October 21, 2021

October 21, 2021 By

Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce is the main writer on the blog, A Tippling Philosopher. His “About” page states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.” His words will be in blue; words of fellow atheist John Loftus in green, and those of eric in purple.

*****

Presently, I am responding to his article, “God Is Unfair – An Accident of History and Geography Syllogism” (10-21-21).

[I]f you were an Arab born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1996, you are incredibly unlikely to be a Hindu; indeed, it is almost certain that you will grow up being a Muslim. Likewise, you are unlikely to grow up with primal-indigenous beliefs of the Amazon growing up in a Lutheran community in Bible Belt USA. Parents, families, communities and societies so often define who we become and what we believe.

There are, and this is an indisputable fact, distinct concentrations of religions around the world. Christians may be concentrated in Europe, South and North America, and other pockets of colonial history. Islam prevails in the Middle East, North Africa, subcontinental India, and the islands of the Indian Ocean. Shintos primarily exist in Japan, Hindus in India and thereabouts.

The challenge for religionists is that most religions have it wrong. That is, religions are mutually exclusive. If I am a Muslim, I believe that the Muslim religion and revelation are correct, and a more accurate representation of reality than that which Jain believes (almost certainly) in India. And if access to heaven or hell, or nirvana, or whatever afterlife it is, or if access to God (whichever god this is), or if access to the fruits of belief in the correct god, depends upon believing in the correct god, then there is a lot on the line.

However, given the serious implications of belief, it seems rather bizarre that OmniGod would design, create and arrange the world (or allow the world to develop) in such a way that most people don’t rationally survey the smorgasbord of religious offerings and then, using logic and reason, assent to the correct one. Instead, they are overwhelmingly born into any given religion.

The belonging to a particular religion depends on where and when they were born.

And that might well be the component of their existence that informs the verdict of whether or not they access the good stuff or get condemned to the bad stuff. Perhaps for eternity.

…

It gets worse when you consider the vagaries of history. Imagine being born into Egyptian or Aboriginal Australian culture in 5,000 BCE, before the events of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Bible (i.e., Old and New Testaments). Now imagine that Christianity is the one true religion. How is it fair, when one has no control over when and where one is born, that one is born into one of those contexts? The person would have absolutely no chance of being able to access the correct divine revelation upon which rests the reward of heaven or the punishment of hell.

Okay, now back to me again. (As opposed to me.)

What I meant to know is if this syllogism works, or could be improved. It’s informal, language-wise:

But with most versions of God as we understand them, and given religious exclusivity, the scenario presented in this argument is as follows:

(1) Our beliefs will define whether we get the good stuff or don’t (heaven, hell, loving union with God, etc.).

(2) Our beliefs (globally) are overwhelmingly defined by when and where we are born.

(3) From (1) and (2), whether we get the good stuff or not is overwhelmingly defined by when and where we are to be born.

(4) We have no control over when and where we are to be born.

(5) Most people are born into the “wrong” places, where beliefs prevail that preclude them from getting the good stuff.

(6) From (3) – (5), most people, overwhelmingly, have no control over whether they get the good stuff (reward) or not (punishment).

(7) It is unfair to be punished or rewarded for things over which we have no control.

(8) God, being ultimately powerful and responsible, has control over everything – when and where we are to be born, the entire world into which we are to be born, who is to be rewarded and punished, and how, etc.

(9) God designs and creates a world in which it knowingly allows most people to overwhelmingly have no control over the good stuff or not.

(10) From (5), (8) and (9), God designs and creates a world in which most people are punished and, overwhelmingly, have control over their punishment.

(11) From (7) – (10), therefore, God is unfair.

***

[the material below comes from combox exchanges]

Joe DeCaro [Christian of some sort]: Although being born into a particular religion may depend on where one is born, staying in that faith, or finding another is up to the individual, not his birthplace, or even his family. * So how can someone in an Amazon rainforest realistically do this? Don’t look at things from your projected Christocentric point of view. Remember, your system might be wrong and Shintoism might hold, instead. * By learning to read and at length think critically, by means of education, becoming familiar with the options of what one can believe, and making his or her own choice, rather than just automatically being what is surrounding him and her.****

The belonging to a particular religion depends on where and when they were born.

If we apply this analysis to you and I, we see that it fits far more in your case: with your atheist worldview. England is one of the most secularized and post-Christian societies in the world, with a population of atheists at or around 50% or so (what a wonderful place: my ancestral homeland!). Some 2% of Christians there go to church regularly (I’ve heard that more Catholics do so than Anglicans now).

So you have simply adopted the prevailing view around you (more atheists and agnostics than anything else), just as someone in the jungles in a primitive tribe grows up animist, or someone in lower western Michigan (my state) tends to be a Calvinist, or the New Englander tends to be very theologically liberal (lots of, e.g., Unitarians) or agnostic. We are what we eat.

In my case, on the other hand, I started out with what might be said to be the prevailing religious view in America: a nominal, vague Protestantism (in my family’s case, Methodist): not talked about much and merely a private, subjective affair (very typically sociologically “Methodist”). I stopped going to church regularly at ten years old and did not again do so till I was 22. That was not the norm at all in the US in the late 60s and 70s. Then I converted to evangelical Protestantism in 1977, which was indeed a sociological trend at that time, but still by no means the majority of the population.

Then I became a Catholic at age 32. That’s in no way the norm in the US, which is about 25% Catholic. Then if you break down Catholics to those (like myself) who attend Mass every week and believe all that the Church teaches (including all the dreaded sexual stuff), it’s probably 10-15% of Catholics and so 2.5-4% of the entire population.

That makes me quite the nonconformist, as I always have been in my life after age 10. I have the belief of between 1 out of 40 people and 1 in 25 folks in the US. If I am walking down the street in the downtown of a large city, I’d have to work very hard to find someone with my same general observant, “orthodox” Catholic beliefs. But I could easily find a religious nominalist or even agnostic within the first three or four people I talked to.

Therefore, it comes down to the individual: to education, ability to think critically and compare the relative plausibility and rationality of competing belief-systems and acting accordingly. We have both become educated, made those choices, and written in defense of our views. In that way we are alike,. But if we do your present analysis and look to see who is more similar to what surrounds him, it’s you, far and away.

It follows that your present analysis (the recycled “outsider test of faith”) casts your own choice of belief in question far more than it does in my case. How ironic, huh?

***

This [argument in the OP] is nothing new. You’re simply recycling (as you must know) Jittery John Loftus’ “Outsider Test of Faith” argument. I’ve refuted that twice (of course with no counter-reply from him, as usual; not even the volcanic explosion for which he is infamous): * Reply to Atheist John Loftus’ “Outsider Test of Faith” Series [9-30-07] * Loftus Atheist Error #4: The Outsider Test for Faith [9-5-19]*So what does the self-respecting atheist do when a Christian refutes their argument (or — to be more neutral, puts up something clearly plausible as a possible counter-explanation)? He or she ignores it, with or without the put-downs and insults, waits a few months, and repeats the same argument again, as if repetition is an indicator of the strength of an argument. * This is not the outsider test for faith, as far as I can tell.That argument is something like “looked at from an external perspective, Christianity makes little sense”This argument is more classically theological, and is better summarized as a version of “it is unfair to send people to hell for not believing in Jesus, when they had no practical way to believe in Jesus.” * Yeah, I’m taking what Loftus’ book discusses in the beginning in order to take it’s off into a problem of evil argument. Loftus, on the other hand, uses this same basis to express his otf [outsider test of faith] from there. But that is an epistemological argument. I’m glad you recognise this even if David didn’t… * It’s simply a variant. The original argument is obviously construed as reflecting on God and His alleged abominable “unfairness.” All you do is make that more explicit (Loftus eventually gets to blaming God, too, just like all good atheists do). It’s nothing new. Atheists see the problem of evil behind every rock and do all they can to ignore their own far more thorny “problem of good.” * Of course he blames god. Who else do you think has ultimate control of the universe and designed and created it knowingly?[responding to eric]

You need not take my word for it. Listen to John Loftus himself, from his book, Why I Became an Atheist (revised version, 2012, 536 pages):

His chapter 3 is entitled, “The Outsider Test for Faith” (pp. 64-78). Loftus summarizes this argument of his as follows:

(1) Rational people in distinct geographical locations around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and defend a wide diversity of religious faiths due to their upbringing and shared cultural heritage.

(2) [T]o an overwhelming degree, one’s religious faith is causally dependent upon cultural conditions.

From (1) and (2) it follows that:

(3) It is highly likely that any given adopted religious faith is false.

Given these odds we need a test, or an objective standard, to help us determine if our inherited religious faith is true, so I propose that:

4) The best and probably the only way to test one’s adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism one uses to evaluate other religious faiths.

. . . I’m not arguing that religious faiths are completely culturally relative and therefore all false because of religious diversity. I’m merely arguing that believers should be very skeptical of their faith because of these cultural factors. . . . (p. 65)

If you were born in Saudi Arabia you would be a Sunni Muslim right now. . . . If you were born in the first century BCE in Israel, you’d adhere to the Jewish faith, and if you were born in Europe in 1200 CE, you’d be a Roman Catholic.. . . In short, we are overwhelmingly products of our times. (p. 66)

At the very minimum, believers should be willing to subject their faith to rigorous scrutiny by reading many of the best-recognized critiques of it. For instance, Christians should be willing to read this book of mine and others I’ve published. (p. 68)

[T]hey can no longer start out by believing that the Bible is true . . . nor can they trust their own anecdotal religious experiences, since such experiences are had by people of all religious faiths who differ about the cognitive content learned as the result of these experiences. (pp. 68-69)

If after you have investigated your religious faith with the presumption of skepticism, you find that it passes intellectual muster, you can have your religious faith. It’s that simple. If not, abandon it. (p. 71)

I proceed to refute this in my two papers linked above. In my longer reply to Jonathan [in the combox; seen above], one can see (basically) how it is done. It applies just as much to atheists as it does to anyone else, and so the argument essentially reduces to a “wash.”

You literally don’t get it. My argument above is not an epistemological argument in that same way. * In the past, when you actually still argued point-by-point with me, you yourself asserted that saying God is “unfair” in your analyses, is essentially the same as saying that He doesn’t exist. You summarized your viewpoint twice, as follows:

(1) God is OmniGod (classical theism: -potent, -scient, -benevolent).

(2) Part of OmniGod’s necessary characteristics would be fairness.

(3) God desires humanity to believe in him and to enter into a loving relationship with him.

(4) Belief isn’t just blind faith and requires some basis in evidence for what is to be believed (e.g., the Bible, being able to touch Jesus, personal revelation etc.).

(5) This evidence is unevenly distributed amongst the population over time and place (i.e., from 0% to 99.9% – e.g., perhaps Thomas).

(6) Unfair distribution of evidence (over which God has sovereign control) is unfair and favours certain people.

(7) Therefore God is either unfair (not OmniGod) or does not exist.

And a more compact version:

1. God is fair (as part of OmniGod theism).
2. We live in a world where humans appear to not have “equality of access to God” (EOAG).
3. If God was to be fair, he would give every human identical EOAG.
4. To give every human identical EOAG, God would have to create some sort of homogenous world.
5. Homogenous worlds are in some sense less perfect/good/desirable than the sort of world we live in.
6. Therefore, there is some good reason (skeptical theism) – a greater good – that God has created a world where humans appear to not have EOAG.
7. (Or god does not exist or is not OmniGod.)

From: “It Turns out the Whole Unfairness of Evidence Apportioning Boils down to “Free Will” “ (3-21-21). I have dealt with this “unfairness” business at least six times in the last seven months:

Debate w Atheists: Doubting Thomas & an “Unfair” God [3-17-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #17: Doubting Thomas & an “Unfair” God [3-17-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #18: Doubting Thomas & Evidence [3-18-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #19: Doubting Thomas & a “Mean God” [3-19-21]

Debate w Atheists on the Allegedly “Unfair” & “Hidden” God [3-21-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #20: Unfair Meanie God & Unfree Will [5-7-21]

Saying god is [not] fair is saying the OmniGod doesn’t exist.

Exactly my point. You end by asserting “God is unfair” (one of your favorite mantras). Of course, you don’t believe God exists, so in effect you are saying, “this unfairness that results from the way things are is proof that God doesn’t exist in the first place, because by definition He is supposedly ‘fair’ and benevolent.” You don’t think there is an “unfair” God up there somewhere. You think God is nonexistent, and you provide as one evidence of that, the supposed massive unfairness of the way things are.

As usual, I go right to your presuppositions, like a good socratic.

I was grappling with philosopher Ted Drange, using a variant of the same argument, in 2003. He wrote a good capsule summary of his position:

It is not that atheism is obviously true, but that ANB [argument from non-belief] (which very few people know about) is obviously sound. The concept is so very simple: If God were to exist then he would want people to be aware of the gospel message (what his son did for them) and could cause them to be aware of it. But most people on our planet do not even believe the gospel message. Hence, God does not exist.

See:

Atheist Argument From Non-Belief (vs. Dr. Ted Drange) [2-26-03]

Debate: Argument from Non-Belief (ANB) (vs. Steve Conifer) [2-26-03]

As usual you are already employing your increasingly frequent tactic of completely dismissing what I say without even grappling with it at all. In other words, you’re becoming more and more like Loftus, Seidensticker, and Madison every day. At least in the “old days” you would put up some kind of fight and counter-reply.

But to do so puts you in hot water with 90% of the commenters here and (I get it from the human perspective) you just don’t have the energy and will power to resist all that social pressure. It’s much easier to join in on the fun and play the game of “Armstrong [and by extension all Christian nonconformists posting here] is a clueless ignoramus who need not detain us even for five minutes.”

The argument in the OP is one big whopper. God judges based on what people know and what they do with that knowledge (see Romans 2 and other similar passages): not based on what they don’t know; supposedly punishing them for ignorance that they can’t help. This is simply atheist mythology. It plays well to the choir, but unfortunately for the argument it’s not Christian teaching. The only ones you could pin such a teaching on is the Calvinists, who are a tiny minority of Christianity now and always in the past (after they sprang into existence 1500 years after Christ).

***

All these arguments along these lines amount to the same thing: “God is an unfair meanie in fact; the Bible presents a fair, benevolent God; therefore the biblical God is a fairy tale, like leprechauns and unicorns.” In a broader sense, it’s merely an application of the good ol’ Problem of Evil (atheism’s favorite argument by far).

I think I show how the argument fails. I engaged in three long dialogues with Jonathan on this in the past. In charity, I’ll assume that’s why he isn’t engaging me now. But he generally doesn’t engage me at length anymore. I continue to engage his arguments.

I would say that reason and evidence (if only folks come across them and are willing to look for them) do clearly point to one true religion: Christianity. I’m not denying that at all. Atheists and radical secularists, Marxists, etc. do their best to suppress any such evidence by mocking and ignoring (processes that are literally constant on this forum and others like it) and even legally suppressing it, so it’s more difficult to get it out.

The difficulty (I agree it is one) is to account for large portions of the world who are not Christians and who have never heard the Christian saving Gospel of God becoming man and dying on our behalf, to make a way to go to heaven.

The biblical solution was for Christians to communicate the Gospel far and wide (the missionary impulse). We have miserably failed in that task and very few Christians are interested in doing that. Of course, God knew this would happen (that had been “Plan A” so to speak), and so He has a way (“Plan B”) that those who haven’t heard can also possibly be saved (therefore, He is “fair”).

Those who never heard the Gospel or learned of true Christianity (not the many counterfeit versions) are judged by what they truly know and how they act upon it. So, for example, if a person grasps and accepts the ethical precept of the Golden Rule, and consistently acts upon it, that counts for a great deal in God’s eyes, and He will respond accordingly and be merciful on Judgment Day.

On the other hand, Christians who know that and much more, and fail to act upon what they know; fail to love others, are — we have strong reason to believe, right from Jesus — in distinct danger of damnation. Just calling themselves Christian doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. In the Bible, the goal is always not just correct belief (orthodoxy) but also correct action based on those beliefs (orthopraxy).

Jonathan made it clear, by saying “Saying god is on fair is saying the OmniGod doesn’t exist” [I take it he meant “unfair” or “not fair” there].

Atheist arguments in the end always seek to disprove God’s existence; not to prove that He does exist, but is a terrible moron and a Beast (which would be the position of something like Satanism). Seeking to show He is “unfair” is simply a reductio ad absurdum technique, in order to seek to force the Christian to admit the alleged dilemma and give up belief in the benevolent God of Christian, biblical theism.

***

The outsider test for faith is not the problem of evil.

It’s asking whether a true outsider would derive Christianity from the evidence they see around them. Or would they derive Hinduism, or some
other religion. Do the facts of the world support the existence of souls that go on to heaven? Do they support the existence of souls that
reincarnate into other animals? Or do the facts not really support any soul hypothesis at all? Or do they support some other hypothesis?
That’s the outsider test.

It would be entirely possible for the world to be such a way that everyone, even aliens and other radical notions of ‘outsider’, agrees there is some entity behind it. In that case, entity-belief would pass the outsider test. And it wouldn’t matter how much evil or suffering there would be in the world, because they are two entirely different arguments.

And Loftus arguing both on different occasions doesn’t make them the same argument, any more than your argument for a localized flood is “simply a variant” on your argument that the Christmas star was Jupiter. Same person, different aspects but the same theology, two different arguments.

What you describe was indeed the first part of Jonathan’s argument in the OP.

The arguments differ in some secondary characteristics, but the bottom line (and that’s what I always focus on, as a socratic) is that God is unfair (itself a version of the Problem of Evil), which for the atheist is “evidence” that He doesn’t exist, just as Jonathan stated twice in one reply to me:

(7) Therefore God is either unfair (not OmniGod) or does not exist. . . .

7. (Or god does not exist or is not OmniGod.)

***

[replying to Joe DeCaro above] Atheists believe that:

1) God doesn’t exist, but that nevertheless,

2) they (at least the online anti-theist types like Jonathan) must be obsessed with Him 24-7 and become angry at how mean and terrible this non-entity supposedly is; how unjust the world with God, er, without God, is: so unfair and tyrannical.

Don’t try to make rational sense of it. It’s impossible. Their thoroughly inconsistent behavior gives them away every time.

***

As I said, the two [arguments: “outsider test of faith” and Jonathan’s current one] are not absolutely  identical. Much ado about nothing. They’re identical in the first part [which is what I was initially referring to] and then go off in different directions, like intersecting circles. Nearly all atheist arguments, however, have the goal of showing or at least heavily implying that God doesn’t exist. That’s my main focus: challenging the atheist as to the route they take to reach such a conclusion.

***

Photo credit: Darrenjsmith (1-30-11). Monks outside the temple at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Rato Dratsang, in India [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

***

Summary: Atheist JMS Pearce regurgitates his “Unfair God” argument, which is a variant of the “outsider test of belief” & “argument from non-belief” (failed) atheist arguments.

October 17, 2021

October 17, 2021 By

Former Christian Dr. David Nicholls wrote his deconversion story, entitled, Real Deconversion Story #19 – David N. (10-15-21). His words will be in green. I responded to one particular claim of his, and then PsiCop picked it up from there and counter-replied to my comment. His words will be in blue.

*****

I lost count of how many Christians I met who presented a sickly-sweet, caring facade that suddenly disappeared once they realized their faith was being challenged, and their initial demeanour was swiftly replaced with fierce hostility and resentment.

I imagine many unbelievers who have attempted to have a meaningful exchange with Christians on the internet have witnessed this disagreeable phenomenon. Such hostility by Christians is not only apparent if their beliefs are challenged, but is also demonstrated by an intolerance of anyone of whom they disapprove.

I respectfully submit that this is not a peculiar characteristic of Christians, but of all human beings (and now more than ever, as the culture becomes more and more immersed in postmodernist subjectivism). The above attitudes are precisely how many people here (with very few exceptions; I hasten to add that Jonathan himself is generally kind and friendly) treat any Christian who dares dissent from the atheist “orthodoxy.” . You can look through a few threads to quickly verify this. I simply block perpetual insulters, so I don’t see most of them. I don’t have time for juvenile mud fights. Life is too short. But the insults are legion and the hostility palpable.

