The Primacy of the Inner over the Outer

A regular visitor to my blog who comments under the moniker NAL brought my attention to some continuing discussions over on B.C. Hodge’s blog Theological Sushi, and although he specifically noted that a fellow commenting there under the name “Rian” has been raking Hodge over the coals, the first blog entry that I looked at when I visited TS did not feature any discussion between Rian and Hodge himself. Rather, what I found – in the entry titled Christianity Doesn't Require Omniscience from Its Adherents - is a discussion between Rian and none other than Steve Hays of Triablogue.

(I don’t think this was the thread that NAL had in mind, since Hodge does not interact with Rian in it. Rather, I’m guessing that NAL had in mind this blog entry, in the comments of which Hodge does interact with Rian, and which I have yet to enjoy reading. All in good time!)

Now I have not occasioned myself to read through the entire discussion between Rian and Hays, though I do intend to as time allows. But what I have read so far was more than enough to get me typing – something I haven’t been doing much of lately. While there’s much to say in response to the small portion I’ve read so far, I did manage to get the following reactions of mine written out, and I decided to post them in a new entry on my blog here on IP.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

D. James Kennedy's Impotent Jesus

In his sermon "The Sin of Unbelief (Part 2)," Christian apologist D. James Kennedy speaks out against "unbelief" and "unbelievers." In developing his point, he makes use of the example of Doubting Thomas, a character in the gospel narrative found only in the book of John. Kennedy finds this example useful because, according to the story, Thomas did not readily accept the testimony of his fellow disciples that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. Thomas wanted to see firsthand evidence that Jesus was really resurrected. Says Kennedy, Thomas "is like many who say, 'unless I can see it, hear it, touch it, I will not believe." According to Kennedy, this requirement for evidence is an attitude of "sin." So accordingly, Thomas was sinning by asking for evidence to support the claim that Jesus had been resurrected; the believer is supposed to “believe,” not “know.” Kennedy's assessment is corroborated to a marked degree by the words which the author of the gospel of John puts into Jesus' mouth: "blessed are those who haven't seen and yet believe." It's hard to see this as anything other than a praising endorsement of sheer gullibility, of suspending the requirements of knowledge for the sake of believing a storybook tale.

Then Kennedy makes a most remarkable assertion. He states:

Now Christ cannot appear personally to all of the billions and billions of people that have lived on the earth since that time, but we have the testimony of many of those that have seen him at that time....

If I were a Christian, I would find this statement most puzzling. Why can't Christ "appear personally to all of the billions and billions of people that have lived on earth" since the 1st century? Christ is the second person in the trinity, a member of the "Godhead," and thus is omnipotent, omnipresent and illimitable by the constraints of this world. If Christ could appear to Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus, why can't he appear to other people, regardless of how many that might be? After all, all human beings who have ever walked the earth were supposedly created by this supernatural being called Christ. In fact, they claim that Christ created the earth to begin with. So why in supernaturalia would Kennedy think his Christ "cannot appear personally to all of the billions of people that have lived on the earth"? Kennedy most likely thinks all those billions will appear before Christ one day, does he not? So here we have a reversal of sorts: the god is unable to appear to man, while man is able to appear before the god.

At any rate, Kennedy does not explain why he thinks "Christ cannot appear personally to all of the billions of people that have lived on earth since that time." He simply slips this premise into his sermon hoping no one seizes upon it for examination. This is how the mystics try to get away with their egregious landgrabs, and watch the sea of chins in his audience nodding in uncritical agreement.

Now we should now ask how well this comports with other things that Kennedy himself has affirmed before his audiences. Consider what he states in his brief sermon entitled "I Can't Believe That!" He says:

If one can't believe in miracles, it is quite obvious that one can't believe in God. The disbelief in the miraculous is simply a statement of atheism. So, when a person says to you, "I can't swallow this business about Jonah being swallowed by a whale," you could simply say to him, "Oh, you're an atheist." That will shock the person. "Uhwha uh not ra really." "Oh, yes, you're atheist. You obviously can't believe in a miracle, and if you can't believe in a miracle, that is ipso facto atheism. If God cannot prepare such a fish, He obviously never created the world. If He didn't create the world, He is obviously not God.

When Kennedy tells his audience that "Christ cannot appear personally to all of the billions of people that have lived on earth" since the 1st century, he's essentially saying that he "can't swallow this business about" Jesus being able to perform a miracle that the bible itself portrays Jesus performing in the book of Acts. We’re supposed to believe that Jesus appeared before Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, but when the opportunity comes for the same Jesus to appear before any of us today, Jesus is suddenly stricken with supernatural impotence. Indeed, such impotence would have to be supernatural, for natural impotence would not be powerful enough to constrain Jesus.

So does Kennedy truly believe in miracles? Or is belief in the miraculous subject to the flip of a light switch, able to be turned on and off given the expedience of the moment? If I were a Christian, it would trouble me to think that Jesus could not appear before all human beings as he allegedly did before Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus as described in Acts 9 and 22. But then again, I never was good at simply believing and suspending my desire to know. And they tell me that my worldview "borrows" from Christianity? They obviously don't know what they're talking about (but many do want to believe this).

Personally, I have no problem denying miracles, since miracles are an expression of the primacy of consciousness metaphysics. So I can be consistent where Kennedy has to shape-shift before his own audiences. It would be better for people like the late D. James Kennedy to have taken a vow of silence on such matters.

by Dawson Bethrick

The Problem of Saul

This is an excerpt from a larger work in progress. The statements by "Presuppositionalist" are actual quotes from an individual who corresponded with me some time ago.


Thesis: If the Christian god wants human beings (whether all or only some) to believe in it, then it should reveal itself to them in an obvious way, as the book of Acts says it did to Saul on the road to Damascus; otherwise non-belief in such a being is warranted given the lack of evidence, and it can even be pointed out that such a god is inconsistent since it claims to be no respecter of persons.

Presuppositionalist response:

God is sovereign and is under no obligation to reveal himself to any man in the way he revealed himself to Saul. Indeed, God is no respecter of persons, and Saul by no means merited or deserved the revelation he received. It served God’s purposes to meet Saul on the road to Damascus; so too, it serves God’s purposes not to reveal himself today in the same ways as he did to Paul, Moses, etc.

None of these points answers the objection that has been raised, and all appear to be little more than an effort to subdue doubts that the objection raises in the mind of someone who wants to believe Christianity is true. For instance, to claim that “God is sovereign and is under no obligation” to do one thing or another, is irrelevant, since the objection neither charges nor requires that the Christian god has any obligation to begin with. The question is not what this god is obliged to do, but what it wants to be the case in the world it allegedly created. If the Christian god wants human beings today to believe in it, why not do for them what it allegedly did for Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus according to the book of Acts?

