The Imaginative Basis of Vytautas' God-Belief, Part 4

Continued from Part 3.

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I wrote: Also, notice that “by means of the creation he has made” fails to address my question because it does not identify an alternative to sensation and perception as a means of knowledge. By pointing to “creation” you’re suggesting that you had to infer your god’s existence, that you do not have direct, firsthand awareness of it. Did you mean to say this? If you infer its existence, what is your starting point, and how did you end up with the conclusion that the Christian god is real? Assuming “creation” only begs the question, as I mentioned above. So hopefully you have something better than this? Now, if you claim to have direct, firsthand awareness of this thing you call “God,” then by what means do you possess awareness of this object? You’ve identified how you do not have awareness of it when you say that your god cannot be sensed or perceived. So, how can one have awareness of it? Or, does no one have awareness of it? If no one has awareness of it, why believe it’s real? Again, try to answer these questions with the distinction between the real and the imaginary in mind. So far, you’ve performed miserably in this respect.

Vytautas: "When I point to creation, I mean that which God created such as the earth, man, and animals."

We can imagine that the earth, man, and animals were created by an invisible magic being. But why suppose that such imagination is true? Pointing to the earth, man, and animals does not validate the claim that said invisible magic being exists, or that they were created by it. Again, we have more primacy of consciousness metaphysics in play here: existence cannot be self-sufficient on this view, it had to be created by an act of consciousness. But why suppose this, especially when all we can do is imagine it, and nothing in reality that we discover by rational means suggests that any consciousness has the power to create its own objects? Blank out.

Vytautas: "If you say that we were not created, then development of language is impossible because if a man made up a language, then it could not be communicated to anther person because the other person does not know the language."

So, human beings cannot learn or acquire a language? That's interesting. I suppose my ability to speak three other languages is a delusion? Next you'll be saying that human beings could not learn to walk.

Vytautas: "It would seem then that man for all eternity had the ability to learn language, since starting with words would not know their meaning, and if a meaning is known, then a right word cannot be found that would signify that same meaning to another person. For a language to work you need meanings and words that signify the meaning for the word."

So, are you supposing that human beings are incapable of assigning meanings to words?

Vytautas: "Another problem is the fact that life cannot come from non-life because the amino acids that can be constructed in the lab are all left-handed, but we need right-handed amino acids for life, unless life always existed."

If tests in the laboratory are the final arbiter in deciding questions like this, where are the lab results which suggest that an act of consciousness can create matter?

Vytautas: "Since God created life and gave man language that he can understand and communicate with, then this gives an explanation for the origin of life and of human language."

Don't you see how all this reads as an argument from ignorance? Since you don't understand how man develops meaning and language, it must have been "God" who did this. Since you don't know how life could have come from "non-life," "God" must have created it. Your entire rationale for your god's existence is an expression of "Duh, I donno! Must be God did it!"

Vytautas: "If men have always existed, it would seem the world would be overpopulated by now, unless they traveled out to other planets. I am not sure what you would say about these issues if existence always existed."

To say that existence exists, and that existence is eternal, is not to say that men have always existed on earth.

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I wrote: Read it again: I wrote: “by describing their god as something non-sensible, and making the kinds of claims to knowledge that they do, Christians show how nonsensical their beliefs are.” The stipulation that your god is non-sensible, coupled with other things Christians say about why they believe their god exists (such as the question-begging appeal to “creation” that we saw in your own statement above), indicate how nonsensical Christianity is.

Vytautas: "If every claim to knowledge has to be validated by a sense experience, then what sense experience justifies or warrants the claim that all claims to knowledge has to be validated by a sense experience."

Every claim to knowledge does not need to be validated directly to sense experience. We are not concrete-bound in our thinking. But all legitimate concepts do ultimately reduce to the perceptual level of cognition. Knowledge has a hierarchical structure. Just as a skyscraper needs a foundation, so does knowledge. The foundation of knowledge is perception. It is on the basis of perceptual input that we form our initial concepts, including the axioms (the widest of all concepts), as well as concepts of entities. These first-level concepts can in turn be integrated into higher abstractions, and those into yet higher abstractions. We can also abstract from what we discover in entities and form concepts integrating their attributes. This is how we get concepts like 'length', 'weight', 'angle', etc.

Do the concepts 'liberty', 'orchestration', 'purview' and 'transformation' refer directly to entities? What does "liberty" look like? What does "purview" look like? You see, these are higher abstractions; they do not refer directly to entities. As higher abstractions, these concepts reside on the higher rungs of the knowledge hierarchy, not at the foundation, not at the level of the perceptually self-evident. In fact, the concept 'knowledge' itself does not refer to an entity; we don't perceive knowledge, we develop it by means of discovery, identification and integration. These are cognitive actions; we don't "see" them. Such actions are one of the benefits of a volitional consciousness. It is because of this nature of man's mind that the so-called "analogical reasoning" endorsed by the Vantillian goon squad is so fallacious and unfit for man's mind.

Besides, "God" is supposed to refer to an entity, not an abstraction. How do we have awareness of entities if not by means of perception? Theists are at a loss as to answer this question. They give no straightforward and unambiguous indication of the means by which they allegedly have awareness of this entity they call "God," assuming they think they have awareness of it in the first place. Does Canon Michael Cole indicate the means by which he supposedly had awareness of Jesus standing next to him?

Vytautas: "You would say that all of your claims to knowledge are based on sense experience, since revelation from God and reasoning from concepts are out."

Knowledge of reality is ultimately based on sense perception, since it is by means of sense perception that we have direct awareness of reality. This does not mean that "reasoning from concepts [is] out." Since we can and do form concepts, we have mental content from which to reason and draw conclusions.