The exact atheist analogy to the Christian having their faith challenged is to have their deconversion story scrutinized (as to various claims made therein that can be challenged). You wouldn’t believe how angry atheists get: more than a match for any Christian anger and insecurity you observe, believe me! And that is my point: the contempt of facing critique is very much a human characteristic: that cuts across all social groups, and it is unfair to pin that solely on Christians, or to act as if they are uniquely sensitive, thin-skinned, and defensive when critiqued.

Other atheists simply ignore any critiques. I’ve gone through that routine literally 144 times, with Bob Seidensticker (74 times), Dr. David Madison (46 times), and John Loftus (24 times): all very active online, criticizing Christianity and the Bible in a polemical and mocking fashion on a daily basis. But question anything they assert, and they flee to the hills, while sending a few pointed insults on their way up the hill . . .

It’s interesting you’d defend Christians by portraying them as no different from other humans.

I did no such thing. What I stated was: “I respectfully submit that this [oversensitivity to criticism] is not a peculiar characteristic of Christians, but of all human beings.” And that is a true statement. No one could know this better than I do, as an apologist, with the experience of over 1000 dialogues with folks of almost all major worldviews.

Dr. Nicholls was trying to imply that somehow Christians as a social group are uniquely prone to being defensive when criticism is offered, and hostile, if it continues to be offered. My counter-point was that this is, in fact, a general shortcoming of all human beings, across all social groups. People are generally insecure, and this includes not liking much at all being told we are wrong, even about what we believe. Again, as an apologist by trade, I know this firsthand, with massive experience; since we defend certain things as true and critique things that we believe are wrong. People (all people, speaking generally) don’t like to be told that they are wrong.

And I would add that in the case of Christians, often their insecurity derives from insufficient training in what they believe (catechesis) and particularly an ignorance concerning why they believe what they do (rational defense of faith, or apologetics). This makes them insecure, sensitive, and/or angry, because they can’t answer sincere, valid questions, and they should be able to in many cases, or at least get the inquirer a source that can answer.

Doesn’t Christianity present itself as a life-changing, and person-changing, belief system?

Absolutely, but this almost always isn’t an instant phenomenon (like, e.g., St. Paul). It’s a lifelong process. Overall, there is much transformation in serious Christian, from what was before. Many of us have been remarkably transformed out of a life of perpetual serious sin.

Shouldn’t following that faith make Christians less prone to hostility after being challenged, than other sorts of people? If not, why not? Does Christianity not have the power to make its followers better human beings than they would be without it? It has a divine origin, does it not? Was it not founded by a deity who actually walked the earth and supposedly established it? If Christians are, in fact, better than other kinds of human beings, what makes them just as hostile to challenge as others?

It should, ideally make them respond in a more “healthy” way, yes, but this would normally require being educated properly in the faith and knowing how to defend the propositions and ideas / doctrines involved. Christians don’t magically receive all knowledge. We have to learn things just as anyone else does.

What’s more … assuming their faith is unassailably and incontrovertibly true, why would any of them actually be hostile to it being challenged? Veracity is its own defense. It makes no sense to be angry, or hostile, toward someone who challenges something that’s absolutely true. To use a different analogue … if someone were to say the earth is flat, or that division by zero is possible, no one would be “hostile” to, or angered by, a challenge to those items of common knowledge. Such people are laughable and pathetic, but they don’t arouse hostility or anger. Just dismissal as deluded cranks.

I totally agree, but again, this requires prior knowledge. This is why I marvel at atheist hostility to Christians, which we see constantly in this very forum. Y’all ought to be ecstatic that you have an opportunity to preach your views to us outsiders, but for some reason it ain’t that way at all.

If you want to insist that Christians are no different from other kinds of people when their beliefs are challenged, you’re tacitly saying their belief system itself is no different from other human belief systems.

Not at all, because here we are comparing one aspect concerning one situation to an entire worldview and the results it produces. I would say that even secular sociology verifies that Christians are different (more charitable and more happy and fulfilled), in, for example, how much charity we give compared to atheists, and in the happier marriages (and even more fulfilling sex lives) in committed Christian couples:

Seidensticker Folly #1: Atheist vs. Christian Generosity [8-12-18]

Christian Sexual Views and Support from Sociology (Discussions About Christian Sexual Morality and Marriage with Atheists) [12-8-06]

Sociology: Devout Married Christians Have Best Sex [2-29-20]

That in turn means it’s just as uncertain as all those other belief systems. And that, by extension, diminishes its presumed veracity and even undermines its claimed divine origin.

Not at all, because you already have a false premise that you are burdened with, as explained above.

I’m not sure what the point would be of challenging someone’s deconversion (or even conversion) story. A person’s personal experience is what it is, and a deconversion story is a narrative of that. Are you suggesting atheists’ deconversion stories are lies? That when, for example, they say they were religious, but then became non-religious, for whatever reasons … are you saying the events they relate never happened? That certainly is possible. It’s very possible, in fact. But, if you make it your business to challenge these deconversion stories, on what grounds can you ever claim any of them are fraudulent? Do you have direct knowledge of the life of an atheist, to the point where you can show his/her deconversion story is false? That too is certainly possible* … but I doubt you could do that with every one of them you come across.

I’ve explained the perfectly sensible, justifiable reasoning employed in the idea of a Christian critiquing an atheist deconversion story in my article: Why Do I (or How DARE I?!) Critique Deconversions?

I virtually never accuse someone of lying or being deceitful. My main critique has to do with lack of knowledge and getting facts wrong, or logical fallacies, which are very common.

What you’re going to end up doing, is calling atheists liars and frauds — and it’s hard to imagine you could do that, and back that up with evidence, in more than a tiny handful of cases. That certainly will arouse hostility in them. Why would it not? What human being would want to be called a liar by you? I wonder if your game is to run around calling atheists liars and frauds, then sit back and call yourself a “victor for Christ” for having done so. That has to be a hollow victory.

Well, this is an incorrect description of what I do. I say they were incorrect, in error, lacked knowledge, were led astray, not that they are liars and frauds. Even with the three men I mentioned, who have literally ignored scores and scores of my critiques, I don’t say they are liars or even that they are insincere. I say they are misinformed, and intellectual cowards, lacking the courage of their convictions. The demonization of everyone who disagrees with us is a child’s game and the ploy of mental midgets.

If this is your way of reaffirming your faith in Christianity — a religion you’ve earlier implied isn’t anywhere near as true, nor as divine, as you’d probably like to think it is — then all I have to say is, good luck to you. Because you need a lot more help than anyone else can give you.

Now your “conclusion” is based on two prior false premises. The entire chain is only as good as the links in it.

One last thing: You appear to believe that making atheists hostile or angry also means they’re wrong.

I never claimed such an idiotic thing. What I have repeatedly noted is that atheists get as angry as anyone else when critiqued, and that most of those even among your “champions” run from constructive criticism and want no part of that or a serious, civil dialogue. They are certainly no better than Christians in this regard, and I would say they are worse.

That, however, is not true. Whether or not someone is angry doesn’t, by itself, make anything they say or believe untrue. Angry and hostile people can be, and often are, right about lots of things. Don’t confuse hostility or anger with error. To do so is illogical.

I totally agree!

* Personal testimonies, memoirs, etc. are always questionable, whether they’re offered by atheists or others. The examples of Mike Warnke and Lee Strobel attest to that, along with many others.

That’s not my position. I accept people at their word, as sincere, short of overwhelming reason to question their credibility and truthfulness (such as hostile witnesses in courts could establish). So it looks like you are merely projecting your own cynicism about people’s own reports on their own lives onto me, where it isn’t present.

And I take this position because Christianity (particularly St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13) commands us to believe the best of other people, not the worst.

PsiCop replied, but never really responded directly to my arguments. He became more and more harsh and accusatory (sadly: the same old story with so many atheists). Here’s the link if you want to read. Best wishes slogging through all that!

***

Photo credit: Dean Drobot [public domain / Shutterstock / The Epoch Times]

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Summary: Two atheists argued that atheists are far less sensitive to criticism than Christians. I disagreed, and contended that all human beings tend to dislike criticism.

***

October 5, 2021

October 5, 2021 By

This issue has come up again, after my critique of former Catholic and singer Audrey Assad raised a firestorm of protest among several leftish Catholics. It turns out that I retracted it and apologized, after she informed me that she had read a lot of apologetics, whereas my “primary theory” for her departure from Catholicism was a lack of reading of same. She graciously accepted my apology, yet these other Catholics (including one really well-known and widely published one) seem — oddly — quite unfamiliar with Jesus’ injunction to forgive others 70 x 7, and continue on with their slander of my name and reputation.

While I retracted my article because it had erroneous information (that I learned about after I wrote it, but which was too presumptuous for me to assume or posit), I made it clear on her Twitter page in several comments, that I was not renouncing the very principle of critiquing deconversion stories that are already “out there” in public. Nor did Audrey herself object to that, as she stated (“I have no qualms with people publicly commenting on my public confessions”).

Reading my loudmouthed, acid-tongued critics, one might get the impression that all I do with my time and in my life’s work (according to their jaded, inaccurate perception) is pick away at, condemn, totally misunderstand, have no sensitivity towards whatsoever, personally attack (without cause) folks who have been brought to an agonized place where they feel they must abandon Catholicism. I have written literally 3,850 online articles. Out of those, I can recall only five — not counting my retracted one — that were devoted to people who left the Catholic faith (Anne Rice, Rod Dreher, Damon Linker, Michael Boyle, and Mindy Selmys: all quite vocal in public about their departures). This is one out of every 770 articles that I write, or 0.13%. Nor does this “genre” play any part whatsoever in any of my fifty published books.

I have, however, done quite a few critiques of atheist deconversions out of Christianity, that can be seen in the second-to-last section on my Atheism & Agnosticism page.

But why do this at all (I can “hear” many people wondering)? How is it not personally “intrusive” or “abusive”? It’s a fair question, and I have explained it in the past, with regard to former Christians who become atheists. The same basic rationale is present in critiques of former Catholics: just substitute “Catholicism” for the wider category of “Christianity”.

The following was written to a former evangelical Protestant; now an atheist; someone I have met in person several times and even invited to my house:

One can listen and extend sympathy in one situation and critique ideas in another. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I simultaneously critique atheism and try to find common ground with atheists, too, in an attitude of respect and listening (exactly what I’m doing right now). When we got together at the restaurant, I spent a great deal of time listening: probably at least as much as I talked (especially with [name]); and there was only one o’ me and six o’ y’all.

If you and I were sitting somewhere and you said something like, “these are the reasons why I left Christianity; what really hurt me and caused me a lot of pain . . .” etc., then absolutely that would be a time for listening, friend to friend, man to man. Surely you would know that I would disagree with many of your reasons, but I would listen and hopefully be a friend.

But as an apologist, generally speaking (in the public arena), I have to defend Christianity, and that includes critiquing reasons given to reject Christianity. If those reasons are inadequate, then it is my task to show how and why they are, in order to prevent existing Christians from using them as reasons to leave (which is, of course, a large part of the reason for these deconversion stories: to persuade others to forsake Christianity as well).

In effect, these deconversion stories are the atheist equivalent of Christian preaching or evangelism. They are intended to persuade; to make the movement grow; to embolden others to “come out” and do the previously unthinkable thing: reject Christianity: very much in internal purpose like our own testimonies.

Therefore, we are equally entitled to critique them; since they are presented in public in the first place, not in private, man-to-man, eye-to-eye, sitting by the fire or in some restaurant talking about the problems of life, kids, work frustrations, etc. Public material (that attacks Christianity) is fair game. Surely you can’t object to that!

If you want to encourage listening in a friendship context, I’m all for that. If you want to say atheists should be treated charitably, I’ve always said that and try to model it as best I can. And I think you know that, having met me at least half a dozen times now.

If you say, on the other hand, that we can’t defend our beliefs against frontal attacks or critique the ideas in deconversion stories, I must respectfully disagree. But we do have to do that without attacking people. (9-16-15)

In a debate on this topic with several atheists, I wrote:

Anyone with an IQ above that of a pencil eraser understands that legalistic fundamentalist sects do not represent all of Christianity. That’s not even arguable. It’s perfectly self-evident.

In my critique of [Name]’s story, I chided her for seemingly equating the despotic form of Christianity she was raised in, with larger Christianity. In another paper, she was more nuanced, and I praised her for it (she wrote: “I didn’t blame Jesus or Christianity for the actions of these angry Christians”).

That’s all I’m calling for: rudimentary fairness in defining a thing and critiquing it, rather than the straw man fallacy.

***

I agree with you that conversion processes are extraordinarily complex. I don’t question that aspect in my recent critiques, and confine myself mainly to the question of, “is the reasoning in these stories sufficient to compel one to abandon Christianity?” Since that is the realm of ideas only, and not experience and social milieu and Kuhnian transformations, and all the rest, I can do one thing without disagreeing with you on the complexity of conversion processes. I’ve been through them myself, so I know firsthand.

I’m merely objecting to writing entire pieces about extreme, fundamentalist versions of Christianity (all three stories I have recently critiqued were of this same nature), and then implying again and again that these represented “Christianity” period. That’s the logical fallacy, and is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

What struck me is how they ditched that and then went right to atheism, as if there weren’t any alternative forms of Christianity that weren’t simple-minded, or abusive, or whatever. It seems to me that if someone is committed to Christianity in the first place, and finds that the brand they are in falls short, that they look for other better forms, before tossing the whole thing.

I can’t sit here as an apologist and let these stories go out uncritiqued, when they unfairly portray Christianity in such an unfavorable light, by equating it with its worst extremes.

It would be like me saying, “I rejected atheism because of Stalin and Mao.” You will certainly say, “hey! That’s not what atheism is about!”

***

I often delve into the fact that most of these people (indeed most Christians, period), don’t study apologetics, so as to know why they believe what they believe. Lacking that, they are then left wide open to rational criticisms. Since they can’t explain their Christian beliefs upon the first bit of questioning from non-Christians, they can easily be dissuaded from them — especially in environments that are hostile. And so we see exactly that happening on college campuses.

This is a major reason why I am an apologist. I try to help Christians synthesize reason and faith, so they don’t get taken in by fallacious and insufficient reasoning and intellectually inferior alternative worldviews.

***

There’s nothing whatever wrong with it. It is a public, respectful critique of public material that directly takes on a major world religion, of which I am an apologist.

The only objection to it would be from a postmodernist subjective (virtually relativist) viewpoint, whereby no one is allowed to criticize anyone else’s views at all because that is fallaciously thought to be a “personal attack.”

A person is not his or her views. (7-19-17)

And from a dialogue with two atheists:

Since these are public (else I wouldn’t know about them in the first place), it’s reasonable to assume that they are more than merely subjective / personal matters, that have no bearing on anyone else. No; it is assumed (it seems to me) that these stories are thought to offer rationales of various sorts for others to also become atheists or to be more confirmed in their own atheism. This being the case, since they are public critiques of Christianity (hence, fair game for public criticism), as a Christian (Catholic) apologist, I have a few thoughts in counter-reply.

I am not questioning the sincerity of these persons or the truthfulness of their self-reports, or any anguish that they went through. I accept their words at face value. I’m not arguing that they are terrible, evil people (that’s a child’s game). My sole interest is in showing if and where certain portions of these deconversion stories contain fallacious or non-factual elements: where they fail to make a point against Christianity (what Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga calls “defeating the defeaters”), or misrepresent (usually unwittingly) Christianity as a whole, or the Bible, etc.

Agree or disagree, that is my motivation. (7-23-17)

And yet another discussion with one atheist:

I’ve been catching all kinds of hell lately from many atheists for having the audacity to critique atheist deconversion stories as inadequate arguments against Christianity. You’d think I had attacked mom or apple pie or summer days at the lake, to see all the fuss and stink.

But we see that — as always — it’s open season on Christian conversion stories. Why would that be? Is it that we’re so relentlessly unreasonable and y’all are invariably so reasoned (and love science, etc., like we supposedly don’t), so that a critique from us of your stuff is impossible beforehand, by the nature of the case? :-)

I’m all for atheists critiquing our arguments in our conversion accounts (insofar as they are there). I just marvel at the thin skin of so many atheists when we deign to do the same thing back. (7-24-17)

Here’s an exchange with an agnostic, with whom I am on quite friendly terms:

The deconvert who takes the trouble to publicly write about their reasons for leaving Christianity, is making the claim, “Christianity [and the Bible] are false because of d, e, f , . . .”

In other words, if they want to “just not believe” and go about their business and not pester Christians for their beliefs, or in effect, “preach atheism” then the question to be asked is, “why are they making this a public issue and making claims that can now be examined in the public arena of ideas and inquiry?” If they aren’t willing to engage on that stage, then why did they write their story? Just for the atheist choir?

If they write about it in public, then they are in effect implying that they are willing to engage one who disagrees. Yet when I come around and disagree, it’s 90% rank hostility for even daring to think of doing such an outrageous thing (with some of the more well-known atheists, like John Loftus, getting the most angry and out-of-control offended). It makes no sense.

If you want to be a blissfully happy atheist who can’t defend why you are one (just like most Christians can’t defend their beliefs, either: which is why I do what I do), then go do it and be silent. But if you “come out and fight,” don’t urinate your pants and moan if an apologist like me attempts to be a gadfly and puncture this bubble of reality that you have constructed.

All I’m doing as an apologist is taking a critical look at d, e, f, and any other reasons given, to see if they can stand up to scrutiny. So far, in my opinion, with over 25 or so such analyses done, I’ve yet to find a former Christian whose reasons d-f, etc. could stand up to and withstand critique. That is my experience. I can’t change it. I don’t claim that it’s universal. But it is a striking unanimity of theological ignorance and straw men.

Therefore, I conclude that the given rational reasons in these particular cases, for rejecting Christianity, fail.

In order to overcome those arguments of mine, the atheist or agnostic has to show how my counter-reasoning goes astray. So far, few if any want to do that. (5-2-19)

From my article, Cordial Dialogue with a Deconvert on Deconversion (10-7-19):

I come along — the Christian apologist — turn the tables, and show that any given deconversion story (including one I found on your site) does not in fact provide a plausible rationale for rejecting Christianity. At best, the typical one (from the ubiquitous former fundamentalist) shows how fundamentalism is unworthy of belief. But that’s like saying that a rejection of the Detroit Lions is a rejection of the NFL or football, period.

***

[I]t is posted in a social setting where the overall thrust and goal is to discredit Christianity. This is patently obvious. Such stories provide the backdrop and framework for those who are struggling or on the fence or doubting as Christians, to start thinking in a different way, because “we are what we eat.”

The deconversion story serves precisely the same “exhorting” or “confirming” function in atheist circles that the Christian testimony (we used to jokingly refer to them as “testiphonies”) does in Christian circles. We hear those (in either camp) and think, “hey, I’m not the only one who thinks and feels like that!”).

The deconversion story remains one piece in the overall atheist agenda (especially in online sites like yours) to undermine and discredit Christianity as untrue and harmful.

Thus, it makes perfect sense for  the defender of Christianity to point out what we believe are the inadequacies and glaring logical and factual shortcomings of any given such story. Why should this surprise you?

And from Part II (10-9-19):

I am responding (with these deconversions) to what is written, not what is not written (which is only common sense). There may be all the submitted reasons in the world for why they changed their view, but I can only respond to what I see. And in this case, and all others so far in such analyses, I have not seen sufficient reason to reject all of Christianity.

You guys are always demanding reasons from us. I’m simply doing the same thing back. And it’s universally disliked, believe me.

To critique another’s reasoning is not to make a personal attack. I could see how it might feel that way, but it is not, because a person is not the same as his or her beliefs. They are two different things. I’m disagreeing with you now, but I am not attacking you personally to the slightest degree.

The above, then, are some of the many reasons why I think critiquing a deconversion is perfectly permissible and even a necessary part of apologetics. People may disagree in good faith, but what they can’t do is assert one or both of the following about me:

  1. That I have no thought-through reasons for believing why I do about this, or
  2. That I am motivated by ill will and malice and hostility and contempt, rather than by a Christian concern for souls and their well-being.