Recall that Saul was not merely a doubter or non-believer, but an active persecutor who aggressively pursued the Christians of his day. He was what today’s believers would call in unison a hostile enemy of the body of Christ. The objection does not make pronouncements about why the Christian god might have chosen to reveal itself to Saul, other than that it simply chose to do so, nor does it suggest that it had any obligation to do so. The objection is wholly compatible with the view that the Christian god could have chosen not to reveal itself to Saul. All the objection does is point out the logical course of action given a desired end. In other words, it is a simple application of the principle of final causation: the end determines the means. It does not stipulate that the end in question is actually desired by any supernatural deity; indeed, if there is no god then it could hardly desire to reveal itself to anyone. But if such a being did exist and it wanted men to believe in it and accept its sacrificed son as their Lord and Savior, what better way to accomplish this end than to reveal itself in an obvious way before them, just as the book of Acts says it did for Saul of Tarsus?

The objection solidly rests on what Christians should be more than willing to take as biblical precedent, and, as mentioned above, upon the principle of final causation: a desired end determines the most fruitful and surefire means of achieving it. What we are expected to believe is that, instead of appearing before us as it allegedly did for Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, the Christian god actually prefers to send fallible men armed with flimsy arguments and no objective evidence to go through the hit-or-miss motions dictated by Christ’s “great commission.” This, we are told to believe, is the preference of a loving god which does not play favorites. On top of this, believers themselves – the ones who come to us with these flimsy arguments and lack of evidence – claim that they were moved to belief by an invisible “Holy Spirit” which “worked” in them a faith and desire to know this god, quite different from Saul's experience. The biblical precedent of Saul’s conversion by means of a personal self-revelation of Jesus in empirical form remains confined to the pages of the storybook and is denied to those who exist today, regardless of whether or not they end up "believing." And while they claim, contrary to what we're supposed to believe about Saul of Tarsus, that their belief is the result of the moving of an invisible magic spirit which somehow influences their minds in some fundamental but poorly explained manner, it is a striking coincidence how many of these same individuals were raised up in the Christian tradition from their youth. The claim that the spirit of the Christian god somehow "moves" in minds of believers, simply does not ring true, and all it has going for it is personal testimony, i.e., an unsupportable claim. Unfortunately, it reduces the Christian claim to the same level as other religious claims: the believer is unable to show how one can reasonably distinguish between what he calls "God" and what he may merely be imagining.

In response to the objection, it is pointed out that “Saul by no means merited or deserved the revelation he received,” but according to the story of his conversion, he got a private visit from this god all the same. This, mind you, from an omnipotent being which is claimed to have “so loved the world” that it gave its only begotten son (cf. John 3:16), and is claimed not to be given to partiality toward any of its creatures (cf. Acts 10:34). Pointing out that Saul did not deserve a personal revelation, does not address the objection. On the contrary, it only makes the matter all the more complicated for the apologist. For now he has to reckon with the claim that the Christian god does not play favorites while at the same time choosing to reveal itself to one individual (one who was actively hostile toward the church in fact) but expecting the same devotion from everyone else.

Saying that “it served God’s purposes to meet Saul on the road to Damascus” also does not address the issue, for it is already granted that the Christian god had a purpose in revealing itself to Saul of Tarsus by granting that it has the ability and the choice to do so. It could likewise have a purpose in revealing itself to human beings of today as well. The objection does not require that the Christian god act without purpose. Indeed, if it exists and desires that men believe and worship it, the purpose in revealing itself to modern human beings would be, among other possibilities, to make its existence incontestably certain to those individuals to whom it reveals itself. That it does not do this is consistent with the premise that it does not in fact exist to begin with.

On this account, the Christian god strikes me as either non-existent or wholly indifferent to the plight of men. Moreover, the very idea that an immortal, indestructible and perfect being would have any purpose to begin with is conceptually specious. Such a being would certainly have no need to act for any purpose, for it wouldn’t have any deficiency to overcome. To say it has needs would only imply that it is somehow incomplete, and that it needs to take action in order to secure something that makes its existence possible, as in the case with biological organsims (such as human beings). In response to this, apologists seek to dumb the matter down to the level of a mere desire rather than a need: the Christian god’s purposes are based on its desires (wishes and wants), not needs that it must satisfy in order to sustain itself or any attribute it might possess. But if such a being were to have any wants, wishes or desires which could provide a basis for any purpose it might set before itself, they would be purely arbitrary. Here apologists prefer to call their god’s purposes “mysterious,” which is a euphemistic signal to shut down all inquiry in preference for “just believing.” At best they can only hope to appeal to passages like Psalm 115:3, which suggest that pleasure of the moment is the final arbiter of their god’s choices and actions, all the while ignoring the fact that the characteristics they attribute to their god would mean that it could refrain from all choices and actions for all eternity, and still be what it is.

All this suggests that it is men, having adopted a worldview philosophically based on the primacy of consciousness and allegorically based on the narratives of a storybook, who are in charge of a god that exists only in their imaginations as they scramble to work out the implications of the assertions they make in describing what they claim to worship.

Presuppositionalist:

This objection intimates that God has not already provided sufficient revelation of himself to all men.

That depends on what one considers “sufficient revelation.” Who determines what is "sufficient" when it comes to something labeled "revelation"? “Sufficient” for what exactly? This is not explained. Was “sufficient revelation” available at the time Saul of Tarsus was supposedly persecuting Christian believers? How would one determine this? Saul had the testimony of the believers he personally persecuted - some of whom could have been eyewitnesses to the resurrection if we go by the accounts - and that was presumably not sufficient. If the testimony of eyewitnesses or their immediate comrades is not sufficient, why suppose that a 2000-year-old storybook is sufficient?

Believers of course reserve the right to say what they choose to say in response to such questions, and posture themselves as speaking for their god. That’s fine - they can imagine and say whatever they want. But notice how the apologist has to keep back-pedaling on this question and dragging it off to irrelevant matters. Today’s non-believers did not invent the example of Saul of Tarsus being converted on his way to Damascus. If Christianity wants to keep Paul, they have to deal with the implications that the story of his conversion introduces. But this is something that believers tend to shove under the rug and ignore. If it were the case that “God’s revelation of himself” were sufficient at the time Saul was persecuting believers, then the personal appearance paid to Saul by Jesus would be superfluous and, worse, all the more an instance of “respecting persons.” And if it were not sufficient, then whose fault is that? Saul’s? If so, he sure got redeemed in a jiff!

And who is to determine whether something is sufficient for another human being? Does the believer reserve for himself a place of privilege here, claiming that in spite of his poor answers to objections raised against his god-belief, its “revelation” is nevertheless sufficient anyway?

by Dawson Bethrick

Answering Ecualegacy, Pt. 4

Below I offer some more thoughts in response to statements made by Ecualegacy in the comment section of Aaron Kinney's blog Pat Tillman and Christian Bigotry.

