,
and yet, that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 1813)

Photo credit: Johansson

Christianity Can Rot Your Brain

Last updated on: June 5, 2013 at 9:44 am By Bob Seidensticker

There’s a lot of killing in the Bible—the honest and wholesome kind. The God-commanded kind.

What are we to make of this violence? Apologist William Lane Craig takes a stab at justifying “The Slaughter of the Canaanites.”

Craig’s entire project is bizarre—trying to support the sagging claims of God’s goodness despite that deity’s passion for genocide—but he gamely has a go. Craig responds to the question, “But wasn’t it wrong to kill all the innocent children?”

If we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

What’s this supposed to mean?? Does it mean that Andrea Yates was actually right that she was saving her five children from the possibility of going to hell by drowning them one by one in the bathtub? Does it mean that abortion is actually a good thing because those souls “are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy”? I hope none of Craig’s readers have followed up with this route to salvation.

It’s hard to believe that he’s actually justifying the killing of children, but there’s more. Let’s fillet Craig’s next paragraph:

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment.

I thought that genocide was wrong. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Not the children, for they inherit eternal life.

Yeah, right. Killing children is actually a good thing. (Are we living Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”?)

So who is wronged?

Wait for it …

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

Uh, yeah. That was the big concern in my mind, too.

Can you believe this guy? My guess is that he is a decent and responsible person, is a good husband and father, works hard, and pays his taxes. But he’s writing this? It’s like discovering that your next-door neighbor is a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

This brings up the Christopher Hitchens Challenge (video). Hitchens challenges anyone to state a moral action taken or a moral sentiment uttered by a believer that couldn’t be taken or uttered by an unbeliever—something that a believer could do but an atheist couldn’t. In the many public appearances in which Hitchens has made this challenge, he has never heard a valid reply.

But think of the reverse: something terrible that only a believer would do or say. Now, there are lots of possibilities. Obviously, anything containing variations on “because God says” or “because the Bible says” could be an example.

“The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”
“Despite the potential benefits to public health, we should avoid embryonic stem cell research because it’s against the Bible.”
“God hates fags.”

Or, as in this case, “God supports genocide.”

This reminds me what physicist Steven Weinberg said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

In other words: Christianity can rot your brain.

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 10/24/11.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Why We Disagree on Moral Issues

Last updated on: May 27, 2013 at 9:33 am By Bob Seidensticker

Why do liberals and conservatives argue so much about morality? Don’t they have a common sense of right and wrong?

Yes and no. For the common examples given by Christian apologists (torturing babies, for example), we’re all on the same page, but it’s more complicated than that. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has brought the amorphous domain of morality into focus to reveal five separate categories. It’s a simple idea that explains much and can help us get past our differences (or at least understand them).

From his TED video, Haidt’s five foundations of morality follow.

1. Care/harm. We’ve evolved to feel (and dislike) pain. This isn’t just true for ourselves; we also sense and dislike pain in others. From this comes kindness, nurturing, empathy, and so on.

2. Fairness/reciprocity. This is related to reciprocal altruism. From this foundation comes justice, rights, autonomy, and the Golden Rule.

3. Ingroup/loyalty. We have a long history as tribal creatures able to adapt to shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies patriotism, selflessness, and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s one for all, and all for one.

4. Authority/respect. As primates, we understand hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies the virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5. Purity/sanctity. This is shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. Being repulsed by things that look or smell bad can keep us from eating unsafe food. It also underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, and more noble way.

Haidt theorizes that the rise of civilization may have needed all five of the morality categories.

Make love, not war

Here’s the interesting bit: when people from different viewpoints are tested against these five categories, everyone strongly endorses #1 (care/harm) and #2 (fairness/reciprocity).

As Haidt’s drawing shows, Americans across the political spectrum strongly endorse the foundations of Care/Harm and Fairness. Not so for the next three. The conservative says “go team,” while the liberal says “celebrate diversity” (#3). The conservative says, “respect authority,” while the liberal says, “question authority” (#4). The conservative says, “life is sacred,” while the liberal says, “keep your laws off my body” (#5).

That’s a caricature, of course. Liberals like the team, authority, and purity as well; it’s just that they are likelier than conservatives to fear these good ideas taken to an extreme.

Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed, and they’ll risk chaos for the benefits of change. Conservatives speak for institutions and traditions, and they’ll risk injustice to those at the bottom for the benefits of order.

Haidt observes that in Eastern thought, it’s not the zero-sum game that it is in the West. While there are opposites (yin and yang, for example), they aren’t enemies. Each is recognized as having value. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer. Each has a role.

This insight that morality is composed of different components has been helpful to me in making clear how those who disagree with me aren’t evil or insane but simply see morality differently. We value the same moral foundations but rank them differently.

Are we at an impasse?

Let me ask for some audience participation. Critique the following thought process.

Social liberals and conservatives will see issues like abortion and gay marriage differently. The liberal acknowledges the differences and wants each person to be minimally constrained. You need an abortion? Within reason, it’s your choice. You want to get gay married? Go for it.

Alternatively: You don’t like abortion or gay marriage? Don’t get one. You want to argue against them? The First Amendment allows that.

The conservative typically wants minimal government intrusion but makes an exception here because the stakes are so high. Life is too important to permit abortion. Marriage is too important in the traditional sense to expand the definition. Government is tasked to impose the correct approach on everyone.

Do we have two equally valid moral approaches here? Are we destined to struggle? Are there social trends pushing us in one direction or the other where (like slavery and civil rights) one side will prevail?

Never let your sense of morals
prevent you from doing what is right.
— Anon.

Photo credit: United Nations

Attack of the Angry Atheists!

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 at 12:49 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Some years ago, I attended a lecture by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza. He began by asking why atheists care about religion. No one goes around complaining about those who believe in unicorns or mermaids, he said, so why should an atheist complain about theists? Theists and atheists should be allowed their separate viewpoints so that everyone’s happy.

The proper place for religion in society

Atheists are annoyed, and yet they have no reason to be, right?

Wrong. But before I get into that, let me briefly summarize the religious aspects of American society that I’m happy with. It’s okay to hand out leaflets in public places (not government buildings or schools—I’m referring to parks or sidewalks) or proselytize from a soapbox. Free speech is great. We all have to put up with hearing stuff we don’t want to, but the good (each of us getting the same rights) outweighs the bad. Churches are fine. I have no problem with someone saying “Merry Christmas” or religious displays on private property. These are all guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The problem

But I do draw a line, so let me summarize some of the things that concern me. I don’t like the tax support for churches ($71 billion in lost taxes each year in the U.S. because church donations are tax deductible). That’s tax money that the rest of us have to make up. I don’t like that all nonprofits’ financial records are available for public scrutiny except those of churches and ministries.

I don’t like “In God We Trust” as my country’s new motto (that change was made about 50 years ago) or on my money. I don’t like “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (also added about 50 years ago). I don’t like the idea of the Ten Commandments displayed on government property, and I don’t like prayers opening government events like city council meetings.

I don’t like that “I’m more religious than you are” seems to be an important claim to make in politics. In 2002, the Senate passed a resolution in favor of “under God” in the Pledge when that phrase was under attack in the court system. The senators then made a pompous photo op on the Capital steps to demonstrate the God-pleasing (or voter-pleasing?) manner with which they could say the Pledge with “under God.” Even Democrats need to make public pilgrimages to churches to prove their godly credentials.

I don’t like revisionist historians claiming that this country was founded as a Christian nation (an empty argument given the clearly secular nature of the Constitution).

I don’t like religion clouding policy decisions. President Bush reportedly said in 2003, “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq … And I did.”

Why is it that if Bush had said, “Poseidon told me to end the tyranny in Iraq,” he would be laughed at, but when he refers to God, it’s okay? I know the answer, of course—it’s because most of the people he’s talking to are comfortable with the idea of God—but is reason a majority-rules kind of thing?

Political lobbyists of any kind can be a problem, of course, but I don’t like the special influence of religious leaders (James Dobson, Pat Robertson, etc.).

I don’t like that policy questions like abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research are partly driven by religious concerns. I don’t like religion in the form of Intelligent Design masquerading as science in the science classroom. Despite the Dover decision, ID will doubtless reappear, like a hydra.