And of course it would be nice to actually have normal, mature conversations with all (or any of) these critics of mine. I’m all for that. You disagree with me? Come talk to me (and get the chip off your shoulder or it’ll be a futile effort). Let’s have a meeting of minds and souls. But that virtually never happens. My most vocal, vehement critics almost always prefer getting into an echo chamber with like-minded folks and gossiping and slandering. Heaven forbid that my side is ever fairly aired or interacted with!

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Photo credit: Zorba the Geek (4-7-17). Broken stained glass window in St Andrew’s, Langford. [Geograph / CC BY-SA 2.0 license]

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Summary: I explain the various reasons why I feel that it is perfectly ethical and necessary as part of apologetics, to critique deconversion stories (of former Christians or Catholics).

October 1, 2021

October 1, 2021 By

Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce is the main writer on the blog, A Tippling Philosopher. His “About” page states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.” His words will be in blue.

*****

Jonathan managed to scrounge up a desperate pseudo-pseudo-quasi-“reply” [choke] to my most recent paper on Noah’s Flood with passing references to my earlier primary one: Local Mesopotamian Flood: An Apologia. He completely ignored another preliminary paper (Local Flood & Atheist Ignorance of Christian Thought), that dealt with biblical language, and why virtually all Christians scholars believe in a local, not a universal Flood.

It’s a case study of intellectual evasion and cowardice and relentless unwillingness to engage point-by-point, with the usual mockery and condescension that we have come to know and love from almost all atheists (at least of the anti-theist variety) who interact online with Christians at all. He calls his “reply” God, Floods, Miracles and Evidence (10-1-21).

It’s an argument about physical evidence, and, of course, there is no physical evidence for it – whether global or regional. 

It’s also an argument from analogy, dealing with the science of what is possible and what could have been entailed in Noah’s Flood. Part of Jonathan’s argument is that even a local Flood, such as what I proposed, is not possible according to the laws of science and specifically of the behavior and characteristics of water, storm systems, etc. Therefore, if I show that it is indeed possible, his counter-argument is defeated. In that respect, it is not simply about literal physical evidence. But there actually is some of that (that Jonathan ignored or never read: per his usual sloppy and unsystematic modus operandi.

The scientific article that I mostly relied on, from geologist Carol A. Hill, was “Qualitative Hydrology of Noah’s Flood”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (Volume 58, Number 2, June 2006). She maintained:

At Shuruppak, and also at Uruk, the last Jemdet Nasr remains are separated from the subsequent Early Dynastic I Period by clean, water-lain clay deposited by a flood. This clay is nearly five feet thick at Uruk [60] and two feet thick at Shuruppak. [61] Since the Sumerian King List mentions that Noah (Ziusudra) lived in Shuruppak (today the archaeological mound of Fara), and since Noah is believed to have lived during the Jemdet Nasr Period, [62] then these sediments date from the right time and place and may be deposits left by Noah’s Flood. [c. 2900 BC]

A popular misconception is that a great inundation such as Noah’s Flood should have left a widespread layer of sediment all over Mesopotamia. If flood deposits occur at Shuruppak (Fara), then why not at nearby Kish? Why have no flood deposits been found at Ur that correspond to Noah’s Flood, and why in the city-mound of Ur do some pits contain thick flood deposits while other pits nearby contain no flood deposits?

This presumed problematic situation is completely understandable to hydrologists—in fact, it is what they expect. Floods erode sediment as well as deposit sediment. Rivers in vegetated terrain (like in northern Mesopotamia) are capable of eroding less sediment than in unvegetated, clay-silt terrain (like in southern Mesopotamia). Rivers may scour and down cut sediment along steep gradients, whereas they may deposit sediment in shallow-gradient situations. Or, sediment left from the waters of one flood may be removed by erosion in a later flood. Most Mesopotamian cities were located close to former river channels or canals since commerce and transportation depended on these waterways.

Apologist Dave Armstrong was complaining that I wasn’t interacting with his apologia for a localised flood. So I half-read it. I say half because I got halfway down and couldn’t take any more. I declared, “I literally don’t understand how someone can rationally assent to the claim.”

There you have it folks. He not only refused to grapple with my paper (or it’s preliminary / introductory precursor) point-by-point, he also didn’t even read the whole thing. By his own estimate he only read “half” of it. This is not the response of one who is confident of his own positions, or who has a robust courage of his convictions. It’s sophistry and special pleading, obscurantism and obfuscation.

His first piece (linked above) essentially boils down to “God did a miracle” (we’ll get onto this in a bit) as well as, “but just in case he didn’t, here’s a bunch of modeling and ‘evidence’ to suggest it could well be natural”. He’s eating his cake and keeping it, too.

This is a gross caricature of my thought (what else is new with Jonathan?). Christian thinking with regard to the relationship of God, natural laws, and miracles is far more sophisticated than Jonathan thinks. I wrote:

Sometimes in the Bible God is described as having caused something that is actually natural. In these cases, the meaning would be that God “upholds” creation and/or caused the origin of natural laws in the first place, which now govern natural events, short of the rare miraculous divine intervention with a miracle. Other times it is purely miraculous . . .

Then I cited Carol Hill:

One does not have to invoke the notion of the suspension or violation of natural laws in “nature miracles.” Divine action can simply be understood as higher-order laws (God’s ultimate purpose) working seamlessly with lower order laws (God’s physical laws). Is it any less a miracle because it can be explained by natural processes? This is the nature of “nature miracles”: to have the timely intervention of God into natural processes.

One of the best examples of a “nature miracle” that comes to mind is Jesus rebuking the winds and sea (Matt. 8:23–26). In Matt. 8:26, the calming of the winds and sea could be explained by a sudden change of barometric pressure—which was probably the case. But it was God who caused this change to take place exactly when Christ commanded the waves and wind to be still.

The argument I made, accordingly, can and should be construed as a purely natural one, insofar as scientific analysis is brought to bear. Christians simply refuse to exclude God as the creator and upholder of the laws of nature that are capable of being observed and more deeply understood via the scientific method.

And when he does try to present natural evidence, he presents someone saying it might just about be done if x, y, z happened and there is a 40-day model of 2.75 inches of rain per hour and tapering off to “just” 1 inch per hour every hour for the next 110 days. Solid.

Yeah, as I said, I stopped reading after that.

That’s not interaction with an exceedingly nuanced and detailed argument that involved far, far more than the above. It’s selective presentation, mockery, and dismissal.

It also inaccurately reports what Dr. Alan Hill argued as to the rate of rainfall. It wasn’t 2.75 inches per hour for all forty days. It was a “peak” of 2.75 inches, then gradually “tapering” to one inch per hour at 40 days. As Figure 3A on page 135 shows, it’s actually two inches, thirty days in, gradually going down to one inch by forty days. Dr. Hill stated “in forty days”: meaning in context, “by forty days.” It then continues to drop, whereas Jonathan mischaracterized it as “1 inch per hour every hour for the next 110 days.” The graph in Figure 3A shows how this is false. The rate decreases to one-half inch by about 85 days and one-quarter inch by 110 days.

Dr. Hill notes: “Such rainfall rates are not unreasonable for large hurricanes.” Indeed, we can match and exceed them (for a 24-hour period) in examining the greatest historical rates of rainfall (since it has been recorded). Dr. Hill’s peak rate is 66 inches in 24 hours. That was surpassed on January 7-8, 1966, when 71.8 inches of rain fell in 24 hours on Reunion Island: approximately 670 kilometers east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, during Tropical Cyclone Denise. Therefore, we know it is possible to rain that much in a day. But that’s only the “peak” figure, that only lasts a few days at most in Hill’s mathematical model.

The world record for a month’s rainfall is 366 inches [30.5 feet] at Cherrapunji, Meghalaya, India in July 1861. That’s 0.49 inches per day, which matches over a month’s time, Dr. Hill’s calculation for the rate of rain at Day 85 of the Flood. Now, granted, we can’t match the figure for the entire 150 days, but we can get close enough to render it at least thinkable or possible to conceive of the Ultimate Superstorm: Noah’s Flood. We only have an accurate record of global weather since 1880. We can’t rule out much larger storms during all of history before that. 141 years of weather-keeping is so low of a percentage of the world’s age (4.543 billion years) that it actually comes out to 0% in calculations. It’s 32.23 million times more time in earth’s history than the vanishingly tiny and miniscule length of time we have been recording weather.

Consequently, there are huge meteorological and climatological / catastrophic events that we know of such as the Altai flood in Siberia, from 12-15,000 years ago, the Black Sea Deluge (about 5600 BC), the Missoula floods in northwest United States, from 13-15,000 years ago, the Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago, and the Bonneville flood in Utah and Idaho (14,500 years ago). One article on prehistoric “monster hurricanes” stated:

A new record of sediment deposits from Cape Cod, Mass., show evidence that 23 severe hurricanes hit New England between the years 250 and 1150, the equivalent of a severe storm about once every 40 years on average. Many of these hurricanes were likely more intense than any that have hit the area in recorded history, . . .

There is even a field of study called Paleotempestology, which is “the study of past tropical cyclone activity by means of geological proxies as well as historical documentary records.”

It stands to reason that in all these millions and billions of years of earth history, that something like Noah’s Flood was entirely possible and did indeed happen.

You are absolutely right. I did misread that and therefore mischaracterise his figures to some extent. But it makes absolutely no difference at all. I will try and respond to this in greater detail when I’m not just about to go to bed…

However, one of the main problems is the fact that Hill and yourself are comparing record statistics over a tiny area of concentrated rain during a cyclone that had limited time, area and scope and extending that to a massive geographical region over a huge amount of time. This is just simply impossible. It is literally impossible. There is more, to boot, but I am not sure I have the energy. We shall see.

***

He relies heavily on Alan Hill’s “Quantitative Hydrology of Noah’s Flood”. 

That’s one of my two main sources, yes. At least he got that right.

However, even the author of this calculation admits God ‘having performed a “nature miracle”‘ (p. 130). 

The notion of “nature miracle” was explained above by his wife.

He also admits, “First, this model, and the nature of the assumptions it embraces, are crude at best” and “we are unable to realistically determine what actually happened to any level of detail during Noah’s Flood” (p. 131).

Of course: just as would be the case with virtually any other scientific analysis of events estimated to have occurred some 4,900 years ago. Any good argument doesn’t claim more for itself than is warranted. Such straightforward and realistic honesty doesn’t disqualify his and his wife’s articles as serious, worthy scientific analyses: not at all of the anti-intellectual, fundamentalist type that Jonathan and many atheists used to be part of (and which still highly influences their thinking in their deeply flawed understanding of Christianity).

The piece relies on an incredibly unrealistic storm surge that lasts for an inordinate amount of time, relying on a whole set of variables. Due to the “paper’s” complete lack of citation, I imagine no one takes this stuff seriously.

Note the mocking dismissal, which (again) is not any attempt at seriously interacting with the argument. He’s so out to sea he doesn’t even seem to realize that the main component of my argument is Carol Hill’s presentation, not Alan Hill’s. Carol Hill isn’t even mentioned! That’s how far he is from actually interacting with and grappling with my actual overall argument. He picks and chooses what he thinks will be best for his purposes of sophistry and mere mockery.

As to a supposed “complete lack of citation”, this is untrue. Anyone can look at the 12-page presentation (complete with very complex mathematical calculations), go to the end, and observe 15 citations. Three are from two articles by his geologist wife. The rest, as far as I can tell, are completely secular scientific citations. Carol Hill’s article, that Jonathan ignores, is copiously footnoted, with 74 footnotes.

So here we have the spectacle of Jonathan MS Pearce, who doesn’t seem to have earned a doctorate even in philosophy (I’ve never been able to ascertain what the case is there, and he got angry about it when I asked him one time), in effect lecturing a geologist and physicist about true science, as if they are quacks and frauds. Near the end of his farcical “reply” Jonathan takes another shot at Dr. Hill:

It’s just, you know, for me, I need good rational evidence. And that, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t include Alan E. Hill and his hydrological winguttery.

“Winguttery” is, I confess, a new term for me. I couldn’t find it in any online dictionary, but it seems to be a term of abject scorn, used mostly by leftish and skeptical-type folks, looking for a colorful insult. Ad hominem, straw men, non sequiturs, switching topics, ignoring, sophistry,  anything at all used in the service of avoiding serious interaction at all costs with a serious Christian and scientific argument: setting forth views he disagrees with, is Jonathan’s goal. It’s pathetic and a disgrace.

In fact, Alan Hill was formerly a Distinguished Scientist of the Institute For Quantum Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University. He has spent some forty years inventing and developing lasers of the Star Wars variety, and in the early 1960s, while at the University of Michigan, Alan and co-workers on a study, were the first to discover nonlinear optics and second-harmonic generation. Wikipedia describes the latter discovery:

Second-harmonic generation was first demonstrated by Peter Franken, A. E. Hill, C. W. Peters, and G. Weinreich at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1961.[7] The demonstration was made possible by the invention of the laser, which created the required high intensity coherent light. They focused a ruby laser with a wavelength of 694 nm into a quartz sample. They sent the output light through a spectrometer, recording the spectrum on photographic paper, which indicated the production of light at 347 nm. Famously, when published in the journal Physical Review Letters,[7] the copy editor mistook the dim spot (at 347 nm) on the photographic paper as a speck of dirt and removed it from the publication.[8] The formulation of SHG was initially described by N. Bloembergen and P. S. Pershan at Harvard in 1962.[9] In their extensive evaluation of Maxwell’s equations at the planar interface between a linear and nonlinear medium, several rules for the interaction of light in non-linear mediums were elucidated.

Here is the article that Dr. Hill contributed to: “Generation of Optical Harmonics” (P. A. Franken, A. E. Hill, C. W. Peters, and G. Weinreich; Physical Review Letters, 7, 118 – Published 15 August 1961). This highly significant and influential article has been cited by no less than 4,392 scientists.

No doubt, Jonathan will interact point-by-point with that, too, and show us all how he is the real, bona fide scientist. Yes, I’m sure (but hey, I won’t be holding my breath waiting. I value my life). Dr. Alan Hill is quite obviously not a nutcase or some fundamentalist pretender. This is a real scientist, and Pearce doesn’t even pretend to overthrow his calculations.

He knows when he is over his head. And so he childishly mocks and lies about a supposed lack of citations (about a scientist whose most famous article has been cited 4,392 times), to try to cover it up. If he insists on embarrassing himself with emptyheaded pseudo-academic displays like this, I will be more than happy to host such novelties on my blog.

The main issue appears to be his reliance on a fairly arbitrary 40-mile conduit into the Persian Gulf  as being the only place where the water can escape. Of course, Mesopotamia is BIG and VERY FLAT. In fact, there is a 1200-odd km southern flatness where, you know, an absolute deluge of water could flow and no storm surge could keep it in.

Again, this is not a comprehensive, point-by-point attempted refutation of the actual argumentation. It is a caricatured, cynical summary of arguments and a mere dismissal. It’s sophistry. The Mesopotamian floodplain being “VERY FLAT” is actually part and parcel of the overall argument, rightly understood and comprehended. But this was in Carol Hill’s article that Jonathan (conveniently) makes no note of, whatever:

The Mesopotamian alluvial plain is one of the flattest places on earth. The surface of the plain 240 miles (400 km) inland from the head of the Gulf is less than 60 feet (20 m) above sea level, [25] and at An Nasiriyah, the water level of the Euphrates is only eight feet (<3 m) above sea level, even though the river still has to cover a distance of more than 95 miles to Basra (Fig. 1). Once As Samawah and Al ‘Amarah are passed, the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers are lost in an immense marshland-lake region (Fig. 1), where water flows very slowly to the Persian Gulf. During spring this whole region—from the Euphrates east to the Tigris—can become severely inundated. [26] The level surface of the plain and shallow river beds of the Euphrates and Tigris, which offer the right conditions for irrigation, [27] can also cause immediate, widespread flooding. And, however difficult it is to get water to the land via irrigation canals, it is just as difficult to get it off the land when it floods. [28] Before any dams were built (before ~1920), about two-thirds of the whole area of southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia) could be underwater in the flood season from March to August. [29] . . .

There are historical references to floods in Mesopotamia in the tenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries BC and seventh and eighth centuries AD. 33 From AD 762–1906, thirty major floods were recorded in and around Baghdad. [34]

Footnotes

25 J. N. Postgate, Early Mesopotamia—Society and Economy at the Dawn
of History (London: Routledge, 1992), 180.

26 M. C. DeGraeve, The Ships of the Ancient Near East (c. 2000–500 BC)
(Lewen: Department Orientalistich, 1981), 8.

27 C. A. Hill, “A Time and Place for Noah,” Perspectives on Science and
Christian Faith 53, no. 1 (2001): 28.

28 Postgate, Early Mesopotamia, 180.

29 Semple, “The Regional Geography of Turkey,” 346.

30 H. F. Vos, Beginnings in Bible Archaeology (Chicago: Moody Press,
1973), 13; DeGraeve, The Ships of the Ancient Near East, 11.

31 S. N. Kramer, “Reflections on the Mesopotamian Flood: The Cuneiform Data New and Old,” Expedition 9, no. 4 (1967): 16.

32 K. Smith and R. Ward, Floods: Physical Processes and Human Impacts
(New York: John Wiley, 1998), 10.

33 Kramer, “Reflections on the Mesopotamian Flood,” 16.

34 Harza Engineering, Hydrological Survey of Iraq (Baghdad: Ministry
of Agriculture, Government of Iraq, 1963), 3–2, 3–3.

And, before I go on, none of Armstrong’s piece or the sources overcome the problems I set out in my own piece, particularly the theological issues (A regional flood is a retribution on all of humanity? How does this fit with Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel etc.?) and the idea that, if this was a localised flood, then anyone could have just, you know, escaped the region or run up a taller hill… I mean, what proportion of all of humanity that is supposedly evil and requires punishment lives on this floodplain? None of this makes nay sense of the Hebrew Bible.

It’s all so desperate.

This sort of (silly, hackneyed) objection was, of course, dealt with in my article, Local Flood & Atheist Ignorance of Christian Thought), that he has chosen to ignore, now, and when I announced it on his blog, almost three months ago now.

Let’s look at world records to quickly check Hill’s thesis:

Wettest place on earth by year: 1041 inches over 365 days = 2.85 inches A DAY = 0.1 inches per hour (your figures require 27.5 times that).
Wettest place on earth by month: 370 inches over 31 days = 11.9 inches per day = 0.49 inches per hour (your figures require over 5 times that).

Here again, as noted above, Jonathan distorts what Dr. Alan Hill actually argued. I think he had such derision for it that his mind simply didn’t process the words properly. That’s what extreme bias does. In both calculations above, he is using the figure of 2.75 inches per hour over the entire period in question, that was in actuality, only a short-term peak figure, and comparing that to the wettest place on earth by year and month. It’s invalid, because he’s using incorrect figures. Noah’s Flood still has a lot more water, but it’s comparatively much less than it would be, using these inaccurate numbers.

He’s also completely neglecting in his equation, as I noted last time, additional water from snow melting off of the surrounding mountains, from the abundant springs in the area, and from surging seawater. Genesis 8:2 refers to “the fountains of the deep” in conjunction with the Flood: presumably a reference to these springs.

You would be demanding, with ALL SORTS of extra variables in place (such that the water doesn’t just rush away into that big flat desert area to the south, there), at least 2046 inches per month, and then for an extra ten days, and then a whole big bunch more thereafter. That is over double the rate seen in one month than over one year in the single wettest place – a village.

It gets worse, though, because those rainfall stats I provided are for a tiny place, not a whole region. So for that amount of rain to fall over a behemoth region is – well – impossible. Actually impossible. There is simply not that amount of rain possible in the world, and no example of this ever having happened. The atmosphere cannot collect that. For clouds to hold that much rain and dump it over THE ENTIRETY of Mesopotamia is utterly ridiculous.

Just think about it

And I’m not convinced it would not flow away too quickly due to…storm surges.

That’s all fine and dandy, but doesn’t deal with the dual arguments of husband and wife (physicist and geologist) Alan and Carol Hill: laid out in the greatest detail. If Jonathan wasn’t merely firing blanks or throwing manure pies, desperately hoping some of it will stick, and hoping that no one will notice his unsavory and unworthy tactics, he would certainly attempt (in his allegedly oh-so-superior academic excellence) a serious systematic interaction and refutation. But he ain’t interested. All he cares about is maintaining the illusion that all Christians are stupid and anti-science.