If you say you have knowledge from some supernatural source, I simply ask for you to explain the means by which you acquired this knowledge. Believers are typically unclear on whether they claim to have direct awareness of their god or not, but this is a key epistemological issue if believers want their claims to be taken seriously.

Take a look at the arguments theists have over the centuries offered for the existence of their god. Are they simply “reasoning from concepts”? No, they’re reasoning from various premises, that is, from statements they have made about the world or the state of affairs or some aspect of our existence. It is here where you will find exploitation of ambiguities (e.g., arguments from “the meaning of life”), false inferences based on unstated, illicit definitions (e.g., the universe had a beginning), reliance on imagination (e.g., “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived...”), and stolen concepts (all the above plus many others). There is no evidence in this world for something that is “supernatural.” Why? Everything in this world is natural (or man-made), finite, destructible, corporeal, etc. How does that which is natural, finite, destructible, corporeal, etc., serve as evidence of something that is supernatural, infinite, indestructible, incorporeal, etc.? In other words, how does A serve as evidence of something that contradicts it on every parameter? Blank out. I’ve asked this kind of question in my blog Is Human Experience Evidence of the Christian God?, but to date no one has provided a substantial answer to this question. This pushes theists into the mental realm, hoping to find some way to construe mental properties as evidence for their god. Hence you get assertions such as “Christianity is the only world which provides the preconditions necessary for experience” or something along these lines, a la presuppositionalism. But examination of this kind of assertion and the defenses that presuppositionalists supply on behalf of it reveal a conspicuous ignorance of conceptual theory, which is where these matters are rightfully addressed. Issues such as the basis of the laws of logic, the justification of induction and the source of objective morality are not going to be rationally settled by pointing to a supernatural entity which we can only access by means of our imagination. Indeed, I cannot think of a more unserious way to address such topics. It is as anti-philosophical an approach as one could come up with, and that is why it is no surprise to me why so many Christians are flocking to presuppositionalism in droves: because Christianity itself is so philosophically challenged. Like cockroaches fearing the light, the Christian thinkers scurry when a rational philosophy comes on the scene. Add to this the fact that Christianity is constituted by the worship of contradiction (see here and here, for instance), and you’ll see understand why this will always be the case.

Vytautas: "You start with raw sensation and consciousness converts the impressions into intelligible language."

Actually, we start with perception, not "raw sensation." There is a profound difference. But I'll keep you in suspense for a while.

Vytautas: "But where did the mind get language but from other minds that communicate the language, so that you must affirm people knowing language from eternity?"

Here's another "Duh, I donno! Must be God did it!" On what basis other than ignorance would I affirm that any god has anything to do with how people know language?

Vytautas: "But we have written records only going back thousands of years. So did people know language for all this time and did not write down their thoughts?"

Possession of a writing system is a precondition for written records, and knowledge of a corresponding language is a precondition for a writing system. So if we have written records going back to a certain point, we can be certain that languages were known and used at that point. Prior to that point, there’s no reason to suppose that there was no language, for the ability to speak and comprehend language generally precedes written literacy. This is the case with children today in fact. So there’s no problem here.

Vytautas: "Also existence exists is a claim about all things, but it cannot be reduced to sense experience because we have not experienced all of existence, unless you say existence is an idea we have before experience."

Why would existence have to be "an idea we have before experience" in order for it to effectively apply to all existing things? Concepts are open-ended. The concept 'man', for instance, includes every man who exists today, who has existed in the past, and who will ever exist. Since anything I perceive qualifies as something that exists (I couldn't perceive it if it didn't exist), the concept 'existence' applies to it. It also applies to anything else that exists, even if I have not perceived it, or ever will perceive it. 'Existence' is the widest of all concepts, for it includes everything and anything that exists. I do not need to have sensed or perceived everything that it includes in order to have formed it (I formed it from just the few things that I have perceived), nor do I need to have sensed or perceived everything that exists for everything that exists to be subsumed by the concept 'existence'. That's how concepts work: they are open-ended, all-inclusive, and unrestricted by temporal limitations. In fact, many of the issues which theists think indicate the existence of their god are actually aspects of concepts which are not understood as having anything to do with concepts. And what's interesting is that the Christian god, supposing it were real, would not have its knowledge in conceptual form, since conceptualization would only get in its way. Concepts are a mental shorthand that are useful to use because we are not omniscient. See my blog Would an Omniscient Mind Have Its Knowledge in Conceptual Form? for a detailed treatment of this matter.

Consider the concept ‘man’ again. It refers to a specific class of entities, namely biological organisms which possess the conceptual level of consciousness. As Aristotle observed, man is the rational animal. Did we form our concept of ‘man’ in the absence of perceptual input? If so, on what basis did we form it? What objective basis supplies this concept with content and meaning? It is true that the concept ‘man’ refers to individuals whom we have not seen and will never see. But it does not follow from this fact that we formed the concept in the absence of perceptual inputs. The individuals to whom the concept ‘man’ refers whom we have not seen and never will see are epistemologically secondary. Why? Because we had to have the concept ‘man’ before we could apply it to things that we have not experienced firsthand. So, how did we form the concept? We formed it initially on the basis of actual individuals whom we have actually perceived. The actual men whom we have perceived firsthand are epistemologically primary insofar as our concept ‘man’ is concerned. It is on the basis of our firsthand, direct contact with these few individuals that we initially formed the concept ‘man’, and due to its open-endedness (made possible by a task in the process of abstraction which Rand calls measurement-omission), we are able to include individuals whom we have not perceived and will never perceive.