Readers should also note that Ecualegacy has erected a new blog. It can be found here:

http://ecualegacy.blogspot.com/

* * *

Ecualegacy:

What kind of proof do you want?

It’s not about what I want. It’s about what the Christian says his god wants. What does it want, and what is it willing to do to get what it wants? If it wants my allegiance, it knows what to do, since according to the Christian’s worldview it created me and is omniscient. So what does it do? It sends internet apologists like Ecualegacy (not to mention others). What is he? Ecualegacy is just a man. And what does he offer? More evasions, just as I would expect if his god were not real.

If the apologist wants to pursue the question – “what kind of proof do you want?” – I would say that a demonstration of the power Christians claim their god possesses would be a good place to start. Something concrete is needed to elevate the content of what they want others to believe from the level of a mere claim – such as “God created the earth and the heaven” – to a demonstration which we can witness firsthand and which unequivocally points to their god as opposed to a rival deity, an as-of-yet unexplained scientific phenomenon, or simply a misidentification of reality. This is essentially what I pointed out to Matt Slick of the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry when I interacted with his essay I don’t see any convincing evidence for the existence of God. In my response to Slick, I wrote:

What the theist will then want to say is that this being which he calls god, possesses a consciousness powerful enough to create planets, enable men to walk on unfrozen water, turn water into wine, and make A into non-A (i.e., make contradictions exist) at will. In other words, the theist is claiming that there exists a being with the power to make reality conform to its will. "Then what kind of evidence would be acceptable?" Well, obviously, given the nature of such a claim, the only evidence for such a claim which could at all be acceptable would be a demonstration of such power.

My position has not changed, and the fact that I have never witnessed a demonstration of what Christian believers claim on behalf of their god has also not changed. Immutability seems to be one of the characteristics they attribute to their god, and indeed, a non-existent being does not change. Consistent with this, I have already pointed to the precedent of biblical example in the book of Acts and the conversion of Saul. According to the story, Saul was an active persecutor of the early Christian church; he initiated the use of force against individuals who peaceably sought to worship their god. And the Jesus of the gospels saw fit to come down and show himself to Saul firsthand. Certainly the Christian god is no respecter of persons (cf. Acts 10:34), is it? And if this procedure worked for Saul, why wouldn’t it work for anyone else? Does the Christian god truly think that sending evangelizing internet apologists like Ecualegecy will be more effective than what it allegedly did for Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus? Or, is this just a legend blown out of proportion by people who want the Christian story to be true?

Ecualegacy then listed some options and gave a reason for shooting them down:

Pillars of fire? Parting seas? Manna from heaven? Booming voices? The Israelites had all that and more AND THEY STILL DIDN'T BELIEVE!

According to the stories in the storybook, that’s right: they (all?) still didn’t believe. Apparently pillars of fire, parting seas, manna from heaven and booming voices are not enough for some people. Of course, I have never witnessed these pillars of fire, parting seas, manna from heaven or booming voices. And so far as I can tell, neither did the ancient Jews. The stories say they did, but what reason does Ecualegacy or any other apologist offer that I should not just dismiss these as fictional accounts? For many people, such as myself, who are more discriminating about what they accept as truth, mere stories such as the ones Ecualegacy cites are certainly not going to be enough. That’s not my problem. Is there more that his god can do? If not, then it must not be a very impressive god. If it can, then let’s see it. Or, is there going to be some excuse for why it doesn’t? It’s Ecualegacy’s god. He can decide.

Ecualegacy then admitted that evidence and proof have nothing to do with it. He wrote:

Your problem isn't a sufficiency of proof. It's pride!

Whose problem is this? Pride is a moral virtue in my book. Observe:

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind-that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining-that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul-that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational being he is born able to create, but must create by choice-that the first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself-and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul's shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others. (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)

Since pride is a virtue in my book, this is not a point of deficiency on my behalf. But the fact that the apologist finds a man’s pride to be a barrier to god-belief is telling in itself. It means he secretly realizes that acceptance of god-belief claims is not likely so long as one values himself, and that one must surrender the moral character he has already earned in order prostrate himself before those who seek to hold him captive. To be a Christian, one must enshrine his vices as his moral norm and sacrifice the virtues he has earned which make him a moral human being. This is why Ecualegacy refers to my pride as a “problem.” It keeps me from swimming into the fisher's nets, and this frustrates him.

Ecualegacy asks:

How hard is it to get down on one knee, say to God, "Okay, I've got your book and I'm going to commit my life to following it?"

The question is not “how hard is it to get down on one knee” and pledge allegiance to an invisible magic being which refuses to show itself to me in a manner which I can perceive, but Why would I do this? In order to do this, I would have to be dishonest to myself. Ecualegacy offers no reason why I should choose to be dishonest to myself. If he decides to present a reason why I should be dishonest to myself, would it be for a selfish, or selfless reason? We’ll have to wait and see until he does provide a reason.

Consider: if I were to do what Ecualegacy suggests, who would benefit? He has already pointed out that, to commit my life to his god, I would have to surrender my pride, the virtue which makes benefit possible for me in the first place. Does he think his god would somehow benefit? His god is already perfect and lacks nothing; it is an indestructible, immortal and eternal being according to what Christianity teaches. Nothing could harm it, and nothing could improve it. It needs nothing to exist, certainly not my worship. I on the other hand am neither indestructible, immortal nor eternal, and my existence depends on my choices and actions. I do need things to exist – namely values. And virtues like my pride – virtues which Ecualegacy’s god requires us to surrender – are what I need in order to be capable of achieving and protecting those values which my life requires, for they make my life worth the effort required to live. It is my life, mind and morality which Christianity seeks to undermine. Most believers do not recognize this because they compartmentalize their beliefs, living a double mental life, with one foot in their religion, and the other foot in the real world. Also, they typically do not have a very intellectual understanding of moral values in the first place. They get their morality from a storybook. Indeed, where does Jesus speak of values anyway? They are taken completely for granted in the speeches which the bible attributes to him.

Ecualegacy asks:

Exactly what has God gotten wrong in his moral guidance I'd like to know?

First, Ecualegacy should identify what he thinks his god has gotten right when it comes to moral guidance. Most likely he rests on the presupposition that every statement attributed to his god in regard to morality is perfectly right because, as he claims, his god is “an all-knowing, all-powerful being in authority telling you what to do.” Ecualegacy is certainly free to believe such things. And I am free to point out that they are delusional premises informed by an imagination which rejects the fundamental principles which are necessary to keep a mind grounded in reality.

But let’s explore this a little more clinically. Here are a few questions for Ecualegacy and other believers to consider before we can work our way towards an informed understanding about morality. Since Ecualegacy advocates the Christian bible as the authoritative source for his views on morality, I would expect him to cite the bible to support his responses to these questions:

a) What is your working definition of ‘morality’?

b) What is the purpose of morality?

c) Does man need morality? Yes or no?

d) If you think man does need morality, why do you think he needs it?

e) By what means does man come into awareness of moral knowledge?

f) Who or what should be the primary beneficiary of moral action? The one who takes the moral action, or someone else?

