Manata Overboard: Adrift and Without a Paddle

It is most pitiable to observe an apologist for a religious perspective, so eager to sick his magical spirits on atheist spoilsports, take a bite out of his own backside in the very trying, while haughtily congratulating himself before his peers. Even when he's fallen overboard, his colleagues do not throw him a life-preserver. Instead, he haphazardly drifts to and fro, at the mercy of torrents and eddies which carry him in no particular direction. But unlike the tale of baby Moses fortuitously caught among the reeds, Paul is found drifting up a creek without a paddle.

This time, Paul tried to take me to task for my quotation of Matthew 19:26, which includes the affirmation that "all things are possible." I pointed to this verse to remind Christian believers (so forgetful they often are) of their own 'worldview presuppositions' which commit them, like it or not, to a chaotic and unpredictable reality (or surreality) in which "all things are possible," since an omnipotent spirit is personally directing its every whip and wiggle. I have pointed out before that presuppositionalism's own hallmark slogan to the effect that Christianity is true "because of the impossibility of the contrary" is incongruous with the worldview such contrivances are intended to defend; for, in a worldview which affirms that "all things are possible," it makes no sense to turn right around and start enumerating things that are impossible. Similar tension arises when one wants to affirm, on the one hand that the nature of the universe is such that "all things are possible," while insisting on the other that things can only be a certain way, which just so happens to be in agreement with other affirmations dear to the confession. From here the dilemmas only succeed in multiplying themselves.

This has apparently gotten on Paul Manata's nerves, for he has sought to undermine my understanding of this clause by suggesting that I have stretched it beyond its intended context. For instance, he tells us that the claim that "all things can happen" applies in a very narrow scope:

1) Dawson's verse he uses to show that "anything can happen, willy-nilly" in a Christian theistic universe, is specifically talking about salvation.

The statement in Matthew 19:26 - "all things are possible" - is in fact the answer that Matthew's Jesus gives in response to his disciples, who asked in the preceding verse "who can be saved?" As an answer to such a question, it could hardly be any more vague, and reads as an attempt to evade stating anything specific on the the issue, as if to say "get outa here, kid, you're bothering me." Coming after such a question, the statement "with God all things are possible" may seem at first blush to have relevance to salvation to a novice. But seasoned Christians should surely know better, for it is very much on the issue of salvation which Christianity demonstrates firm inflexibility. For though the topic of the dialogue between Jesus and his disciples in Matt. 19 relates to salvation, Jesus is made to say "with God all things are possible" (v. 26) right after declaring that "a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven" (v. 23). Evangelists typically emphasize Christianity’s view of salvation, which is marked by its exclusiveness, and contrast it from the eastern adage that "there are many paths to the summit of a mountain." Christianity hardly promotes a soteriology in which the possibilities are endless. On the contrary, "strait is the gate" to the magic kingdom (cf. Mt. 7:13-14), and many denominations stress the teaching that there is no allowance for even minor deviation from the plan. James 2:10 tells us that "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." The gospel of John has its Jesus exclaim that "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (14:6).

Because of its intolerance to alternatives in regard to salvation, the claim that "all things are possible" in this regard is highly misleading. For instance, Christians are not supposed to entertain the possibility that the god they worship is anything other than the god of the New Testament. Thus on their teaching it is not possible that the god with whom "all things are possible" is a god that also says "there are many paths to the top of the summit" with regard to salvation. Would Christians say that one can be saved by praying to a non-Christian god? No, it's not likely that Christians would admit this. And yet here is a possibility proposed in relation to salvation, and already the statement "all things are possible" patently does not apply. Would Christians say that it is possible for a sinner to be saved without repentance? No, I doubt many Christians would admit this. Would Christians say that it is possible for a sinner to be saved without faith? No, I doubt they would admit to this, either. Would Christians say that it is possible for a sinner to be saved on his own volitional instigation? Calvinists likely would not admit to this. Would Christians say that it is possible for a sinner to be saved without the intervention of the Holy Spirit? Many Christians would likely dismiss this as well. Perhaps the applicability of the claim that "all things are possible" is more specific to who can be saved, owing to the question this is supposed to answer. But even here we find another dry well. For what Christian would say that a sinner who refuses to repent can be saved? What Christian would say that a sinner who refuses to confess Jesus as his Lord and Savior can be saved? What Christian would say that a sinner who refuses to believe there's a god can be saved? It is highly unlikely that any doctrine-driven Christian would admit to such proposals, instead dismissing them as impossible. So, contrary to what Paul intimates, it seems that the statement "all things are possible" in fact does not apply to the issue of salvation at all. Rather, it seems that Paul is simply offering another dodge which misses Christianity's own teaching!

Since it is clear now that the statement "all things are possible" could not apply to salvation, for this statement still to be true, it must apply in some broader context, one that is not made clear in the Matthean passage in which we find it. The context in which I cited Matt. 19:26 concerned the suggestion, made by Jason Engwer, to the effect that a mass hallucination being responsible for the alleged appearances of the post-resurrection Jesus was "highly unlikely." For I had written:

While we are told that coincidental mass hallucination "seems unlikely," this is stated in the context of a defense of a belief system which tells us that "all things are possible" (Mt. 19:26), that the universe was created by an act of consciousness, that dead people rose from their graves (cf. Mt. 27:52-53), that serpents and donkeys and burning bushes speak in human languages, that water was turned into wine by a wish, etc.

Even though many apologists might prefer the safety of non-commitment, it seems that some apologists are in agreement that the Christian god could cause hallucinations on a large scale basis. But couldn't also the devil? Christianity's defenders tend to shy away from discussing (yea, even acknowledging) the mischief that demons, devils and other "bad spirits" are presumably capable of wreaking in human affairs, for doing so admits the possibility that Christians themselves have been deceived by these invisible beings. And what about other gods? Naturally, Christians discount the claim that there are other gods. But if one grants legitimacy to the notion of the supernatural to begin with, then we could only rule out such possibilities by special pleading.

2) Does that verse really mean that anything can happen, that anything is possible?

This is a question that the Christian will ultimately have to decide for himself. To discover what the bible means, I have to start with what the bible says. But it needs to be kept in mind that I did not write Matt. 19:26, nor does my worldview conceive of an invisible magic being and invest it with the power to do what Christianity claims on behalf of its god. So again, what a particular passage might mean and the concern to find a way to live with it, are not my problems. But here Paul is on the verge of reducing "Scripture" to a game of "that’s what it says, but that’s not what it means." Perhaps Paul needs a course in McKinsey 101. We saw above that there are many hypothetical possibilities that can be conceived in regard to the salvation of man's soul, the issue to which Paul contends the meaning of the statement in Matt. 19:26 is constrained, which Christians themselves, on the basis of statements taken from the New Testament, would reject.

Now Paul asks if the verse in question can "really mean that anything can happen, that anything is possible." Christianity answers this question in its characteristic yes-and-no fashion, offering no stable guide to discerning when a guarantee on either yes or no can be had. The Christian wants things both ways: he wants to say, on the one hand, that his god is all-powerful, possessing unlimited sovereignty, completely and unexceptionally in control of its creations; and yet, on the other hand, he wants to say that there are constraints in place which cannot be altered, constraints which even his god must observe (even though those constraints owe their very existence to this god). It should be no wonder at this point why Paul has fallen overboard. Yet he continues:

a) If so, Dawson's should provide an argument for it. He needs to because his case rests on this.

I need to provide an argument to the effect that the words "all things are possible" mean "all things are possible"? If we do not allow the words to speak for themselves, what good will it do for me to present an argument, which itself consists of words? We saw above that his initial point completely misfires, and even then he does not shed any light on exactly how Mt. 19:26 should be understood. In spite of these shortcomings, he complains that the onus is on me.

Then Paul sought outside help:

b) Just because it uses a word that is universal, does not mean that is how it is being used in this passage. There is such a thing, which philosophers of language recognize, as restricted quantification. Philosopher of language William Lycan, speaking on restricted quantification, writes that, "What logicians call the domains over which quantifiers range need not be universal, but are often particular cases roughly presupposed in context" (Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction, p.24).

This is quite odd, especially coming from Paul himself. For elsewhere he has affirmed that a statement that is not qualified automatically defaults to universal scope of meaning, and yet in the present case, when the statement is in fact explicitly qualified universally, it is not to be taken as such. So, is Paul saying that it is not the case that "all things are possible with God"? It is limited? To what extent? The original issue was whether or not the Christian god could cause mass hallucinations. Is Paul actually trying to say that the Christian god could not cause mass hallucinations? Fellow Triablatherer Jason Engwer himself stated:

Christians don't argue that hallucinations would be supernaturally impossible. What Christian ever denied that God could produce mass hallucinations?

Jason should throw Paul a safety line. Instead, we'll likely see the apologists striking out against their critics. For instance, Christians may counter saying, "But this is the Christian God! It wouldn't make sense for Him to misrepresent Himself by causing mass hallucinations to those whom He has chosen to document and deliver His message of salvation!" This kind of retort of course overlooks the fact that these are the believer's assumptions, not mine. And they rest on very shaky ground indeed. Adult thinkers typically admit that human beings are not infallible. Also, human beings are always the source of supernatural claims (claims to mystical revelation notwithstanding). In his letter to the Roman church, the apostle Paul seems quite happy in calling "every man a liar" (3:4). (Perhaps he meant everyone but himself.) If one grants validity to the notion that there is a supernatural consciousness which can coordinate human history according to its will or "plan," whose power is invincible and whose efficacy in causing desired outcomes cannot be impeded by any extraneous factor, then one erases any rational distinction between the arbitrary and the objective, the absurd and the reasonable. In effect, one admits the all-encompassing element of complete randomness (for there is nothing more difficult to judge than another mind), having no idea of what to expect to be the case from moment to moment, unless of course, at the height of his pretense, the believer in such things carelessly blurs the distinction between his mind and the mind he imaginatively attributes to the supernatural fantasy he enshrines. (And if he does this, we'll have some simple tests for him to take.) In such a way, the theist is simply being consistent with the foundations of his worldview by confessing "all things are possible," without any hint of limitation of impediment.

The myriad dilemmas to which this tangled mess leads are in fact logically prior to tales of a resurrected god-man who was born of a virgin, worked miracles and preached a folk morality whose maxims are well suited to adorning billboards and placemats, for the premise that such a supernatural consciousness is real is logically prior to the accounts we find in the gospel narratives. (In fact, it is often on the basis "if God exists" that the mere possibility that these narratives have any truth to them is accepted and defended.) Thus we continue to see how the Christian worldview works against itself: in the words of Steve Hays himself, the apologist "can only make his claim by burning his drawing card." In this case, the drawing card is essentially the premise that "not all things are possible," which is sensible on certain non-Christian grounds, only to surrender that card in exchange for a new card which says "all things are possible." The way out of this conundrum is to dilute the card that replaced the original in order to soften its claim. But at this point it's too late. Does the apologist ever make his position clear? No, he doesn’t. He’s in complete defense mode, and that’s it. His only hope at this point is to rummage for some trivial tu quoque that he can slap on the non-believer.

What should not be overlooked is the fact that Paul's concern to tone down the scope of Mt. 19:26 by suggesting that its use of the modifier 'all' is unnecessary, can easily be taken as criticism of the bible's own wording. For here he's saying that there is a better way for the bible to have stated its message (it just happens that this better way matches Paul's apologetic interpretation). Mt. 19:26 says "all things are possible," and yet here Paul is telling us that not "all things are possible." Contending against the bible itself, he quotes one line from a college intro text on the philosophy of language to suggest that the "all" in "all things are possible" might not really mean "all" after all, but may instead refer to "particular cases roughly presupposed in context." This is exegesis by retreat to the approximate. But as we saw above, if the particular case in this context is the issue of salvation, then exactly what is Matt. 19:26 saying? Taking the New Testament teachings on salvation as this broader context (which is what Paul tells us it must be), we already observed significant inflexibility on this matter. So without further elaboration from Paul, this point is unhelpful to his case. He could sure use a paddle at this point. But he only succeeds in making matters worse for himself. Observe:

c) Is there more to the story? That is, should we assume that this is not to be taken universally because of other basic presuppositions? Well, the Bible tells us that, indeed, not everything is possible. For example, God cannot lie or deny Himself (Titus 1:2; 2 Timothy 2:13). Also, it was "impossible" that death should hold Jesus (Acts 2:24).

This just demonstrates that Mt. 19:26 is in conflict with other New Testament teachings. I know better than to dispute the fact that the bible is far from internally uniform. Many before me have pointed out that the bible contradicts itself in many points. So this is nothing new, and given the points I've already raised so far, broadcasting this internal disagreement does nothing to vouchsafe Paul's attempt to constrain the relevance of Mt. 19:26 to the topic of salvation.