His “paper” is…

a) demanding things that have never even remotely been experienced in the history of the planet, and
b) demanding things that are still physically impossible.

He replied “Nonsense. There have been several floods of the magnitude that my model posits: from storm surges, tidal waves, etc. And there have been instances of a great deal of water remaining for months.”

Yeah, but no. Not to that degree. Ever.

That was the purpose of my last article: Pearce’s Potshots #47: Mockery of a Local Flood (+ Striking Analogies Between the Biblical Flood and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927). That was but one example of a flood with remarkable similarities to the biblical description of Noah’s Flood (with an even longer sustained rain and longer overall drying time) and to my proposed local model in Mesopotamia. Jonathan dismisses it with an eight-word “sentence.” That’s not rational dialogue, folks. It’s just . . . silly. Don’t fall for this crap. It’s not a serious reply at all, and as far from a “refutation” as east is from west.

And he seems to have reduced his flood theory scope over time so now this really, really is a local flood: “It’s only the floodplain of Mesopotamia, and it doesn’t have to be all that deep.“

Wow. Quite the climbdown.

There is no “reduced” scope or “climbdown.” This has been my view for (at the very least) almost 40 years. I wrote in a related paper, dated 5-25-04 (that’s over 17 years ago):

I formed my view on this during the early 80s due largely to Bernard Ramm’s book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1954). He pointed out things like the 18 layers of forests on top of each other in Yellowstone Park, which blows away the young earth and flood geology alike.

As for a universal flood (if by that one means that the waters literally covered the entire earth), the Bible doesn’t require this. The theory also suffers from several serious flaws having to do with what would happen with that much water around, even covering the mountains.

So, nice try at misrepresenting my views (in the effort to — you guessed it! — make me look silly), but no cigar.

I suggest you go and read Genesis 7-9 and see whether the Bible is talking about the Mesopotamian floodplain, and not at all that deep. “It doesn’t have to be all that deep” also happened to kill every human being and animal, including swarming insects. All dead. From a floodplain flood.

I suggest Mr. Science and Mr. Bible go and read my paper, Local Flood & Atheist Ignorance of Christian Thought), that deals with all this in infinitely more detail than Jonathan’s self-serving tidbits of tedium.

I could go on looking at Armstrong’s apologetics but it’s a waste of time, it really is. 

Yet another elegant evasion, that fools no one but himself and his sycophant, clonish, groupthinking followers.

But perhaps this is a “win” of sorts. He is moving goalposts because evidence has actually forced him to admit a smaller and smaller scope for the huge inundation so that perhaps we will get to some real local flood that he admits was the foundation of a mythologised biblical account like, you know, we see in every other culture of the world.

Nice bit of “wishful mythologizing” there.

He’s written another piece on how a Mississippi flood can be used as evidence for such a flood. That reasoning, too, was erroneous for a whole bunch of reasons. A 30ft flood that took a year to subside (without having a massive flat desert to the south). I think it, at peak, rained 15 inches in 18 hours, not remotely near 2.75 inches every hour for 40 days, and then another 1 inch every hour for 110 days…

This article absolutely refuted Jonathan’s idiotic claims about proposed analogous floods:  “Not to that degree. Ever” and “No – not for that amount of time and over that area. There have not.” So he uses his usual vacuous method: 3-4 sentences of hyper-biased, jaded “summary” followed by the breezy dismissal. “How the mighty have fallen.”

Perhaps my favorite Armstrong quote is this: “Then we wouldn’t have the wonderful story, laden with spiritual meaning. Obviously, he did what God told him to do. If one believes in God, and this God communicates, the follower listens and obeys.”

Nothing says wonderful story and spiritual meaning like human and animal genocide. Oh yeah, hmm mmmm, just feel that spiritual goodness seeping through like…moral poison.

Holy crud. It’s worse than I thought.

So when God righteously judges, it’s “genocide.” But when us oh-so-good and holy human beings decide to wickedly, heartlessly torture and murder innocent, helpless children in their mother’s wombs (some 2.5 billion times over the last 50 years or so; certainly more than the entire population of the world in Noah’s time), it’s “choice” and “a woman’s right” and “spiritual goodness”. Gotcha.

Jonathan cites in agreement some anonymous idiot saying, “Physics, obstacles, boundaries and rules don’t apply when you’re talking about God’s magnificence.” This is rich in irony and farce. Here I have cited an actual physicist bringing his expertise to bear on the topic of proposed models for a local Flood, and Jonathan claims that “no one takes this stuff seriously” and that Dr. Hill is a proponent of “hydrological winguttery.”

No true interaction; no serious examination of either his or his (utterly ignored) geologist wife’s extensive and fascinating arguments. Only mockery. And why? Well, obviously, it’s because Jonathan is way over his head here and he knows it. He’s not fooling anyone not already in his adoring choir. But (here’s his dilemma) he can’t ever be “shown up” by a Christian apologist (and above all: not one who is utterly despised by his sycophants on his blog) and so this is what we get: fatuous silliness and verbal diarrhea.

In all honesty, I did plan on a section on this in my previous piece, but it would have dragged on even more. As this one has.

We could have all sorts of scenarios where God can do perpetual miracles, can do something insanely big like a flood and then clean up afterward to make sure no evidence exists and so on.

Sure, you can always find anything you want to find out there somewhere. It has nothing, however, to do with my analysis, so it’s a perfect non sequitur.

If God can do crazy miracles, and can set up scenarios where we have no natural evidence of those miracles, then there’s no point arguing with believers. 

I already went through this above.

They can just assert anything. But we shouldn’t believe it because the only evidence are the claims in a single 2000-year-old book (or their heads). And when we do textual and anthropological analysis of that text, things don’t look good for the believer. This is a conversation ender.

That’s not all there is. One can analyze the biblical claims made about the Flood and see if such a Flood is possible or impossible, based on what we know as a result of scientific inquiry and discovery.

But if such massive miracles are not miraculously cleared up afterwards, then there would be evidence of them happening. A global flood should leave mountains of evidence across heaps of domains. The same can be said of a regional flood.

Not necessarily, as explained by Carol Hill (and ignored by Jonathan).

What we have is a confluence of criticisms against people like Armstrong. Not only do your claims not even work scientifically,

. . . as he ignores virtually every scientific argument that I cite, and mocks one scientist I cite and ignores the other . . . impressive!

but there is no positive scientific evidence for them, and your book is textually, anthropological, historically, linguistically, theologically, philosophically problematic to boot.

We have evidence of a sort by possibility and analogy. It’s not a book; it’s a series of articles.

Or, Mr Armstrong, you have no rational justification for believing what you do. 

Whatever you say, Jonathan, o inexhaustible font of wisdom and knowledge!

Psycho-socially? Why, yes, you were born where you were to the family and community you were. So, of course, you are Christian, and, of course, your entire life revolves around sustaining your worldview.

I was born into a nominally Methodist family; didn’t know diddley squat about Christianity for my first 19 years (wasn’t even aware that Jesus claimed to be God), was a practical atheist and didn’t go to church for ten years, became politically and socially ultra-liberal in high school and college, and became an evangelical Protestant based on my own choice (not my nominal family’s) at age 19. Thirteen years later, I became convinced (through very extensive research) of Catholicism, which is even more remote and further away from my all-Protestant immediate family. Nothing was “of course” about it at all. No one could have predicted wither my theological or intellectual path.

If I had followed my initial upbringing, I would be a typical secularist, far left Democrat today who probably wouldn’t go to church and who would accept a vague “God” at best: One Who had no effect on one’s day-to-day life (more like the deists’ “god”). One would have seen no outward indication at all in 1975, that I would be a fervent evangelical two years later, or in 1988, that I would become convinced of Catholicism two years later.

So this bullcrap pseudo-psychoanalytical “analysis” doesn’t work with me. I don’t fit into Jonathan’s arbitrary boxes that he puts Christians into. As soon as I was old and equipped enough to do so, I adopted positions and worldviews based on my own reasoning and research: not caring one whit what anyone else thought or thinks of my choices.

Moreover, I have refuted this line of argument in-depth, twice (twelve years apart). Author of multiple books and webmaster John Loftus (one of Jonathan’s mentors and inspirations), calls this “the outsider test of faith.” He challenged me to grapple with it. I have, two times, with (according to the usual anti-theist atheist intellectual cowardice) no reply from him:

Reply to Atheist John Loftus’ “Outsider Test of Faith” Series [9-30-07]

Loftus Atheist Error #4: The Outsider Test for Faith [9-5-19]

***

I wrote on Jonathan’s blog (in response to a post of his that did exactly what I critique here):

Once again, folks are doing anything and everything except interacting point-by-point with my very extensive argument. Now it’s fine if any given person chooses not to do so. But don’t pretend that my argument has been interacted with when it hasn’t. Jonathan has taken a few chunks of it and replied. At least he has done that.

This could actually be a fun and enjoyable discussion about science.

You guys should be overjoyed that a Christian has taken science seriously, and tried to harmonize it with the Bible, that he takes equally seriously. That’s what you always demand: show how the two are compatible. Others here have sought to do so with a Universal Flood view.

Instead we get the “101 topics” routine. I’m not gonna go down that rabbit trail. I made my argument and I defend THAT. So far no one has offered any comprehensive reply to it. All the questions are just a way to avoid grappling with my argument as I have constructed it.

That’s not to say they have no validity in and of themselves. Many of them do. But I don’t address them based on a methodological gripe: if someone makes a methodical, systematic argument, then IT needs to be taken on. If folks want to talk about a million other Flood-related things, more power to them. I continue to stand by my argument and wait for someone to actually interact with it in a sustained, comprehensive fashion. So far, no takers.

My overall argument for a local Mesopotamian Flood (c. 2900 BC) has three parts:

Local Flood & Atheist Ignorance of Christian Thought

Local Mesopotamian Flood: An Apologia

Pearce’s Potshots #47: Mockery of a Local Flood (+ Striking Analogies Between the Biblical Flood and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927)

***

Photo credit: Hans [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

***

Summary: Anti-theist atheist Jonathan MS Pearce displays a “flood of irrationality & cowardice” in his desperate non-answers to my elaborate arguments for a local Flood.

July 4, 2021

July 4, 2021 By

Also, a Summary Statement on Catholics and the Documentary Hypothesis

Atheist anti-theist Jonathan M. S. Pearce is the main writer on the blog, A Tippling Philosopher. His “About” page states: “Pearce is a philosopher, author, blogger, public speaker and teacher from Hampshire in the UK. He specialises in philosophy of religion, but likes to turn his hand to science, psychology, politics and anything involved in investigating reality.” His words will be in blue.

*****

Jonathan Pearce, in his concerted effort to absolutely avoid engaging in any exegetical debates about Genesis with me, lest the sky fall down (see my first and second reply to him concerning the Flood, and a third related paper), has repeatedly noted that the stories about the Flood in Genesis are redundant and needlessly repetitive. This, in turn, so he assumes without adequate evidence, is an irrefutable indication of multiple authors being in play (the Documentary Hypothesis [“DH”]). My current reply is an effort to show that a biblical literary technique known as chiasmus can more plausibly explain this, without necessary and/or knee jerk recourse to DH.

First, let’s document his cocksure magisterial utterances in this regard:

For those uninitiated, the Pentateuch contains some irreconcilable issues that fall into four categories: repetition (redundancy), contradictions, discontinuity, terminology and style. There is only one coherent solution: it was compiled using multiple sources, and written at multiple times. (6-29-21)

The Pentateuch contains some irreconcilable issues that fall into four categories: repetition (redundancy), contradictions, discontinuity, terminology and style.

The basic principle is that these four issues demand an explanation.

The only thing that makes sense of this is that there are multiple sources (over multiple time periods) that have been redacted to produce the finished document. (7-2-21)

What a pointless repetition [Gen 6:19] even if it didn’t contradict. This is known as redundancy and is a major reason why the DH/SH exists. There are doublets and triplets all over the Pentateuch that have no discernible raison d’etre (and even some things four times). (7-2-21)

Look at this passage and tell me it makes sense on its own without needing a theory that proposes multiple sources woven into a single narrative: [cites Gen 7:6-13] . . .

Repetition, redundancy and contradiction.

I really wish Armstrong would read his Bible. (7-2-21)

I will also furnish you with an account of redundancies in the Torah (from Baruch J Schwartz’s chapter “The Documentary Hypothesis”, . . . (7-2-21)

[T]he Noah’s flood myth is a good example of the multiple sources of the Pentateuch evidenced by both redundancies through repetition and contradictions. (7-3-21)

Of course, the key to repetition was the word “redundancy” that he conveniently forgets. The issue with redundancy in the Torah is that the repetitions serve no purpose. That’s the point. (7-3-21)

. . . the days, the number of animals and every other instance of contradiction, repetition (redundancy), discontinuity, and stylistic and terminological divergence. (7-3-21)

There is simply no use for the repetition in the Genesis flood accounts. What is it we are so obviously going to forget about those details that we so desperately need to remember? (7-3-21)

Before we begin, let me make a comment about Catholics and the Documentary Hypothesis / Theory. Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin, writing about the Documentary Hypothesis (1-1-13) stated: “It is . . . possible for a Catholic to hold a number of positions, from full Mosaic authorship, to the documentary hypothesis, to intermediate positions, depending on how one sees the evidence.”

After yet another exercise of sheer mockery and pompous “know it all” condescension from Pearce in his combox, including his revelation that once again he read virtually none of my paper that he supposedly “responded” to, and describing my argument as “apologetic nonsense” and “disingenuous construction”, I wrote there:

Catholics are free to accept or reject DH / Mosaic authorship as they please, and at least one pope (St. John Paul II) believed in it. You seem to worship DH as the Holy Grail. To me it’s something I don’t believe in, based on what I have seen. I’m free to do so as an orthodox Catholic. There is no requirement that I must believe it. If someone else does (up to and including great heroes of mine, like Pope John Paul II) that’s fine. Live and let live. It’s a big ho hum and a yawner.

Pope St. John Paul II referred to the “Yahwist” source (the “J” in “JEPD”) in 16 of his addresses or writings: 15 of these were general audiences (1979-1980), and the other usage was in his papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995). He referred to “Elohist” in three general audiences (1979-1980). But Pope Benedict XVI never did so. Nor did Pope St. Paul VI, Pope St. John XXIII, Ven. Pope Pius XII, or Pope Francis. Benedict XVI was certainly as good of a Bible scholar (if not better) than John Paul II. I note also that he did refer to DH before he was pope (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) in his book, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall: a book that I have in my library and which I have cited several times.

But back to the immediate topic:

There can certainly be various reasons for repetition: one obvious one being its obvious utility as a teaching and memorization device (as I have already noted in this larger exchange). Another quite plausible thing is something I was excited to learn about this very day: a Hebrew literary technique called chiasmus. Jimmy Akin (in whose article I first saw it mentioned) provided a good basic summary:

The biblical authors commonly structure their material according to a literary form known as chiasmus.

This involves a sequence of elements that can be divided into two halves, with the second half being a mirror image of the first, like steps leading up one side of a pyramid and down the other.

A simple example is Jesus statement that the “first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30), which has an A-B-B’-A’ structure.

This chiasmus occurs in a single sentence, but there are much more involved ones in the Bible, ones that span large blocks of text and that serve as a major organizational principle for an entire book.

This is the case with Genesis. Much of the book is organized into large chiastic structures.

Pearce, who ludicrously fancies himself as a big expert on the Bible, never mentions “chiasmus” or “chiastic” on his blog. So he can learn something from this, too (i.e., making the huge assumption that he reads this article, and doesn’t give up in a hissy fit after the second paragraph.

Wikipedia (“Chiastic structure”) offers an excellent overview. After noting the basics of chiasmus, as Akin did, it elaborates:

Chiastic structures that involve more components are sometimes called “ring structures”, “ring compositions”, or, in cases of very ambitious chiasmus, “onion-ring compositions”. These may be regarded as chiasmus scaled up from words and clauses to larger segments of text.

These often symmetrical patterns are commonly found in ancient literature such as the epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Classicist Bruno Gentili describes this technique as “the cyclical, circular, or ‘ring’ pattern (ring composition). Here the idea that introduced a compositional section is repeated at its conclusion, so that the whole passage is framed by material of identical content”.[1] Meanwhile, in classical prose, scholars often find chiastic narrative techniques in the Histories of Herodotus:

“Herodotus frequently uses ring composition or ‘epic regression’ as a way of supplying background information for something discussed in the narrative. First an event is mentioned briefly, then its precedents are reviewed in reverse chronological order as far back as necessary; at that point the narrative reverses itself and moves forward in chronological order until the event in the main narrative line is reached again.”[2]

The article continues:

Mnemonic device

Oral literature is especially rich in chiastic structure, possibly as an aid to memorization and oral performance. In his study of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Cedric Whitman, for instance, finds chiastic patterns “of the most amazing virtuosity” that simultaneously performed both aesthetic and mnemonic functions, permitting the oral poet easily to recall the basic structure of the composition during performances.[6] Steve Reece has demonstrated several ambitious ring compositions in Homer’s Odyssey and compared their aesthetic and mnemonic functions with examples of demonstrably oral Serbo-Croatian epic. [7]

Use in Hebrew Bible

In 1986, William H. Shea proposed that the Book of Daniel is composed of a double-chiasm. He argued that the chiastic structure is emphasized by the two languages that the book is written in: Aramaic and Hebrew. The first chiasm is written in Aramaic from chapters 2-7 following an ABC…CBA pattern. The second chiasm is in Hebrew from chapters 8-12, also using the ABC…CBA pattern. However, Shea represents Daniel 9:26 as “D”, a break in the center of the pattern.[8]

Gordon Wenham has analyzed the Genesis Flood narrative and believes that it is essentially an elaborate chiasm.[9] Based on the earlier study of grammatical structure by F. I. Andersen,[10] Wenham illustrated a chiastic structure as displayed in the following two tables.

Chiastic structure of the Genesis Flood Narrative
A: Noah and his sons (Gen 6:10)
B: All life on earth (6:13:a)
C: Curse on earth (6:13:b)
D: Flood announced (6:7)
E: Ark (6:14-16)
F: All living creatures (6:17–20 )
G: Food (6:21)
H: Animals in man’s hands (7:2–3)
I: Entering the Ark (7:13–16)
J: Waters increase (7:17–20)
X: God remembers Noah (8:1)
J’: Waters decrease (8:13–14)
I’: Exiting the Ark (8:15–19)
H’: Animals (9:2,3)
G’: Food (9:3,4)
F’: All living creatures (9:10a)
E’: Ark (9:10b)
D’: No flood in future (9:11)
C’: Blessing on earth (9:12–17)
B’: All life on earth (9:16)

A’: Noah and his sons (9:18,19a)

[Dave: see a much nicer, more visually appealing version of this]

Within this overall structure, there is a numerical mini-chiasm of 7s, 40s, and 150s:

Chiasm of the numbers 7, 40, and 150
α: Seven days waiting to enter Ark (7:4)
β: Second mention of seven days waiting (7:10)
γ: 40 days (7:17)
δ: 150 days (7:24)
χ: God remembers Noah (8:1)
δ’: 150 days (8:3)
γ’: 40 days (8:6)
β’: Seven days waiting for dove (8:10)

α’: Second seven days waiting for dove (8:12)

Use in New Testament

Form critic, Nils Lund, acknowledged Jewish and classical patterns of writing in the New Testament, including the use of chiastic structures throughout.[11]

The article, “Literary structure (chiasm, chiasmus) of Book of Genesis: Chiastic Structure and Concentric Structure and Parallel of each pericope” is a marvelous compendium of no less than 81 spelled-out uses of the technique in the book of Genesis alone. If it weren’t already obvious, I note that it would be extraordinary for four authors to construct such obviously deliberate literary techniques or devices, across their allegedly intertwined stories. Thus, chiasmus is a strong argument for single authorship and/or Mosaic authorship of Genesis. And there are massive examples in the other five books of the Torah as well, as I will document.