These questions will get the conversation started by clarifying from the beginning some basics of each side’s position. I have answers to these questions, but I would like to find any Christian who will be willing to answer these questions in a straightforward manner and stick to his answers. So far I have found none who are willing to do this.

Ecualegacy asks:

Where is he asking something impossible or even harmful from Christians?

For one, the Christian religion demands – as Ecualegacy’s own statements indicate – that I as a human being surrender my pride, one of my cardinal virtues. Another cardinal virtue which it demands that I sacrifice on the altar of god-belief is my honesty. But as I have explained elsewhere, I am too honest to be a Christian.

by Dawson Bethrick

Answering Ecualegacy, Pt. 3

We continue now with my response to Ecualegacy's comments.

I wrote:

Sending other human beings to represent it will always be insufficient

Ecualegacy replied:

He could have just created us with a certainty of His existence in our minds. But I think I beat the dead horse enough about that line of atheistic objection.

Saul of Tarsus was not “just created... with certainty of [Jesus’] existence” already in his mind; at least the story implicitly assumes that he was not, since he is first introduced to us as a persecutor of Christians, not a committed believer. So why does Ecualegacy think he needs to take the discussion in this direction?

Over and over again, he continues to avoid my point, even though it is exemplified in the book of Acts. In order to manifest its reality to Saul of Tarsus, the god named Jesus appeared before him as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute early Christian believers. That’s the story we read in the book of Acts. That’s the model that the New Testament gives us. Why is it wrong for me to point to this model as an example? Christians believe it actually happened as it is reported in the book of Acts, do they not? St. Paul comes across as quite confident in what he claims in his letters. Do Christians think that Jesus was violating Saul’s free will by appearing to him?

In fact, many apologists claim that the Christian god did create us with certain knowledge of its existence already implanted in our minds, or at any rate made this knowledge in man somehow inescapable. They go on to claim that non-believers are actively and willfully “suppressing” that knowledge. They cite passages from the first chapter of Romans to substantiate these assertions. For instance, Greg Bahnsen writes:

With respect to the revelation of God in nature, Paul categorically declares that those who do not believe it are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20 – etymologically, “without an apologetic”!). After all, they do not merely have some vague and uncertain evidence for the living and true God, but actually “know” the truth about Him (vv. 19, 21). It would be an unwarranted misreading of Scripture to understand the kind of “certainty” that it claims for the truth and believability of the Christian message to be a “practical” or “moral” certainty of dedicated conviction – and not at the same time an intellectual or rational certainty. (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 71)

Christian believers do this so that they can feel better about believing in their imaginary god by vilifying non-believers as dishonest suppressors of “the truth.” And yet not one of them can prove his god’s existence.

Again, one can make any claim he wants about something that does not exist in the first place. All he needs to do is imagine it, and if the distinction between reality and imagination is unclear to him in the first place, then he may very well think he’s talking the truth when he tells us about his imaginary deity.

Now it’s true, Bahnsen and his bible are not very clear on this point. Is it saying that man was “born” with this knowledge already implanted in his mind? Well, such a supposition would make one believe that such knowledge is universally inescapable. There’s some suggestion of this in what is being claimed here, for it is used to hold every human being liable to such knowledge. On such a view, knowledge is automatic, not the product of mental effort. How is this possible for minds that we are constantly being reminded are fallible, finite, inferior, incapable of anything on its own? The other alternative is that this “knowledge of God” is thought to be inferred from nature somehow. But what specifically in nature is the focal point where this alleged inference begins is not stated, nor does the claim identify the steps one needs to make in the chain of inference to go from “nature” to “God.” They say the devil is in the details, and that’s probably why Bahnsen never points them out. To make matters worse for Bahnsen, if the “knowledge of God” so claimed is thought to be inferred from nature, who is doing the inferring if not the fallible, finite minds which Christianity condemns as worthless to begin with? Again we’re back to men as the origin and medium of god-belief claims. The objects I observe in the natural world do not come with a label or stamp indicating “Made by God” or “Made in Heaven.” If I accepted the rudimentary error that the world was created by an act of consciousness to begin with, what would lead me to suppose that it was the Christian god as opposed to some other invisible magic being which did the creating? The Lahu tribesmen tell me that Geusha is the world’s creator. Geusha is not the Christian god; for instance, Geusha did not send a son to be crucified by Roman authority. What makes the Christian claim true but the Lahu claim false? Both the Christian god and Geusha are equally indistinguishable from what people may merely be imagining. So to go with Christianity, we have to arbitrarily special-plead the case. An honest man would not do this.

I wrote:

for human beings can be deluded, they can lie, they can be sincerely mistaken.

Ecualegacy responded:

Here we have some classic objections to Biblical authenticity. Were the NT Scriptures:

A) products of an early 1st Millennium JK Rowling?
B) products of a prolific, but deluded band of apostles?
C) products of sincerely mistaken apostles (Hey Thomas, I could have sworn I saw Jesus at the Bizzare [sic] yesterday!)?
D) the true and accurate Word of God?

I'm never going to be able to prove to you that A) is absolutely false, so I won't bother trying.

It is good that Ecualegacy admits this in regard to his point A) above. So long as the possibility that portions of the bible are fictitious cannot be ruled out, it must be reckoned with. Christianity views human beings as innately depraved creatures which can produce no good of their own. And yet human beings are the only medium through which this omniscient and omnipotent deity chooses to reach human beings? This makes as much sense as trying to dig a hole with a shovel whose handle is made of rope.

Ecualegacy writes:

At the same time, I'm not going to waste time trying to argue that Homer wrote the Illiad, that Caesar wrote the Gallic Wars, or that Plato wrote The Republic.

Good call. Neither will I. I don’t base my life on those writings, either. In fact, it wouldn’t change my life one iota if the texts Ecualegacy mentions turned out to be pseudonymous. For all I know, they very well could be. I’m just being consistent here. Unlike Ecualegacy, I have no confessional investment in who the authors of any ancient texts might have been.

Ecualegacy writes:

Not exactly the same league or importance as the Bible, I'll admit, but we have copies of the New Testament BY FAR closer to the autograph date than for any of the other ancient major writings I've listed (or are in existence so far as I can tell...unless it was scratched on a slab of marble or dug straight from the ground).

It’s never been very clear to me why believers are so anxious to put stock in the amount of “copies of the New Testament” there are throughout history, or in how much closer they are in time to the purported “autograph date” than other ancient writings. A copy of a fiction is still a fiction, even if it were penned a month after the original, and Ecualegacy has already admitted that he cannot rule out the possibility that the bible is fictitious.
Ecualegacy wrote: If, however, you allow for the possibility that the NT was written when traditional NT scholars think, then you have some uncomfortable questions to answer (uncomfortable for the unbeliever that is).