In his haste to claim a petty victory, Paul draws a non sequitur:

d) Therefore, Dawson's foundational premise has been refuted.

It does not follow from the question "does that verse really mean that anything can happen, that anything is possible?" that my "foundational premise has been refuted." In fact, what does he think my "foundational premise" was, if not Mt. 19:26? Is Paul claiming to have refuted a statement in the bible?

It does not follow from the absurd claim that I need to provide an argument to the effect that the words "all things are possible" mean "all things are possible," that my "foundational premise has been refuted."

It does not follow from the fact that there are verses within the New Testament which conflict with Matthew 19:26, that my "foundational premise has been refuted."

Paul’s dinghy is not only hopelessly adrift, it's also starting to list, so he's going to have to do better than this. While he’s at it on another try, he might stop to take a broader look at my point. But I doubt he will. Also, he can tell us precisely what he thinks the best way to understand Mt. 19:26, and explain what value it has. Paul will likely want to say that Mt. 19:26 says something less than what it plainly reads.

3) Since that premise has been cut off at the knees, Dawson's other points are nothing but hasty generalizations. God creating the world, talking animals and the like, does not imply that we should suspend belief on, say, the resurrection because since those things happened, maybe hallucinations happened. Maybe they did, but you're not going to get there from where Dawson starts.

Again Paul must not be reading very well, for I will be the first to point out that, from where I start, we are not likely to arrive at the conclusion that the characters mentioned in the gospel stories, for instance, were hallucinating when they thought they saw Jesus walking around after being crucified, simply because I don’t grant these stories even that much credibility to begin with. That does not mean that I start out by assuming them to be false outright. If I did that, I never would have become a Christian myself in my early 20s, and none of our exchanges would have ever taken place. My point here is that the hallucination theory itself grants a level of credibility to the texts of the New Testament which I think is unwarranted. This was the point I was trying to illustrate when I gave the example of the woman at the trial hoping to reverse the murder charge against her husband. A juror in that case need not come to the trial assuming that whatever the wife will state in her testimony will be false in order to reject her tale about the vampire flying into the room where the murder occurred and killing the victim, only to fly back out and never be seen again. That the wife claimed that there were 500 witnesses to the murder as she describes it, in no way prompts us to suppose that those 500 people were hallucinating. Indeed, we only have her passing claim that they existed, with no details on the identity of any of those 500 persons; even if there were some witnesses, we cannot consult with them to learn what they think they saw. Similarly, that we find a passage in I Corinthians (a passage, mind you, which some scholars think is a creed that the apostle Paul is repeating while yet others surmise that it is a post-Pauline interpolation) that posits an anonymous 500 or so witnesses of the risen Jesus, in no way prompts me to suppose necessarily that those 500 witnesses must have been hallucinating. And the claims in passages such as I Corinthians 15 or Matthew 27:52-53, in no way prompt me to believing them any more than the miracles attributed to St. Genevieve and apparently recorded by a contemporary who would have witnessed them firsthand, or at any rate consulted those who had. Richard Carrier, in his multi-part essay Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story, gives some background on this:

In 520 A.D. an anonymous monk recorded the life of Saint Genevieve, who had died only ten years before that. In his account of her life, he describes how, when she ordered a cursed tree cut down, monsters sprang from it and breathed a fatal stench on many men for two hours; while she was sailing, eleven ships capsized, but at her prayers they were righted again spontaneously; she cast out demons, calmed storms, miraculously created water and oil from nothing before astonished crowds, healed the blind and lame, and several people who stole things from her actually went blind instead. No one wrote anything to contradict or challenge these claims, and they were written very near the time the events supposedly happened--by a religious man whom we suppose regarded lying to be a sin. Yet do we believe any of it? Not really. And we shouldn't.

Perhaps the Trogs govern their minds otherwise. As Jason Engwer writes, "We don't need a report by Mike Wallace before believing what somebody tells us or before concluding that we weren't hallucinating when we thought we saw something." Though statements such as this do not strike me as expressly plugging outright credulity, what exactly is it intended to mean?Indeed, I really would like to know why Christians seem to be personally offended at the fact that I do not believe the bible’s claims. The more I interact with their defenses, the more it seems they’re offended at the fact that I do not simply take their word for it. For Paul, now apparently hoping that he can wade his way back to shore, it is at this point merely a matter of a personal "right to believe" what the bible states. He writes:

4) Dawson mentions that the things we believe show our fundamental beliefs about the world as a whole. I agree with him on this. The problem, though, is that Dawson only gives half the Christian story. God is the determiner of what is possible and impossible. On the basis of God's revelation, I believe it was "impossible" that death should hold Jesus. Furthermore, the Bible reports these things as true. It reports the sightings as true sightings of the risen Jesus, not hallucinations. So, taking in to account the rest of the story, I have every right to believe that these things happened, and that they were not hallucinations. The Bible proclaims that these people witnessed the resurrected Lord, it proclaims this as fact. So, holding to my fundamental presuppositions, I do rule out the hallucination story (this is not to go against what Engwer has argued, but is a presuppositional approach to the matter). Thus, Dawson asks the believer to take only part of his story, while neglecting other crucial aspects. Christianity comes as a unit.

I agree that Paul has the right to believe what Christianity feeds him, just as I declare my right not to believe such nonsense. (Of course, I do not find a theory of individual rights in any of my bibles, and the concept of rights only applies in the sphere of chosen actions, and Reformed Christianity teaches that the believer does not have a choice about his beliefs since they are divinely chosen for him.) And no, I am not asking the believer "to take only part of his story, while neglecting other crucial aspects." Rather, I'm simply pointing out that the fundamentals of the Christian worldview are generously compatible with outcomes which Christians want to reject because of their obvious conflict with higher-level doctrines. That apologists strain themselves over the hallucination theory so much suggests that they, too, are at least implicitly aware of this. Also, the methodology that the apologists employ to validate the claim that the gospel stories are historically accurate, can only commit them to accepting extra-biblical claims - even if they conflict with the bible's theology - if that methodology is employed consistently. We saw above the miracles attributed to St. Genevieve. We have also seen the example of the vampire alibi provided by the wife of an accused murderer who claims to have witnessed the extraordinary event firsthand. Indeed, can we really suppose that Marshall Applewhite would "die for a lie"? The believer's problems get even more complicated when he borrows from a worldview which Christianity rejects as "foolishness" in order to defend Christianity, as I have exposed.

Paul asserts that "God is the determiner of what is possible and impossible." I recall imagining things like this as well when I was a Christian. But on Christianity’s own premises, the claim in Mt. 19:26 that "all things are possible" is a divinely revealed truth which settles the question here quite explicitly. Unless Christians suppose that their god goes back on its word, then it seems that anyone confessing himself to be a Christian should accept Mt. 19:26 as a solemn and unalterable truth, and consequently have the courage to follow it to its logical conclusion, regardless of the undesirable implications it may have for other teachings (such as those biblical teachings which are in direct conflict with it). But an even larger point which Christians are likely to blank out on, is the fact that along with belief in the supernatural comes any arbitrary belief one wants to throw in with it, since the very notion of supernaturalism is in itself arbitrary. And Christianity is a prime example of this. Claims that the bible provide the guide on which beliefs should tag along with the underlying supernaturalism of Christianity, far from disconfirming this, actually substantiate it in large measure. For pointing to the bible's content in this manner only shows that, whatever happens to fill its pages is good enough to be believed on its say so.

Fighting against the undertow as the tide begins to fall, Paul tries to leverage himself in the sandy liquefaction swaddling his ankles:

5) The mere fact that God could have deceived people, does not imply that He did. This is a modal fallacy.

Paul should have stayed in his dinghy. For since I do not posit any gods to begin with, I cannot be charged with this modal fallacy. For I have not argued a) that there is a god, b) that this god can deceive people, or c) that it did deceive people. Naturally, both b) and c) assume a), so I'm simply being consistent in rejecting them along with a). Also, the fallacy with which I am charged presumes a), b) and c), and since these are not my premises, any fallacy here is not to be charged to my position.

While it may be Paul's outward ambition to discredit my position (which is a sure failure, for I assert no gods), his deeper concern is to settle in his mind the assumption that his god has not deceived him. But how could he know this, if in fact he accepts that it is possible that his god could deceive him? If he has been deceived, his claims not to have been deceived would be worthless. If he has been deceived, he could have been deceived to think he was right when in fact he was not. Paul is in peril of being caught up by a waterspout 'bout now. But he goes on:

6) Dawson makes reference to what the believer is "torn" over. As I illustrated above, the believer is only "torn" if he leaves out other parts of his worldview. Thus Dawson's critique looks like thus: RESTATED: "If the Christian only believes some parts of the Christian worldview, then he'll have problems believing other parts." Sorry, but this is not intellectually convincing, in the least. Thus Dawson's attempts at an internal critique is a completely abortive one.

There is another way in which the believer can be torn, namely by straddling contradictory premises (in this case opposite fundamental orientations between subject and object of consciousness) while trying to coordinate both to supporting the same conclusion. This is what I had referred to in my blog, but which Paul fails to mention. In other words, leaving out some part of the Christian worldview is not the only way that the believer can be torn in this manner. As I pointed out in my blog, he is torn when he attempts to incorporate assumptions borrowed from a rival position and alien to the Christian worldview in order to defend the Christian worldview, as in the case of seeking to discount various proposals on the basis of so-called ‘naturalistic’ premises in order to defend a position which enshrines supernatural notions. The tension between affirming a worldview which asserts that "all things are possible" on the one hand, and enlisting on the other hand the premises of a worldview which recognizes certain proposals to be impossible or so unlikely as to be justifiably dismissible, to defend that former worldview, should be obvious. Because it grants metaphysical primacy to an imaginary ruling consciousness, supernaturalism (of which Christianity is only one variant-type) relinquishes its ability to provide any objective analysis of real-world proposals because of the subjective orientation inherent in its affirmation of a ruling consciousness controlling the universe of objects. Since, in such a view, all the objects in the universe owe their very existence and distinctions to the creative wishing of the ruling consciousness, the ruling subject serves as its own standard as well as the standard of everything it creates (which is said to be everything distinct from itself). In this way, the Christian effectually reduces what he might call 'objectivity' to pure self-reference by denying reference to any objects distinct from itself which exist independent of its intentions and resist conforming to its wishing. It is this paradigm of ultimate subjectivism which affirmations purported to have objective backing (such as assessments as to what is 'likely' and 'unlikely') are hired on to defend. It simply does not work.

As the storm current carries him dangerously close to a jagged reef, Paul really begins to feel the absence of his paddle:

7) Dawson makes mention of a cartoon universe. Well, if ours is a cartoon universe, his is a fairy-tale one: "Once upon a time (read: "billions and billions of years ago"), a frog turned in to a prince (read: "one species turned in to another species"). It's also an alchemists worldview. The alchemists tried to get qualities to turn in to their opposites, such as making gold from led. [sic] Well, in Dawson's fairy-tale universe we have: scales turning in to feathers, the non-flying acquiring flight, the non-moral becoming moral, the non-rational becoming rational, etc.

Just as I had predicted above, Paul can come up with nothing more than a tu quoque retort, and a poor one at that. The problem is that Paul has not sufficiently grasped the point of the cartoon universe analogy. Since my worldview does not posit a supernatural ruling subject, the changes which occur in the world are, according to my worldview, not at all analogous to changes that occur in cartoon, which are directed by the designer of the cartoon. The evolution of the species is not the result of a ruling consciousness wishing their changes into place. If "scales turning in to feathers, the non-flying acquiring flight [I take it he does not have the Wright brothers in mind here], the non-moral becoming moral, the non-rational becoming rational, etc.," are all hallmarks of a fairy-tale universe, then the picture that Genesis gives us is quintessentially fairy-tale in nature. According to Genesis, we have dust becoming a human being, and yet dust is non-moral while human beings are moral. Thus we have, according to Genesis, the non-moral becoming moral. The same with the non-rational becoming rational, since dust is also non-rational. Genesis has a bone taken from the first man turn into a woman. I remember scolding fellow Christians when I was a believer, explaining to them that they simply did not grasp Christianity at all well since they insisted that a cow becoming a whale is impossible. As a believer, I thought: "If my God can turn water into wine, who can say that He cannot turn a cow into a whale?"