Similarly with the concept ‘existence’. We began our journey into conscious experience by perceiving things existing independently of us. This was our initial conscious experience, and it happened in our first days and months of life as infants. This primitive experience preceded our ability to form concepts, and therefore preceded any concepts we eventually did form. We had to have perceptual input of some kind to form our first concepts of existents. The axioms, being the widest of all concepts, were implicit in the first actions of our conscious experience. Later we formally grasped them when we started to make specific recognitions like “John is funny” or “the chair is here.” Basic predications of this sort fundamentally include even more basic recognitions, such as “this exists” and “that exists,” which are wider affirmations than “John exists” or “the chair exists,” for these latter recognitions relate to specific entities rather than to an indefinite array of possible entities as in the former cases. What’s common to them all? The axioms are. Did we have these axioms before we perceived? This would be like asking if we had knowledge of concepts before we were aware. That would constitute another instance of the fallacy of the stolen concept, for knowledge presupposes awareness, and similarly, for the same reason, conceptualization presupposes perception.

Vytautas: "Why object to me showing God’s existence from the concept of God, if you infer all of existence from your concept?"

Existence is not inferred. We perceive existence directly. Look at anything you perceive. Say, the computer monitor, or a telephone, a table, a sandwich, a tree, your friend, a mountain, a gas station, etc. Do these things exist? If they do, then you're saying that the concept 'existence' applies to things that you directly perceive. It would be silly to say we don't perceive existence. If you don't perceive existence when you perceive, what are you perceiving? Non-existence? We don't start with the concept of something, and then from that basis show that what the concept denotes must exist. We don't do that with anything. Why suppose this is valid in the case of your god? Perhaps you are confusing your imagination for a valid concept, which confusion my challenge is intended to bring out.

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I wrote: I take it by this response that you are affirming that you infer your god’s existence rather than have awareness of it directly. So unlike many Christians, you do not claim to have direct, firsthand awareness of your god. Otherwise I would expect to see you identify the means by which you have such awareness (such as when I point to my senses to identify the means by which I have direct awareness of my computer screen, the shirt I’m wearing, the amount I need to pay on a bill I receive in the mail, etc.). You say that creation needs a creator. Okay, fine. Now you need to prove that what you call a “creation” was in fact created, that it is in fact a “creation.” Let’s see how effectively you can do this.

Vytautas: "By asking for proof you assume the laws of logic which are immaterial and invariant laws of reasoning."

Logic and reasoning are conceptual, not "immaterial." "Immaterial" only says what something is not. By classing logic and reason as "immaterial," you're essentially saying you don't know what they are. How does your ignorance supposed to get you anywhere?

Vytautas: "The reason we have the same logic, such as we both agree contractions cannot be true, is because we both made in the image of God, since we have descended from Adam the first man."

This is more appeal to the sacred storybook. It indicates that you have no conceptual understanding of logic and reason, and thus adopt a storybook understanding as if it were somehow true. The reason why logic is universal is two-fold: one, it is conceptual. Universality is a property of concepts (remember the part I said above about concepts being open-ended? That's the universal aspect of concepts. The concept 'man' includes all men, those living today, those of the past, and those of the future. This is why we need to use modifiers when we speak of a specific man or group of men). The other reason is because of the proper orientation between subject and object. The relationship between a subject (a knower) and any object (what it knows, perceives, holds in awareness, etc.) is not a relationship of equals. Have you ever heard the statement “Wishing doesn’t make it so”? Ever wonder why it’s true? The reason why this statement is true is the primacy of existence metaphysics: the objects of consciousness are what they are independent of the act of consciousness by which we are aware of them. Theism directly contradicts this fundamental principle by positing a form of consciousness which has direct, immediate and total control over everything in its awareness. So there’s a fundamental dichotomy that results in theistic worldviews: for man, here on earth, wishing does not make it so, but for the deity in its fake environment (i.e., the imaginative realm of the believer), its wishing makes everything so. To see how theism explicitly endorses this most fundamental reversal between subject and object, see my blog Confessions of a Vantillian Subjectivist.

Vytautas: "But on your assumption that knowledge is obtained from experience, since you were born ignorant, you obtained the laws of logic from the objective world. How did you get immaterial and unchanging laws from the material and changing world?"

You mean, how did I "get" logic and reason from what I perceive? We start with perception, and from perceptual inputs we form concepts, as I mentioned above. Once we have developed a body of concepts, we have something to work with. What kind of work do we do? We use that basis of knowledge to continue adding to it, identifying new units and integrating them into the growing sum of our knowledge by means of logic. There's no "mystery" here. But yet that is precisely what you're seeking to exploit - a mystery, a gap, a gap so big that only your void-god can fit into it. This shows that the rationale for your god-belief rests on assertion from ignorance.

Vytautas: “If you say that logic is obtained from examining the definition of the concept, then some knowledge comes from reason and not just experience.”

I didn’t say that “logic is obtained from examining the definition of the concept.” Rather, it is the application of the law of identity to the knowing process.

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I wrote: Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is an irreducible primary. It is not the result of something “prior” to existence; there is no “prior” to existence. Either you start with existence, or you start with non-existence. Implicitly this is what the theist does; he finds beginning with the irreducible fact that existence exists unsatisfying, typically for reasons that are unclear to himself, and that is why he wants to posit a form of consciousness which is responsible for bringing existence into existence. My analysis of the theist’s dilemmas is not inaccurate. Observe:

Vytautas asked: “But where does existence come from?”

I responded: I love this question – it confirms that my antiapologetic approach has been right on all along. Let’s consider it: “Where does existence come from?” Well, what is the alternative to existence, if not non-existence? If we accept the premise buried in your question, the only answer that would satisfy it would be: from non-existence. But you want to say that existence comes from your god (it created existence, right?), but also that your god exists. So your question leads you to a self-contradiction. You demand an explanation for existence, suggesting that existence “came from” something other than existence (i.e., non-existence), and yet say that it came from something that exists. In rational philosophy, your question commits what is known as the fallacy of the stolen concept. Incidentally, this fallacy is inescapable in the religious view of the world.