As just one example from this article, I offer the section on the covenant with Noah: which occurred right after the account of the Flood:

[8]The Covenant with Noah  (Gen 9:1-17)
A(9:1-7)
Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat (9:4)
(בשׂר)
B(9:8-11)
never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood (9:11)
(המבול)
C(9:12)
A sign of the covenant
(אותהברית)
C'(9:13)
A sign of the covenant
(לאותברית)
B'(9:14-16)
the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings (9:15)
(למבול)
A'(9:17)
This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all mortal creatures that are on earth (9:17)
(בשׂר)
A: Flesh. B: All creatures never be destroyed by the waters of a flood. C: A sign of the covenant.
Gen 9:1-7
A(9:1) Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth (9:1)
B(9:2) the human is in charge of beast, birds and fish (Human as the administrator of the animals)
C(9:3) Eating creatures is permitted
D(9:4) Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat (9:4)
C'(9:5) Shedding blood is prohibited
B'(9:6) If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed (9:6) (Human as the administrator of the human)
A'(9:7) Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it (9:7)
Gen 9:8-11
A(9:8-9) covenant with you and your descendants after you (9:9) (covenant for future)
B(9:10) Covenant with every living creature
A'(9:11) covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; (9:11) (covenant eternal)
Gen 9:12-17
A(9:12-13) The sign of the covenant
B(9:14-15a) God will recall the covenant with all living beings
C(9:15b) the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings (9:15)
B'(9:16) God will recall the covenant with all living beings
A'(9:17) The sign of the covenant

Biblical Chiasm Exchange: a site devoted to comprehensively listing all instances of chiasmus in the Bible, lists no less than 100 of them in Genesis, 55 in Exodus, 26 in Leviticus, 38 in Numbers, and 64 in Deuteronomy. This is 283 times in the Pentateuch. Lots of “pointless repetition” and “redundancy”: as Pearce (who is likely no longer reading this article) would put it.

The book of Psalms contains a whopping 196 instances, which is more than one per Psalm. As an elegant example from a very well-known passage of Scripture, here is the chiastic structure of Psalm 23:

A. 1 The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.

B. Food and drink

2 He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.

C. security

3 He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

D. 4 Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:

C’. security

for thou art with me; 
thy rod and thy staff
they comfort me.

B’. Food and drink

5 Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.

A’. 6 Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for ever.

Isaiah, my favorite Old Testament book, contains 119 chiasms in 66 chapters. Jeremiah has 87, Ezekiel, 71.

The New Testament continues the technique, with the Gospels exhibiting 101, 63, 92, and 81. For a relatively famous example, see a portion of the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:22-48.

The book of Acts has 84 chiasms. Romans leads the way in the Pauline letters, with 33.

See another paper specifically about Noah’s Flood and chiasmus, and a second.

An in-depth examination of chiasmus in classical literature, noted many examples in Homer and cited another scholar who found 1257 examples in Livy and 1088 in Tacitus.

Bible scholar E. W. Bullinger catalogued “over 200 distinct figures [in the Bible], several of them with from 30 to 40 varieties.” That’s from the Introduction to his 1104-page tome, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (London: 1898): a very useful volume in my own library. He devotes 31 wonderful pages to a slightly larger category of literary devices that he calls “Correspondence” (pp. 363-393).

***

ADDENDUM: Exchange with Pearce on His Blog

[this was his preliminary “response” to the above paper]

Jesus wept, your first paragraph.

Another item for your not-to-read list. First paragraph and out. LOL

Dude, to think I’m not engaging with you is ridiculous.

You’re right. Far from me to think you don’t engage. You do, after all (just going by your own reports) read one paragraph of each of my lengthy new articles responding to you. Credit where due. Seidensticker, Madison, and Loftus don’t read my rebuttals at all and never ever respond (and ban me from their sites as an extra bonus). At least you respond with fine comedic material and non sequiturs. You’re funny and entertaining, whereas those guys are grim as the grim reaper.

I’ve just spent 2 solid weeks researching the documentary hypothesis and writing a chapter on it for a forthcoming book. Have you actually read any source material on the documentary hypothesis? I mean, really? or have you only read conservative evangelical supposed critiques of it?

I use your method. I get through one paragraph and think to myself, “this is hogwash!” and then stop reading.

Oh, okay, so that’s how to dismiss an entire discipline of rational scholarship…

I haven’t dismissed it at all (in the sense of claiming that no orthodox Christian could possibly believe in it). To the contrary, I have noted how Pope St. John Paul II believed in it, and to some extent, also Pope Benedict XVI. I do not. I simply have no interest in it and it has no bearing whatsoever on my arguments. Can you not grasp that? Go argue with someone who actually believes in the thing!

You have dismissed something I think you barely understand.

Whatever the case, I’m not the one to wrangle with about it. It’s not my burden to defend it, anymore than it is your burden to defend the existence of God. I defend the non-contradictory nature of Sacred Scripture, which is an issue that goes far beyond DH.

As I mentioned recently, you assumed there was a contradiction in a particular passage and then went on to say that DH adequately accounts for it. I denied the presence of a contradiction in the first place. Thus, that discussion was prior to the application of DH. It was at the level of premises.

It is your burden of proof since you are asserting a single authorship of a book that is clearly not. You need to provide positive evidence of this. You have it the wrong way round.

I am not asserting that at all in these particular arguments. I’m simply defending what we have in the text, as non-contradictory, and a local Flood (and often, non-literal texts) as opposed to a universal one.

My arguments stand on their own, whether the Pentateuch was written by one person or a hundred.

I do think that my recent discovery of chiasmus is quite consistent with single authorship and makes little sense if it is four or more. But I wasn’t trying to prove that. I was showing that this remarkable technique truly is present in the text: massively in the Flood story and at least 81 times in Genesis.

You’ll likely simply ignore it. That’s your frequent “out” and technique of avoidance and evasion, as I’m discovering more and more.

Yesterday you were carping on and on about how I completely ignore the Epic of Gilgamesh Deluge story and had nothing to say about it. In fact, I was addressing it in my second paper published on the same day you were making the false claim, and had done so a few times in my writings. So you were dead wrong. And you simply ignore what I said.

Yesterday you were also waxing delusionally about how DH would shut my mouth and how I couldn’t possibly have any reply to it in any possible universe. Yet here I am today offering a fairly striking explanation (the literary technique of chiasmus) of the “redundance” that you see everywhere in Genesis. So you were dead wrong again. And you will in all likelihood ignore what I said about this, too, lest you stumble into what could be a very interesting and fascinating discussion indeed.

You have no interest in that, in the final analysis. Your goal is to make out that I am an imbecile, idiot, and ignoramus. Your increasingly shrill and boorish comments about me personally and my beliefs and research are specifically designed to give precisely that impression to your adoring, fawning audience.

***

Photo credit: bytrangle (1-19-18) [Pixabay / Pixabay License]

***

Summary: Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce has taken to belittling Genesis as “redundant” & then using the Documentary Hypothesis as his “go-to” answer to everything. But Chiasmus better explains this.

June 30, 2021

June 30, 2021 By

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE / BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY  

Books by Dave Armstrong: The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible [1-24-23]

Introduction for My Book: The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible + Near Eastern Archaeological Periods and Timeline of the Patriarchs [1-24-23]

“Dig Deep and Defend the Bible” [promotional article for for my book: The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible] [ Catholic Answers Magazine, 10 July 2023]

Free “Book”: The Word Set in Stone: “Volume Two”: More Evidence of Archaeology, Science, and History Backing Up the Bible (100 sections) [5-25-23]

15 Archaeological Proofs of Old Testament Accuracy (short summary points from my book, The Word Set in Stone) [National Catholic Register, 3-23-23]

15 Archaeological Proofs of New Testament Accuracy (short summary points from my book, The Word Set in Stone) [National Catholic Register, 3-30-23]

Abraham

Abraham, Warring Kings of Genesis 14, & History [7-31-21]

Ehrman Errors #1: Philistines, Beersheba, Bible Accuracy [3-18-22]

Sodom Obliterated (Chapter Four from my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible) [1-26-23]

Walking the Journey of Abraham (Chapter Three from my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible) [3-2-23]

Amorites

Arameans, Amorites, and Archaeological Accuracy [6-8-21]

Bethlehem

Archaeology & First-Temple Period Bethlehem [4-6-23]

Camels, Domestication of

Camels Help Bible Readers Get Over the Hump of Bible Skepticism [National Catholic Register, 7-21-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #67: Camels Make an Ass of a Man [3-1-22]

Chariots, Iron (Judges and Joshua)

Pearce’s Potshots #41: 13th c. BC Canaanite Iron Chariots [7-16-21]

David, Saul, and Solomon / Kingdoms of Judah and Israel

Rarity of Non-Biblical Mentions of King David Explained [9-16-21]

King Hezekiah: Exciting New Archaeological Findings [12-13-22]

Archaeology & Solomon’s Temple-Period Ivory [1-28-23]

Archaeology & King Rehoboam’s Wall in Lachish [1-31-23]

Archaeology Confirms Dates of Five Biblical Battles: Battles at Beth She’an (c. 926 BC), Beth Shemesh (c. 790 BC), Bethsaida & Kinneret (732 BC), and Lachish (701 BC) [2-6-23]

King David: from “Myth” to History (excerpt from my 2023 book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible) [3-14-23]

“King David Versus King Arthur” is only available as Chapter Eleven of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

King Solomon’s “Mines” & Archaeological Evidence [3-24-23]

Ziklag (David’s Refuge from Saul) & Archaeology [3-29-23]

King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, & Archaeology [4-7-23]

Fall of Jerusalem (586 B.C.), Archaeology, & Biblical Accuracy [4-10-23]

Assyrian King Sennacherib, the Bible, & Archaeology [4-17-23]

Archaeology & Ten (More) Kings of Judah & Israel [4-20-23]

Solomon’s “Impossible” (?) Wealth & Archaeology [4-25-23]

Solomon’s Temple and its Archaeological Analogies (Also, Parallels to Solomon’s Palace) [4-25-23]

The Queen of Sheba, Solomon, & Archaeology [4-27-23]

Archaeology, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba [National Catholic Register, 6-2-23]

Archaeology and King Solomon’s Mines [National Catholic Register, 6-29-23]

Was King David Mythical or Historical? [National Catholic Register, 7-24-23]

Edomites

Edomites: Archaeology Confirms the Bible (As Always) [6-10-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #42: 12th c. BC Moabite & Ammonite Kings (The Broad Definition of “King” in the Ancient Near East, + Biblical Use of  “Chiefs of Edom”) [7-19-21]

Exodus / Hebrew Bondage in Egypt

Seidensticker Folly #5: Has Archaeology Disproven the Exodus? [8-15-18]

A Pharaoh’s Death (Ex 2:23) & Exodus Chronology [7-27-22]

Egyptian Proof of Hebrew Slaves During Jacob’s Time [2-17-23]

When Was the Exodus: 15th or 13th Century B.C.? [4-15-23]

Evidence for Hebrews / Semites in Egypt: 2000-1200 B.C. [5-3-23]

Did the Hebrews Cross the Red Sea or the “Reed Sea”?: And Which Specific Body of Water Did They Cross, According to the Combined Deductions and Determinations of the Bible and Archaeology? [5-9-23]

Biblical Hebrew Names with an Egyptian Etymology [5-9-23]

Ezra

Garden of Eden

“Search for the Garden of Eden”: available only in Chapter One in my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

General

God: Historical Arguments (Copious Resources) [11-9-15]

Archaeology: Biblical Maximalism vs. Minimalism (+ Dates of the Patriarchs and Other Major Events and People in the Old Testament) [9-9-21]

OT & Archaeology: 25 Fascinating Confirmations (From Noah to Joshua”: the Hebrew Scripture is Extraordinarily Accurate & True to History) [9-21-21]

Timeline of the Patriarchs: A Summary [Facebook, 9-28-22]

Genesis: Table of Nations

Genesis 10 “Table of Nations”: Authentic History [8-25-21]

Table of Nations (Gen 10), Interpretation, & History [11-27-21]

Gerasenes / Gadarenes

Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Swine, & Atheist Skeptics  [7-25-17]

Gerasenes, Gadarenes, Pigs and “Contradictions” [National Catholic Register, 1-29-21]

Goliath

Goliath’s Height: Six Feet 9 Inches, 7 Feet 8, or 9 Feet 9? [7-4-21]

Gospels: Accuracy of

Are the Gospels & Acts “Propaganda”? (Unpacking a Statement from Historian A. N. Sherwin-White) [2-16-22]

Hebrew Language

Archaeology, Ancient Hebrew, & a Written Pentateuch (+ a Plausible Scenario for Moses Gaining Knowledge of Hittite Legal Treaties in His Egyptian Official Duties) [7-31-21]

Archaeology & a Proto-Hebrew Language in 1800 BC [1-31-23]

Hittites

The Hittites: Atheist “DagoodS” Lies About Christian Apologists Supposedly Lying About How Biblical Critics Once Doubted Their Historical Existence [1-10-11, at Internet Archive]

Habitually “Lying” Christian Apologists?: 19th Century “Hittites Didn’t Exist” Radical Skepticism and Examination of Atheist DagoodS’ Replies and Charges [1-15-11, at Internet Archive]

Hittite Skeptics Chronicles, Part III: Specific Citations of Denial (Budge, Sumner, & Conder) and Biblical Historical Accuracy (in the Time of Elisha) [1-19-11, at Internet Archive]

Great Hittite Wars, Part IV: Lying Christian Egyptologist M. G. Kyle?: Atheist DagoodS Disputes Sir A. E. Wallis Budge’s Reported Hittite Skepticism  [1-21-11, at Internet Archive]

“Higher” Hapless Haranguing of Hypothetical Hittites (19th C.) [10-21-11; abridged 7-7-20]

“Israelites” as a Title

Pearce’s Potshots #27: Anachronistic “Israelites”? [5-25-21]

Jesus

The Census, Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem, & History [2-3-11]

“’Bethany Beyond the Jordan’: History, Archaeology and the Location of Jesus’ Baptism on the East Side of the Jordan” [8-11-14]

Archaeology: Jesus’ Crucifixion, Tomb, & the Via Dolorosa [9-18-14]

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: Herod’s Death & Alleged “Contradictions” (with Jimmy Akin) [7-25-17]

Reply to Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce: “Contradictory” Genealogies of Christ? [7-27-17]

December 25th Birth of Jesus?: Interesting Considerations [12-11-17]

Seidensticker Folly #4: Jesus Never Existed, Huh? [8-14-18]

Was Christ Actually Born Dec. 25? [National Catholic Register, 12-18-18]

The Bethlehem Nativity, Babe Ruth, and History [National Catholic Register, 1-1-19]

Are the Two Genealogies of Christ Contradictory? [National Catholic Register, 1-5-19]

Jesus’ Resurrection: Scholarly Defenses of its Historicity [4-12-20]

Jesus’ December Birth & Grazing Sheep in Bethlehem (Is a December 25th Birthdate of Jesus Impossible or Unlikely Because Sheep Can’t Take the Cold?) [12-26-20]

Pearce’s Potshots #11: 28 Defenses of Jesus’ Nativity (Featuring Confirmatory Historical Tidbits About the Magi and Herod the Great) [1-9-21]

Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents: Myth & Fiction? [2-10-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #52: No Tomb for Jesus? (Skeptical Fairy Tales and Fables vs. the Physical Corroborating Evidence of Archaeology in Jerusalem) [11-10-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #64: Archaeology & 1st Century Nazareth [2-25-22]

Quirinius & Luke’s Census: Resources on the “Difficulty” [2-26-22]

Cana: Archaeological Comparison of “Rival” Sites [3-29-23]

What We Know About Nazareth at the Time of Jesus [National Catholic Register, 11-24-23]

Job

Book of Job, Archaeology, History, & Geography [4-1-23]

John: Historical Accuracy of

Archaeology & the Gospel of John’s Accuracy (Ch. 15 of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible) [3-2-23]

Joseph (Patriarch)

“Joseph in Egypt”: available only in Chapter Five of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

Joshua’s Conquest of Canaan / Era of the Judges

Pearce’s Potshots #32: No Evidence for Joshua’s Conquest? [5-28-21]

What Archaeology Tells Us About Joshua’s Conquest [National Catholic Register, 7-8-21]

Ehrman Errors #5: Hazor Battles “Contradictions”? (Including Possible Archaeological Evidence for the Battle of Deborah in Judges 4) [3-23-22]

Ehrman Errors #6: Joshua’s Conquest & Science [3-23-22]

Archaeology & Judges-Era Lead & Tin Trade [1-26-23]

“Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan” is now only available as Chapter Ten in my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

Samson’s Death-Scene: Archaeological Confirmation [3-27-23]

Did Samson Really Destroy the Philistine Temple With His Bare Hands? [National Catholic Register, 4-28-23]

Joshua’s Conquest: Rapid, Always Violent, & Total? [5-1-23]

Judas & the Thirty Silver Coins

Judas’ “Thirty Coins of Silver”: Archaeology & History [6-18-23]

Luke: Historical Accuracy of

“St. Luke Knows His Stuff” is only available as Chapter Fourteen of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023).

Moabites & Ammonites

Pearce’s Potshots #42: 12th c. BC Moabite & Ammonite Kings (The Broad Definition of “King” in the Ancient Near East, + Biblical Use of  “Chiefs of Edom”) [7-19-21]

Moses and the Pentateuch

Did Moses Exist? No Absolute Proof, But Strong Evidence (Pearce’s Potshots #35, in Which Our Brave Hero Classifies Moses as “a Mythological Figure” and I Reply!) [6-14-21]

Using the Bible to Debunk the Bible Debunkers (Is the Mention of ‘Pitch’ in Exodus an Anachronism?) [National Catholic Register, 6-30-21]

Archaeology, Ancient Hebrew, & a Written Pentateuch (+ a Plausible Scenario for Moses Gaining Knowledge of Hittite Legal Treaties in His Egyptian Official Duties) [7-31-21]

In Search of the Real Mt. Sinai (Fascinating Topographical and Biblical Factors Closely Examined) [8-16-21]

The Tabernacle: Egyptian & Near Eastern Precursors (Archaeology Entirely Backs Up the Extraordinary Accuracy of Holy Scripture Yet Again) [9-8-21]

Fascinating Biblical Considerations About Mount Sinai [National Catholic Register, 11-23-22]

*
*
Moses, Science, and Water from Rocks [Catholic365, 11-18-23]
*
*
Archaeology Supports the Book of Nehemiah [National Catholic Register, 11-30-23]
*
New Testament
*

Noah’s Flood

Noah’s Ark: Josephus, Earlier Historians, & Church Fathers (Early Witnesses of the Ark Resting on Jabel [Mt.] Judi) [3-16-22]

Biblical Size of Noah’s Ark: Literal or Symbolic? [3-16-22]

Peter

Archaeology & St. Peter’s House in Capernaum [9-23-14]

Philistines

Pearce’s Potshots #33: No Philistines in Moses’ Time? [6-3-21]

Ehrman Errors #1: Philistines, Beersheba, Bible Accuracy [3-18-22]

Prophets

Prophet Elisha and Archaeology [4-4-22]

Prophet Elijah and Archaeology [4-13-22]

Is There Any Archaeological Support for the Prophet Daniel? [National Catholic Register, 4-25-22]

See “Digging Up Proofs of the Prophets”: Chapter Twelve of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023).

Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom & Gomorrah & Archaeology: North of the Dead Sea? [10-9-14]

Sodom Obliterated (Chapter Four from my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible) [1-26-23]

Tower of Babel

Pearce’s Potshots #54: Tower of Babel; Who’s the “Idiot”? [11-24-21]

The Tower of Babel, Archaeology, & Linguistics [4-13-23]

Linguistic Confusion and the Tower of Babel [National Catholic Register, 6-21-22]

Tower of Babel: Dialogue with a Linguist [6-26-23]

* * *

Helpful General Articles from Others

53 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically (Bible History Daily / Biblical Archeology Society, 10-13-20)

 

SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY AND THE BIBLE / SCIENTIFIC HARMONY WITH THE BIBLE

Adam and Eve (and Genetics)

Historicity of Adam and Eve [9-23-11; rev. 1-6-22]

Defending the Literal, Historical Adam of the Genesis Account (vs. Catholic Eric S. Giunta) [9-25-11]

Adam & Eve of Genesis: Historical & the Primal Human Pair [11-28-13]

Adam & Eve & Original Sin: Disproven by Science? [9-7-15]

Dialogue with Philosopher Dr. Lydia McGrew on Adam and Eve and the Polygenism vs. Monogenism Genetics Issue [Facebook, 5-11-17]

Only Ignoramuses Believe in Adam & Eve? [9-9-15]

Animals: Mythical

Loftus Atheist Error #9: Bible Espouses Mythical Animals? [9-10-19]

The Bible and Mythical Animals [National Catholic Register, 10-9-19]

Pearce Pablum #71: Dragons in the Bible? [3-4-22]

Demonic Possession

Demonic Possession or Epilepsy? (Bible & Science) [2015]

Disease / Germ Theory

Vs. Atheist David Madison #37: Bible, Science, & Germs [12-10-19]

Seidensticker Folly #36: Disease, Jesus, Paul, Miracles, & Demons [1-13-20]

The Bible on Germs, Sanitation, & Infectious Diseases [3-16-20]

Bible on Germ Theory: An Atheist Hems & Haws (. . . while I offer a serious answer to his caricature regarding the Bible and genetics) [8-31-21]

Earth: Creation of

Cosmological Argument for God (Resources) [10-23-15]

Genesis Contradictory (?) Creation Accounts & Hebrew Time: + Refutation of a Clueless Atheist “Biblical Contradiction” [5-11-17]

The Genesis Creation Accounts and Hebrew Time [National Catholic Register, 7-2-17]

Earth: Sphere

Biblical Flat Earth (?) Cosmology: Dialogue w Atheist (vs. Matthew Green) [9-11-06]

Flat Earth: Biblical Teaching? (vs. Ed Babinski) [9-17-06]

Carrier Critique #3: Bible Teaches a Flat Earth? [3-31-22]

Evolution, Theory of

Catholicism and Evolution / Charles Darwin’s Religious Beliefs [8-19-09]

Dialogue with an Atheist on Evolution [9-17-15]

My Claims Regarding Piltdown Man & the Scopes Trial Twisted [10-10-15]

Scripture, Science, Genesis, & Evolutionary Theory: Mini-Dialogue with an Atheist [8-14-18; rev. 2-18-19]

Catholics & Origins: Irreducible Complexity or Theistic Evolution? [6-17-19]

Why I Believe in “Non-Miraculous” Intelligent Design [6-20-19]

Debate: Can Intelligent Design Be “Non-Interventionist”? (vs. Dr. Lydia McGrew) [6-21-19]

Exodus and Moses

Acacia, Ark of the Covenant, & Biblical Accuracy [8-24-21]

Science, Hebrews and a Bevy of Quail [National Catholic Register, 11-14-21]

“Out of Egypt with Moses,” “The Ten Plagues and their Aftermath,” and “The Red Sea, and Miracles in the Desert” are only available in Chapters Seven to Nine of my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

Manna: Possibly a Natural Phenomenon? [5-5-23]

Flood & Noah 

Old Earth, Flood Geology, Local Flood, & Uniformitarianism (vs. Kevin Rice) [5-25-04; rev. 5-10-17]

Adam & Eve, Cain, Abel, & Noah: Historical Figures [2-20-08]

Noah’s Flood & Catholicism: Basic Facts [8-18-15]

Do Carnivores on the Ark Disprove Christianity? [9-10-15]

New Testament Evidence for Noah’s Existence [National Catholic Register, 3-11-18]

Local Flood & Atheist Ignorance of Christian Thought [7-2-21]

Local Mesopotamian Flood: An Apologia [7-9-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #47: Mockery of a Local Flood (+ Striking Analogies Between the Biblical Flood and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927) [9-30-21]

Pearce’s Potshots #48: Flood of Irrationality & Cowardice [10-1-21]

Noah’s Flood: Not Anthropologically Universal + Miscellany [10-5-21]

Debate: Historical Local Flood & Biblical Hyperbole [11-12-21]

Pearce Pablum #72: Flood: 25 Criticisms & Non Sequiturs [3-8-22]

Atheist Jonathan MS Pearce’s Straw Man Global Flood [8-30-22]

Garden of Eden

“Search for the Garden of Eden”: available only in Chapter One in my book, The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible (Catholic Answers Press: March 15, 2023)

General

Dialogue w Atheist on Christianity & the Scientific Method [7-19-01]

God and “Natural Evil”: A Thought Experiment [2002]

Atheist Myths: “Christianity vs. Science & Reason” (vs. “drunkentune”) [1-3-07]

Richard Dawkins & “Religion vs. Science” Mentality (+ Galileo Redux) [3-20-08]

Reply to Atheist Scientist Jerry Coyne: Are Science and Religion Utterly Incompatible? [7-13-10]

Christianity: Crucial to the Origin of Science [8-1-10]

Books by Dave Armstrong: Science and Christianity: Close Partners or Mortal Enemies? [10-20-10]

Typical “Science vs. Catholicism” Criticisms (and Myths) from an Agnostic Scientist Refuted [7-29-11]

Science and Christianity (Copious Resources) [11-3-15]

Dialogue with an Agnostic on Catholicism and Science [9-12-16]

Richard Dawkins: D- Grade for Science & Christianity [5-23-18]

Seidensticker Folly #21: Atheist “Bible Science” Absurdities [9-25-18]

Seidensticker Folly #23: Atheist “Bible Science” Inanities, Pt. 2 [10-2-18]

Loftus Atheist Error #7: Christian Influence on Science [9-9-19]

The Bible is Not “Anti-Scientific,” as Skeptics Claim [National Catholic Register, 10-23-19]

Modern Science is Built on a Christian Foundation [National Catholic Register, 5-6-20]

Seidensticker Folly #44: Historic Christianity & Science [8-29-20]

OT & Archaeology: 25 Fascinating Confirmations (From Noah to Joshua”: the Hebrew Scripture is Extraordinarily Accurate & True to History) [9-21-21]

“Nature Miracles”: Natural Hypotheses for God’s Actions (For Example: Noah’s Flood, Parting of the Red Sea, Quails, Earth Swallowing up Sinners, Sodom & Gomorrah, & Water from the Rocks) [10-30-21]

Goliath

Goliath’s Height: Six Feet 9 Inches, 7 Feet 8, or 9 Feet 9? [7-4-21]

Herod Agrippa “Eaten by Worms”

Herod Agrippa I “Eaten By Worms”: Myth or Plausible? [6-20-23]

Jericho

Jericho and Archaeology — Disproof of the Bible? (Here is one possible explanation for the high level of erosion in Jericho) [National Catholic Register, 9-26-21]

Jericho: Did the Walls Collapse Due to Resonance? [5-1-23]

What Made the Walls of Jericho Fall? [National Catholic Register, 5-20-23]

Jesus

Resurrection Debate #4: No “Leafy Branches” on Palm Sunday? [4-19-21]

Resurrection (?) #10: “Blood & Water” & Medical Science [4-25-21]

Carrier Critique #2: Crucifixion Eclipse? [3-30-22]

Darkness at Jesus’ Crucifixion — Solar Eclipse or Sandstorm? [National Catholic Register, 4-15-22]

Jonah

Was Jonah in the Belly of a Whale? Yes, But . . . [3-27-23]

Did God Raise Jonah from the Dead? [National Catholic Register, 4-20-23]

Medical Science

Carrier Critique #4: Bible & Disease & Medicine (+ Medical Advances Made in the Christian-Dominated Middle Ages) [3-31-22]

Miracles and Science

The Resurrection: Hoax or History? [cartoon tract; art by Dan Grajek, 1985]

Silly Atheist Arguments vs. the Resurrection & Miracles [2002]

Biblical and Historical Evidences for Raising the Dead [9-24-07; revised for National Catholic Register, 2-8-19]

Dialogue with an Atheist on Miracles & First Premises [12-18-10]

Exchange on Miracles & Hyper-Rationalism [12-7-15]

Dialogues with Atheists on Miracles [6-8-16]

Does God Still Perform Miracles? (Some Evidence) [5-26-18]

Miracle of the Sun at Fatima: Brief Exchange [7-3-18]

Dialogue w Agnostic on Proof for Miracles (Lourdes) [9-9-18]

Miracles & Scientific Method: Dialogue with Atheist [2-22-19]

Atheist Desire for Amazing Divine Miracles / Incorruptibles [2-23-19]

David Madison vs. the Gospel of Mark #6: Chapters 5-6 (Supernatural & Miracles / Biblical Literary Genres & Figures / Perpetual Virginity / Healing & Belief / Persecution of Jesus in Nazareth) [8-18-19]

Seidensticker Folly #39: “The Sun Stood Still” (Joshua) [4-16-20]

Reflections on Joshua and “the Sun Stood Still” [National Catholic Register, 10-22-20]

Debate On Miracles Vs. An Atheist [1-6-23]

Patriarchs: Old Ages of

969-Year-Old Methuselah (?) & Genesis Numbers [7-12-21]

Souls and Spirits

Seidensticker Folly #8: Physics Has Disproven Souls? [8-16-18]

Seidensticker Folly #71: Spirit-God “Magic”; 68% Dark Energy Isn’t? [2-2-21]

Dark Energy, Dark Matter and the Light of the World [National Catholic Register, 2-17-21]

Star of Bethlehem

Star of Bethlehem, Astronomy, Wise Men, & Josephus (Amazing Astronomically Verified Data in Relation to the Journey of the Wise Men  & Jesus’ Birth & Infancy) [12-14-20]

Timeline: Star of Bethlehem, Herod’s Death, & Jesus’ Birth (Chronology of Harmonious Data from History, Archaeology, the Bible, and Astronomy) [12-15-20]

Who Were the “Wise Men,” or Magi? [National Catholic Register, 12-16-20]

Conjunctions, the Star of Bethlehem and Astronomy [National Catholic Register, 12-21-20]

Star of Bethlehem: Refuting Silly Atheist Objections [12-26-20]

Route Taken by the Magi: Educated Guess [12-28-20]

Star of Bethlehem: More Silly Atheist “Objections” [12-29-20]

Astronomy, Exegesis and the Star of Bethlehem [National Catholic Register, 12-31-20]

Pearce’s Potshots #12: Supernatural Star of Bethlehem? (Biblical View of Astronomy, Laws of Nature, and the Natural World) [1-11-21]

Star of Bethlehem: Natural or Supernatural? [1-13-21]

Bible Commentaries & Matthew 2:9 (Star of Bethlehem) [1-13-21]

Star of Bethlehem: Reply to Obnoxious Atheist Aaron Adair (Plus Further Related Exchanges with Aaron and a Few Others in an Atheist Combox) [1-14-21]

Star of Bethlehem: 2nd Reply to Arrogant Aaron Adair [1-18-21]

Star Researcher Aaron Adair: “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!” [1-19-21]

Star of Bethlehem & Magi: 20 Fascinating Aspects [1-22-21]

Ehrman Errors #9: Star Stopping Over a House?! [3-25-22]

Did the Star of Bethlehem Move Like Tinker Bell? (+ Discussion of Micah 5:2: The Prophecy of Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem) [12-19-22]

Star of Bethlehem: Scientific Verification (vs. an Atheist) [12-20-22]

Was the Star of Bethlehem a Natural Celestial Event? [12-21-22]

“The Star Went Before Them” (The Word Set in Stone) (Retrograde Motion and the Phenomenological Language of the Bible) [7-24-23]

Universe, Origin of: Cosmological Argument / Big Bang

Cosmological Argument for God (Resources) [10-23-15]

Cause of the Big Bang: Atheist Geologist Challenged [4-21-17]

Seidensticker Folly #14: Something Rather Than Nothing [9-3-18]

Seidensticker Folly #38: Eternal Universe vs. an Eternal God [4-16-20]

Seidensticker Folly #42: Creation “Ex Nihilo” [8-28-20]

Creation Ex Nihilo is in the Bible [National Catholic Register, 10-1-20]

Universe, Origin of: General

Atheism: the Faith of “Atomism” [8-19-15]

Clarifications Regarding My Controversial Atheist “Reductio” Paper [8-20-15]

Exchanges with Atheists on Ultimate Origins [11-19-15]

Atheists Seem to Have Almost a Childlike Faith in the Omnipotence of Atoms [National Catholic Register, 10-16-16]

Atheists & Inherent “Omnipotent” Creative Qualities of Godless Matter [7-26-17]

Dialogue w Atheist on the Origin of the Universe [6-23-18]

Dialogue with an Atheist on “God of the Gaps” [6-24-18]

Vs. Atheist David Madison #38: Who is Insulting Intelligence? (. . . with emphasis on the vexing and complex question of the ultimate origins of matter and life) [12-11-19]

Seidensticker Folly #75: Why a Universe at All? [11-5-21]

Debate: a Universe Self-Created from Nothing? [11-9-21]

Universe, Origin of: Teleological Argument / Intelligent Design

Albert Einstein’s “Cosmic Religion”: In His Own Words [originally 2-17-03; expanded greatly on 8-26-10]

Theistic Argument from Longing or Beauty, & Einstein [3-27-08; rev. 3-14-19]

Teleological (Design) Argument for God (Resources) [10-27-15]

Dogmatic Materialist Scientists vs. Intelligent Design [10-29-15]

Seidensticker Folly #41: Argument from Design [8-25-20]

God the Designer?: Dialogue with an Atheist [8-27-20]

Universe: Sustained by God

“Quantum Entanglement” & the “Upholding” Power of God [10-20-20]

Quantum Mechanics and the “Upholding” Power of God [National Catholic Register, 11-24-20]

Books by Dave Armstrong: The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back Up the Bible [1-24-23]

Introduction for My Book: The Word Set in Stone: How Archaeology, Science, and History Back up the Bible + Near Eastern Archaeological Periods and Timeline of the Patriarchs [1-24-23]

***

Photo credit: Kenneth A. Kitchen is the dean of biblical archaeologists in our time. His book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, was published in 2006. [from the Amazon book page]

***

Summary: I collect hundreds of my blog posts having to do with the Bible & archaeology (scientific evidence that supports its accuracy) & also the relationship between the Bible & science, generally.

Updated on 6 January 2024

June 3, 2021

June 3, 2021 By

Anti-theist atheist Jonathan M. S. Pearce wrote the article, “The Exodus Debunked: You Philistines!” (3-9-18), to which I respond. His words will be in blue.

*****

[see the Bible passages in the Old Testament where the Philistines are mentioned (RSV): including Exodus 13:17 and 23:31 and eight times in Genesis]

Pearce makes another argument that reference to the Philistines in Moses’ time is anachronistic: thus suggesting that the Bible is 1) woefully inaccurate, or that 2) the book of Exodus was written way later than the time of Moses.

The basis for a lot of what I will be telling you will come from my friend and Skeptic Ink Network colleague Rebecca Bradley and her chapter, “The Credibility of the Exodus”, in John Loftus’ Christianity in the Light of Science . . . 

[W]hatever the date chosen for the Exodus, believers must adhere to the idea that the Philistines were already established along the Mediterranean coast. Of course, you can guess what is coming next…

They weren’t.

This anachronism is rather similar to the camel issue and the pitch issue, both already mentioned.

I refuted the false claims about the alleged absence of camels in three papers (one / two / three), dealt with the supposed absence of pitch in the time and place of Moses’ birth (Pearce was dead-wrong again, according to archaeology, not the Bible only), and also supposed anachronistic biblical use of the term “Israelites”.

As Bradley states (p. 263):

This is a problem for even the “late date,” since the Philistines’ arrival was part of a dramatic process that only began at about 1200 BCE: . . . 

…they were defeated in the epic battle with Rameses III in about 1180 BCE and then were allowed to settle along the southern coast of the Levant. From the late twelfth century BCE [i.e. 1100s BCE, not the 100 years earlier, the proposed later date of the Exodus], they were a strong presence in the form of the Philistine Pentapolis, until they came under Assyrian control in the eight century BCE, along with most of their neighbours.

. . . Simply put, when the Bible mentions the Philistines in this Exodus context, the Philistines did not exist. It’s not that they were there, but were called something else – it’s that they did not yet exist.

The problems with this scenario are not confined to merely the Exodus account. Genesis 21 and 26 have Abraham and Isaac visiting the Philistines some nine centuries before they existed! (Perhaps a series debunking Genesis is on the cards…) . . . 

The only reason, as an objective historian, to maintain that the Conservative, traditional biblical interpretation of the Bible is correct would be that you really, really wanted the Bible to be correct. 

Genesis 10:14 (RSV) Pathru’sim, Caslu’him (whence came the Philistines), and Caph’torim.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges comments on this passage:

The parenthetical clause within the brackets seems to be out of place. According to Deuteronomy 2:23, Jeremiah 47:4, Amos 9:7 the Philistines came out of Caphtor. Accordingly, we may conjecture the clause originally stood after the word “Caphtorim,” and has been accidentally transposed. On the other hand, this explanation seems so obvious, that some scholars consider that the clause “whence … the Philistines” is in its right place, but that the words “and Caphtorim” are only a gloss on the mention of “the Philistines.”

Deuteronomy 2:23 As for the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caph’torim, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and settled in their stead.) [see more info. on the Avvim]

Jeremiah 47:4 . . . the LORD is destroying the Philistines, the remnant of the coastland of Caphtor.

Amos 9:7 . . . [God]: “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?

At this point I can imagine Pearce muttering to himself: “But this is from the Bible; who cares about that? It’s blind faith circular reasoning and so proves nothing . . .” Well, hold your horses, my friend. I’m just beginning my article, and this is the biblical background, which will be considered in light of the non-biblical sources I am about to bring to bear (and I will show that they are both in harmony, as always).

Josephus‘ Antiquities of the Jews i.vi.2, . . . placed them explicitly in Egypt . . . using extra-Biblical accounts [he] provides context for the migration from Caphtor to Philistia. He records that the Caphtorites were one of the Egyptian peoples whose cities were destroyed during the Ethiopic War. (Wikipedia, “Caphtor”)

Here is the passage in question:

Now all the children of Mesraim, being eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt, though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim; for the Greeks call part of that country Palestine. As for the rest, Ludicim, and Enemim, and Labim, who alone inhabited in Libya, and called the country from himself, Nedim, and Phethrosim, and Chesloim, and Cephthorim, we know nothing of them besides their names; for the Ethiopic war, [*Antiq. b. ii. chap. x.] which we shall describe hereafter, was the cause that those cities were overthrown.

What Josephus calls the “Ethiopic War” occurred during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose II (1493-1479 BC).

A location called Kaptar is mentioned in several texts of the Mari Tablets and is understood to be reference to Caphtor. An inscription dating to c. 1780-1760 BCE mentions a man from Caphtor (a-na Kap-ta-ra-i-im) who received tin from Mari [Syria]. Another Mari text from the same period mentions a Caphtorite weapon (kakku Kap-ta-ru-ú). Another records a Caphtorite object (ka-ta-pu-um Kap-ta-ru-ú) which had been sent by king Zimrilim of the same period [r. 1775-1761 BC], to king Shariya of Razama. A text in connection with Hammurabi [r. c. 1792-1750 BC] mentions Caphtorite (k[a-a]p-ta-ri-tum) fabric that was sent to Mesopotamia via Mari. An inventory thought to be from the same era as the previous texts mentions a Caphtorite vessel (GAL kap-ta-ri-tum) (probably a large jug or jar). (Wikipedia, ibid.)

Trude Dothan (d. 2016) received the coveted Israel Prize for archaeology in 1998, in recognition for her many years of excavating (at Deir el-Balah, Hazor and Qasile) and teaching (at Hebrew University, Princeton, New York University, Brown University and the University of California at Berkeley). One of the world’s leading authorities on the Philistines, Dothan is the author of The Philistines and Their Material Culture (Israel Exploration Society, 1982) and, with her husband, Moshe, of People of the Sea (Macmillan, 1992).”

She explains the well-accepted theory that the Philistines came originally from Crete, and thus reflected that background and the larger historical and cultural influence of the Mycenaean civilization of Greece (1600-1100 BC):

The homeland of the Philistines, Caphtor (Amos 9:7), is generally recognized by scholars as Crete, (although some believe Caphtor to be located in Cilicia in Asia Minor.)