At any rate, the cartoon universe analogy clearly does not apply to the theory of evolution, for the theory of evolution does not posit a consciousness which plans and executes the course that evolution takes. In fact, as a scientific theory, it is perfectly compatible with the primacy of existence principle. The proposal that reptilian features probably evolved into avian features has support in both the genetic and fossil records, and thus is not without evidential basis. This gradual transformation over time is not at all analogous to a man waving a wand and reciting an incantation to part the waters of an inland sea, cursing a tree and making it wither and die, walking on unfrozen water, or turning water into wine just by wishing it. In these examples, the causality is the wishing of a consciousness which holds metaphysical primacy over the objects involved. On the contrary, the incremental changes motivating the evolution of the species happen over great expanses of time gradually as the result of biological causality (not by some cosmic spirit's wishing), and is thus more analogous to an infant growing into an adult, or a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, both of which are examples of biological causality which we do observe within the relatively shorter periods of our delicate human lifespan.

8) Dawson says we're inconsistent because we have fantasy intertwined with reality. Well, if all you need to do to win is label someone's view false, then Dawson has a problem, "one that usually runs along undetected by the believer as he insists on [fairy-tales and alchemy] while illicitly borrowing from a reality-based worldview."

If Paul were half as concerned with understanding his opponent's position as he is with winning debates, he might actually learn something. However, he shows not only that he does not have any actual arguments against the position he cites, but also that he's not very original, either.

Finally, Paul realizes that he's adrift and without a paddle:

9) An, last but not least, we find ourselves up Dawson's creek without a paddle. Dawson writes,

On the basis of my worldview's fundamentals, I can consistently suppose that it is "highly unlikely" that a group of individuals will have the same hallucination, complete with shared uniform details, and for reasons not unlike those which Jason himself has mentioned. For instance, an hallucination is not only an individual and private experience, its distortion of what one perceives is most likely to be influenced by such an enormous number of imperceptible factors that it would be essentially unrepeatable.

Therefore we see that if Dawson is to be consistent with his "worldview's fundamentals" then he should believe in the resurrection and deny that it was hallucination (note that the hallucination approach does not have more explanatory scope in that it fails to address the empty tomb)!

Dawson's "worldview fundamentals" lead him to affirm fundamentals of a "cartoon universe!" At the end of the day, though, no argument of this sort is going to convince a man who loves his sin. We are told that even in the presence of the resurrected Lord, "some doubted" (Matt. 28:17).

Yes, we indeed find Paul up a creek without a paddle. For here Paul reasons on the basis of a false dichotomy, namely that either the resurrection stories in the New Testament are explained on the premise that the early Christians were hallucinating, or on the premise that the stories in the New Testament are true. (Notice that many apologists seem to think that the truth of the New Testament follows by default if the hallucination theory is sufficiently rebutted.) Apparently Paul, like others who sought to interact with my statements, did not read my opening paragraph very well; or, due to short attention span, they did not retain what I had stated there. For I stated:

I know of no good reasons to limit the debate to only these alternatives, I am not writing to defend the view per se that the individuals which the New Testament claims to have witnessed Jesus after his alleged resurrection were in fact hallucinating; indeed, I have no confessional investment to protect on this issue and thus am not committed to such predetermined outcomes.

In fact, I think there are better explanations for the development of the early Christian record, namely that it developed along the lines of an evolving legend. This is precisely what the documents themselves suggest if we examine their content in their own right, and refrain from the ‘authorized’ habit of reading the later accounts (i.e., the gospel narratives) into the earlier epistolary strata. I mentioned some of these points under the section titled ‘The Legendary Nature of the Evidence’ in my blog, but the responses that the Triaboogers have offered to it were weak where they were not concessional. Jason, for instance, basically admits that he is not certain about the resurrection accounts (he writes: "Historical judgments, including a historical judgment about Jesus' resurrection, are matters of probability"), and seems to concede that it is "not impossible" that mass hallucinations helped in getting the early Christians off to a good start.

If the accounts of Jesus’ life in the end boil down to legends, then there is no need to grant the documentary evidence the level of credibility that the hallucination theory assumes. After all, documentary evidence is not proof, and imaginative embellishment such as we find in fiction as well as non-fiction, was just as available to writers in the first century as it is today. True, I cannot prove that hallucination did not play a role in at least the development of some portion of the overall legend, but neither have the Triaboogers or other apologists. What’s more is that their protestations against the hallucination theory clearly take for granted key assumptions which are disputed in the critical literature, and thus they beg the question to begin with. Not only do they assume that the New Testament documents outline uniform accounts and teachings, they also assume that the accounts are historically reliable. But if, for instance, the stories of Paul’s conversion in Acts are not historically reliable, then there’s no need to suppose that Paul was hallucinating. Time and again, such basic points seem to have escaped the wit and wisdom of Triablogue’s apologetic superstars, who are apparently so eager to rush into battle against their threatening nemeses that they don’t realize they’ve fallen over a cliff.

As for the claim that there was an empty tomb, what proof does anyone really have that there was an empty tomb to begin with? Even the apostle Paul, the earliest Christian writer, made no mention of an "empty tomb." Nor do the other NT epistles. The element of the empty tomb may very well be a later concoction, incorporated into the Jesus story specifically to ward off the charges of hallucination, subjective visions and the such, just as Matthew's narrative incorporates the element of Jesus' tomb being guaraded in order to ward off the charge that Jesus' disciples stole his dead body (cf. Mt. 27:62-66). Because these precautionary devices are effectively used by believers in barricading themselves in the belief program of the New Testament, apologists often characterize alternative explanations, namely those which do not appeal to Christianity's invisible magic beings, as if they were themselves fantastical. I'm reminded of Carrier's comments in response to Bill Craig regarding alternative explanations on the topic of the alleged empty tomb:

Craig thinks "that most alternative explanations for the empty tomb are simply incredible" (259) but I wonder how he figures that. They may be unusual, but they are certainly not beyond belief--a great many unusual things have actually happened in history. (Carrier is quoting from Craig's Reasonable Faith.)

Indeed, unusual and unlikely things do happen. But it is most ironic to say on the one hand that a 'naturalistic' explanation - i.e., one which does not point to activity said to be performed by invisible magic beings - is "incredible," and then turn around and affirm supernaturalistic explanations as if they were credible.

As for the story element that "some doubted" Jesus' resurrection, a good story-writer could have easily worked this into his version of the story to give his imaginary scenes additional didactic relevance with respect to the theology he wanted his story to illustrate. Given the nature of the gospels as a medium showcasing a community's particular theology, we would expect nuances like this. While they may serve in making the overall account more palpable, they do not make the obviously fantastical portions of the story believable.

Paul says that "no argument of this sort is going to convince a man who loves his sin." This kind of statement reads more like the author's own self-projection than anything approaching a well considered indictment. But since it is directed at me, I can only ask what exactly is it that I love which Paul is calling "sin"? What I love is my life as an end in itself, and this is what Christianity resents. Steve Hays made this clear when he wrote: "we need to serve God. We are creatures. We are not our own end. We find our fulfillment in serving one greater than ourselves." The view expressed here conceives of the individual as the means to someone else's ends. In this Christianity exposes its political affinity with the communism of the Soviets, which reduces men to chattle in selfless service to the State. (Here we can agree with the presuppositionalists that the communist unbelievers have 'borrowed' their morality from the Christian worldview.)

Paul quotes Jason Engwer’s response to my blog:

Here we see another example of how Dawson Bethrick doesn't understand the issues he's discussing. Christians don't argue that hallucinations would be supernaturally impossible. What Christian ever denied that God could produce mass hallucinations? That's not the issue. Rather, the issue is the unlikelihood of these hallucinations occurring naturalistically. If Bethrick wants to argue that God made these people hallucinate, then we can interact with that argument. Until then, our focus will be on naturalistic theories, since Bethrick and other critics aren't arguing for supernatural theories.

Like Paul, Jason seems not to have read my blog very carefully, for I pointed out at the beginning that I was not writing to defend the hallucination theory. This statement also overlooks the facts that supernaturalism as a category is broader than just Christianity (for there are numerous versions of supernaturalism, Christianity merely numbering among them), and that supernaturalism is yet compatible with the view that the early Christians were deceived by hallucinations caused by a ruling consciousness which Christians themselves have misidentified. Christian apologists discount such proposals, even though they are equally implicit in supernaturalism as anything their theology teaches, typically by special pleading their position as they arbitrarily grant their assumptions primacy over alternatives which compete with theirs. Moreover, although on my view mass hallucination is unlikely, it is not patently impossible, and the unlikely does sometime happen. For instance, it is highly unlikely that a piece of music I wrote and recorded (and yet had not published) in the mid-1990s would become a primary piece of evidence in a legal suit having nothing to do with me. And yet, in spite of these unlikely circumstances, this did in fact happen.

Still drifting about without a paddle, Paul found himself tossed in a torrent of his own misconceptions:

But Dawson's got bigger problems than showing how the resurrection could happen naturally. Dawson needs to show now [sic] naturalism can do anything. Taking naturalistic presuppositions, why trust our reasoning (cf. Reppert's "C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea;" Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism," etc). Why trust our senses? Dawson will tell us that those things are axiomatic, but he must admit that the senses do, sometimes, deceive us. How does he tell when they do and when they don't? Why trust the chemical reactions in your grey matter? Why assume a real order to the universe? You see, at the end of the day, on Dawson's "reality based worldview" everything is a miracle.

Paul says that I’ve "got bigger problems than showing how the resurrection could happen naturally." And though I do encounter my share of problems (for instance, I would like to lose 10 lbs over the next month and this is proving rather difficult for me), among my problems is not one of "showing how the resurrection could happen naturally." Perhaps Paul’s not been paying attention, so I'll spell it out for him again: I do not think the resurrection of Jesus happened to begin with, nor have I anywhere affirmed that it has. Paul is obviously ‘reasoning’ on the basis of the false dichotomy I pointed out above.

Paul then goes on to list other problems that he thinks I have. For instance, he states that "Dawson needs to show now [sic] naturalism can do anything." But to whom am I supposed to show this? And why do I "need" to show this? At any rate, the most concise answer to this that comes to mind is Francis Bacon's famous dictum: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." That is, naturalism allows man to accomplish his goals by teaching him how to work with nature on its own terms and according to its own constraints. (Contrast this with 'supernaturalism', which relies instead on prayers to invisible magic beings instead of action taken on the basis of sensory input - for the senses might deceive us!) As evidence of the success of naturalism so conceived, I point to everything from Paul’s breakfast cereal, to the bowl that he eats it from, to the glass that he uses to drink his orange juice, to the detergent he uses to clean it, to the sink with running tap water where he cleans it (assuming he does), to the refrigerator where he stores his orange juice, to the toothbrush he should probably use more frequently, to the toothpaste in his medicine cabinet that he should use more liberally, to the razor he uses to trim his whiskers, to the motor car that gets him to church and back, to the building materials and knowledge that were incorporated in building the church in which he worships an invisible magic being, etc. All these wares that Paul uses on a daily basis are ultimately a product of "naturalism," if by "naturalism" we mean that basic orientation of mind to the world which takes nature as its own authority on itself, as opposed to an orientation which takes seriously the imagination of a supernatural consciousness which is accessible by means of prayer, which controls nature at will and accomplishes its tasks by wishing. The achievements that are made not only possible but very real by naturalism, are unmatched by anything the religious mindset has ever produced. Not even Gutenberg’s printing press was brought into existence by praying to the supernatural or reciting incantations in the name of invisible magic beings, and yet one of the first documents to pass under its new invention of adjustable type was a set of texts which enshrines the very nonsense which can only stifle such achievements when taken seriously. My supposition is that, any time Paul wants to achieve a goal, instead of fasting and praying and making his wishes known to the ruling consciousness, he instead chooses to govern his actions according to the reality he perceives with his senses, indeed walking by sight even while pretending by faith.

Although I have thrown life-preservers to Paul on these and similar matters numerous times before, he will not accept them from me. But it is interesting how theistic apologetics has no choice when the going gets rough but to resort to ultra-skepticism, which is another bait-and-switch tactic inspired by the deep confusion that Christianity introduces into one's epistemology. Questions such as "why trust our senses?" can be dismissed as invalid on the basis of the fact that they commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. For how does one get to higher abstractions such as ‘trust’ if his senses did not already give him awareness of any objects in the first place? For Paul's question to be intelligible, the concepts he employs in forming that question would have to have objective content (otherwise he’s engaging in a purely subjective dialogue whose only point of reference is the shifting chaos of a mind that has no access to an objective reality). Thus if we doubt or dispute the validity of our senses, this can throw the question Paul asks into dire jeopardy long before we even get to it. Moreover, for me to acquire awareness of Paul’s question, I need to use my senses. To ask "why trust your senses?" is essentially no different from asking "why think you are conscious?" Such a question ignores the fact that thinking is an activity of consciousness. One would need to be conscious in order to consider the question in the first place. To ask "why trust your senses" and similarly fallacious questions, suggests that the one asking it believes that consciousness needs to be validated somehow. But this would pose an insuperable problem for Paul, for he cannot validate his consciousness without assuming what he needs to validate it, thus the validity of Paul's consciousness, on his own assumptions, stands on circular argument whose premises ultimately rest in subjective paradoxes. Such is the outcome when taking stolen concepts to their conclusion.