Vytautas: “When I say where existence came from, I am asking where all the finite, temporal, and changing things come from.”

If you ask where some particular concrete came from, I would answer that it ultimately came from existence. But when you get to existence as such, then you run the risk of committing the fallacies I enumerated above, just as you have.

Vytautas: “God is not finite, temporal, and changing, so that there is no contradiction, since God created everything from nothing, and the universe is not the same being as God.”

Again, one could say this about anything he imagines. But notice that he’s not starting with existence. If we begin with the fact that existence exists, then there’s no need to take your concept-stealing question “where does existence come from?” seriously.

Also, since the universe is the sum total of all that exists, if you say your god does not exist in the universe, then you concede that your god does not exist. For any entity which exists, exists as a part of the universe.

Vytautas: “So it seems you do not know how things came to be, since they were always here.”

You’re dropping context here. If existence has always existed, then the question “where does existence come from?” is nonsensical. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, we can question the origin of specific entities all we want, and we can come up with knowledgeable answers, but only by looking at the specifics involved and using reason to guide our judgments and conclusions. But was there ever a time when nothing existed? Why believe this? If things have always existed, then why assert that they were created? If they have always existed, they didn’t need to be created. The notion of a creator of existence will not only always be superfluous, it will always commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. But even though this has been explained to you repeatedly now, you will nevertheless ignore this instruction and kick against the pricks. The more you do this, the less credible your position becomes.

Vytautas: “By existence you mean all that exists, so that everything was always here but just in a different form. Did conscious always exist or is it another form of matter?”

I have no idea whether or not consciousness has always existed. Indeed, for this question to be sensible, we would have to ask: have conscious organisms always existed? Well, where? On earth? I doubt it. Have there always been conscious organisms elsewhere in the universe? I have no idea. How would I know? For the purposes of our discussion, why would that even matter? Whether conscious organisms have always existed in the universe or not, the truth is still the truth. Is consciousness “another form of matter”? I’d say this is a scientific question. Indeed, how could I prove that consciousness is not made from a type of matter which we do not understand yet? Thanks to Christianity’s anti-rational, anti-scientific view of the world, science is still in its infancy. There’s lots yet to discover. It is counter to the endeavor of scientific discovery to affirm that we know everything already, when in fact we do not.

Vytautas: “If consciousness came from matter, then consciousness can be thought of as a mechanical machine, such as a bicycle can be explained by the motion of the parts, so that a mind would be explained by the motion of the parts. But you say, or suggest that you have an immaterial mind, which is made of something that is not matter.”

I nowhere said that I “have an immaterial mind.” I have a conscious mind. Consciousness is its own kind of existence. The notion “immaterial” only says what something is not; it is not another word for consciousness. It never has been, it never will be.

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Vytautas had written: “If it was always here, then we could not come to this point of time because before this time an infinite amount of time had to pass before we got here. But then we would never get to this point in time because an infinite amount of time had to happen before we got here.”

I responded: This line of argument not only ignores the fact that time presupposes existence, it also ignores the fact that it is always now - i.e., the present is eternally continuous. We could not conceive of past or future times if the present did not exist. Challenges to this point will inevitably involve a false conception of time. A rational understanding of time does not lead to the conundrum you try to raise because time is conceptual, not metaphysical. This is a common mistake among thinkers, but it is a mistake nonetheless.

Vytautas: "When I said that it was always here, I mean that existence is always here, so that I did not ignore existence. If it is always now, then there is no past or future. So when I eat pizza last week, then I am actually eating a pizza right now even though I am not eating pizza right now. Therefore, it is not always now, since now signifies the present moment that is not eternal but it is an infinitesimal duration of time. You must mean that the present is always present to you, but you were not always here."

You've misinterpreted what I have stated. It is always the present. Think about it: when is it not the present? That is the meaning of the present tense of the verb 'to be' - i.e., "is." It applies to the present tense. The word 'now' always has its reference to present action. Recognizing this fact does not at all indicate that you are actually eating the pizza you ate last week. What an absurd interpretation! "Last week" ultimately only has meaning in contradistinction to the present. If it were not now, you could not say "last week," for present tense action takes place in the present tense.

Vytautas: "And if time is conceptual, then what sense object did you sense to give you time?"

The concept 'time' does not refer directly to any particular object; hence my statement "time is conceptual." It is an abstraction from prior abstractions. This is why it is so often misunderstood, as many thinkers expect it must refer directly to some entity or concrete. It doesn't. It is a form of measurement. What it measures is movement and action.

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Vytautas had written: “But on the Christian position, God created time at the moment of creation and a finite amount of time can happen until this point in time.”

I responded: It is true that I can imagine this happening. But again, the imaginary is not real. You can claim that “God created time,” but simply claiming this to be the case does not make it true. And notice that it is posited in answer to a fallaciously conceived problem. “God” is asserted as the solution to a problem that simply does not exist. If this is how you infer your god’s existence, no wonder so many people reject it.

Vytautas: "If the imaginary is not real, then when I see an apple, then my mind recognizes this object and puts an image in my mind, since I see an image of an apple because it is impressed on my mind, and then the apple is not real, since I have an image of the apple."

Wrong. When you perceive the apple, you are aware of it directly. When you perceive an apple, you are not aware of an "image" of the apple that your mind "created." This error is known as representationalism. It has been refuted. See David Kelley's book The Evidence of the Senses for a proper understanding of the nature of perception.

Vytautas: "But the apple is real, so some of our images are real."