The documents which have been assembled into the New Testament had to be written sometime. The dates that various scholars have attributed to the elements comprising the New Testament have never impressed me very much. And scholars are far from unanimous on when anything in the NT was first written down. Naturally those who want the content of the New Testament’s writings to be true, will push for early dates on all or most of the documents, to allow less time for legendary material to creep into the narratives. Some apologists even seem to think that legends or simple invention could not wind up in documents purporting to record events which happened some 10 years earlier, for instance. In fact, however, it only takes a few sessions of writing to pack a narrative with invented details.

But even this common apologetic move is premised on circular reasoning, for it is clearly assumed in such efforts that what the stories relate actually happened, and that they actually happened when the stories purport to have taken place, which is at best loosely figured according, for instance, to known reigns of rulers mentioned in some of these documents. To claim that the gospel of Mark, for instance, was written only 35 or 40 years after the events it records, is to assume that the events it records actually happened in the first place. But that’s precisely what the believer is called to prove. So he begs the question by playing the dating game. Had he something more secure than appeals to human scholars and their estimations about when such-and-such document was written, we would have most likely seen it by now.

Ecualegacy continued:

How in the world would the early church community accept any of the NT Scriptures as true when they PRESUPPOSED that the very people they were addressed to could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues. Not that glossolalia trick, but genuine, "Hola, yo puedo hablar espanol perfecto sin un dia de escuela" kind of tongues. Too bad I can't speak spanish without studying it. I've been married to a lovely latin wife for 5 1/2 years and still am not yet fluent.

Is this supposed to be one of the “uncomfortable questions”? I can already see a couple problematic assumptions which Ecualegacy has apparently accepted without much critical reflection. For instance, the way he phrases his question suggests that he believes that there was only one “early church community,” when in fact it is most likely the case that there were many different communities constituting the budding church. Different communities no doubt had different teachers, and different teachings as well. The various gospels are thought by many critical scholars to reflect competing views of Jesus among different communities which were at best only loosely connected. Keep in mind that there were no Zondervan bibles in circulation at this time, so not everyone in church was in possession of the rarefied canon we have today. They were lucky to even have a copy of one or two letters in the beginning, assuming there were any in existence to begin with.

Another problematic assumption lies in a similar vein. Ecualegacy seems to think that groups of people presuppose things in unison, as if they truly were of one mind. We are not in a position today to know the intimate details of what each member of the various ancient Christian communities that existed back then may have been presupposing. Some may have presupposed, as Ecualegacy suggests, that “the very people [the books of the New Testament] were addressed to could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues.” But to affirm this of the members of the early church is anachronistic. Are we to suppose that every community had a copy of I Corinthians, the letter in which St. Paul itemizes the various “spiritual gifts” they can expect to be distributed among those who believe? Even the members of today’s churches, with the benefit of mass-produced bibles, complete with center references, concordances and commentaries, do not all presuppose that all believers (the ones to whom the bible is addressed) are running around possessing one or more of the spiritual gifts that we find listed in I Cor. 12. I remember when I was a Christian, how I was taught to suppose that the reason we did not see these gifts manifested among the church membership was because of the presence of sin, or lack of faith, or simply because “the Spirit” didn’t want to show off. The believing mind can invent all kinds of “reasons” why one should not be surprised when “the fruits of the spirit” manifest themselves in ways that are indistinct from what would be the case if there were no “Spirit” to begin with.

But in spite of these corrections, Ecualegacy might still wonder why anyone in the early church community would accept the New Testament texts as truth if he “presupposed” that the people to whom they were addressed “could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues.” The implication behind Ecualegacy’s question is that he acknowledges that these things weren’t really taking place. So why believe they were taking place?

And though it’s most likely the case that the average believer did not “presuppose” that the gifts we read about in I Cor. 12, for instance, were being manifested in the lives of fellow members (the average believer most likely learned about these “gifts” well after conversion anyway, after making the initial downpayment of a life-altering confessional investment), anyone who did could have still believed that the NT texts with which he may have been familiar were true for any number of reasons. For instance, he may have listened to embellished testimony from fellow believers in which they claimed to have performed healings, or prophesied, or spoke in tongues (even “that glossolalia trick” that Ecualegacy mentions can be convincing enough to someone who wants to believe). I myself have heard many Christians claim that they had performed healings or other miraculous stunts. Unfortunately no one was looking at the time, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, right? The desire to believe religious teachings quite often fosters an underlying context of fantasy and denial. The believer is taught to accept claims from fellow believers uncritically and to fear doubts, so he actively seeks to squelch them.

I think a rather candid statement from John Frame answers much of Ecualegacy’s question here. Frame writes that

a person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to belief. (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37)

Look around. Even today people believe all kinds of things that they’re told to believe. We see people today and in the recent past believing the most bizarre claims, and in fact acting on those claims as if their eternal souls’ livelihood depended on them. Look at the Jim Jones cult-massacre. Look at the Heaven’s Gate drop-outs. Look at the Branch Davidians and their spectacular cookout. We have people today going on mainstream Christian television broadcasts claiming to be able to heal and prophesy and do all these other neat tricks. Even though they never produce the real McCoy, there are still people out there who put their faith in such claims, even after they’ve been exposed as charlatans. The NT promises that believers will display these abilities, and many have claimed to have possessed them. But even Ecualegacy cannot speak Spanish without torturous effort. He’s just as mundane as the rest of us.

As Ecualegacy points out, the New Testament makes a number of very tall claims about various abilities which believers can expect to acquire as a result of becoming “new creatures in Christ.” One of those abilities is referred to as the gift of tongues. Ecualegacy says it’s “too bad” that he cannot speak Spanish “without studying it,” which suggests to me that he did not receive “the gift of tongues.” If it were all a fiction, I would expect that he would have to acquire skills in a foreign language just as anyone else does: by firsthand effort.

Ecualegacy writes:

Add to that the incredible claims of the scriptures which people could go and investigate for themselves.

Oh, the claims are there alright. But how could they be investigated? And how do we know that they weren’t investigated and the results of those investigations ignored or even repressed? Are we to expect that committed believers would record and broadcast the findings of investigators who determined that St. Paul, for instance, was telling a few tall ones in order to solidify the churches he founded? I have already written about this topic in my blog Five Hundred Anonymous Witnesses. To date, no Christian has addressed the points I raise in that piece.

Ecualegacy:

Add to that the perfect moral teachings of the apostles and the profound testimony of their selfless lives.

Far from perfect in my book of morals, that’s for sure. That they called for selflessness is itself an indication that what they were peddling was a foul-smelling fiction. I have already written about morality in the following blogs:

Christianity vs. Objective Morality

Do I Borrow My Morality from the Christian Worldview?