But consider: If your arm were severed, would you "distrust" your experience of pain? Would you have to prove that your experience of pain is real to those who believe in invisible magic beings in order for that experience to be real? Would you suppose it is legitimate to ask whether or not you're actually experiencing pleasure instead of pain as a result of the wound? Perhaps the Triabooger would say at this point that my use of the term 'wound' is "prejudicial and tendentious," since it suggests bodily damage and therefore pain rather than pleasure.

Yes, the validity of the senses is axiomatic in that the senses do not produce contradictions, are not conceptually reducible, are not established by means of proof, are not inferred from prior truths, are implicit throughout all perception and therefore in any knowledge statement (since knowledge is knowledge of reality, and this can be acquired only by specific means). Moreover, the validity of the senses must be assumed, even if only implicitly, in the very act of denying them. Remember that consciousness is an axiom. Since man’s initial means of awareness is perceptual in nature (where perception is the automatic integration of sensory material), the validity of the senses is indeed axiomatic.

Paul did ask "why trust our reasoning?" and although I thought this point was already clear to him, I find that this too needs to be spelled out to him explicitly: I do NOT trust Paul’s reasoning. There have been far too many instances of fallacy and dishonesty in Paul’s attempts to derive conclusions, so much so that what he purports to conclude is usually suspect. The statements of Paul's that I interact with above are a case in point.

Paul says that I "must admit that the senses do, sometimes, deceive us." But I do not accept this for the same reason that I do not accept the question "why trust our senses?" And that reason is quite simply that such a position commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. Paul has conflated sense perception and conceptual identification. There is no such thing as a "deceptive sensation." The tricky part to some things we perceive comes when we intend to identify what we have perceived, and this is a conceptual matter.

And the outcome of Paul’s questions (reminder: questions are not arguments) is supposed to be the view that, according to my worldview, "everything is a miracle." He has confused my worldview with his, for my worldview does not pretend that there are any miracles as Christianity understands them (i.e., as 'manifestations' of a supernatural consciousness). Indeed, it could not do this, for my worldview is squarely premised on the primacy of existence principle, while the very notion of miracles rests on the primacy of consciousness view of reality, which my worldview rightly rejects. All this has been explained to Paul before, but it’s clear that he does not allow these truths to sink in, and, in his zeal to make those who dare not believe in his invisible magic being look foolish, he will run roughshod over the facts of the case in order to distort an opponent’s position (by asking questions which he himself does not answer).

Paul’s apologetic is as cheap as it comes. It basically consists of asking a bunch of questions to which we’re all supposed to throw up our hands and say "Duh, I donno! Must be god did it!"

by Dawson Bethrick

Did the Author of I Peter See the Risen Jesus of the Gospels?

According to the story we find in the New Testament book of Mark, considered by many to be the earliest gospel, Jesus “ordained twelve” disciples, “that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils” (3:14-15). A man named Simon Peter is the first of the twelve disciples to appear in Mark’s listing (3:16). According to Matthew 4:18-20, Peter was a fisherman who abandoned his career to become a follower of Jesus, who was preparing his ministry to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24). According to all four gospel narratives, Peter was present with Jesus throughout much of his ministry, attending Jesus’ many speaking engagements, hearing the master’s teachings, even experiencing many of Jesus’ miracles firsthand.

In all, the name ‘Peter’ appears in 93 verses in the KJV versions of the four gospels alone, more than any of the other disciples. Without a doubt, Peter is not only a prominent character in the gospels, but if these stories are true, he would be eyewitness to the most significant events in early Christianity, such as Jesus’ performance of miracles and healings, the last supper, the passion, and finally the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. (1) And although there is no known contemporary documentation of Peter’s life or even existence outside the New Testament, the book of Acts portrays Peter as one of the two most important personalities involved in promulgating Christianity after Jesus’ ascension, the other of course being the apostle Paul.

The New Testament also contains two letters which bear the name Peter. They are typically titled I Peter and II Peter. And although Peter was, according to orthodox New Testament history, an unlearned Jewish fisherman (cf. Acts 4:13), both letters are written in polished Greek. Because of this, some have suggested that Peter was using a secretary to write the letters in Greek on his behalf, though the texts themselves do not make this claim. Despite this, many hoping to salvage Petrine authenticity do not easily relent on this point, even though it compromises the matter; as E. Eve writes, "the letter then becomes the product not of Peter, but of the secretary." (2) Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that I Peter is earlier than II Peter, giving it more probability of being genuine. But many scholars have noted that, due to its references to persecution, it likely dates from post-70 AD, requiring Peter to be very old for the time which would be very unusual for a fisherman. Since II Peter is generally agreed to be too late to have been written by the Peter of the gospels (3), and therefore can safely be dismissed as pseudonymous, our interest is focused on I Peter and its claim to authenticity.


Dating Clues

I Peter is addressed “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (v.1), that is, to Christian believers who were living in various places throughout the region and apparently suffering persecution. The Greek word ‘parepidemos’ is sometimes translated as ‘pilgrim’, as in I Pet. 2:11, and is used to connote heaven as the Christians’ native home, and earth as merely a temporary dwelling. The use of the term ‘scattered’ (Greek ‘diaspora’) here suggests that the congregations addressed were unconnected or out of touch with each other, and by addressing a letter to all of them simultaneously, its author was seeking to bring unity to them by speaking to an issue that affected them mutually. This suggests a period after Paul's missionary work (Bithynia-Pontus and Cappadocia had not, by all accounts, been missionized by Paul), thus requiring some time since Paul's ministry for the church to develop and reach these "frontiers of the Roman Empire." (4) By the orthodox timeline required by the gospels, already we're moving decades after the resurrection.

Sailhammer explains that I Peter "was written to give hope and encouragement to Christians who were suffering for the sake of Christ," and the author's "starting point for hope in the Christian life is the resurrection of Christ (v. 3), but the focus of his hope is clearly set on Christ’s second coming (v. 5)." (5) The letter's preoccupation with suffering and persecution is significant in terms of its implication for the date of the letter's composition, and has led many scholars to suspect that the Peter of the gospels could not be its author. For instance, Emeritus Professor of the New Testament W. G. Kümmel highlights the implications I Peter's concern for persecution has for dating the letter as follows:

The situation of persecution of those addressed can be understood only as occurring at the beginning stages of civil persecution... According to the unanimous tradition of the early church, the first persecution of Christians on more than a merely local basis (cf. 5:9) took place under Domitian. But that, of course, takes us beyond the life-span of Peter. (6)

Additionally, Elliott thinks it is "likely that 1 Peter was written from Rome sometime during the years 73 to 92 C.E.," since

Distance from the Pauline period and the early 60s is also indicated by the growth and coalescence of diverse traditions reflected in 1 Peter and the shift from an internal Jewish debate over the Mosaic law to a struggle of believers now labeled as 'Christians' with an alien and hostile society.” (7)

Already we have some striking clues in I Peter which militate toward the view that the Peter of the gospels was probably not the author of the letter. The Peter of the gospels was an unlearned fisherman whose native tongue would most likely have been Aramaic, and yet the letter is written in polished Greek. Furthermore, the locale of the letter's addressees and its preoccupation with the hostility that the Christian movement encountered in its neighbors (a far cry from the ready-made mass conversions of Jerusalem Jews reported in Acts), both suggest a post-Pauline period, pushing the date of its composition at least beyond the 70s. One wonders, if the author really were the Peter we read about in the gospels, why didn't he write (or dictate) his letter (and more like it) at an earlier time, closer to the events described in the gospels?


A Deafening Silence

What is really interesting about I Peter, is that here we have a letter purported to be authored by the same Peter we read about in the gospels, and yet it makes no mention whatsoever to any post-resurrection appearance by Jesus. As we saw above, the gospels depict Peter as chief among the apostles, and according to I Cor. 15, Peter was the first to see the risen Jesus. (8) In fact, however, I Peter makes no mention of any of the details and events which Peter would have witnessed and which, according to the gospel narratives, were so important to the inception of Christianity, such as Jesus' miracles, his lessons in parables, healings and exorcisms, a betrayal by Judas, the empty tomb, etc.

To explain such omissions, apologists, insisting on I Peter's authenticity, would have us believe that Peter the disciple would have had no need to mention even one of his extraordinary experiences with Jesus as described in the gospels. Given the purpose of I Peter (as Sailhammer above put it, "to give hope and encouragement to Christians who were suffering for the sake of Christ"), this seems rather dubious. What is incontestable is that, were the Peter of the gospels the author of the letter, he would have had more than ample opportunity to seal the hope he sought to instill in his audience by referring to things he would have personally witnessed, just as today's preachers make use of the gospel stories to underscore the message they're trying to get across. Acts portrays Peter, in his public speeches, as referring to Jesus' "miracles and wonders and signs" (2:22), alluding to the empty tomb (2:29), even performing many miracles and healings himself (cf. 2:43, 3:6, 5:12, etc.).


Missed Opportunities

I Peter is full of opportunities where we could reasonably expect the Peter of the gospels to make mention of the signs and wonders and risen Jesus that he purportedly saw firsthand in order to further the purpose of his letter. And yet its author makes no use of these opportunities.

For instance, I Peter 1:21 states that “God… raised [Jesus] up from the dead, and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.” But the author does not mention the gospel feature that Jesus was seen on earth in a physical body, both before and after his resurrection, either by the purported author of the letter or by others who had known and traveled with Jesus during his life on earth. And although Peter was, according to the gospels, a major participant in Jesus’ ministry from its beginning, present no doubt at many of Jesus’ speaking engagements and a hearer of Jesus’ teachings, parables and prayers, the author of I Peter never attributes any of his exhortations or words of wisdom to the missionary Jesus of the gospels. On the contrary, as do Paul and other epistle writers, the author of I Peter finds ample occasion to cite the Old Testament. I Peter 2:13-14 contains the following advice:

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers.

Does it seem likely that someone familiar with the gospel’s passion events, which has Jesus being sent to the cross by the Roman authority of Pontius Pilate, would say that “governors… are sent by [the Lord] for the punishment of evildoers”? According to I Peter 2:22, Jesus "did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” and yet was put to death like an evildoer under the authorization of a Roman governor. Commentators may quote I Pet. 2:24’s “by whose stripes ye were healed” as a reference to the passion events of the gospels. However, this appears to be variation of Isaiah 53:5, which states:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Indeed, as with the Pauline epistles, the writer or I Peter relies on Old Testament texts to describe his Jesus' suffering, rather than on anything we find in the gospels. Not only this, the writer also relies on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, rather than on the Masoretic text or an Aramaic targum as we might expect if the author of this letter were actually the Peter of the gospels. Scholars have noted that the use of this source by the author of I Peter indicates a native familiarity with Greek and Greek sources that the Peter of the gospels most probably would not have had. P. J. Achtemeier says of I Peter:

The absence of influence from the language of the Hebrew Bible or the Targumim on the one hand, and the clear influence of the LXX on the other, show that the author was at home in Greek rather than Semitic culture, and such is likely not to have been the case with Simon Peter. (9)

Again, instead of any direct and unambiguous reference to the gospels’ passion scenes, which depict the crucifixion in a specific place and at a specific time, with specific characters performing specific roles, I Peter’s depiction of Jesus is compatible with the conception of Jesus found in the Pauline epistles – that is, a Jesus which was crucified and resurrected in a distant, unspecified past, wholly bereft of the kinds of details we find in the gospels. A.E. Harvey, whose concern is to defend the miracle stories found in the New Testament gospels and other Christian stories, makes a crucial admission relevant at this point:

We know from the epistles that it was possible to speak and write about Jesus without any mention of his miraculous power. (10)

How could this be in the case of a letter bearing the name of a key player in the gospel stories? How could this be in the case of someone who is said to have seen firsthand things that no other human being has seen? How could this be in the case of a man who abandoned his life as a fisherman in order to follow a worker of miracles which he would have witnessed for himself, and even experienced firsthand? Perhaps I Peter was written too early for the miraculous tradition ascribed to Jesus in the gospel legends to have been included in a letter bearing the name of one of Jesus' most important disciples? Perhaps I Peter was written by someone who did not know that any miracles had been performed? The apocryphal book The Acts of Peter, written in the latter half of the second century (11), was late enough to include references from the gospel stories. In this text, the miracle of walking on water is mentioned, a miracle that Matthew 14:22-31 has Peter enjoy firsthand. But the Acts of Peter dates late enough for the legends found in the gospels to have circulated and become associated with literature attributed to personalities who are mentioned as disciples of Jesus.