Doesn't follow. For one, you've misconstrued the way perception works. Also, if I imagine an apple, what I imagine is not real, even if the way I imagine it is as faithful to the apple that I have perceived as I can possibly make it. There is still a fundamental distinction. I think what you meant to say is that when someone perceives an apple, his awareness of that apple is real. But Objectivism agrees with this, since consciousness is affirmed as one of its founding axioms. The religious worldview’s failure to distinguish between the real and the imaginary is a consequence of its baseline failure to distinguish between the subject of consciousness and its objects. I have explained this in numerous posts on my blog.

Vytautas: "It is unintelligible to say that the present is eternal, since there is the past and future which are distinguishable from the present."

Eternal means that temporal concepts do not apply. Eternity is not in the past or in the future. It is simply the absence of the applicability of temporal measurement. Since time presupposes existence, existence is eternal. That does not mean that the current state of affairs is eternal, since causality does in fact exist.

Vytautas: "It would seem time would require a consciousness, since the material world does not contain time."

Time requires consciousness, but not for the reason you propose. It is because (a) time is a form of measurement, and (b) measurement is a mental activity, that it requires consciousness. But what it measures - movement and action - does not require consciousness. The standard of our time-keeping is the movement of the earth around the sun. It happens whether anyone is aware of it or not. And yes, the "material world" does contain time. We know this because temporal concepts apply in the material world.

Vytautas: "So if existence is eternal, since everything was always here, then there is an eternal consciousness, since time is a concept and not something sensed in the world."

You're missing two facts: first, that time presupposes existence, and second that eternality is the absence of the applicability of temporal concepts. Because your argument fails to take these two relevant facts into context, its conclusion is unsound. It also ignores the fact that consciousness presupposes existence as well, specifically the existence of any objects of which it is conscious.

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Vytautas asked: “If you say that all that is real must be capable of being sensed, then do you know this claim about all of reality?”

I responded: Careful not to make a category mistake here. My knowledge is not an object that exists independent of me, so it is not bound to conditions that attend objects which exist independent of me. I know what I know by a means of knowledge. It’s called reason. It is the faculty which identifies what I perceive and integrates what I perceive into the sum of my knowledge. You want me to accept as knowledge something which I cannot perceive and integrate into the sum of my knowledge without contradicting it. Why should I do this? You offer no good reasons for this.

Vytautas: "If you cannot see time, then time does not exist."

As I pointed out, time is conceptual. Since you operate on a false understanding of concepts, this point is most likely lost on you. But keep in mind: time does measure things that I can see, such as a relay race.

Vytautas: "But we do experience duration of time, so knowledge is not just by perception."

Knowledge is conceptual. Perception is the basis of knowledge, since the most fundamental concepts are formed on the basis of perceptual input. Those initial concepts themselves can be integrated into higher abstractions, building a hierarchical sum. Now if you propose something other than perception by which you have awareness of objects, please tell us what it is, and explain how we can reliably distinguish between it and your imagination.

Vytautas: "We are able to distinguish between the present moment and things that have happened and what will happen."

Here is one area where imagination has a legitimate use in our knowledge. Since the future has not happened yet, we must rely on our imagination to estimate what will happen in the future. But here's the tricky part: what serves as our standard for the future estimations that we imagine? Does our imagination serve as that standard, or do objective inputs, ultimately grounded in what we perceive firsthand, serve as that standard? If I take the biblically inspired imagination as my standard, I would probably imagine that the graves at a nearby cemetery will open up and the corpses which lie in them will crawl out, walk among the people of the city I live in, showing themselves unto many. If I take the inputs I gather from reality and validate by means of an objective process as my standard, I would not suppose that the corpses in the nearby cemetery will crawl out of their graves. See the difference?

Vytautas: "If the present is eternal which means that at all times it is present, then we should only use verbs in the present tense and never in the past or future tense."

You’re treating time as if it were metaphysical rather than epistemological. The fact that it is always now does not mean that all temporal concepts refer to the present. To correct your error here, you should try to understand that it is what time measures that is metaphysical.

Vytautas: “If knowledge is identification of objective reality and compilations of these identifications into your mind, then can you make claims about what your mind has stored as knowledge? If yes, then this would not empirical claims to knowledge, but these would be non-empirical, since you did not sense your mind.”

This is a non-problem. Self-consciousness is also an axiom. So I do not need to use my senses to explore my own consciousness. My consciousness is aware of itself as a secondary object. We first learned how to do this by identifying our senses, and then following the hierarchy on up from there.

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Vytautas wrote: “I think you do not want to believe in God because if you did then, you have to worship him by the commands that he gives in Scripture.”

I responded: You ignore the fact that at one time I was a Christian and in fact wanted Christianity to be true. I demonstrated with my whole life at that time that when I thought it was true, I devoted my life according to Christianity’s dictates. There were many problems, but they all reduced ultimately to the fact that I was being dishonest to myself. When Christians urge me to return to Christianity, they are in effect urging me to be dishonest to myself. I won’t do that. When I was young, impressionable and philosophically defenseless, I was conned into such self-dishonesty. But now I know better. So it ain’t gonna happen, regardless of who disapproves.

Vytautas: (silence)

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Vytautas wrote: “You do not want to have anything to do with God and detest him because you want to live in darkness and not come to the light.”

I responded: I’ve matured in many ways since my sojourn into Christianity. One way in which I have matured is morally. Today, if I thought the god of the bible were real, I would certainly not worship it. It is most worthy of contempt. But I realize that it is a fiction, that it does not really exist, that it is an imagination which has captured the fixation of millions of people. I’ve observed how this fixation on such a detestable construct degrades individuals to defending the most abhorrent evils imaginable.