In other Biblical references, the Philistines are synonymous with the Cherethites; that is Cretans (see Zephaniah 2:5 and Ezekiel 25:16). Various Biblical traditions suggest that the Caphtorim (or at least some of them) are to be identified with the Cherethites. Thus the Biblical sources seem to link the Philistines with a previous home in Crete. . . .

The detailed Biblical account of Goliath’s armor and weaponry is a vivid description of a Philistine warrior in full battle dress:

“And he had a helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail. … And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron; and one bearing a shield went before him.” (1 Samuel 17:5–7)

Goliath’s dress and armour (bronze helmet, coat of mail, bronze greaves [leg guards], and javelin) as well as the duel between champions are all well-known features of Aegean arms and warfare. They clearly indicate Aegean traditions carried on by the Philistines. The 12th century Warriors’ Vase from Mycenae shows Mycenaean warriors very similarly equipped. . . .

The shapes and decorative motifs of Philistine pottery were a blend of four distinct ceramic styles: Mycenaean, Cypriot, Egyptian, and local Canaanite. The dominant traits in shape and almost all the decorative elements were derived from the Mycenaean repertoire, and, as we have said, point to the Aegean background of Philistine pottery Philistine shapes of Mycenaean origin include bell-shaped bowls, large kraters with elaborate decoration, stirrup jars for oils and unguents, and strainer-spout beer jugs; the latter no doubt served as centerpieces at many a Philistine party. A few of the many decorative motifs are stylized birds, spiral loops, concentric half-circles, and scale patterns. Although Philistine vessels were richly decorated with motifs taken from the Mycenaean repertoire, these motifs were rearranged and integrated with other influences to create the distinctive “signature” known as Philistine. . . .

Female pottery figurines also reflect Philistine cult origins and beliefs. The “Ashdoda” is the only complete example of a well-defined type that was common from the 12th to the eighth century B.C. The Ashdoda figure is probably a schematic representation of a female deity and throne. It is clearly related to a grouping known throughout the Greek mainland, Rhodes and Cyprus—a Mycenaean female figurine seated on a throne, sometimes holding a child. These Mycenaean figurines are thought to represent a mother goddess. . . .

Burial customs are generally a sensitive indicator of cultural affinities, and Philistine burial customs reflect the same fusion of Aegean background with Egyptian and local Canaanite elements that distinguishes every other aspect of their culture. (“What We Know About the Philistines”, Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1982)

***

Genesis 26:1 Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abim’elech king of the Philistines.

I accept the life and death dates of Abraham as being c. 1813 BC-c. 1638 BC (this period is the Middle Bronze Age II, for the Near East), based on the estimate of the Jewish Virtual Library. In 1956, the eminent Israeli archaeologist  Yohanan Aharoni identified the Tel Haror site as the biblical Gerar. It’s located in the western Negev Desert of Israel, between Gaza and Beersheba, some 14 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. This is the ancient territory of the Philistines. Could it have been visited by Isaac, as the Bible states? Yes! The Wikipedia article on the archaeological site states:

During the Middle Bronze Age II it was one of the largest urban centres in the area, occupying about 40 acres. The city contains substantial remains of Middle Bronze Age II through to Persian-period settlement strata.

The Middle Bronze Age in the Levant ran from 2000-1550 BC, with Middle Bronze Age II referring to 1750-1650 BC.

A Minoan graffito was found in the sacred precinct dating to ca. 1600 BCE. Analyses of the sherd determined that it originated in Crete, most likely the south coast. (Ibid.)

For more information on this find, see: Day, Peter M., et al. 1999 “Petrographic Analysis of the Tel Haror Inscribed Sherd: Seeking Provenance Within Crete.” Aegaeum 20: 191–96; and Oren, Eliezer D., et al. 1996 “A Minoan Graffito from Tel Haror (Negev, Israel).” Cretan Studies 5: 91-118.

Israeli archaeologist Avner Raban (1937-2004) wrote a very educational article in 1991, entitled, “Minoan and Canaanite Harbours.” Aegaeum 7: 129-46. It has many tie-ins to our subject matter, and supports a notion that commerce may have been what brought the Philistines from Crete to Canaan (and to Egypt):

Cretan artifacts were found in [Egyptian] 12th dynasty [1991-1802 BC] sites in many places along the Nile Valley (such as Karun, Gahob, Abydos and even in the oasis of Harageh). Egyptian artifacts of that period were found at Cretan Middle Minoan [2100-1600 BC] context . . . Similar Middle Minoan II [1800-1700 BC] artifacts were found in Levantine trade centres such as Byblos [Lebanon], Ugarit [Syria] and even the inland Qatna [Syria] . . .

Sargon I [20th-19th c. BC] of Akkad (Agade) mentioned Crete (. . . the biblical Kaphtor) together with sources of metal ores from over the Mediterranean, already in the 24th century B.C.E. and a broken Akkadian cuneiform  inscription of around 1800 B.C.E. was found on the island of Kythera [island between the Greek mainland and Crete]. An early Babylonian cylinder seal of about the same period in Tholos B in Platanos, in the Messara Valley in Crete. (p. 144) [my bracketed material and links]

Australian archaeologist Robert Merrillees reports in his 2003 article, “The First Appearances of Kamares Ware in the Levant.” Egypt and the Levant 13: 127-42, on the discovery of a portion of a Minoan cup from around 1800 BC, that was found in Ashkelon, part of ancient Philistia, on the coast.

At Tel Kabri in present-day northwest Israel on the coast, are archaeological remains “containing one of the largest Middle Bronze Age (2,100–1,550 BCE) Canaanite palaces in Israel” (Wikipedia). The article continues:

Among the discoveries at the site by the two full-scale archaeological expeditions, two have attracted particular attention from the archaeological community. The first finding to come to international attention was the discovery of Minoan-style frescoes in the palace at Kabri. As of 2015, these are the only Minoan paintings ever discovered in Israel.

Sources:

Cline, E. H.; Yasur-Landau, A.; Goshen, N. (2011). “New Fragments of Aegean-Style Painted Plaster from Tel Kabri, Israel”(PDF). American Journal of Archaeology. 15 (2). 

Science Daily (7 December 2009). “Remains Of Minoan-Style Painting Discovered During Excavations Of Canaanite Palace”.

These have been dated by Cline et al to the 17th century BC (p. 245; Abstract).

No one needs to hold that these earlier Philistines from Crete were a great nation prior to the 12th century BC, when everyone believes they quickly became so. But archaeology suggests that there were enough of them present in the region, to be mentioned as such in the early Bible passages.

Nature (7-4-19) reports:

The Philistines appear repeatedly in the Bible, but their origins have long been mysterious. Now genetic evidence suggests that this ancient people trace some of their ancestry west all the way to Europe.

Choongwon Jeong and Johannes Krause at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and their colleagues analysed the DNA of ten ancient people whose bones were found in Ashkelon, a Philistine city located in modern-day Israel. The DNA suggests an influx of people of European heritage into Ashkelon in the twelfth century BC. The individuals’ DNA shows similarities to that of ancient Cretans, but the team warns that it is impossible to specify the immigrants’ homeland because of the limited number of ancient genomes available for study.

The closest DNA match was Crete: about 43%. So once again, we see that archaeology has supported biblical accuracy. The Philistines (according to genetics) likely originated in Crete, just as the Bible stated in Genesis, Jeremiah, and Amos. And significant numbers of them were present in Egypt and Canaan before 1200 BC: again, precisely as the Bible states.

Note also that when the Bible mentions Isaac’s visit to the Philistine king Abim’elech (1950 BC or so), no mention is made of the five famous cities of Philistia: Gaza, Ashdod, Ash’kelon, Gath, and Ekron (Joshua 13:3). They were much more important later. All that was mentioned was Gerar, which I have shown from archaeology was flourishing at that time. But if the Bible were so anachronistic, as charged, it seems like it would have mentioned them. Instead, it’s historically accurate.

And we would expect the systematic historical and archaeological accuracy that we actually find, in a book believed in [very reasonable] faith by Christians and Jews to be the inspired revelation of God.

***

Photo credit: Aaadir (4-29-21). Tel Haror, widely thought to be the remains of the biblical city of Gerar. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication]

***

Summary: Atheist JMS Pearce tries to argue that the early biblical references to the Philistines are anachronistic: thus proving the inaccuracy of the Bible. Wrong again!: says secular archaeology.

***

April 10, 2021

April 10, 2021 By

Dr. David Madison is an atheist who was a Methodist minister for nine years: with a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Boston University.  I have replied to his videos or articles 45 times as of this writing. Thus far, I haven’t heard one peep back from him  (from 8-1-19 to 4-10-21). This certainly doesn’t suggest to me that he is very confident in his opinions. All I’ve seen is expressions of contempt from Dr. Madison and from his buddy, the atheist author, polemicist, and extraordinarily volatile John Loftus, who runs the ultra-insulting Debunking Christianity blog. Dr. Madison made his cramped, insulated mentality clear in a comment from 9-6-19:

[T]he burden of the apologist has become heavy indeed, and some don’t handle the anguish well. They vent and rage at critics, like toddlers throwing tantrums when a threadbare security blanket gets tossed out. We can smell their panic. Engaging with the ranters serves no purpose—any more than it does to engage with Flat-Earthers, Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, and those who argue that the moon landings were faked. . . . I prefer to engage with NON-obsessive-compulsive-hysterical Christians, those who have spotted rubbish in the Bible, and might already have one foot out the door.

Only preaching to the choir from Dr. Madison! One can’t be too careful in avoiding any criticism or challenge. John “you are an idiot!” Loftus even went to the length of changing his blog’s rules of engagement, so that he and Dr. Madison could avoid replying to yours truly, or even see notices of my substantive replies (er, sorry, rants, rather). He wrote in part:

Some angry Catholic apologist has been tagging our posts with his angry long-winded responses. . . . If any respectful person has a counter-argument or some counter-evidence then bring it. State your case in as few words as possible and then engage our commenters in a discussion. . . . I talked with David Madison who has been the target of these links and he’s in agreement with this decision. He’s planning to write something about one or more of these links in the near future.

Needless to say, I still await these long-promised replies to any of my critiques from good ol’ Dr. Madison. His words will be in blue.

Presently, I am replying to his article, “Bible Blunders & Bad Theology, Part 6″ (11-27-20).

*****

Question Two: How Would Anyone Acquire Knowledge of a Miraculous Conception?

“Well, God told the authors, didn’t he?” This works for those who believe the Bible is God’s inspired word. But they react with proper skepticism when other religions claim the same thing for the Qur’an and Book of Mormon—which they don’t accept for a moment. Historians know very well that “God told them” doesn’t work; it’s faith-bias out of control, claiming far more than can be objectively known. John Loftus pointed this out in his Christmas day post in 2016: 

How might anonymous gospel writers, 90 plus years later, objectively know Jesus was born of a virgin? Who told them? The Holy Spirit? Why is it God speaks to individuals in private, subjective, unevidenced whispers? Those claims are a penny a dozen.

You may fervently believe within your heart, but there are no data by which virgin birth can be confirmed; it is a feature of ancient folklore. . . . 

How many Catholics have paused their adoration of Mary long enough to ask: How do theologians know what was happening in the womb of a first century Galilean teenager? . . . 

This theology thrives among those who never ask—who have been taught not to ask—How do you know all this? All this is fueled by theological imagination, and a fair amount of craftiness too, that is, digging for texts that can be construed to support flights of fantasy. Why do people take it seriously? 

I doubt that theology can be grounded in reality; objective evidence for god(s) has never been found. . . . superstitious folklore that gods use virgins to beget human children.  

Wow. Really? Is Dr. Madison truly this fantastically clueless and, well, stupid? Just a moment’s thought (no more) will provide any sentient being with an IQ higher than a rusty nail enough time to figure this one out. It’s not rocket science, but it is science of a rather obvious, straightforward type: the science of biology and specifically reproduction, to be exact.

How would anyone know that they were the carriers of a baby who was not conceived by man, but by God? Here’s how it works (perhaps Dr. Madison — i.e., if he ever read any opposing opinions ever — and his equally zealous buddy John Loftus will have to read this three times to grasp it):

1) Mary is visited by an angel (the Annunciation: recorded in Luke 1:26-38).

2) This angel (Gabriel) informs her that “you will conceive in your womb and bear a son” (Lk 1:31).

3) Mary asks the logical and reasonable question: “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” (Lk 1:34). She was a farm girl. She knew how babies came about in both animals and human beings.

4) The angel explained to her that she would bear the Messiah and the Son of God / God the Son (Lk 1:32-33, 35) by means of a miraculous virgin birth: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1:35).

Now, how could anyone possibly find out about such a miracle? Well, we can by listening to Mary’s own testimony about it, which got to Luke either directly, or through oral tradition.

How can we possibly verify such a miracle? How can we “know”? After all, Dr. Madison in his infinite wisdom, has informed us that “there are no data by which virgin birth can be confirmed” and that it’s mere “folklore” and is simply “imagination” and “craftiness” and “flights of fantasy.” Why (Dr. Madison passionately inquires), would anyone “take it seriously”? It’s not “grounded in reality.”

Now, we all realize that we’re dealing with an atheist (and apostate) who rejects all biblical texts as inaccurate and untrustworthy: especially if they express a supernatural event that the atheist redefines out of existence before even fairly examining it. But that’s rather beside the point. Here, as in all his innumerable bashings of the Bible and Christianity, Dr. Madison is making the point that it is internally incoherent, and ought not be believed by any rational and “scientific” person.

He’s not asking the question: “why should we believe the account of Luke 1 as historical?” He’s asking a much more philosophically fundamental question and an epistemological one: how could such a thing as a virgin birth be known at all, by anyone? That’s why he frames it as “how would anyone acquire” such knowledge? In other words, how it is possible even in a theoretical or hypothetical sense, to know this and to pass it on to another chronicler like Luke? He thinks the entire thing (believe it or not believe it) is impossible and absurd from A to Z: totally ridiculous and nothing but. And so he taunts us Christians to explain this event that to him is utterly inexplicable.

With that runaround introduction, let’s get back to the second question: How can we possibly verify such a miracle? Well, again, it’s very simple:

1) In due course, it will be physically evident that she is indeed pregnant, and in nine months she delivers the baby Jesus.

2) She knows for a fact that she has not been intimate with a man at any time before Jesus was born, nor (most Christians through history have believed) at any time in her life.

3) Therefore, she has rather compelling proof that a miracle did indeed occur. She was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and not a man, precisely as the angel told her.

She not only “knows” this for sure, but she knows it with a certainly perhaps as compelling as that for any miracle ever, since babies can only come about by one natural process, which did not occur in her case. 

So how can we “know”? How can anyone “confirm” or “take” the virgin birth “seriously”? I just explained it. It happened to a human being, and the most reasonable explanation is to accept that what the angel told Mary was absolutely true: since the obvious miracle has to be explained somehow.

Once Jesus was born and lived His life, performed many extraordinary miracles, claimed in many ways to be God in the flesh, and ultimately rose from the dead, even visited His followers after His death, then it was also confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt that He was God.

The entire process is verifiable and empirical at all stages: the virgin birth is a physical event that’s proven by a pregnancy occurring without intercourse. Jesus proves Who He is by performing verifiable miracles (a lame man walks, a blind man sees, a demon-possessed man is liberated; dead people are raised; Jesus Himself rises from the dead. He meets with His disciples after death and shows that He has a resurrected body, by eating fish and having Thomas feel the wound in His side. 500 people see Him after death. They go out and transform the world with His gospel message of salvation: many of them dying for their faith.

What more does one need? Nothing except faith. The atheist lacks that and immediately shrugs off all such evidence (usually with accompanying smirks and mockery). There are many possible causes for why they might do so: but none of them derive from a fair, objective examination of Christian claims, or a rational, logical analysis. We see how utterly irrational and laughable this objection was.

***

Photo credit: The Annunciation (1644), by Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

Summary: Atheist anti-theist sophist Dr. Madison asks how Jesus’ virgin birth could possibly be “confirmed”? How can anyone “know” it happened? Very simple: listen to Mary’s own report. This ain’t rocket science. But it is biological science.

***

Tags: alleged biblical contradictions, anti-Christian bigotry, anti-theism, anti-theists, Atheism, atheist exegesis, atheist hermeneutics, atheists, Bible “contradictions”, contradictions in the Bible, critiques of Christianity, David Madison, Debunking Christianity, Madison Malarkey, virgin birth, Mariology, Annunciation, Blessed Virgin Mary, John Loftus 

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April 10, 2021

April 10, 2021 By

Mark 16:17-18 and the Various Sign Miracles

Dr. David Madison is an atheist who was a Methodist minister for nine years: with a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Boston University.  I have replied to his videos or articles 44 times as of this writing. Thus far, I haven’t heard one peep back from him  (from 8-1-19 to 4-9-21). This certainly doesn’t suggest to me that he is very confident in his opinions. All I’ve seen is expressions of contempt from Dr. Madison and from his buddy, the atheist author, polemicist, and extraordinarily volatile John Loftus, who runs the ultra-insulting Debunking Christianity blog. Dr. Madison made his cramped, insulated mentality clear in a comment from 9-6-19:

[T]he burden of the apologist has become heavy indeed, and some don’t handle the anguish well. They vent and rage at critics, like toddlers throwing tantrums when a threadbare security blanket gets tossed out. We can smell their panic. Engaging with the ranters serves no purpose—any more than it does to engage with Flat-Earthers, Chemtrail conspiracy theorists, and those who argue that the moon landings were faked. . . . I prefer to engage with NON-obsessive-compulsive-hysterical Christians, those who have spotted rubbish in the Bible, and might already have one foot out the door.

Only preaching to the choir from Dr. Madison! One can’t be too careful in avoiding any criticism or challenge. John “you are an idiot!” Loftus even went to the length of changing his blog’s rules of engagement, so that he and Dr. Madison could avoid replying to yours truly, or even see notices of my substantive replies (er, sorry, rants, rather). He wrote in part:

Some angry Catholic apologist has been tagging our posts with his angry long-winded responses. . . . If any respectful person has a counter-argument or some counter-evidence then bring it. State your case in as few words as possible and then engage our commenters in a discussion. . . . I talked with David Madison who has been the target of these links and he’s in agreement with this decision. He’s planning to write something about one or more of these links in the near future.

Needless to say, I still await these long-promised replies to any of my critiques from good ol’ Dr. Madison. His words will be in blue.

Presently, I am replying to his article, “Remarkable Resistance to Rational Inquiry” (2-19-21).

*****

Many of the faithful . . . sense that religion has claimed too much. They know that the famous promise of the risen Jesus in Mark 16 just isn’t true, i.e., that baptized Christians—using Jesus’ name—will be able to “…cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (vv. 17-18)

These verses quality as Bible silliness (not really excused because they’re in the fake ending of Mark) and are disconfirmed by Christians in their daily lives. But there are still great expectations of God the Great Healer, with little more than faith to go on.

The only silly and dumbfounded person here is Dr. Madison: who should know much better than to make such a clueless argument. As so often, this involves non-literal genre of the Bible: a not uncommon occurrence. For example, hyperbole (exaggeration) is often used by Jesus. But in this instance it’s proverbial language: general statements that are often true, but which admit of many exceptions. In other words, this is not some hyper-literal statement that any and every Christian will be able to do any of these things anytime, at will.

No; rather, it’s a proverbial statement that among Christians as a whole, one will be able to observe all of these phenomena: demons being cast out (mostly the domain of the exorcist today), speaking in new tongues, not being hurt by poisonous snakes or poison in a drink, and healing the sick by touch.  We can easily show in several ways that this saying was not meant literally; that is, wasn’t intended to describe universal application.

I’ve already educated Dr. Madison three times (one / two / three) with regard to the true biblical teaching on healing, which is not universal or on command. I dealt with the topic of healing in the Bible early on in my apologetics apostolate (1982). But he never learns anything because he refuses to engage any criticism, let alone to be corrected; so he repeats the same hogwash over and over (apparently thinking his argument improves by repeating lies). He even buys the same tripe that some of the silliest, most gullible, and scripturally ignorant Christians (that he despises) accept. How ironic, huh? The “smart” atheist who believes the same ridiculous and unbiblical thing that fundamentalist ignoramuses do (i.e., that God supposedly heals all the time, upon command, as if He were a genie in a bottle) . . .