I Peter thus shows more affinity and familiarity with Paul’s letters than with any scene found in the gospels, and yet it is purported to have been written by one of Jesus’ closest companions. Unlike later texts bearing the name of the famous disciple, nowhere does I Peter mention any of the miracles attributed to Jesus in the gospels and to which they portray Peter a witness. It seems that, if the Peter depicted in the gospels were writing “to give hope and encouragement to Christians who were suffering for the sake of Christ,” as Sailhammer puts it, then references to the power that the purported author had witnessed – if in fact he had witnessed any miracles to begin with – would have advantaged his purpose vastly more than merely explaining to his readers that “in their sufferings they share in the sufferings of Christ” (12), and promising an experience of joy at some unspecified point in the future. Specifics always seem to be far more effective in making a case than do appeals to vague approximates, such as we find in I Peter. This should not be taken to mean that the points that the author does offer in the interest of bolstering his readers’ encouragement should have been replaced, but rather supplemented with firsthand testimony of the events we read about in the gospels, had he actually witnessed them. Unfortunately, they aren't.

Another missed opportunity is found in I Peter 3:19, which mentions that Jesus “went and preached unto the spirits in prison” after he was, according to the KJV’s version of 3:18, “quickened by the Spirit.” By some apologists' interpretation of this passage, this means that Jesus was made "by the Spirit" to rise in a physical body - a detail not stipulated by any New Testament text prior to the gospels, and yet I Peter makes no mention about Jesus preaching to his followers on earth after he was resurrected. The whole sequence that I Peter gives in 3:18-22 is as follows:

a. “put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit” (3:18)
b. “preached to the spirits in prison” (3:19)
c. “gone into heaven and is at God's right hand” (3:22)

with no mention of appearances to believers on earth, such as we find in the gospels, such as the alleged author of the letter itself is said to have witnessed.

Chapter 4 of I Peter opens with more references to Jesus suffering in the flesh, but again, we find no references to details from events that Peter of would have witnessed according to the gospels. The author does not tell his readers about the anguish he would have experienced as he watched Jesus being flogged as he carried the heavy wooden cross up to Golgotha (cf. Mark 15:20f). He doesn’t mention Jesus being adorned with a crown of thorns (cf. Mark 15:17, Matthew 27:29; John 19:5). He tells his readers in 4:13 that they are “partakers of Christ's sufferings,” but he gives nothing specific to indicate what kind of suffering Jesus endured, other than that he was crucified. According to the gospels, however, Jesus was already suffering before he was nailed to the cross. But we wouldn’t know this from the epistolary record. Like other epistles in the New Testament, I Peter does not even mention the malefactors who were crucified beside Jesus.

I Peter's fifth chapter begins with the author identifying himself as “a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed” (v. 1), but he does not identify himself as a witness of a risen, physical Jesus who, according to the gospels, appeared in Jerusalem (or was it Galilee?) and mingled with the faithful. Achtemeier takes “the reference to 'witness' in 5:1… to mean Peter is calling himself an eyewitness to the passion of Jesus.” (13) Notice how this assumes that the gospel Peter is the author of I Peter, in spite of the complete absence of references to any gospel detail in the letter.


Conclusion: I Peter is Not Authentic

This whole letter, purported to have been written by someone whom the gospels paint as a star eyewitness to the resurrected Jesus, presents a context which is difficult to reconcile with that gospel record. And the same situation is repeated throughout the NT epistolary record, save for in some of the later epistles, which, according to many scholars, are pseudonymous. Clearly, if there was opportunity for this writer to identify himself as a witness of Christ’s sufferings as we find them described in the gospel narratives, there was more than such in the case of I Peter if in fact its author had seen the resurrected Jesus as the gospels tell us. Indeed, this would have only encouraged the intended readers of the epistle to remain steadfast and hopeful, which is one of the chief messages it tries to convey to them.

Donald Guthrie tells us that

As an eyewitness of the risen Christ Peter would never forget the profound impression which that stupendous event made upon his mind... (14)

And although we can reasonably expect the same of anyone who would have been in the position of the man named Peter by gospels, this supposition alone makes it very difficult to believe that the author of the letter bearing Peter's name in the New Testament was the same individual we read about in the gospels. Was the eyewitness of Jesus during his lifetime and post-resurrection appearances the author of I Peter? W. G. Kümmel writes:

I Pet contains no evidence at all of familiarity with the earthly Jesus, his life, his teaching, and his death, but makes reference only in a general way to the 'sufferings' of Christ. It is scarcely conceivable that Peter would neither have sought to strengthen his authority by referring to his personal connections with Jesus nor have referred to the example of Jesus in some way. (15)

The evidence simply does not add up to Petrine authenticity. What we have in I Peter is precisely what we would expect if, in the first century, there were diverse views of Jesus, just as today there are competing strains of Christianity. The letter's conspicuous omission of allusions to events which according to the gospels the disciple Peter would have witnessed in person, is not explained by a dearth of opportunity to introduce them, but by the fact that the author simply did not know of them. For surely had the author witnessed the miracles attributed to Jesus during his ministry, and the appearances Jesus is said to have made in the flesh and on the earth after his resurrection, he would have had ample opportunity to point to them in substantiating the message of hope that he wanted to deliver to his fellow believers.


Notes:

(1) Of course, Peter would not have been a witness of the virgin birth ascribed to Jesus by the gospels of Matthew and Luke. But then again, what NT writer could have witnessed this?

(2) The Oxford Bible Commentary, p. 1263.

(3) A summary of some reasons why II Peter is widely agreed to date from the 2nd century is provided here.

(4) J.R. Michaels, (Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments, art. "1 Peter"; see also J.H. Elliott, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, art. "First Epistle of Peter"

(5) NIV Compact Bible Commentary, p. 577.

(6) Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 418f, 424.

(7) The Anchor Bible Dictionary, art. "First Epistle of Peter"

(8) Incidentally, Paul makes no mention of Jesus being seen by any women, even though according to the gospels the first to encounter the risen Jesus were women. But even on this point, the gospels are not entirely uniform. As Wells points out:

This sory of guards who saw the angel, knew that the tomb was empty, and had to be bribed by the chief preists to pretend that the body had been stolen while they were asleep (Mt. 28:11-15), shows that Christian tradition does not, after all, uniformly make only women the initial witnesses concerning the resurrection. (The Jesus Myth, p. 132)

(9) A Commentary on First Peter, pp. 6-7.

(10) Jesus and the Constraints of History, p. 98; quoted in Wells, The Jesus Myth, p. 142.

(11) Cf. Stoops, The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 5, p. 267.

(12) Sailhammer, op. cit.

(13) A Commentary on First Peter, p. 9.

(14) New Testament Introduction

(15) Introduction to the New Testament, p. 424.

by Dawson Bethrick

Jason and the Halluci-Nots

Recent Controversy

A spate of recent blog articles (1) has rekindled an old debate between bible believers and critics of the Christian religion on whether or not the so-called "post-resurrection appearances" of Jesus were real or hallucinatory in nature. Since I know of no good reasons to limit the debate to only these alternatives, I am not writing to defend the view per se that the individuals which the New Testament claims to have witnessed Jesus after his alleged resurrection were in fact hallucinating; indeed, I have no confessional investment to protect on this issue and thus am not committed to such predetermined outcomes. Rather, I am seeking to give some brief observations on various objections which have been raised against this proposal by Jason Engwer & co. of the Christian blog known as Triablogue.


An All Too Typical Defense

In one of his articles defending the New Testament's claim to eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus from the charge of hallucination, Jason repeatedly claims that "every major strand of early evidence" (he uses this very phrase four separate times), disconfirms - even "contradicts" - what we would expect to be the case if those accounts were in fact hallucinatory in origin. By "early evidence" he is no doubt referring to various claims found in the texts of the New Testament. Throughout his rejoinder to such proposals, Jason's approach to the matter rests on the assumption that the elements of the New Testament's stories are accurate and historical to begin with, and that a theory attributing the experience of the risen Jesus to hallucination would have to come to grips with these stories on their own terms. Elsewhere I have already explained my view in regard to the claim that the bible constitutes "archaeological evidence" in Contra Dusman, where I clarify my position on this matter as follows:

I'm perfectly willing to accept the text of the New Testament as evidence showing what some ancient people *believed*. But this is far from supporting the claim that what they believed is true... I'm not disputing against the view that there were people in the first and second centuries who believed writings found in the New Testament.

Furthermore, in my blog Reckless Apologetic Presumptuousness, I have already raised issue with the assumption, so commonly taken for granted by believers, that the texts of the New Testament present a uniform picture of Jesus and early church figures and activity, an assumption which is easily reinforced by reading the details we find in the gospels into the early epistolary records. So even before going very deeply into Jason's offerings on the issue, I already detect some areas of concern.


The Legendary Nature of the Evidence

Given the scant details that can be adduced from the New Testament on the psychological stability of the characters mentioned in its stories and chronicles, it is unclear where defenders of Christianity think they get their certainty about the supposed truthfulness of the incredible claims found in the New Testament. Here we have an ancient set of texts, written over a period of several decades and later assembled together in one volume, all apparently about the same individual who is claimed by believers to be the supernatural creator of the universe walking the earth fully clothed as a human man named Jesus. The earliest of these documents are a series of letters written mostly by one man, known to us as the apostle Paul, and his accounts put Jesus in some unspecified past in an unspecified setting, for the most part giving no time, location or other details one could confidently call historical. Much of his letters are preoccupied with doctrinal disputes, ethical teachings, theological arguments, etc., and shows no interest in a pre-Easter Jesus. Paul also includes references to his own mystical experiences of this Jesus, who he says died by crucifixion and was later resurrected, after which time Paul was paid a personal visit in the form of a visionary experience (according to one later source, at any rate) and selected to be Jesus' traveling emissary in search of converts to a belief program built on worshipping this resurrected "savior."

Later, some time after Paul's life and missionizing campaign, a new series of texts starts to be written. These texts also speak of a man named Jesus who was divine, and who was also crucified by the Roman state, and who was later resurrected from the dead. But these texts, known as gospels, place this Jesus into a historical context that is absent from Paul's many letters. All four of these texts portray a Jesus that bears little if any resemblance to the Jesus that Paul describes. The gospel Jesus, for instance, is said to have been from Nazareth, was born of a virgin, survived a slaughter of infants ordered by a jealous king, was baptized by a man named John the Baptist, worked as a carpenter, conducted a preaching ministry in and around Judea, taught in parables, cast out demons and healed diseases, worked various miracles, raised the dead back to life, was betrayed to Roman authorities by a man named Judas Iscariot, and was executed under the rule of Pontius Pilate. While the letters of Paul speak of a Jesus in an unspecified, vague past with virtually no historical details, the later gospel texts paint a detailed portrait that comes alive in the imagination of the reader, complete with other characters who interact with Jesus as well as place names and other location references, all of which give their portrait of Jesus a historical context that Paul's letters do not have.

What's more is that the gospel texts essentially repeat the same story (suggesting that later narratives were derived from the earliest account to produce new versions), and - significantly - that the gospel story grows more elaborate and impressive with each telling. For instance, the earliest account, found in the book of Mark, begins with Jesus as an adult getting baptized under the supervision of John the Baptist. This detail is nowhere mentioned in any of Paul's letters. The next two gospels, Matthew and Luke, seeking to confer a miraculous beginning to their Jesus, portray Jesus as having a virgin mother. And again this detail is nowhere mentioned in any of Paul's letters. The last of the canonical gospels, John, goes even further in giving its Jesus divine credentials by equating Jesus with the Logos (an idea which bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the same name enjoying reverence among Hellenistic Jews in the decades prior to the writing of John), an eternal being existing forever in a magic kingdom and enjoying immutable bliss as a member of the "Godhead." Similar progressions from relatively bare to more embellished treatments of the same anecdotal material can be observed throughout the story of Jesus' gathering of disciples, his performance of healings and other miracles, on up through to the passion and post-resurrection scenes. Thus the gospel accounts themselves are unhelpful in uncovering any truths in the earliest testimony, for the narrative accounts that we find in the gospels bear the signs of literary invention rather than historical reporting.