Vytautas: “You are an egoist which means that your own interests are the most important. So you would say worshiping God is evil since it is not in your own best interest.”

Not only would serving an eternal, infinite, perfect, indestructible and perfect being fail to accomplish anything for that being, it would not meet my own ends which I must satisfy if I am going to exist. Praying to an invisible magic being does not put food in the belly, money into bank accounts, or roofs over one’s head. Believing the bible to be true and/or imagining that there is a god controlling the universe, like a cartoonist who makes cartoons, will not produce the values that I need in order to live. Nor is the dishonesty that such belief demands of the believer conducive to a happy life. Moreover, I have, for instance, already shown that the 10 commandments are morally useless.

Vytautas: “But everything someone does is for their own best interests at the time, since no man has hated his own flesh.”

How do we know that “no man has hated his own flesh”? I have known people who mutilated themselves, were diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, committed suicide, etc. Their actions told me that they had contempt for themselves.

Vytautas: “So everyone does what seems good to him all the time.”

And look at what the Christian worldview tells us is “good.” It gives no clear and consistent definition to the words ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and seats their meaning in the whims of an invisible magic being which doesn’t exist in the first place, which is only accessible by means of imagination inspired by a storybook held as sacred (i.e., as infallible and unquestionable and holy) and is thus expected to be accepted as truth even if its reader does not understand it. Moreover, by removing man’s nature as a biological organism and his needs as a living being from any consideration in the standard of good and evil, these notions – in the religionist’s hands – are completely divorced from man’s life and are irrelevant to his needs.

Vytautas: “You are just saying relative to me worshiping God is not good because I should follow my own rational self-interest."

It doesn't matter to me if you follow your own rational self-interest or not. I suspect you do in much of your life (such as when you take effort to meet your life needs), but your religious beliefs will only conflict with this to the degree that you take them seriously and attempt to practice them consistently.

Vytautas: "The point is not that we should follow our own rational self-interest, but that we should ask what should be our rational self-interest."

I'm happy to discuss this. On my view, the answer to the question "what is my rational self-interest?" is: objective values. The religious view of the world does not have an answer for this other than to undermine the very concepts of rationality and self-interest, and to destroy an individual's capacity for both through its mystical teachings.

Vytautas: "Since God knows everything, he would know what is best for us."

This is just another appeal to an invisible magic being which is imagined to "know all." It's a most unoriginal attempt to foist authority over others. Under examination, it proves to be as shallow as it is imitable. If the Christian god "know[s] what is best for us," what does it say about our need for moral values? I've checked the bible, and it does not speak of moral values. In fact, you can search high and low, but you won't find the word "morality" in it to begin with. The bible's failure to include even a passing discussion of the nature of values (as opposed to a serious treatment of the matter) cannot simply be chalked up to an oversight. If that were the case, this would discredit the bible as a source on morality. Nor can the apologist say that this is something that everyone "just knows" already to begin with. If that were the case, then where's the need for the bible as a source of moral instruction? There's no two ways about it: the bible is simply and quite utterly a completely deficient as an intelligible resource on the topic of morality.

Vytautas: "He gave us the law in order us to know that we should love God and our neighbor as ourselves."

The "law" to which you refer here is informed by commandments issued by an invisible magic being. The source in which these commandments are found was written, redacted and compiled by individuals who obviously did not understand that love is not subject to commands. And look what it calls for: indiscriminate love for (a) something that would not deserve love even if it existed (that is, the Christian god, which arbitrarily withholds justice from some [the elect] and arbitrarily condemns the rest to eternal damnation [the damned]) and (b) anonymous "neighbors" who, by mere virtue of their proximity, are to be valued as much as one values himself. Why? "...just because..." the invisible magic being wishes it. This is the epitome of whim-based morality. And what is a whim-based morality if not a subjective morality? Again, I have already explained how "laws" of this type are morally useless.

Vytautas: "But we do not keep the law and have broken his covenant."

A "covenant" is "an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified." Such agreement is enjoined voluntarily by participants who are knowledgeable about the agreement's terms and the responsibilities it carries. Now I am not a party to any agreement with an invisible magic being. Indeed, I see no good reason to enter into an agreement with someone who refuses to show himself to me. So I am certainly not guilty of "breaking" some "covenant" with your god, Vytautas. To call this a "covenant" while those who you include in it have not agreed to its terms, commits the fallacy of the stolen concept. It does so because it ignores the genetic roots subsumed by the concept, in this case, namely, informed agreement.

Vytautas: "But Jesus came and fulfilled the law and died on the cross to expiate the sins of his people. He kept the moral, ceremonial, and judicial law perfectly, so that we might have life."

So in other words, the ideal (Jesus) was sacrificed for the sake of the non-ideal (us) in which the demands of justice are ignored for an arbitrarily selected group who arbitrarily believe all this happened in the first place, and this constitutes a moral transaction? How?

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I wrote: You accuse me of “suppressing” something that you’ve not been able to show is even true. So you affirm two falsehoods here in one breath: 1) that I am suppressing some truth, and 2) that your Jesus Christ is real. If you’re god-belief had something more substantial than baseless accusations, why do you resort to them when the going gets rough?

Vytautas: "It seems that in order for something to be true, I must empirically observe the truth for myself."

Either we use rational judgment in determining what we accept as true, or we don't. I advocate that we use rational judgment in determining what we accept as true. I don't see where Jesus or any other biblical character advocates this.

Vytautas: "But how does this one fact relate to everything else as a whole? If you start with yourself, you will not come up with the answer, since all of your experiences are particular."

I start with existence. Existence is universal, and literally so: everything that exists in the universe, exists. So not only do I start with a universal, I also start with every particular. I don't "start with [myself]" - that is a straw man, and only exposes your unfamiliarity with my position. My position is invincible, Vytautas.