Rational Morality vs. Presuppositional Apologetics

Calvindude’s Defense of Christian Moral Bankruptcy

Hitler vs. Mother Theresa: Antithesis or Symbiosis?

Common Ground Part 5: Ethics

I’ve not seen any Christians offer much in way of response to these posts, either.

Ecualegacy writes:

You simply can't pay charlatans enough to do what the Apostles did.

Ecualegacy has already ejected his points from the broader context he earlier admitted as a real possibility. If the stories in the bible are fictional (above he admitted that he was “never going to be able to prove” that they are not fictional), such as legends which grew with each retelling until they were finally written down (there is ample evidence for this throughout the New Testament itself), then there’s no need to take the stories of “what the Apostles did” as anything other than fiction, or at best as embellished storytelling. So Ecualegacy is simply begging the question here.

But let’s grant Ecualegacy’s point and consider how much the apostles should have charged for their “selfless lives.” On the same token, how much do you suppose Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult was paid for his beamed-out antics? How much was Jim Jones paid for his suicidal crusade? How much was David Koresh paid for his Texan compound cookout in 1993? These people were sold on the idea that their rewards would be coming in “the next life,” not in the form of financial reimbursements that they could take to the bank in this life.

Ecualegacy writes:

If it were one guy, you might dismiss him as a freak. But 12 and more? That's stretching the odds. Nor can we hope they were simply deluded. That's too any
people making too many mistakes.

Again Ecualegacy is begging the question by assuming the truth of what he has been called to defend. The story does indeed mention 12 immediate disciples of Jesus (one of which betrayed him, so it’s now down to 11; even St. Paul forgot this at one point in his letters). But if it’s just a story, then there’s no need to take these numbers seriously. And even if we did, is “12 and more” really so impressive? Over 900 individuals died at Jonestown in 1978 for a religious cause; most of these deaths were suicides – for what they believed. “You simply can’t pay charlatans enough to do what the [People’s Temple members] did.” By Ecualegacy’s measuring stick, Jim Jones’ message must have had some truth to it. If a mere 12 is “stretching the odds,” how much more is 900 plus “stretching the odds”?

Ecualegacy writes:

Besides, suppose I had "better" or "irrefutable" evidence that the Bible is true. Something like the OT describing the evolutionary process like a modern text book or predicting the exact date a spectacular comet would swing by? What would you really do with that knowledge?

The facts of the evolutionary process was available to thinkers 2000 years ago just as they are to us today. Granted, the technology we have today makes the relevant data much more readily available. And our understanding of how to integrate the facts we gather from the world is also far superior. But in fact, some ancient thinkers did suspect a common descent to the variety of flora and fauna they observed in the world. See for instance the 6th century Greek philosopher Anaximander, considered by many today as “evolution’s most ancient proponent.” So if a mere human being with no connection to the Christian deity could recognize at least on a primitive level the commonality in the origin of species, then would the presence of such a recognition in the bible suggest divine authorship or inspiration? I don’t think so.

As for comets, their itineraries are not impossible for men who study the nighttime sky to project. So this would not be very impressive either. Nope, the omnipotent, omniscient, infallible and perfect creator of the universe would have to do something that men could not by any measure come close to matching.

Ecualegacy writes:

Would you "like" God any more than you do now?

It’s not about me liking Ecualegacy’s god or about his god doing something for me. After all, it is his god that is the one desiring worship and sacrifice, not I. I’m simply pointing out that, if this god were real and it truly wanted to make its existence known to me, it would know what it needs to do. Sending apologists whose arms are loaded with the cheapest forms of argument is certainly not going to impress me. I already know too much to be taken in by it all. But there was a time when I did not know so much, and at that point in my life I was a Christian. Now the cat is out of the bag. I’ve grown up.

Would it help if I invent my own god in my imagination and confess that I worship it? By calling it “God,” would Ecualegacy approve of my worldview, choices and actions any more than he does now, even though I openly admit that I’m just imagining? Or, would that not be enough? Would he need to make sure the god I invent in my imagination is commensurable in some way to the one he has imagined in his mind? Well?

Ecualegacy writes:

Would you be any more inclined to do what he has told you to do? You'd still be coming at him with the same prideful arguments you are now I suspect. But only you can answer that question for yourself.

Since Ecualegacy’s god is merely imaginary and does not actually exist, it will never be able to answer my arguments. Nor will Ecualegacy himself. He can deflect, evade and spin the issues, but he will not be able to meet my arguments on their own ground. He can chalk this up to pride, but citing my pride is not an argument. He does this so that he can settle in his mind that he is right and I am wrong, given his aversion to pride. But it does nothing to affect my position. At that point he’s simply trying to quell his own nagging doubts.

I wrote:

You can cite Holding and Miller and any other apologist all you want, but at the end of the day these are just other human beings, and they too fail to provide a method by which we can distinguish between what they call “God” and what they may merely be imagining. What they do provide is an example of how one can settle confusions and contradictions which arise as a result of their desire to protect a delusion in their minds.

Ecualegacy responded:

"Delusion in their minds" is a conclusion I think you've reached prematurely.

The conclusion is sound, as this argument demonstrates:

Premise: Any worldview which affirms, depends on or reduces to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics is delusional.

Premise: Christianity is a worldview which affirms, depends on or reduces to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics.

Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity is delusional.

For support of this argument’s premises, see my blog.

Ecualegacy writes:

And if this post weren't already 2500+ words long, I'd spend another 500 or 1000 more taking you through the steps.

Steps to what? Please, don’t hold back on my account. If you’ve got something, it’s no use telling us you have it and then withhold it. Bring it on.

Ecualegacy writes:

But you really ought to do some homework for yourself and go look up the experts.

But I am an expert.

Ecualegacy writes:

Besides, your objection sounds suspiciously like Carl Sagan's famous line about wanting somthing like a flaming cross orbiting the earth to prove God's existence.

This, too, is not an argument. Nor does it answer the question on the table: How can I distinguish between what Ecualegacy as a Christian believer calls “God” from what he may merely be imagining? Is Ecualegacy saying, in roundabout manner, that it is wrong for me to ask this question? Or, can he recognize that this is a legitimate concern (since there is a difference between the real and the unreal, the actual and the imaginary) and address this problem in the case of his god-belief?

Ecualegacy writes:

For crying out loud, people landed on the moon and the average man on the street is starting to believe the conspiracy theorists who say man didn't!

Again, this is not an argument. Perhaps Ecualegacy doesn’t have any to begin with? Let’s wait for my next installment in this series, and see what more he has to say.

by Dawson Bethrick

Answering Ecualegacy, Pt. 2

Recall that Aaron had asked Ecualegacy who created evil, if the god which allegedly created the universe did not create it. Ecualegacy's answer was:

The short answer to this question is, "We did!" (and Satan too).