Our Limited Vantage

We do not have the benefit of seeing what Paul identified as Jesus when he tells us things such as that he received his gospel story by means of revelation (Gal. 1:12) and that "it pleased God… to reveal his Son in me" (Gal. 1:15-16). So again, it's unclear how believers can conclusively rule out at least the possibility that what Paul experienced was hallucinatory in nature, or at least subjective. As what appears to be a private deliverance to Paul that apparently informs his whole gospel (cf. Eph. 3:2-4), this "strand of early evidence" is not, contrary to what Jason has told us, "inconsistent with hallucinations and other psychological disorders," for these are internal experiences that Paul claims for himself, not experiences that are suggested to have been shared with others. Since the book of Acts reads like a later concoction whose intention is to portray a kind of "golden age" pageant of post-Easter adventures of the apostles, all we really have from Paul are his letters. Indeed, how does one rule out psychological disorders as at least a contributing factor in one's reasoning when an individual takes belief in invisible magic beings so seriously?

Jason and other Halluci-Nots may claim that the experience that Paul is referring to in these passages in the first chapter of Galatians, is the incident in which the book of Acts puts Paul on the road to Damascus with fellow travelers. Unfortunately, however, the book of Acts, which tells the same conversion story twice (with conflicts), could only indicate that the content that Paul later referred to as "my gospel" (cf. Rom. 2:16, 16:25) - of which he tells us that he "neither received it of man, neither was I taught it" (Gal. 1:12) - was delivered to him at a later point in time since he was instructed to proceed to Damascus "and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do." (Acts 22:10) The story does not indicate that any more than this was communicated to Paul on this occasion. Since it does not appear that Paul was given a full education on Christian theology at the time of his conversion on the road to Damascus (at least, according to Acts), and since he was not "taught it" or "received it of man," this leaves unexplained exactly how he acquired (if that's the right word) knowledge of Jesus. The record we have nowhere rules out later private visitations by Jesus; in fact Paul's frequent appeals to having knowledge by means of divine revelation suggests that he enjoyed repeated visits by Jesus, or that he was in regular contact with the risen deity.

Of course, at this point, one might raise the question: why doesn't Jesus do for everyone he wants to save what the New Testament says he did for the apostle Paul (i.e., pay a miraculous personal visit), rather than just for one man who lived upwards of 2,000 years ago, whose writings are the only record of these private deliverances from a divine source, and whose ideas have been hotly debated throughout the centuries? It's larger questions like this that serve to put these disputes about whether hallucinations et al. played a part in the development of the early Christian testimony. As it is now, with a private message hand-delivered to one individual who died centuries ago and penned into texts which read like legend and myth, the result that reaches us in the modern era tends to raise more questions than it can hope to answer, and to cause more problems than it can hope to resolve. Apparently the all-wise, all-knowing creator of the universe finds the present method of disseminating its word to be preferable to a direct approach, but for reasons that we will likely never know.


Needlessly Limiting Possible Alternatives

A common apologetic tactic is the artificial restriction of available options for consideration on some point of contention to only two alternatives, one preferred by the apologist and the other presented as too implausible to be taken very seriously. Even though such strategem typically trades on superficial understanding of the issues involved, the intention behind such a ploy is not only to score an easy victory for theism, but also to belittle any alternative to theism (and any would-be adherents by implication). In Basic Contra-Theism, I encountered this proclivity for simplistic bifurcation as I considered the common apologetic treatment of the "origin" of the universe as "a choice between self-generating matter and an intelligent Creator." It seems that apologists are so accustomed to thinking in terms of square circles vs. circular squares, that non-believers should be mindful not to fall into the same booby-traps. For we see this propensity to bifurcate in an article called A Closer Look at the Subjective Visions Theory, to which Jason linked for support. Its author writes:

according to the 'subjective visions' theory, those that saw Jesus did so within the context of a dream, vision, etc., but Jesus did not really appear. In other words, it was the result of the mind playing tricks, or a hallucination.

Of course, the causality behind the experiences that Paul and other alleged eyewitnesses of the resurrected Jesus need not have been either hallucinations or "the mind playing tricks." An individual can have what some might term 'visions' as a result of a heightened, frenzied state, akin to what many charismatics and Pentecostals sometimes experience when brought to a trance-like state in which a subject may be heard babbling a "nonsense language" (so-called "speaking in tongues"). An individual can in fact be encouraged to "let go" of himself and be "taken over" by what are supposed to be "spirit forces." The subject may not experience actual hallucinations, but may be expected that the exhiliration thus experienced has religious significance. Since the details of what Paul's 500 witnesses actually experienced are nowhere given, it is possible that the individuals he had in mind underwent a kind of mass trance-like episode. Earl Doherty points out that the wording Paul uses in I Cor. 15 suggests precisely this:

In a study of the meaning of “ophthe” (the ‘seeing/appearance’ word in the Greek), The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (vol. V, p. 358) points out that in this type of context the word is a technical term for being “in the presence of revelation as such, without reference to the nature of its perception.” In other words, the ‘seeing’ may not refer to actual sensory or mental perception. It may simply be “an encounter with the risen Lord who reveals himself... they experienced his presence.” If what we have here is more a sensing of Christ’s “presence” than a full-blown hallucinatory vision, this would make it easier to accept that so many individuals and even a large group could imagine they had undergone such an experience. It is far from clear, therefore, that Paul in 15:5-8 is describing anything more than a series of occasions on which many people, most of them within a group already formed for a religious purpose, felt a conviction of faith in the spiritual Christ, experiences which took on heightened significance with the passage of time. (2)

In fact, from the scant description that we are given, Paul's 500 witnesses could very well have experienced the same kind of delusion nurtured by indulged religious hysteria not unlike the kind experienced by Marshall Applewhite and his Heaven's Gate followers. Applewhite was so certain there was a space ship hiding in a comet's tail, that he happily poisoned himself so that he could be resurrected on board the otherwise undetectable craft and be carried off into paradise to live happily ever after. The familiar ring of this kind of sold-out certainty concerning a set of ideas that are clearly absurd is due to its sounding for some 2,000 years now. Whether this delusion is constituted by "subjective visions" or by something else, can certainly be debated. But the dubiousness of such claims cannot. Was Marshall Applewhite hallucinating? I don't know, but I tend to doubt that he was since his devotion to his nonsense was sustained over a long period of time. Do I believe that the space ship he said was hiding in a comet's tail really existed? No, I don't. Do I believe that a universe-creating deity "became flesh and dwelt among us" some 20 centuries ago, only to be nailed to a cross and resurrected back to life three days later, and later wafted up to a magic kingdom above our heads some place? No, I don't.

Christian believers have a vested interest in rejecting out of hand explanations that do not affirm their predetermined religious commitments, only then to concoct occasionally plausible-sounding objections to any alternative hypothesis that's been proposed by a non-believer. The problem is not restricted to their inability to explain how they could possibly know for certain what was going through the apostle Paul's mind so as to confidently rule out psychological disorders as a key or contributing factor behind his claims; it also includes the implausible outcomes that their objections lead to when applied as principles in determining the truth of rival claims of a religious nature. I'm referring here to the unintended consequences that are likely to arise from the implications generated by the objections apologists raise against criticism, as well as to the ingenuity they must summon up in order to craft a host of qualifications that are enlisted to stave off unwelcome applications of the same. For instance, apologists will insist that the mystical claims in Paul's letters do not indicate psychological disorders, while the belief that a space ship hiding in the tail of a comet and waiting to scoop up believers' souls after they imbibe a lethal cocktail, is clearly whacko. O what a tangled web they weave...


Rival Miracle Claims

There is no doubt that religious believers reserve for themselves the right to pick and choose which miracle reports they will accept. But this privileged selectivity does not reduce to the application of rational principles. Non-Catholic Christians, for instance, while blindly affirming the stable-mindedness of the anonymous five hundred witnesses mentioned in I Cor. 15, typically dismiss the eyewitness testimony of the estimated 70,000 or so who attest to the Miracle of the Sun, seen outside Fatima, Portugal in October 1917 by 140 times the number that the New Testament claims to have spotted the resurrected Jesus. And unlike Paul's claim to so many eyewitnesses in I Cor. 15, in the case of the Miracle of the Sun we have actual names of witnesses who were present at the miracle, such as the attending newspaper reporter Avelino de Almeida, and Dr. Joseph Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University.

Another Halluci-Not and prolific writer of sweet nothings, Steve Hays has sought to preempt the use of what many take to be well-documented Marian Apparitions as counter-examples to the Halluci-not thesis. When attempting to counter the proposal that Paul's experience of Jesus was visionary in nature, the apologist exhibits a strong tendency to take Acts as actual history:

This fails to distinguish between an objective vision or appearance and a subjective vision or appearance... Even in the case of the Damascus road encounter, this was a public event, not a private event, for Paul’s escort were also witnesses to this audiovisual event. It’s a spatiotemporal phenomenon.

We must not forget that the book of Acts itself puts the words "heavenly vision" into Paul's mouth when it portrays him as recounting his conversion experience to King Agrippa (Acts 26:19). Thus it is up to the author of Acts to clarify whether his story's purported experience by Paul was "an objective vision or appearance" or "a subjective vision or appearance." The details given in Acts are too scant and inconsistent with themselves to allow us to make this clarification with much confidence. Naturally the apologist does not want it to be considered subjective, but in the cartoon universe of theism, everything is ultimately subjective anyway. Steve may say to me that, since I am persuaded that, like the gospels, Acts is more legend than history in the first place, that I therefore cannot rely on Acts 26:19 to support the visionary proposal. But if Acts is more legend than history, then the stories of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus are brought into serious doubt anyway. As Earl Doherty points out in response to Gary Habermas' statements to Lee Strobel on page 234 of The Case for Christ, we actually have in the New Testament "a wealth of invention" (Doherty) where Habermas chooses to see "a wealth of sightings of Jesus."

Each writer sat down to provide 'proofs' of Jesus' rising in the flesh," explains Doherty, "and they all quite naturally come up with anecdotes of their own, which best explains their incompatible variety. (3)

Anxious to dispel the subjective implications of phrases such as "heavenly vision" used by Acts to describe Paul's sighting of Jesus, Steve exclaims:

There is also an obvious difference between saying the same Jesus appeared to Paul and the twelve, and saying that Jesus appeared the same way to Paul and the twelve. Even if the Damascus road encounter involved a different mode of presentation, this does not imply an identical mode of presentation for Easter.

But does Paul ever distinguish between the nature of his sighting of Jesus and the sighting of Jesus he says these others enjoyed? On the contrary, it remains ambiguous and unspecified, thus allowing believers to uncritically read gospel details into what they read in Paul. Apologists need to understand that, while they want to put the onus on the New Testament's critics, the onus is really on the New Testament itself to shore up the very areas where they claim its critics habitually default. Steve claims that

the whole point of this chapter is to repeatedly stress the physicality of the glorified body

even though the chapter nowhere uses the word 'physical' (at least not in any of my translations), not to mention the fact that this position needs to be reconciled with what we read in I Peter 3:18, which speaks of Jesus as "being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit." It is hard to read this statement as coming from one of Jesus' own disciples who, according to the gospels, met face to face with a physically resurrected Jesus.

Steve may counter that Paul spoke of Jesus having been resurrected in the flesh, but Paul himself indicates that there are different kinds of flesh, that "all flesh is not the same flesh" (I Cor. 15:39), which leaves open the possibility that Paul may have reserved the use of the term 'flesh' in some circumstances to refer to some spiritual, non-physical "substance" which is to be distinguished from the tissue, bone and organs of living organisms. So this is at best inconclusive. Moreover, Paul insists that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (I Cor. 15:50), which suggests that the physical bodies we have are not analogous to the resurrected bodies that believers should expect to awaken in once they are resurrected. All these issues point to just some of the many serious ambiguities that plague the New Testament record, thus inviting endless contests between conflicting interpretations and wide-ranging speculations. (I'm glad these aren't my problems.) To be sure, there have been many efforts over the centuries to codify an authorized interpretation, but this endeavor is about as effective as trying to harvest wheat on the dark side of the moon; and no matter how much effort is applied to this ambition, the early record is still what it is: laden with incompatible variances and unyielding ambiguities.

Concerning reported sightings of the Virgin Mary, Steve hedges when considering the question "Do we reject Marian sightings?" giving no firm answer one way or another. He says that

some reports are more credible than others because some reporters are more credible than others.

I agree: some reports are more credible than others, and some reporters are more credible than others. But here we might inquire as to what criteria Steve consults in determining whether a report is "more credible than others," or in determining when one reporter is "more credible than others." Obviously the writers of the New Testament meet his criteria, while what he has written strongly suggests that his contemporaries (or near contemporaries) who have claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, do not meet his criteria. What are those criteria? Heaven knows! But he does give some indication here:

After all, how do they know what Mary looks like? Jesus was seen by his contemporaries. But no one today is a contemporary of the Virgin Mary. No one knows what she used to look like when she was walking the earth two thousand years ago. Any "recognition" of Mary would be based, not on a knowledge of the historical individual, but on Catholic art and iconography. Mary a la Raphael.