I don’t like that children are indoctrinated into religion when they’re young and defenseless. I’d like to see religion treated as an adult issue, like cigarettes, sex, or alcohol—something that you can get involved with if you choose, but only after you’re mature enough to weigh the issue properly. Adults are very good at justifying beliefs they arrived at through poor reasoning—that’s why adults from a myriad of religions can each argue with a straight face that theirs is the one true religion. And, of course, this explains why religion must maintain access to children’s minds: their market share would plummet without it.

I don’t like people using religion as a proxy for moral behavior. For example, you’ve probably heard about the survey that ranks atheists as the least trustworthy minority in America.

For more reasons why atheists have a right to be angry, see Greta Christina’s list.

D’Souza is right about one thing—no one complains about belief in unicorns or mermaids. That’s because those beliefs don’t cause harm in society. Contrast that with Christianity.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force
for atheism ever conceived.
— Isaac Asimov

Photo credit: Dan Santat

Rationalizing Away the “Canaanite Problem” (2 of 2)

Last updated on: January 9, 2013 at 1:39 pm By Bob Seidensticker

This is the conclusion of a critique of Greg Koukl’s justification of the Canaanite problem, God’s genocide of the people living in the Promised Land. Read part 1 here.

God and Racism

Koukl moves on to defend God against charges of racism.

God cared nothing about skin color or national origin.

Yes, you can make the sock puppet say that God cares nothing about race. But the very concept of a Chosen People means that the Bible has plenty of other verses that say the opposite:

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, not even in the tenth generation. (Deut. 23:3)

And why should that be a surprise? After all, the founders of those two tribes are said to have come from incestuous relations between Lot and his two daughters (Gen. 19:36–8). Yuck!

Just after the genocide passages in Deuteronomy, God forbids intermarriage with these foreign tribes (Deut. 7:3). The prohibition against intermarriage is also given in Ezra (9:2, 10:10) and Nehemiah (chapter 13). King Solomon was chastised for his foreign wives (1 Kings 11).

Slavery is an excellent way to see the us/them distinction. It was limited to six years for fellow Jews, but it is for life for slaves from other tribes (Lev. 25:44–6). Let’s not imagine that God was colorblind.

The apologist might respond that the prohibitions against intermarriage were meant to avoid temptations to worship other gods. Okay, but they’re still anti-miscegeny laws. Are they wrong today? If so, why excuse them back then?

Even some stories of Jesus show him focused only on his own tribe. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and he denies a Canaanite woman’s pleas for help with, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (Matt. 15:22–8). He forbids his disciples to waste time on the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matt. 10:5–6).

Back to Koukl:

The book of Judges—a record of the “Canaanization” of Israel—ends on this sinister note: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25).

Sinister? Where else does “right” come from but from ourselves (both individually and as a society)? Koukl imagines an objective morality grounded outside humanity, and I impatiently await evidence that such a morality exists and is accessible.

Tamp Down Those Feelings of Pity

Koukl wraps up his justification.

Without question, the Canaanite adults got their just deserts. Regarding the children, I personally take comfort in the fact that, on my view, those who die before the age of accountability are ushered immediately into Heaven.

Well, I still have questions. How can genocide be acceptable justice when it’s universally rejected today? And how can you be so comfortable with, say, a five-year-old Canaanite girl dying in agony from her wounds but then get freaked out at the abortion of a single fertilized human egg cell? What about Andrea Yates—did she really save her five children from hell by drowning them, like she hoped? And how does killing children square with, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16)?

This nonsense reminds me of William Lane Craig’s response to the genocide of the Canaanites (my critique here). His conclusion:

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

(Yeah, that’s also who I was most concerned about.)

This bizarre and embarrassing thinking is what happens when smart people are determined to shoehorn this Iron Age book into modern reality regardless of how poorly it fits. And many Christians wonder what about Christianity could possibly bother atheists …

Back to Koukl’s defense of God:

But was God right? I’ve already shown that if God needed morally sufficient reasons for killing the Canaanites, he had them in abundance.

After World War II, 24 Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremburg. Did the Allies have morally sufficient reasons for killing them all? Apparently not, because they weren’t all put to death. Seven received prison terms, and three were acquitted.

No, God did not have morally sufficient reasons for genocide. He may have had his own reasons that we’re unable to understand, but “morally sufficient” as those words are defined in the dictionary? Nope. And that also goes for “good,” “just,” and other imagined attributes of God.

Tamp Down Feelings of Reason as Well

Koukl encourages us to find biblical justification for his view that we should just let go and let God.