Then Ecualegacy followed this declaration with the following accusation:

I believe you're taking "God's will is always done" to a literal absurdity.

I responded:

This isn’t Aaron’s fault; the very idea of a god is itself already a literal absurdity. Aaron is simply trying to interact with someone who has committed his life to believing a literal absurdity.

Ecualegacy now states:

That is an opinion. And coming from such a finite being, a very weakly positioned one indeed. I'd ask for specifics, but I know where to look on atheist websites and what they argue.

It’s statements like this which indicate to me that the believer is always ready to confuse himself with the god he claims to worship. Ecualegacy wants to dismiss my point on the basis that it is “an opinion” which comes “from... a finite being.” I claim to be nothing other than a finite being. The problem for Ecualegacy is the fact that I exist, while the god he imagines does not. Unlike the god he imagines, he cannot control what I think and affirm. So the motivation to dismiss my views as mere “opinion” is clear enough. But we should bear in mind that calling my statement an opinion is not an argument, and it does nothing to refute the content of my statement. Nor does the fact that I am a finite being undermine my position. According to my worldview, the actual is always finite.

Unfortunately, Ecualegacy’s dismissal works against his position just as effectively as it works against mine. He has offered his opinions. If position statements and affirmations are dismissible on the mere basis that they are opinions, then Ecualegacy’s opinions can be brushed aside just as easily as he brushes aside mine. Also, Ecualegacy himself is a finite being, just like me. He may pose as the spokesman for an allegedly infinite being, but this does not overcome the fact that he is just as finite as they come. And if being finite is supposed to indicate fallibility in some way, Ecualegacy is just as fallible as I am. He could be wrong about his claims about the existence of an infinite being. But he does not seem willing to acknowledge this fact.

Ecualegacy had written:

The way I understand it, God wanted to create beings that could genuinely love him. This meant giving them a real choice to accept or reject him...to do good or to do wickedness.

I responded:

To accomplish this, the god you speak of should have at minimum provided its sentient creatures a means by which they could distinguish “God” from imagination.

Ecualegacy now responds:

I believe that God accomplished this spectacularly with the Bible.

Pointing to the bible only makes my point for me. The bible provides a vast collection of stories. When we read a story, our imagination makes the story we read come alive in our minds, envisioning the characters and their actions from the details that are supplied, and supplying many details of its own that are not provided in the story itself. We imagine what a story describes. Relying on story-telling is an invitation to relying on subjective invention.

For instance, in the story of Jesus coming to one of Jerusalem’s gates (cf. Lk. 7:12f), we imagine what the story describes. We concoct in our minds an image of what he looked like, what he was wearing, who else was there, the time of day, the slope of the road he was traveling on, the packs on his donkey, his companions, the guards at the gate, the people attending the dead man being carried out of the city, etc., etc., etc. Our imagination gives life to the story as we read it and consider it in our minds. The same is the case when we read any story, whether fiction or non-fiction. When we read news stories, we use our imagination to picture what is described, and when we read Harry Potter stories, we do the same thing. Relying on a written source gives us no alternative but to carry what we read over into our imagination.

Ecualegacy has not answered my challenged. But he did continue:

I'm not saying you can "prove" the veracity of the Scripture like heliocentricity or men landing on the moon. But I do think you can narrow the options down to Christianity as the most likely choice. I've written elsewhere about this on my own blog at http://ravizacharias.blogspot.com/ so I won't repeat myself here. This post is already long enough.

Ecualegacy acknowledges that "the veracity of the Scriptures" is not provable "like heliocentricity or men landing on the moon." This is an important admission. Essentially what he is saying is that there is nothing scientifically truthful in the bible's god-belief claims. Proof requires measurability, and the supernatural is "beyond measure." The supernatural is, according to Bahnsen, "whatever surpasses the limits of nature" (Always Ready, p. 177). Whatever "the supernatural" might be, it must be so unlimited that it is beyond any means of measurement. This already puts it outside the realm of rational knowledge, for it violates a basic principle of concept-formation, namely that the measurements belonging to units integrated into a concept "must exist in some quantity, but may exist in any quantity" (ITOE, p. 12). So whatever it is that theists call "supernatural," it cannot be integrated into the sum of human knowledge (since by its very description it defies a fundamental rule of knowledge integration), and yet we are expected to accept it as knowledge.

In spite of tragic oversights of this nature, Ecualegacy still thinks that we "can narrow the options down to Christianity as the most likely choice." If he thinks Christianity is "the most likely choice," what alternatives has he considered? And if he thinks it's merely a matter of choice - such as "Well, I choose that Christianity is the true worldview" - then he has already long departed from the principle of objectivity.

He says that he has written about this on his blog, but at this time there are only two brief entries to his blog (dated April 11 and April 12, 2007), and neither of them speak to any issue under the present discussion. And yet he says in response to the issue that I raise that he will not bother repeating himself, apparently because he thinks he’s already dealt with it. Not that I can see.

I had written:

the way it is now, we field claims about “God” from other human beings, but we have no way of distinguishing what they call “God” from what they may merely be imagining.

Ecualegacy complained:

You're just full of simply false arguments today. No way of distinguishing between real God and false god? Tell me I don't have to get neck deep in epistomology and cult detection with you to explain this.

I offered two observations, and Ecualegacy refers to them as “false arguments,” but even then he does not show where any of my statements are false, nor does he offer any counter arguments. I stated that "we field claims about 'God' from other human beings." Ecualegacy is just one of many examples. Is Ecualegacy not a human being? I'm willing to grant that he is, and yet he accuses me of being "full of simply false arguments." Does he realize what he is saying?

I also pointed out that "we have no way of distinguishing what they call “God” from what they may merely be imagining." And as I would expect, Ecualegacy has not identified any procedure by which I can distinguish between what he calls "God" and what he may merely be imagining. In fact, Ecualegacy has apparently missed the challenge that I have posed to him. I did not say “distinguishing between real God and false god,” but between what he calls "God" (his “real God”) and what he may merely be imagining. Notice that Ecualegacy offers nothing to help us do this. If he wants “to get neck deep in epistomology” [sic], I invite him to bring it on. Let’s review the epistemological process by which one gets from “this world” to the “supernatural world.” I have already indicated some reasons why this project is doomed from the get-go. See for instance my blog Is Human Experience Evidence of the Christian God?

But my overall point here should be clear. It may not be clear to Ecualegacy, but it’s clear to myself and probably to many of my readers. We learn about the Christian god from other human beings, not from the god itself. A collection of writings is not a supernatural person. Books are inanimate and non-conscious, and persons are animate and conscious. Men claim ancient texts were written by a deity, but their claiming this to be the case does not make it so. Everything I have ever learned about the Christian god has in one way or another been delivered to me by another human being or group of human beings. No deity has ever come and appeared before me. I can assure Ecualegacy and anyone else who believes Christianity’s claims, no deity has ever come to me and made its existence known to me personally. Chiding that I’m arrogant for expecting it to do this does not change this fact (indeed, I do not expect the non-existent to do anything). Moreover, my pointing out that no deity has done this does not make on arrogant, unless pointing out facts entails arrogance to begin with.