If it is valid to ask how those who claim to have experienced a visit from the Virgin Mary "know what Mary looks like," we should also ask: How did Saul of Tarsus know what Jesus looked like? Steve says that "Jesus was seen by his contemporaries," but this may be read as saying far too much. That one is a contemporary of another, does not indicate that either has seen the other or knows what the other looks like. For instance, both Steve and I are contemporaries, but I would never be able to pick him out from a crowd. Nor would he be able to do the same with me. Today we have cameras which record faithful images of our physical features, such that I could pass my picture to Steve via e-mail, and then he very well might be able to pick me out of a crowd. But cameras were not around in 1st century Palestine, so Jesus' "contemporaries" (an expression which takes the gospels as history) didn't even have this benefit. The "no one knows what she used to loo like" approach is certainly applicable in considering claims involving inanimate objects, such as that the burnt markings on a tortilla are the image of Mary. But a sighting of the Virgin Mary is usually claimed to involve an encounter with the real McCoy, though perhaps only in spirit form, which can enable direct communication, sometimes even dialogue (such as we find in Acts' versions of Paul's firsthand encounter with Jesus). And if the apparition identifies itself as the Virgin Mary (just as whatever it was that appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus allegedly identified itself as Jesus), then there's no need for face recognition based on prior knowledge of "what she used to look like when she was walking the earth two thousand years ago" in the first place. The apparition could very well have introduced itself as the Virgin Mary, and the person experiencing the vision, whether subjective or otherwise, might very well be prone to believing it.

Regardless, Steve makes it clear that he is committed to taking the New Testament - including significantly the gospels - as historically accurate on its say so when he writes:

We have more than the Easter appearances to go by. We also have everything that went before. Easter Sunday comes at the tail-end of the Gospels.

How these apologists' belief in the bible amounts to anything better than "it's true because I want it to be true," is not at all clear. But it is clear enough that Steve has the gospels in mind when he asserts that

this additional biographical material gives us a chance to become acquainted with the apostolic witnesses to the Resurrection.

But what the witnesses that Paul speaks about in I Cor. 15? For instance, what "biographical material" do we have in the case of the 500 who Paul claims saw the risen Jesus? Even though this is among the earliest post-resurrection sightings of Jesus reported in the New Testament, Paul mentions it only in passing, not even telling us who any of these 500 might have been or where the sighting may have occurred. Apparently this doesn't matter, because the gospel details are read into the accounts we read in Paul's and other early letters, such that "by the time we arrive at the Resurrection, we know a good deal about the character and quality of the reporters." Were I to take so much for granted in my criticism of Christianity, apologists would try to make a field day of me.

Steve says:

This is not at all the same thing as comparing a reported sighting of Jesus with reported sighting of Mary, where you have two isolated reports without any supplementary background material to help us size up the reporters. To compare the first Easter with Lourdes or Fatima or other suchlike is comparing the incomparable.

Indeed, the sighting of Mary at Fatima is so better documented than the unattested and conflicting reports that we find in the New Testament's epistolary record, that the two are essentially incomparable.

In a last-ditch effort to discount sightings of the Virgin Mary, Steve asserts:

The Resurrection is a purposeful event. Seeing Mary is a grilled cheese sandwich is not.

This merely puts the onus to prove a negative squarely on Steve's shoulders. Otherwise he risks asserting from his own ignorance while standing on New Testament invention. It is not difficult to suppose that the individual(s) who saw Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich would agree that their sighting was not a purposeful event. If one can suppose that turning water into wine or causing a fig tree to wither is sufficiently purposeful for an incarnated deity to take trouble to effect, one can with as much imagination consider that an apparition in burn marks, water stains, tree knots, etc., to be just as purposeful. A mind inebriated on religious faith has already stepped onto the wild-card grounds of make-believe. Surely if apologists had something more substantial than special pleading and rash dismissals, they'd be screaming it instead of these paltry offerings.


The Questionable Value of Purported Eyewitness Testimony

It is important to keep in mind that, in many cases of eyewitness testimony reported in the New Testament, we do not have this testimony from those who are said to have been the eyewitnesses themselves. The reports are at best secondhand (if not further removed) even to those who recorded them. In fact, in most cases we don't even have their names! For instance, in Acts' stories of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul is said to have been travelling with an unspecified number of companions. Who these men were and why they, too, were not converted as was Paul, we are not told. The story seems to include them only so that it can be claimed that Paul was accompanied by witnesses to the same event, thus serving as an element deliberately included (perhaps invented?) to anticipate the charge of hallucination, for they serve no other purpose in the story.

Would we accept stories of such supernatural character if we were told that they have taken place in our time? Suppose a woman takes the stand in defense of her husband who is being tried for a murder which took place 20 years earlier. The known facts of the case are that there is a victim whose death clearly resulted from foul play, that a blood-stained knife has the accused's fingerprints all over it, that there is a receipt for the purchase of the blood-stained knife signed by the accused, that the accused had strong motive to eliminate the victim, etc. The prosecution is confident that they have an airtight case against the accused. But when the wife takes the stand, she explains to the court that she was present at the scene of the murder when the victim met his violent demise, but that the perpetrator was in fact not her husband. On the contrary, she tells the court that a vampire bat had flown into the room where the victim was killed and turned into a dark-haired man wearing a long, flowing cape. The caped man then walked over to the accused and grabbed the murder weapon, which was in the accused's possession at the time, then strutted over to the victim and stabbed him right into the heart. As the victim lay dying in a pool of his own blood, the caped man turned back into a bat and flew back out the window, never to be seen again. The members of the audience in the courtroom are aghast at what they had just heard, and naturally find the witness's testimony unbelievable. But as she is cross-examined, she insists that her testimony is true, and tells the court that there were more than 500 other witnesses to these very events. Thus the sighting of the vampire was therefore, as Steve says of Paul's sighting of Jesus on the road to Damascus, "a public event, not a private event," and therefore not dismissable as an hallucination or psychotic episode. Of course, this was 20 years ago, so she does not have the details as to the identity and present whereabouts of these unnamed witnesses to this amazing event; she even indicates that some have already "fallen asleep," which the court is to understand as meaning deceased. When asked if any of these 500 witnesses had names, she assures the court that they in fact had names, such as (and I quote) "Bob, Nick, Dan, Pete, Frank, Eddie, and Arnold." She goes on to list the names of no fewer than 12 of the more than 500 witnesses she insists were at the scene of the crime when it happened. So her story is clearly on a par with what we find in the New Testament relating to Jesus' post-resurrection appearances, with the added benefit of a live witness who can be cross-examined. What do you suppose that further cross-examination will uncover holes in her story? What if we had the benefit of being able to cross-examine Paul and other NT writers on the stories that they told? From our vantage, we will never have this opportunity, but the Halluci-Not thesis is driven by the dogma that we are to believe what we read in the New Testament on its own say so. Critical thinking need not apply.

Now here's the question to ponder, and I'm sure it wasn't hard to see it coming: If you were a member of the jury in this trial, how would you evaluate this woman's testimony? Would you think that what she told the court accurately reflects what actually happened at the time of the murder? Or, would you suppose that she

On Jason Engwer's reasoning, we cannot suppose that hallucination was involved, for

Subjective visions, whether we would call them hallucinations or something else, would be experiences within an individual's mind, not shared experiences. While it would be possible for people to have similar hallucinations around the same time, we wouldn't expect the details to be identical.

But since we do not have any testimony from the 500 or so witnesses that the accused's wife claims were present at the scene of the crime, we have no confirming indicators of which details those 500 or so witnesses would report, had we the opportunity to consult them. Thus we would not know whether their experience was shared or dissimilar. Such factors do not seem to concern Jason, for he continues:

If some people lost at sea begin having hallucinations, it's possible that they would all think that they're seeing a ship, but it's highly unlikely that all of them would think that the ship is the same color, is at the same distance, is traveling at the same speed, has the same markings on the side of it, etc.

Similarly, in his blog Hallucinations? Jason quotes Gary Habermas:

Let us suppose that a group of twenty people is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean when the ship sinks. After floating on the ocean for three days with no sleep, food, or fresh water, and with the strongest desire for rescue, one member points to a large ship on the horizon that he is hallucinating. Will the others see it? Probably not, since hallucinations are experienced only in the mind of the individual. However, let us suppose that three others in the group are so desperately hopeful of rescue that their minds deceive them into believing that they see the ship as well. As their imaginary ship approaches, will they all see the same hull number? If they do, it is time for the entire group to begin yelling at the top of their lungs because the ship is real. (4)

This is all well and good, at least in the case where details such as the color of the vessel, the rate at which and direction in which it may traveling, its hull number, even its port of call, might be reported by those experiencing the hallucination so that they can be compared. But in the case of Paul's unnamed 500 or so witnesses, we do not have their testimony, so we do not know what they would report if they in fact existed and could be questioned. That's just the point: this is all a secondhand claim by Paul, with no references, no details, not even an indication of time or place! So even if this were a case of hysteria-induced mass hallucination (which the apologists have not proven impossible), we are not given any details as to what they might have experienced, so if there were discrepancies in their experience, they are omitted from Paul's secondhand (or further removed) report. In other words, we do not have firsthand testimony from these 500 witnesses, so the question of their uniformity is unanswerable on what we are given in the New Testament. For all we are given, some of Paul's 500 might have seen a Jesus who had long hair, suffered from chronic acne and smelled of urine, while others might have seen a Jesus who was balding, bearded and smelled of fish. Still others might have seen a pristine Jesus, glowing with white light and surrounded by singing angels. Habermas' objection is thus insufficient to put the believer's worries to rest, because the scenario he uses to inform it is not sufficiently analogous to the situation recorded in the New Testament.


"...it's highly unlikely that..."

My attention is often piqued when a Christian apologist insinuates that a proposal under consideration is deemed "unlikely," such as when Jason writes:

It seems unlikely that a group of 11 people or a group of more than 500 people would have hallucinations of Jesus at the same time without eventually discovering that they had been mistaken.

Of course, we should not expect any New Testament writer to have come forward to correct the record if in fact any of these alleged eyewitnesses did discover that they were mistaken. But there is an even larger concern here. While we are told that coincidental mass hallucination "seems unlikely," this is stated in the context of a defense of a belief system which tells us that "all things are possible" (Mt. 19:26), that the universe was created by an act of consciousness, that dead people rose from their graves (cf. Mt. 27:52-53), that serpents and donkeys and burning bushes speak in human languages, that water was turned into wine by a wish, etc. To assess the likelihood of some event or occurrence under consideration, a thinker, whether he realizes it or not, is making reference to fundamental premises that he holds about the world in general. As some apologists might say, he is "invoking his worldview presuppositions." Greg Bahnsen explains:

presuppositions have the greatest authority in one's thinking, being treated as your least negotiable belief and being granted the highest immunity to revision.(5)

What 'seems likely' to me is that the apologist is not mindfully conscious of his own worldview's basic premises and their implications as they concern the issues on which he makes such pronouncements. He is torn between the premises of the position he wants to defend, and premises he employs in that position's defense: on the one hand, the Christian's position affirms a fanciful, cartoon-like view of the universe where anything the ruling consciousness wishes is not only possible, but the very standard of reality as such; while on the other hand he seeks to dismiss alternatives to his paradigm on the basis that certain elements of those alternatives "seem unlikely." There's a fundamental inconsistency here, one that usually runs along undetected by the believer as he insists on a fantasy while illicitly borrowing from a reality-based worldview. On the basis of my worldview's fundamentals, I can consistently suppose that it is "highly unlikely" that a group of individuals will have the same hallucination, complete with shared uniform details, and for reasons not unlike those which Jason himself has mentioned. For instance, an hallucination is not only an individual and private experience, its distortion of what one perceives is most likely to be influenced by such an enormous number of imperceptible factors that it would be essentially unrepeatable. But if I held to the view that the universe is run by a magic spirit who choreographs all events in human history according to a divine "plan," on what grounds could I confidently say that uniform hallucinatory experiences shared by even enormous numbers of human beings is either "unlikely" or impossible? Blank out.