When Job lost everything dear to him, he did not rail against God, but worshipped Him

God made clear to Job that might makes right (Job 40)—not an especially good reason to justify one’s actions and compel worship.

Reflecting on the sovereignty of God, the Apostle Paul asked, “Does not the potter have a right over the clay?” (Rom. 9:21)

Clay has no dreams that can be frustrated, and it can’t lose a loved one. It doesn’t feel pain when you cut it or hold it under water.

How does this irrelevant analogy help us justify God’s genocide of people who, unlike clay, are alive and do feel pain?

God is God and we are not. He is not to be measured by our standards. Rather, we are to be measured by His.

Don’t we share a moral sense with God? When Abraham haggled with God on the minimum number of good people in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18), Abraham said, “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. … Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham had no problem conversing with God using a shared moral sense.

The Bible itself rejects this idea that God’s moral sense is out of reach.

Atheists read the account of Canaan’s conquest and sniff with moral indignation at the suggestion a holy God could be within His rights to destroy the Canaanite people along with their culture.

Not quite. For me, this contradiction between the good, righteous, and just god that the Christians imagine and his actions summarized in their own book is compelling evidence that what they imagine doesn’t exist.

Koukl imagines that he’s patched the holes his worldview, but it’s as leaky as ever.

I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality,
and of the most lovely benevolence:
and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity,
so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture,
as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions
should have proceeded from the same being.
— Thomas Jefferson

Photo credit: WikiPaintings

Kreeft’s Argument from Absolute Conscience Fails Absolutely

Last updated on: October 20, 2012 at 11:56 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Philosopher Peter Kreeft says that his Argument from Conscience (PDF) is one of only two arguments for the existence of God in the Bible. Its biblical pedigree doesn’t do it any favors, however, and it fares no better than the rest.

Kreeft summarizes the argument:

The simple, intuitive point of the argument from conscience is that everyone in the world knows, deep down, that he is absolutely obligated to be and do good, and this absolute obligation could come only from God. Thus everyone knows God, however obscurely, by this moral intuition, which we usually call conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul.

Kreeft defines conscience as “the knowledge of my absolute obligation to goodness.”

Absolute obligation? Where did this come from? That’s not how I define the word, nor is it how the dictionary defines it. This qualifier exists only in Kreeft’s definition.

What does Kreeft do with people like me who aren’t on board? He puts us into two bins: (1) those who have no conscience or a defective conscience and (2) those who know the truth of Kreeft’s words but repress this knowledge.

And what about the third bin, those who see obligation but not absolute obligation? There is no third bin. We know that these people actually understand God’s will because the Bible says so. You know the kind—those people “who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them” (Rom. 1:18–19).

(Is it just me or does it seem circular to assume the existence of God in an argument about the existence of God? And is it just me or have I been insulted?)

He continues with the assumption of absoluteness and says that one’s conscience has absolute moral authority. I appreciate that I’m compelled to listen to my conscience, but (again) where does the absoluteness come in?

Maybe we’re defining things differently. To me, an absolute obligation isn’t simply an important or strongly felt obligation. The key is its grounding. It’s more than grounded within me (such as, “it’s just wrong to chew with your mouth open”). It’s more than grounded within society (such as, “it’s illegal to pass a stop sign without coming to a complete stop”). It’s grounded in an absolute way that transcends both me and society.

I see no evidence that one’s conscience is an absolute moral authority. Kreeft provides none and simply asserts the claim.

Back to Kreeft’s argument, quoted in summary above. He imagines that he’s firmly established that the conscience is an absolute moral authority and moves on to the second premise: “the only possible source of absolute authority is an absolutely perfect will, a divine being.” That sounds plausible, but since he’s given no reason to imagine that the absolute authority he refers to exists, he has no argument.

Given the imagined absolute conscience, is its absolute truth reliably accessible by ordinary people? Kreeft admits that it isn’t but says that God has “revealed to us clear moral maps (Scripture and Church).” If our conscience tells us to reject these maps, that’s the indication of a faulty conscience.

Hold on—scripture and church are “clear moral maps”?

Nonsense. The Christian church is dividing faster than amoebas. There are now 42,000 denominations of Christianity and counting. Which one(s) are correct? Christians can’t even decide among themselves.