Vytautas: "I think I have shown that God exists by looking at the concept of God,"

I've already pointed out that "God" could not be a concept. Even on the Christian's understanding of what his god is, it is not a concept. Concepts are mental integrations of two or more units. For instance, the concept 'man' integrates all men who exist, who have existed and who will ever exist. But "God" is supposed to be sui generis, a unique being. Also, I have already explained why looking at the concept of a thing to "show" that it exists is backwards. We don't do this with any other entity; why would we use such a method in the case of your god? Again, if your god is imaginary, then I can see why we would need to first "look at the concept of God" and then determine whether or not it exists.

Vytautas: "and then you counter by saying God could have a different name than the one I give."

No, I said you provide no indication of how I can reliably distinguish between what you call "God" and what you may merely be imagining. How many times do I need to point this out?

Vytautas: "However, the substance still remains the same when I say God exists."

What substance? Where is it? By what means can one have awareness of it? You say we cannot perceive it. Okay. So by what means can one have awareness of it? If you aren't aware of it, then why say it exists? What leads you to believe it exists? From what you've indicated so far, from stolen concepts to epistemological reversals, you have no sound inference for its existence. In fact, you cannot explain how I can reliably distinguish between what you call "God" and what you may merely be imagining. So now you speak of some unspecified "substance." How do you measure it? Can it be combined with other substances? What is its freezing point? What is its melting point? What is its flash point? Is it water soluble, fat soluble? What are its applications? What's its market value? Does it float on water, or is it denser than water, so that it sinks? You see, if you're going to apply a legitimate concept to your god, I'm going to ask you to defend this application by showing how it qualifies as a unit that can properly be subsumed under the reference of that concept.

Vytautas: "When you say Jesus is not real because the 500 witnesses and the saints that came out of the tombs during the resurrection could be called into question, then that does not deal with the gospels as a whole and focuses on information that we don’t know too much about."

I did not present as an argument to the effect that "Jesus is not real because the 500 witnesses and the saints that came out of the tombs during the resurrection could be called into question." But it is good that at least you admit that the "information" given in the New Testament regarding these things is scant. To call it "thin" would be an understatement. It would be nice, however, if you would at least concede that, given what Paul says about the 500 brethren in I Cor. 15, there'd be no way for the Corinthians to "follow up" on Paul's passing mention of them.

Vytautas: "You say that hearsay evidence cannot be used for history, but I don’t see the reason why since testimony is a good source of knowledge which you seem to reject."

There are times when hearsay evidence is all we have to go on. Similarly with firsthand testimony, of which we have very little in the New Testament, and of that it is quite ambiguous at best. In the case of either types, however, it is important to bear in mind that they constitute claims which do not serve as their own validation. "My cousin Joe is 15 feet tall" is a claim that cannot be taken as truth on its own affirmation. Who witnessed Jesus turning water into wine in John chapter 2? No one in the NT claims to have witnessed this. Who made sure that there really was no wine in the water pots to begin with? If my friend, whom I know is real, claimed that he turned water into wine by wishing it, I would not believe it. Why believe it simply because it's written in some storybook? If your friend claimed to have turned water into wine just by wishing it, would you believe it? Wouldn't you ask to see a demonstration of this ability if he expected you to take his claim seriously? Or, do you just believe everything people claim? I doubt you do. You don't want to accept what I claim. But have I claimed anything at all as bizarre as what we read in the pages of the sacred storybook? Have I claimed that my cow jumped over the moon, or that a wooden puppet's nose grew because he told a lie, or that a bunch of zombies crawled out of their graves and walked through the city???

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Vytautas wrote: “You choose to dismiss the New Testament not for intellectual reasons but for moral reasons.”

I responded: I do not accept the dichotomy here that the moral is non-intellectual. In fact, I would say that moral reasons (assuming the morality of rational philosophy) are intellectual.

Vytautas: "Your reasons to reject the New Testament is not based on historical evidence,”

First and foremost, my rejection of any religious view of the world is a consequence of my commitment to reason and rational judgment. I would have to renounce reason in order to accept the religious explanation of the world. I know this, for that is what I had to do in my walk as a Christian almost 20 years ago. I remember it all very well. As for historical evidence, I await any confirming historical evidence for any of the claims we find in the bible. What historical evidence (not simply claims, mind you) confirm the existence of the Jesus of the gospels? The Shroud of Turin perhaps? I’m happy to discuss it.

Vytautas: “but you imagine that the events recorded did not happen, and then say people were hallucinating or they lied about what they reported.”

I’ve already pointed out that I don’t think hallucination is the best explanation for the allegations we find in the New Testament. In the case of the 500 brethren which Paul mentions in I Cor. 15, for instance, I’m not convinced that there were any such 500 brethren, since Paul gives no details whatsoever about who they were, where they were, when they were, and what they supposedly experienced. It’s just a passing reference. It does not serve as “historical evidence” by any reasonable standard. But even if we do accept the claim that there were some actual 500 brethren gathered at some place (where?) at some time (when?) experiencing something (what?), Paul gives us no reason to suppose they were experiencing anything more than a waking fantasy, like Canon Michael Cole describes.

As for “imagin[ing] that the events recorded did not happen,” that is not how imagination works. Imagination is a positive projection, not a negation as your statement here suggests. I don’t have to imagine that something which did not happen, did not happen. If it did not happen, it simply did not happen. I can imagine it happened, even if it did not. But again, that would be imagination, not reality, not “history.”Vytautas: “By intellectual reasons, I meant constructing an interpretation of the events during the earthly life of Jesus.”

My interpretation of the Jesus story is that it is clearly a series of concoctions which grew in legend with each retelling. It’s the stuff of fiction, much like Harry Potter.