In the final analysis, the proposal that hallucinations or other subjective factors played a role in the development of early Christian accounts, is not as implausible or "unlikely" as these apologists would like to believe. The objections raised against the possibility of hallucinatory causes behind the alleged eyewitness testimony in the epistles of Paul, for instance, rely on numerous questionable and sometimes indefensible assumptions, a tendency to read too much into what is actually given in the New Testament, the failure to distinguish between detailed firsthand account and secondhand or further removed testimony wholly lacking in details, and other hallmarks of over-anxious reasoning which frequently accompanies defenses of religious worldviews. Most ironically, we are told that it is "highly unlikely" that mass hallucinations may have played a role in Christianity's beginnings, while being assured that the New Testament's fanciful, myth-like stories are not only true, but divinely inspired truth, fit to serve as the bedrock of our perspective on life and reality as such. One can only say: May the Force be with you!

Notes:

(1) Some of the recent blog articles fueling this controversy include:

The Visionary Basis of Christianity, by Matthew (8 May 06)
God Fought Monsters In Order To Create The Universe: How John Loftus Reads The Bible, by Jason Engwer (8 May 06)
The Hallucination Theory: A Skeptical Delusion, by Jason Engwer (10 May 06)
Hallucinations, by Jason Engwer (11 Apr 06)

(2) Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ," pp. 253-254n.88.

(3) Ibid., pp. 203-204.

(4) The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, p. 106.

(5) Van Til's 'Presuppositionalism'

by Dawson Bethrick

Basic Contra-Theism

An age-old ploy in the attempt to validate god-belief involves the supposition that the universe needed a creator. Arguments to this end have been formalized in numerous variations, but the basic argument makes the claim that the universe is something that "began to exist," and ends by positing a deity which is said to have created the universe, allegedly by speaking or wishing it into existence. This conclusion we are expected to accept as knowledge. Unfortunately, most if not all variations of this kind of argument that I have come across, do not state the working definition of 'universe' they assume in their premises, even though this is one of the key terms at issue in such arguments. Of course, if one is hoping to defend a position that is rationally indefensible, it's best to veer away from committing oneself to firm definitions. Nevertheless, the argument that the universe needs a creator, and that creator happens to be the one which defenders of such arguments worship, serves as a typical fall-back position when the going gets rough after other apologetic devices have been deployed.

In the comments section of a blog recently posted by Steve Hays of Triablogue, we find an exchange, between John Loftus of Debunking Christianity and a commenter who has chosen to remain anonymous, on this very issue. The anonymous commenter rolled out a stripped down version of this argument, shorn of the sophisticated embellishments that modern apologists usually heap onto it. With this we find the customary false dichotomies that usually accompany the deployment of such arguments. And as is all too typically the case, the defender of this argument does not provide a working definition for the concept 'universe'. After reviewing arguments like this, even those which are far more sophisticated than the one presented here, I'm convinced that such arguments are not defensible on a coherent definition of 'universe'. Below I will show that a coherent definition of 'universe' invalidates such arguments. I will also show that such arguments, whether their defenders realize it or not, commit them to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics, which invalidates itself.

Let's look at the exchange.

John Loftus wrote:

What I'm saying is that I have never seen an event in my expereience which requires a supernatural explanation--that is, something which science cannot explain based upon the laws of nature.

An anonymous commenter responded:

Sure you do, you see it every day, it's called the universe, which science has no explanation for. It's called life, which science has no explanation for. If you claim they do then you obviously don't understand the proper use of the term. Unsupported foundational assumptions are philosophy, not science. Also principles of operation are not an explanation of causes.

Consider John’s statement: he stated that he has not witnessed any event “which science cannot explain based upon the laws of nature,” i.e., an event which necessitates a leap beyond nature to explanation by reference to the so-called “supernatural.” The anonymous commenter, presumably a theist, pointed to the universe as such a candidate. But the universe is not an event, and it is not science’s task to produce an explanation for the universe as such. I will touch more on this individual's misconceptions about the universe below.

For the present moment, observe that the anonymous commenter also pointed to life as a example of something “which science has no explanation for.” It’s not clear what content the anonymous commenter is looking for in a satisfactory explanation, but the science of biology has given men great understanding about the nature of life, and new discoveries are constantly being made. He suggests that the claim that science has an explanation for life means “you obviously don’t understand the proper use of the term.” So apparently there are underlying assumptions here which are serving to reinforce the anonymous commenter’s presupposition that science cannot offer an explanation for life, regardless of what discoveries scientists actually make. What specifically those underlying assumptions might be are anyone’s guess, for the anonymous commenter does not identify them. At this point it has become obvious that there is in theism a vested interest in seeing ignorance of science prevail, for therein lies the gap that theism finds its opportunity to pontificate. Without that gap of ignorance, there's no footing for theistic nonsense. And still theists insist that they do not oppose scientific developments.

To preempt a common countermove by theistic apologists (e.g., "Biologists can't create life in a laboratory!"), we should keep in mind that there is a profound difference between having an explanation for X and being able to repeat X. Seismic geology, for instance, can explain the causality behind earthquakes, but this is not the same as being able to recreate them. So while science enables us to formulate rational explanations for many things having to do with living matter, this is not tantamount to the claim to being able to recreate living organisms in a sterile test tube. If the question is as simple as “Where did life come from?” I have a simple and incontrovertible answer: life came from existence. Anyone who wants to claim that life came from non-existence, is free to present his case any time.

In response to the anonymous commenter’s statement, John Loftus wrote:

Anon, good points, because it is astounding to me that this universe exists. But to call it a miracle is prejudicial in favor of a God. How about we call the existence of this universe strange or unexplainable as of yet. Heidegger said "the fundamental philosophical question is why does something exist rather than nothing at all." That would include your God or the universe. Why does something exist? You can only call it a miracle if you can also explain why it is that an eternal uncreated God exists. but since you can't, then this universe is....is....strangely wonderful.

An anonymous commenter (perhaps the same as above) wrote:

Well, you're either left with an uncaused effect, or a Creator who made it from nothing. Either way it's not natural; hence must be supernatural. Matter does not create itself. So one is left with the problem of the inability of natural laws to explain its existence. If left with a choice between self-generating matter and an intelligent Creator the rational one is decidedly not matter generating itself. That's a pretty big argument in favor of God. So rationally the preference would be in favor of God.

The procedure of the case presented here is quite simple: First, present two options, namely theism and an alternative to theism. Then construe the alternative to theism to be so implausible that theism prevails by default (rather than on any actual demonstrable merits in its favor). If one accepts the premises implicit throughout the case, then theism will surely seem the better of the two. But are the premises which this procedure assumes rationally defensible? I submit that they are not.

The first point that needs correction is the characterization of the universe as an “effect.” Just as the universe is not an “event,” the universe is also not an effect, whether caused or uncaused. The universe is the sum totality of all that exists. (Compare Merriam-Webster’s definition of universe: “the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated.”) By virtue of the universe’s inherent all-inclusiveness, it would be self-contradictory to assert that something can or does exist “outside the universe.” Since existence exists and only existence exists, to suppose that something exists outside the sum totality of existence is necessarily incoherent. Consequently there can be no “outside” the totality, and thus nothing “outside the universe.”

Another reason why the notion that the universe is an "effect" is invalid has to do with the concept 'effect' itself. The concept ‘effect’ necessarily implies a cause which would have to precede the effect in question in order to bring it about and make it a part of reality. But causality necessarily presupposes existence. It would be incoherent to assert that something is caused while denying the existence of any thing or things which do the causing. So existence is a precondition to causality, not the other way around. Therefore, by implication, rather than being an "effect"of some prior cause, the universe - that is, the sum total of existence - is preconditional to any cause and effect to begin with. Thus to call the universe an “effect” commits a logical reversal. That is, to call the universe an effect is to posit causality outside the context of the universe, which means: to use the concept ‘causality’ while denying or ignoring its genetic roots, namely existence. This error is known as the fallacy of the stolen concept, and it is the fundamental error of theistic creationism.

It is true that matter does not “create” itself. Indeed, what necessitates the supposition that matter is “created” in the first place, if not the mystical premises borne on stolen concepts like the one assumed above? Moreover – and topical to theistic apologetics – we should ask: What validates the claim that matter was created by an act of consciousness? This is the basic presupposition of theistic creationism, but can those who endorse such a notion present any evidence in support of it? Yes, we can imagine something popping into existence at the whim of a consciousness which possesses powers which our imagination can attribute to it with abandon, such as we might see in a cartoon. But imagination does is not a substitute for fact, and what the theist needs in order to validate this presupposition which is so integral to theism, is not merely what he can imagine (for it is readily granted that the religious imagination is abundantly fecund), but facts which bear on the matter at hand. Since there are no empirical facts which can serve as evidence conclusively supporting the theist’s claims, and since the facts that do bear on the matter in fact show theism to be a contradiction, theists have no choice but to resort either to appeals to emotion, psychological or physical threats, or a semblance of argumentation to defend their faith stance. And this is where they open the door to frequently undetected cognitive errors, such as the stolen concept pointed about above.

The anonymous commenter explicitly repeats the basic procedure of his case when he writes:

If left with a choice between self-generating matter and an intelligent Creator the rational one is decidedly not matter generating itself.

If we limit ourselves to these two scenarios - "between self-generating matter and an intelligent Creator" - then I submit that we have already given rationality short-shrift. As a result, affirming one or the other horn of this false dichotomy cannot be considered rational. Rationality is the commitment to reason as one’s only means of discovering and validating knowledge, and his only guide to action. Reason is the faculty which identifies and integrates what we perceive via our senses, and indispensable to this is the ability of man's mind to form concepts on the basis of objective inputs supplied by sense perception. Our senses are our primary and only direct means of awareness of reality. To discover what is “out there” (i.e., in the world, in the universe), we do not start by turning inward and consulting our imagination. The initial inputs of reason cannot be our imagination, for our imagination itself needs content, and this ultimately comes from what we perceive as well. No examples of consciousness in nature are examples of consciousnesses which create their objects ex nihilo. But theistic creationism posits precisely this idea: that the whole universe was created ex nihilo by an act of consciousness. Essentially, it holds that a ruling consciousness wished the universe into existence. But theists cannot objectively substantiate this claim; the most they can do is disparage alternatives to their view and hope for the best – that is, hope that their illicit premises are accepted uncritically.

Since existence exists independent of consciousness, and consciousness is consciousness of existence, the task of consciousness is not to create its own objects (which is the essence of metaphysical subjectivism), but to perceive and identify them. Do we not all begin as ignorant infants perceiving the world for the first time and constantly struggling to discover and identify everything around us as we mature? I know I did. Can an honest man claim otherwise? Also, since reason is the means by which we conceptualize what we perceive, a rational worldview is one which does not attempt to fake reality by supposing that it is a creation of consciousness; rather, a rational worldview is the systematic application of reason to the task of discovering fundamental truths (i.e., rational principles) and developing a comprehensive view of reality and life. Already we should see how profoundly incongruous theism is to this project, for it affirms the very opposite view - that the universe, reality, and the objects we perceive are ultimately dependent on and conform to someone’s consciousness intentions, that is, to the ruling consciousness’ wishing.

As the anonymous commenter apparently assumes, there are no good reasons to suppose that matter is “self-generating.” But an alternative to theism does not require that matter be self-generating. Only if we begin with non-existence would we need to invent such notions, and since existence exists, the proper place to start is with existence, not with non-existence. So the basic procedure errs by limiting the alternatives to two fundamentally flawed positions and by arbitrarily affirming one while rejecting the other. (Of course, if one is willing to retreat so far from reason as to posit a ruling consciousness which can materialize its wishes at will, it is unclear how one could rule out the possibility of self-generating matter and keep a straight face in the first place.)

As we have seen, theistic creationism itself consists of two fundamental errors, namely that something exists "outside the universe" (that’s one error), and that this extra-universal thing is a form of consciousness which wished the universe into existence (there’s a second error). Thus in the final analysis, theistic creationism is presented as an explanation on the basis of the misguided notion that two wrongs make a right, and this simply does not fly.

Interestingly, theists typically claim that their god was not created, that it exists “necessarily” – which is essentially taken to mean that it does not require an explanation beyond itself. We have only their say so on this, for there is nothing they can point to in the world which conclusively validates such claims. Why not begin with the universe, which we know exists, and build our worldview on the basis of this incontrovertible and objective fact? Theists typically do not dispute the need for a starting point, they just want it to be some form of consciousness which serves as back-up to their feigned authority and which is thought to have created the universe according to their preconceived notions, ever expanding the ruling consciousness’ role as an explanatory terminus which, like a malleable goo, can be troweled into any gap or crevice that momentarily stops the mind in its pursuit for further discovery. The problem for theism is that, as man’s knowledge of the universe grows, the role that theism’s ruling consciousness can play in plausible explanations can only evaporate.

by Dawson Bethrick