And let’s check the hypothesis that scripture is a clear moral map. Are Christians of a unified voice on the topic of abortion? Same-sex marriage? Euthanasia? Stem-cell research? Capital punishment? The use of torture? Any divisive social issue? Scripture is a sock puppet that you can make say just about anything you want, and Christians on all sides of these issues do just that.

I see two possibilities: (1) absolute morality exists though we can’t reliably access it or (2) there is no absolute morality but we have a shared (and imperfect) moral instinct. Kreeft’s argument has done nothing to justify the supernatural explanation, so I’ll go with the natural one.

Secular schools can never be tolerated
because such schools have no religious instruction,
and a general moral instruction
without a religious foundation is built on air;
consequently, all character training and religion
must be derived from faith.
— Adolf Hitler

Photo credit: zen

A Flawed Analogy to Morality

Last updated on: October 27, 2012 at 12:28 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Leah Libresco has responded to my recent post on objective morality. I’ll pull out some of her comments that need responses.

What I don’t understand is why Bob sees his conscience as worth listening to.

Leah imagines that I have a choice. My mind is programmed to give much weight to the moral evaluation that comes from the conscience. It’s not the only input—for example, I might not aid that old person who dropped a package if I’m carrying something fragile or important myself and can’t risk dropping it—but it’s a major input.

Leah goes on to wonder about mechanical brain implants or drugs that would override or mimic the conscience. Sure, that’s increasingly possible.

Here’s the parallel that comes to mind for me. Suppose I’m communicating with Leah using public key cryptography. I get a message from Leah that’s encoded with her secret key. What else can I do but assume that it’s really from her? Once I hear of a security breach (maybe some hacker is out there, mimicking other people), I will no longer trust signed messages like this. But until then, I have no choice but believe that it’s from Leah.

This brain-implant thought experiment would work the same way. “What’s that? My conscience says that I ought to hit that cute little baby? All righty!” If it looks and quacks like a conscience, I’ll assume that it’s a conscience. As you can imagine, I can’t see any way to verify what my conscience says against an external, objectively true answer. (But of course this comparison would be ridiculous. If I had access to an infallible source, I’d use that and not bother with my imperfect conscience.)

Maybe my view of how the mind works is more machine-like or more rigid than Leah’s. Am I missing how the brain is configured?

Leah imagines another experiment.

“Hey, Bob,” I say. ”I’ve got a pretty nifty computer program here. It can give you advice about what to do when you’re not sure about a moral problem. In long-duration clinical trials conducted here in the present, people who did what the black box told them whenever they asked it a question were more likely to have children than people who ignored the black box’s advice, people who weren’t given a copy of my black box, and people who were just given a magic eight ball hidden in a black box. (I had a devil of a time getting an IRB to approve all those control groups, but I wanted to be thorough). Would you like a black box of your own?”

I’m not sure why Bob should turn me down

Meh. Having more children doesn’t have much appeal. My DNA may have more interest in your offer, but I don’t care what it thinks. What shapes DNA and what motivates the mind are different things.

The box I’m offering him is optimized according to pretty similar criteria as the conscience he trusts because it was shaped by evolution.

My conscience has my mind on a pretty short leash—it’s just how the brain is wired. My mind listens to my conscience but doesn’t worry much about the origin of things. Improving fertility has little appeal.

Leah responds to one of my points by referencing some of the words I used.

“Rise above” presupposes some dimension of height. “Hone” implies some form that we’re getting closer to by paring away extraneous material. If you have a sense that more is possible, then you must have some expectation that an external standard exists, and that you have some kind of access to it (even if it’s as limited as our access to physical laws, which we have to painstakingly deduce).

Hmm—am I appealing to an external standard? Let’s think about this.

Morality obviously changes—slavery was moral (that is, acceptance was widespread) and now it’s not, legal alcohol was immoral and now it’s not, and so on. But Leah asks if I see not change but improvement. Sure, morality changes, but can we claim that it’s improving?

Society always sees the change as improvement—otherwise, why would it make the change?—but by what standard do we claim it’s an improvement? We look back with mild horror at what passed for acceptable morality in society in the past, but why think that what we see today is more than simply change?