The way Jesus phrases it shows that He is talking generally about the collective of Christians: “these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will . . .” (Mk 16:17, RSV).

It’s like saying, “these things will accompany those who play basketball in the NBA: slam dunks, 55% three-point-shooting, triple-doubles, 20 rebounds a game, scoring of 50 points a game, and averages of 10 or more assists per game.”

We can see examples of individual Christians doing these things in the Bible. Speaking in tongues occurred on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:4-12) and on other occasions of new believers receiving the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:45-46; 19:6). St. Paul talks about “gifts of healing . . . the working of miracles . . . various kinds of tongues” (1 Cor 12:9-10) but specifically states that not everyone has every gift: “All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (12:11).

He nails down this point of diversity and not unanimity of every gift by comparing the spiritual gifts and the Church itself to different parts of the body (12:12-27). Then he reiterates the notion of different gifts for different Christians: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? [30] Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?” (12:29-30). This is a literal explanation of what Jesus expressed in a proverbial fashion. St. Paul is described as not being hurt by a snake:

Acts 28:3, 5-6 Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, when a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. . . . [5] He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. [6] They waited, expecting him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead; but when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.

Acts 8:7 states: “For unclean spirits came out of many who were possessed . . .” References to healing can be found in Acts 5:16 and 8:7.  The first says “all” were healed; the second says “many.” So it’s not true that all are supposed to be healed all the time. See my healing paper above for much more along those lines. Acts 28:8 refers specifically to Paul healing a man by laying his hands on him.

***

Photo credit: St. Paul, shipwrecked on Malta, is attacked by a snake which he shakes off into a fire; it does not harm him and the onlookers take him for a god. Etching after J. Thornhill. This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive). [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license]

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Summary: Atheist Dr. David Madison appears to take everything in the Bible literally: leading him to the same silly conclusions as uneducated fundamentalists. I explain biblical proverbial language, so he (and many atheists like him) can get up to speed.

*

Tags: alleged biblical contradictions, anti-Christian bigotry, anti-theism, anti-theists, atheism, atheist exegesis,  atheist hermeneutics, atheists, Bible “contradictions”,  contradictions in the Bible, critiques of Christianity, David Madison, Debunking Christianity, Madison Malarkey, biblical proverbial language

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April 3, 2021

April 3, 2021 By

Atheists love to discuss the problem of evil, which they consider a knockout punch to Christianity: or at least to the notion that God is good and all-powerful. Recently an anti-theist atheist polemicist noted that someone “constructed an annotated bibliography of more than 4,200 philosophical and theological writings on the problem of evil published from 1960 to 1990—nearly one publication every 2½ days, and that is only in English.” They milk it for all it’s worth.

And for our part, many Christian apologists and theologians (including myself) agree that the problem of evil is the most difficult issue that Christians have to deal with and explain: though we do believe (over against atheists and other skeptics) that it’s not fatal to Christianity or the belief in a good God at all, and that we have more than adequate answers to it.

We hear a lot less, however, about the corresponding (and I contend, even more difficult) issue that atheists have to explain from their own perspective: “the problem of good.” After seeing yet another treatment of the problem of evil on my favorite atheist blog (A Tippling Philosopher), I decided to produce this paper, drawn from three previous efforts (the first listed is my favorite debate ever, with anyone):

The “Problem of Good”: Great Dialogue with an Atheist (vs. Mike Hardie) (+ Part Two) [6-5-01]

Dialogue w Agnostic/Deist on the “Problem of Good” [7-18-18]

The “Problem of Good”: Dialogue w Atheist Academic [9-11-19]

I will be selecting “highlights” of my own comments (with a word or a capital added here and there), in order to produce a more succinct or compact version of the argument. Three asterisks will separate the excerpts from each other.

***

The atheist:

1) Can’t really consistently define “evil” in the first place;

2) Has no hope of eventual eschatological justice;

3) Has no objective basis of condemning evil.

***

Atheist justifications for morality (i.e., logically carried through) will always be — i.e., in their logical reduction and/or ultimate result — either completely arbitrary, relativistic to the point of absurdity, or derived from axiomatic assumptions requiring no less faith than Christian ethics require.

***

Atheists are usually as moral and upright as a group as any other group of people. But to the extent that they are moral and good, I argue that this is inevitably in conflict with their ultimate ground of ethics, however it is spelled-out, insofar as it excludes God. Without God it will always be relative and arbitrary and usually unable to be enforced except by brute force. Atheists act far better than their ethics (in their ultimate reduction).

The Communists, though, acted fairly consistently with their atheistic principles (as they laid them out — not that all atheists will or must act this way, which is manifestly false). God was kicked out, and morality became that which Marx (or Lenin) decreed.

***

In the atheist (purely logical and philosophical) world, Hitler and Stalin and Mao and other evil people go to their graves and that’s it! They got away with their crimes. They could have theoretically gone out of the world (as well as all through their lives) laughing and mocking all their victims, because there literally was no justice where they are personally concerned. Why this wouldn’t give the greatest pause and concern to the atheist moralist and ethicist is beyond me.

In the Christian worldview, though, the scales of justice operate in the afterlife as well as (quite imperfectly) in human courts and in gargantuan conflicts like World War II where the “good guys” (all in all) managed to win. Hitler and Stalin do not “pull one over on God” (or on an abstract notion of justice). They don’t “get away with murder.” They are punished, and eternally at that, barring a last-minute repentance which is theoretically possible, but not likely. All makes sense in the end. . . .

That doesn’t make it a bed of roses for us, by any means, but it is sure a lot easier to endure than under atheist assumptions, where one returns to the dust and ceases to exist, quite often having utterly failed at life, or having been abused their entire life, with nothing significant to ever look forward to. Where is the hope and purpose in that?

***

This is not so much an argument, as it is pointing out that the logical conclusion to atheist ethics is utter despair at what goes on in the world, and the ultimate meaninglessness of it all. It is not arguing that:

1) All is meaningless in the end; therefore no morality (in practice) is possible, and therefore all atheists are scoundrels.”

but rather:

2) The ultimate meaninglessness of the universe and the futility of seeing tyrants like Stalin do their evil deeds and never come to justice in this life or the next, ought to bring anyone who believes this to despair, and constitutes a far greater (“existential”) difficulty than the Problem of Evil — which has a number of fairly adequate rejoinders — represents for the Christian.

***

Meaning is put into all human beings by God. But more accurately, I am simply acknowledging — with Sartre — that it is a sad and troubling, devastating thing if God does not exist, that a universe with no God is (when all is said and done) a lonely, tragic, and meaningless place. This is presupposed by the very Argument from Evil that is used against us! So you can scarcely deny it! Most lives on this earth are not all that happy or fulfilled.

And you would have us believe that after miserable, ragged lives lived all through history (e.g., the millions who don’t have enough to eat right now, or the Christian victims of genocide and slavery in the Sudan), the persons die and go in the ground, and that they ought to be happy during their tortured lives? Why? What sense does it all make?

***

It is clearly far worse to have a Hitler and a Stalin do what they did and go to their end unpunished, than it is to believe in an afterlife where monster-morons like that are punished for what they did, and that those who lived a far better moral life are rewarded at long last (for many, the only significant “happiness” they ever had).

***

Atheist ethics will always end up being self-defeating, and/or relativistic to the point of being utterly incapable of practical application. Failing God, the standard then becomes a merely human one, therefore ultimately and inevitably arbitrary and relativistic and unable to be maintained for large groups of people except by brute force and dictatorship (which is precisely what happened, if Stalinism or Maoism are regarded as versions of consistent philosophical atheism to any degree, or even corrupt versions of it).

***

The atheist problem is: how to arrive at an objective criteria; how to enforce it across the board; how to make such a morality something other than the end result of a majority vote or the power of governmental coercion.

***

Christians have the universal and absolute standard: God. What do humanists have? How are worldwide ethics to be determined and lived out? If there is an atheistic ethical absolutism (as I suspect), then that will have to be explained to me: how it is arrived at; why anyone should accept it, etc.

***

1. Objective morality must be non relativistic (not relative to cultures, governments, or individuals).

2. Without a higher being, all behavioral imperatives logically and in practice reduce to (ultimately arbitrary) relativism, in the sense that no single standard will be able to be enforced for, or applied to one and all (which is what “objective morality” — #1 — requires); and that because no substantive or unquestionable criterion is given for the grounds for such a standard, as an alternate to the Christian axiomatic basis of God, in Whose Nature morality resides and is defined.

3. Therefore, there cannot logically be a self-consistent objective morality (one able to be consistently practiced by one and all in the real world) without a higher being; all merely human-based efforts will end in arbitrariness (and often, tyranny), due to the inability to arrive at a necessary, non-relative starting point and systematic moral axiom.

***

We defeated the Nazis’ and put an end to it. Great (thank God), but how does that bring justice to the 6 million Jews and many thousands of others who perished in the camps and in battle? In the Christian view there certainly is justice, because there is the Judgment and the sentence of damnation for evil persons. This is how we view the world in terms of ultimate justice and meaning, and seeking your alternative system of making sense of such monstrous evils as Nazism and Stalinism.

***

You just admitted (as far as I can tell) that “good” is relative to the individual. How, then, can there be an objective standard of “good” applied to all? By what standard do we decide what is good for everyone to do (what obligates them)?

***

Hitler thought the Holocaust was good. Stalin thought the starvation of the Ukrainians was good. Corrupt Crusaders in the Middle Ages thought slaughtering women and children was good. Timothy McVeigh thought blowing up a building and killing 168 people was good. Terrorists think blowing up cars in crowded market places is good. The American government (and most of its people) thought annihilating civilians in two entire Japanese cities by nuclear bombs was good. America thought slavery was good (and later institutional racism and discrimination). Pedophiles think molesting children is good. Etc.

How do we resolve this inherent relativism? The Aztecs thought human sacrifice was good; the Catholic Spaniards thought it was a hideous evil. How do we resolve such conflicts? Was Aztec sacrifice good or evil (or neither)? And if the latter, how do we convince someone of a different culture that what they are doing is evil?

***

I am trying to understand the atheist rationale for the most important, fundamental issues that all human beings face: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is there life after death? What is right and wrong? What is justice? How does one end injustice? What is love? What is truth? Etc.

***

I’m saying, “assume that all this afterlife and God business is false and untrue; now tell me how purpose, hope, and meaning is constructed in such an atheistic worldview.”

***

Is the atheist view simply existentialism, where one believes whatever they want, so as to achieve “meaningfulness”? That would be no better than the pie-in-the-sky which atheists so despise, of course. It simply substitutes pie-in-the-head (no pun intended).

***

Human beings are very curious mixtures of both great evil and great capacity for good and love. This is another thing that the Christian view explains far better than any other I have seen.

Atheists always have to chalk evil up to environment, because they don’t look at it in metaphysical, ontological, or spiritual terms. So McVeigh had a Bircher for a father; Hitler was done in by his anti-Semitism; Stalin by his lust for power, the killers at Columbine High School by the availability of guns and right-wing fanaticism, etc., and what-not. Christians say that all people are capable of great evil or great good, depending on the courses of action they take, and how they respond to God’s graces. Environment is a factor, but not the sole or overwhelmingly primary factor.

***

How about committing genocide or child molestation, or deliberately oppressing people through wealth or political power? What if those things gave a person “meaning,” since you have admitted that these things are relative to the person, and strictly subjective? No one else can tell the person who does these evils (which we all — oddly — seem to agree are “evil”) that they are wrong — it being a relative matter in the first place. This is now very close to the heart of my logical and moral problem with atheist morality (which, in my opinion, always reduces to relativism and hence to these horrendous scenarios).

***

The atheist is simply living off the cultural (and internal spiritual) “capital” of Christianity, whether he or she realizes it or not.

***

I am talking about the ultimate logical implications of atheism, regardless of how one subjectively reacts to them. The very fact of objectivism and subjectivism (assuming one grants both as realities) allows the possibility that the atheist is not subjectively facing the objective logical implications of atheism (which I maintain are nihilism and despair).

***

Just because I think atheism has bad logical implications, doesn’t mean that I think atheists are therefore “bad” people.

***

When all is said and done, the Christian believes there is a certain sort of God, and this affects everything else, and the atheist says there is no such God, and that affects everything in their view.

***

Atheism doesn’t account for the evil person whose reflection amounts only to a ruthless, Machiavellian calculation as to how he can get ahead, indifferent to how many others suffer in the process. If your “standard” is rationality and a sort of abstract utilitarian outlook, then it breaks down when we get to the quintessential evil, selfish person.

***

[2nd dialogue]

I used Hitler and Stalin in order to highlight and make it clear (by using the worst-case scenarios) what atheism entails, in terms of “cosmic justice.” It’s a scenario which is both incomprehensible and outrageous to me, and I don’t believe that the universe is like that: whatever it turns out to be in the end. In any event, Christianity (whether true or not) at least offers final justice and ultimate meaning in a way that atheism never has, and never will.

***

It is this inherent quest for meaning and happiness (which I believe is put into us by God), that causes atheists (who still have it within them too!) to deny that the universe is meaningless. I think their view that it is meaningful without God is an “unconscious” carryover from the Christian worldview. In my opinion, they have not fully grappled with the implications of a universe without God. For the Christian, such a universe would be like hell: the ultimate horror.

***

[3rd dialogue]

The problem of good is at least as big of a problem for atheism, as the problem of evil is for theism (it’s a classic turn-the-tables argument).

***

The problem of good is well  summarized in Dostoevsky’s statement, “If there’s no God and no life beyond the grave, doesn’t that mean that men will be allowed to do whatever they want?” [see more on this quotation from The Brothers Karamazov (1880)]. The way I used the argument (back in 2001) was not to assert that it proves God exists. Rather, I think it helps to establish that theism (considered as a whole) is more coherent and plausible than atheism.

***

In the Last Judgment the scales will be weighed and divine / cosmic justice will be applied. Evil people will be judged and sent to hell, and those who are saved by God’s grace will be allowed to enter heaven. Atheism obviously has no such scenario, since it denies the existence of God, the afterlife, human immortality, heaven, and hell, so my statement is absolutely true, as to atheism. It has no such thing, and cannot, by definition. And from where we stand, this is a huge problem. It’s central to the problem of good.

***

“Objective” in this context means a binding, non-arbitrary standard of absolute morals within the framework of atheism. I’m not denying that individual atheists have such moral / ethical standards for themselves. Of course they do. What I’m saying is that they are all ultimately arbitrary and relativistic without a God to ground them in, and that large atheist systems act in accordance with this moral relativism and/or amorality (Mao, Lenin, Stalin et al): and we see what they produced.

***

Any good and noble impulses within atheist consciences are there because they are innate in human beings: put there by God in the first place. If there were no God, they wouldn’t be there and evil would be far, far greater than it is now (and it is a huge and troubling problem now).

***

In the atheist outlook, the next person can always say, “who cares what you think about morality; that’s just you, and your view is no more worthy of belief or assent than the next guy’s . . .”

***

The Christian “rock bottom” is God. The atheist rock bottom is like peeling an onion: it’s nothing.

***

Many atheists (at least those in power) did indeed conclude that any evil was possible in a godless universe. If there is no ultimate morality and justice, of course this is true. It comes down to raw power and “might makes right” and reducing human beings to the “red in tooth and claw” state of primal nature and the animal kingdom, where the strong rule, in an amoral state of affairs.

***

What is the measure? And how and why would all human beings be bound to it, in a godless ethical system?

***

On what absolute / objective basis do you define “kindly” and how and why would all human beings be bound to it?

***

You certainly believe (or act like you believe) that rape is a thing that is essentially a moral absolute [i.e., absolutely immoral] in all times and places. It’s presupposed in your arguments . . . But Japanese troops during the Rape of Nanking (not particularly religiously observant) did not do so, did they?:

In the mere six weeks during which the Japanese perpetrated the Nanking Massacre starting on Dec. 13, 1937, an estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were brutally raped and sexually assaulted by the invading soldiers. They sometimes went door-to-door, dragging out women and even small children and violently gang-raping them. Then, once they’d finished with their victims, they often murdered them. . . .

The invaders, though, didn’t even stop at simply murder. They made these women suffer in the worst ways possible. Pregnant mothers were cut open and rape victims were sodomized with bamboo sticks and bayonets until they died in agony.

You don’t think that rape is a moral absolute, and that it is wrong at all times? If you don’t, then you just justified the Rape of Nanking, or at least provided the “ethical” basis for someone else (in power) to justify and rationalize it. In atheist “eschatology” there is  no ultimate justice for perpetrators of monstrous crimes such as these. In Christian cosmology there is ultimate justice and hell awaiting those who do such things and who do not repent of them.

I think you would agree with me, on the other hand that the nuclear bombing of Japan was immoral insofar as it killed innocent civilians (the US then became as evil as their enemy). But in an atheist world of morality, there is no compelling reason to explain why it is immoral, and must never be violated.

***

The problem of evil presupposes that there are things that are indisputably wrong, and agreed to be so by all, as virtually self-evident. Otherwise, the atheist indictment against God (which fails, even as is) could not even begin to succeed. In other words, the atheist has to tacitly admit that the problem of good is a problem for atheism, in order to proceed against God and theism; and that is incoherent and self-contradictory. He or she winds up arguing as much for God as against, by utilizing such weak arguments.

***

I’m saying, “these are the consequences on the ground of atheism, taken consistently to its logical extreme.”

***

Societies construct legal systems, which hold that certain behaviors are wrong, and therefore, punishable by law. Law presupposes moral absolutes. Jails and judges and laws all presuppose an absolute system of morals and right and wrong. Otherwise, there could be no laws at all, and “everything would be permitted” (legal and moral anarchy). We would be back to Dostoevsky.

***

You have to casually assume moral absolutes to discuss morality at all (i.e., if you condemn any particular behaviors).

***

It can be shown that all societies agree on basic moral principles. C. S. Lewis in fact did this at the end of his book, The Abolition of Man. (what he called the Tao). We would say that is natural law and the human conscience, grounded in God. Commonalities don’t “prove” God’s existence, but this is perfectly consistent with what I wrote above, and what we would fully expect to find if God did exist. All societies, for example, have prohibitions of murder, as inherently wrong. They may differ on the parameters of murder (the definition). But they don’t disagree that there is such a thing as murder: that ought not be done, and for which there are strict penalties.

***

Related Reading

I have written a lot of material on the problem of evil as well (the first listed being my most in-depth effort):

Problem of Evil: Treatise on the Most Serious Objection (Is God Malevolent, Weak, or Non-Existent Because of the Existence of Evil and Suffering?) [2002]

God and “Natural Evil”: A Thought Experiment [2002]

Dialogue on “Natural Evil” (Diseases, Hurricanes, Drought, etc.) [2-15-04]

Replies to the Problem of Evil as Set Forth by Atheists [10-10-06]

The Problem of Evil: Dialogue with an Atheist (vs. “drunken tune”) [10-11-06]

Dialogue w Atheist John Loftus on the Problem of Evil [10-11-06]

“Logical” Problem of Evil: Alvin Plantinga’s Decisive Refutation [10-12-06]

Reply to Agnostic Ed Babinski’s “Emotional” Argument from Evil [10-23-06]

“Strong” Logical Argument from Evil Against God: RIP? [11-26-06]

Why Did a Perfect God Create an Imperfect World? [8-18-15]

Blaming God for the Holocaust (+ Other Such Bum Raps) [11-1-17]

Atheists, Miracles, & the Problem of Evil: Contradictions [8-15-18]

Alvin Plantinga: Reply to the Evidential Problem of Evil [9-13-19]

Ward’s Whoppers #14: Who Caused Job’s Suffering? [5-20-20]

God, the Natural World and Pain [National Catholic Register, 9-19-20]

***

Photo credit: Billie Burke (1884–1970), playing Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in The Wizard of Oz (1939) [WizardofOz.com]

***

Summary: Atheists love to discuss the problem of evil, which they consider a knockout punch to Christianity. But we rarely hear about the equally or even more difficult atheist “problem of good.”

***

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