I wrote:

The bible itself, in Acts chapters 9 and 22 for instance, provides examples of this god personally revealing itself to a doubter and persecutor of believers. The way it is now, these are just stories that we read, very much on the par of a Harry Potter or other storybook.

Ecualegacy responded:

Speaking of absurdities! You're comparing apples with carrots here (or is it ducks with Hippogriffs?). Harry Potter and the Bible don't even belong in the same class of literature! JK Rowling, who we know is the author, doesn't claim her works to be Scripture inspired by God.

Ecualegacy does what he did above: he focuses on a small detail in order to distract attention from a more compelling issue. In my statement above, I allude to the story of a man named by the New Testament as Saul of Tarsus. According to the story that we read in the book of Acts, Saul was a persecutor of the early Christian church. In Saul’s pursuit of Christians in Damascus, as the story goes, he was stopped by a visit of the very Jesus he was purportedly persecuting. According to Acts, the two dialogued, there were witnesses to the event, and the event was profoundly real enough to the character of the story that it turned him around 180 degrees in his thinking and he became one of history’s leading spokesmen for the Christian religion. Assuming this story is true (which is what Christians want us to do), this man Saul had a personal encounter with the Christian deity. Assuming this story is historically accurate, then, this man Saul had a firsthand basis upon which he could distinguish what he would come to call “Lord” from what he may have merely been imagining. Unfortunately, a story in a book does not accomplish this for its readers. On the contrary, it leaves its readers stranded in an invented realm of the imagination, giving no objective basis for credibility. Nothing Ecualegacy says even comes close to acknowledging this hindrance to belief, let alone settling the matter in favor of Christianity.

As Ecualegacy points out, we know who the author of Harry Potter books is. By contrast, we do not know who the authors of the gospel stories in the New Testament were. This is not my fault as a non-believer, but I am frequently vilified for pointing this fact out. Such reactions indicate that Christians seem to be on the wrong side of facts.

Ecualegacy:

You'll have to do better than this Dawson if you expect to be taken seriously as an accuser against the Living God.

By making statements like this, Ecualegacy is posing as one who would seriously entertain a case against his god-belief if it met certain benchmarks, which of course he nowhere specifies. But since he’s already fully accepted his religion’s premises as truthful, this is merely a pose. To corroborate this, notice that he does not interact with the points of criticism that I have raised, and in fact has repeatedly attempted to divert attention away from them - either by shifting focus or by simply dismissing them as opinions from a finite being, etc.

I wrote:

If your god is the same god as the one written about in the book of Acts, and it wants us to believe it is real, it knows what to do.

Ecualegacy responded:

Another fallacious argument.

I pointed to the biblical precedent, as given in Acts chapters 9 and 22, to support my point that, if the Christian god were real and truly wanted me to believe in it, it would know what to do. Jesus’ appearance to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus was enough to convince an active persecutor of the early church. How much more would a personal visit from an almighty deity to someone like me, turn me around from what believers want to characterize as “evil ways”?

But given Ecualegacy’s reaction (he calls my citation of Acts 9 and 22 a “fallacious argument,” even though he does not identify any fallacy which my citation allegedly commits), he apparently must think that his god does not know what to do. So we would have to infer from this roundabout admission that his god is not omniscient after all.

Ecualegacy:

God does not merely want you to believe he is real. Ref to James 2:19 "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder." The point is not intellectual belief in God as though he were a fact to read about in a book. The point is to have a relationship with him built on faith and love. Besides, having irrefutable proof of God does not evidentially produce a deeper love for God. Otherwise, we'd have expected that the Israelites would have had a better run.

Again Ecualegacy shifts the issue in order to avoid dealing with the real issue. We were discussing belief, and when I point out that all Ecualegacy’s god would need to do to get someone like myself to believe it is real, would be to show itself, just as the New Testament book of Acts says happened to Saul of Tarsus. Instead of acknowledging that this would be an effective approach (according to the storybook, it was certainly effective in the case of Saul of Tarsus), he calls this a “fallacious argument” and now tells us that mere belief is not enough. There’s always going to be something more demanded of the initiate once he’s bitten the bait. Christian discipleship is always a game of “But wait, there’s more.” So of course, merely believing isn’t enough: Christianity wants the believer to surrender his will in full, like a payment he didn’t realize he was committing himself to make. But before this can happen, he must first believe, and that is the issue before us, the issue which Ecualegacy wants to move beyond before the ploy has been exposed. Or, does one first surrender his will, and then he will believe? Perhaps Ecualegacy would like to admit this, but lacks the courage to do so.

Ecualegacy speaks of having “a relationship” with Jesus, one “built on faith and love.” But even before one can attempt to have an actual relationship with Jesus, it seems he would first have to at least believe that Jesus is actual and not merely imaginary. But if Ecualegacy’s god is imaginary, if Jesus is simply a mood, he is doing precisely what I would expect him to do: move around from issue to issue without settling any of them. The intention is to not let the discussion stop long enough for the opposing party to realize that our leg is being pulled.

What Ecualegacy needs to understand is that I have no desire to form a relationship with his Jesus. Why would I want a relationship with a god which requires its worshippers to be willing to kill their own children, just as it demanded of Abraham?

So the issue of belief needs to be explored before we can entertain the idea of willfully entering into a relationship with this invisible Jesus, and that is what I inquired on. The point that I was making to Ecualegacy above in fact has the benefit of biblical precedent, namely the story found in Acts of Jesus paying Saul a personal visit. To believe something is the case rationally, one must first have awareness of it in some manner which provides for distinguishing between reality and imagination. When I see a tree, for instance, I can imagine the tree pulling itself out of the ground and casting itself into the sea (sound familiar?). But when I look back at the tree again, I can see that it is not doing what I have imagined. It remains a tree right where it always was, completely unaffected by my imagination. I can distinguish reality from imagination by comparing what I perceive with what I imagine. Christianity denies the believer this ability when it comes to his god-beliefs.

So what Ecualegacy must be advocating, is a relationship with an imaginary friend. Even adults have been known to indulge in fantasy relationships with imaginary friends. In fact, the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, is said to have a fantasy relationship with an imaginary friend. According to one source, Cho had

an imaginary girlfriend by the name of "Jelly," a supermodel who lived in outer space and who called Cho by the name "Spanky" and traveled by spaceship.

Christians need to provide something better than their flimsy apologetic arguments to distinguish their Jesus from simply a more developed version of an imaginary friend.

by Dawson Bethrick