Here’s another parallel. We’ve all seen jiggle puzzles (also called dexterity puzzles) like the one in the photo above. It’s a handheld box with a picture and a few small ball bearings. The picture has tiny wells that can each hold one ball bearing, and the goal is to carefully move the box to put certain ball bearings (they sometimes have different colors) into the correct wells.

Consider a popular model of morality that parallels a jiggle puzzle. Once we’ve correctly figured out a moral issue (say: concluding that slavery is wrong), we’ve placed that ball bearing in the correct well. That problem is resolved once and for all, the ball bearing isn’t going anywhere, and we can move on to worry about placing those other ball bearings.

But why imagine that this is a valid analogy? Why imagine that we were objectively wrong on slavery before and we’re right about it now? Sure, we think we’ve got it figured out … but different societies in centuries past thought that they had it figured out too, but they came to very different conclusions. “Morality” is a moving target.

My ongoing challenge to those who imagine objective morality: resolve an as-yet-unresolved moral conundrum (abortion, stem cell research, etc.). They can’t do it, and yet they hold on to their claim. One of us is missing something. Am I phrasing the challenge correctly?

The definition we’re using for objective morality is “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” If these values exist and are reliably accessibly to almost all adults, we should all be singing from the same songbook. Since we aren’t, I think the problem is that we’re not using the same definition of “objective.”

Any thoughts?

The true measure of a man
is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
— Samuel Johnson

C.S. Lewis on Morality

Last updated on: March 20, 2019 at 7:49 am By Bob Seidensticker

C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a fundamental work in Christian apologetics. Many Christians point to this book as a turning point in their coming to faith. I’d like to respond to some of Lewis’s ideas.

Lewis says that there is a “real” right and wrong. If this were not so, how could we declare the Nazis wrong? Find a man who rejects this premise, Lewis says, and you will quickly detect the hypocrisy. He may break a promise to you, but as soon as you do the same, he declares that that’s not fair and falls back on a “real” rightness.

I don’t see it that way. “Right” and “wrong” come with an implied point of view. I’m happy to say that the Nazis were wrong, but when I do so, the word wrong is grounded in my point of view. (Kind of obvious, right? I mean, whose point of view would I be using but my own?)

That statement is simply a less clumsy version of, “The Nazis were wrong according to Bob.” There is neither a need to imagine nor justification for an absolute standard.

Lewis doesn’t use the term “objective morality” (he wrote about 70 years ago, which explains a few odd phrasings), but I believe this is what he means by “real right and wrong.” Let’s use William Lane Craig’s definition for objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

Despite Lewis’s claims, we needn’t imagine that morality is objectively true. We see this simply by looking in the dictionary. The definition of “morality” (or “right” or “wrong”) doesn’t require any sense of objective grounding or absoluteness.

Like Lewis, I insist that you keep your commitments to me, that you follow the basic rules of civility, and so on. When you don’t, I’m annoyed not because you violated an absolute law; you violate my law. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got, and that’s enough to explain the morality we see around us.

To the person who insists that objective morality exists, I say: show me. Take a vexing moral issue—abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, capital punishment, sex before marriage, torture, and so on—and show us the objectively true moral position. If you want to say that objective morality exists but it’s not reliably accessible, then what good is it? This kind of objective morality that looks nonexistent might as well be.

When we see a widespread sense of a shared morality within society, are we seeing universal moral truth? Or are we seeing universally held moral instincts? That latter, natural explanation does the job without the need to handwave objective moral truth into existence.

Evolution explains why part of morals is built-in. What we think of as proper morals has survival value. It’s not surprising that evolution would select for a moral instinct in social animals like humans. Evolution is often caricatured as being built on the principle “might makes right.” No, natural selection doesn’t favor might but fitness to the environment. A human tribe with trust and compassion might outcompete a more savage rival tribe without those traits.

We see this moral instinct in other animals. In a study of capuchin monkeys, for example, those given cucumber for completing a task complained when others got grapes (a preferred food) for the same task. These monkeys understood fairness just like a human. (An excellent video of the monkey’s reaction is here.)

As an aside, I think it’s a mistake to look down on other primates and their “less-developed” sense of morality. The same powerful brain that gives us honor and patriotism, justice and mercy, love and altruism, and other moral instincts that we’re proud of also gives us racism, self-pity, greed, resentment, hate, contempt, bitterness, jealousy, and all the others on the other side of the coin. No other species has perfected violence, slavery, cruelty, revenge, torture, and war to the extent that humans have.

If we exceed the morality of our primate cousins on the positive side, we also do so on the negative side. Let’s show a little humility.

Human morality is nicely explained by an instinctive and shared sense of the Golden Rule plus rules that are specific to each culture. The dictionary doesn’t demand any objective grounding in its definition of morality, and neither should we.

I believe in Christianity
as I believe that the sun has risen:
not only because I see it,
but because by it I see everything else.
— C. S. Lewis

Photo credit: ho visto nina volare

Gay Marriage Inevitable?

Last updated on: July 4, 2012 at 4:00 am By Bob Seidensticker

A century ago, America was immersed in social change. Some of the issues in the headlines during this period were women’s suffrage, the treatment of immigrants, prison and asylum reform, temperance and prohibition, racial inequality, child labor and compulsory elementary school education, women’s education and protection of women from workplace exploitation, equal pay for equal work, communism and utopian societies, unions and the labor movement, and pure food laws.

The social turmoil of the past makes today’s focus on gay marriage and abortion look almost inconsequential by comparison.

What’s especially interesting is Christianity’s role in some of these movements. Christians will point with justifiable pride to schools and hospitals build by churches or religious orders. The Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century pushed for corrections of many social ills—poverty and wealth inequality, alcoholism, poor schools, and more. Christians point to Rev. Martin Luther King’s work on civil rights and William Wilberforce’s Christianity-inspired work on ending slavery.

(This doesn’t sound much like the church today, commandeered as it is by conservative politics, but that’s another story.)

Same-sex marriage seems inevitable, just another step in the march of civil rights. Jennifer Roback Morse, president and founder of the Ruth Institute for promotion of heterosexual marriage and rejection of same-sex marriage, was recently asked if she feared being embarrassed by the seeming inevitability of same-sex marriage. She replied:

On the contrary, [same-sex marriage proponents] are the ones who are going to be embarrassed. They are the ones who are going to be looking around, looking for the exits, trying to pretend that it had nothing to do with them, that it wasn’t really their fault.

I am not the slightest bit worried about the judgment of history on me. This march-of-history argument bothers me a lot. … What they’re really saying is, “Stop thinking, stop using your judgment, just shut up and follow the crowd because the crowd is moving towards Nirvana and you need to just follow along.”

Let’s first acknowledge someone who could well be striving to do the right thing simply because it’s right, without concern for popularity or the social consequences. I would never argue that someone ought to abandon a principle because it has become a minority opinion or that it is ridiculed. If Dr. Morse sticks to her position solely because she thinks it’s right, and she’s not doing it because of (say) some political requirement or because her job depends on it, that’s great.

Nevertheless, the infamous 1963 statement from George Wallace comes to mind: “I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” That line came back to haunt him. To his credit, he apologized and rejected his former segregationist policies, but history will always see him as having chosen the wrong side of this issue.

Christianity has similarly scrambled to reposition itself after earlier errors. Christians often claim that modern science is built on a Christian foundation, ignoring the church’s rejection of science that didn’t fit its medieval beliefs (think Galileo). They take credit for society’s rejection of slavery, forgetting Southern preachers and their gold mine of Bible verses for ammunition. They reposition civil rights as an issue driven by Christians, ignoring the Ku Klux Klan and its burning cross symbol, biblical justification for laws against mixed-race marriage, and slavery support as the issue that created the Southern Baptist Convention.

Mohandas Gandhi had considerable experience as the underdog. He said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

(And then they claim that it was their idea all along!)

The same-sex marriage issue in the United States has almost advanced to “then you win” stage. Check back in two decades, and you’ll see Christians positioning the gay rights issue as one led by the church. They’ll mine history for liberal churches that took the lead (and flak) in ordaining openly gay clerics and speaking out in favor of gay rights.

If someone truly rejects same-sex marriage because their unbiased analysis shows it to be worse for society, great. But it is increasingly becoming clear how history will judge that position.

Truth never damages a cause that is just.
— Mohandas Gandhi

Photo credit: Spec-ta-cles

The first post in this series is here: Homosexuality v. Christianity
Marriage—Designed for Procreation?
Biblical Marriage: Not a Pretty Picture
Marriage vs. Religious Freedom
Confused Thinking About Homosexuality