Vytautas: “You make the comparison of people reporting the saw Elvis when they died, but anyone can go to the grave and see that Elvis is dead.”

I’m not sure you’re talking about by people who supposedly “saw Elvis when they died.” If they saw something when they died, how would we know this? They’re dead. If you mean people who claim to have seen Elvis after *he* died, why not believe their testimony? Yes, anyone can go to Elvis’ grave, but what would this prove? I’ve not been to his grave, but how do I know that there is a body in it? Was Elvis buried in a glass coffin above ground? Or, was he buried in a wooden coffin which was placed underground? And maybe the body in the grave isn’t really Elvis’. Or, it’s just a shell of a body, and Elvis’ “spiritual body” (in which, incidentally, Paul promises the faithful to be resurrected) is what these people are seeing. After all, Elvis is the King, isn’t he? He could have been “sown a natural body,” but “raised a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44). Indeed, if I were a Christian, I don’t think I could justifiably (on Christianity’s premises, that is) dispute claims about Elvis’ post-resurrection appearances. Indeed, if we believe Jesus was resurrected on the frail “evidence” we find in the New Testament, why not believe that Elvis was resurrected on the documented reports of thousands of contemporary witnesses?

Vytautas: “Why did not the first century enemies of the Christians point to the tomb of the dead Jesus, if the New Testament is a legend?”

If the New Testament is legend, then there was no Jesus to begin with, let alone a tomb in which Jesus’ lifeless body was placed. Besides, how do we know what “the first century enemies of the Christians” do or say, or didn’t do or didn’t say? They could have said all kinds of things (such as there was no dead Jesus placed in any tomb), and their testimony may not have survived, or was destroyed by Christians seeking to censure their opponents. Indeed, what contemporary of Jesus records Jesus’ being placed in any tomb? Paul is the earliest writer in the New Testament, coming well before even the earliest gospels, and he nowhere mentions any tomb. Not a peep from Paul about a tomb. Of course, the theist could always say that Paul had no intention of repeating what the gospels say about Jesus’ tomb. But this would be silly: the gospels weren’t around yet when Paul was writing his letters, so he would not have been “repeating” anything written in them.

Coming up next: Part 5 and the Conclusion to all this.

by Dawson Bethrick

The Imaginative Basis of Vytautas' God-Belief, Part 3

Continued from Part 2.

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Vytautas wrote: “There are prophesies of the Old Testament that confirms the New Testament. Psalm 22 tells that a company of evildoers encircles Jesus; they have pierced his hands and feet-- Jesus can count all his bones-- they stare and gloat over him; they divide his garments among them, and for his clothing they cast lots. Matthew 27 says when the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. And John 19 says when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. So the Old Testament gives evidence for the New Testament.”

I responded: Again this is all very weak. Anyone writing a biography about Jesus who wanted to give it the stamp of Old Testament authority, could (and would!) sprinkle that biography with allusions to the Old Testament, since the Old Testament was already held as an authoritative source. Much of the gospels read this way, and even suggest this explicitly when, for instance, Matthew writes things like “this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet…” (Mt. 1:22, see also 21:4, 26:56, et al.). If a passage in the Old Testament says that some people cast lots over a suffering servant’s garments, the obvious thing to do would be to say this happened in the case of Jesus’ garments after he was crucified, and PRESTO, the Old Testament passage becomes “prophetic.” It’s an easy trick, one which actually has precedent in many parts of the bible. The so-called “fulfillment” in the New Testament of so-called “prophecies” drummed up in the Old Testament, is so contrived as to give away the game.

Vytautas: “How can the Old Testament passage become prophetic, when the New Testament writers are recording the OT passage and not changing the wording of the passage when it is recorded in the NT? Are you saying that the writers of the NT are misquoting the OT?”

Misquoting an older passage is not necessary to fabricate it into a prophecy. The older passage is pulled out of context, however, and given a new one in order to treat it as a prophecy. The prophecy is thus artificial, not genuine.

Vytautas: “The writers are interpreting the events of their day using the Old Testament.”

Sorta, but not exactly. They were not “interpreting events” that actually happened in their day. They were interpreting what they took as religious truths using familiar OT motifs. Hence the need to pull an OT passage out of its original context and give it a new context so that it can be seen to have contemporary relevance. What is telling in this respect is the fact that Paul nowhere puts his Jesus in a historical setting. Paul’s Jesus is nothing like the Jesus we read about in the gospels. Paul’s Jesus is not a miracle-working healer who conducts a ministry in and around Jerusalem and Galilee and their environs in the early years of the first century. He’s not sermonizing on the mount, turning water into wine, quieting storms and walking on the waters of the sea. Paul continually draws from the OT to describe his Jesus. And when Paul gives moral instruction in his letters, he gives no indication that Jesus was the source of this instruction (Paul cites OT references), and later we find those same moral teachings put into Jesus’ mouth in the gospels. For instance, from G. A. Wells:

Paul gives it as his own view (Rom. 13:8-10) that the law can be summed up in the one Old Testament injunction "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." According to Lk. 10:25-8, Jesus himself taught that love of neighbor (together with love of God) ensures salvation; but one could never gather from Paul that Jesus had expressed himself on the matter. In 1 Thess. 4:9 it is not Jesus but God who is said to have taught Christians to love one another. And in the injunction not to repay evil for evil but always to do good to all is given in the same epistle (5:15) without any suggestion that Jesus had taught it (as according to the gospels he did in the Sermon on the Mount). In his letter to Christians at Rome Paul says "bless those that persecute you" (12:14 and 17) and "judge not" (14:13). Surely in such instances he might reasonably be expected to have invoked the authority of Jesus, had he known that Jesus had taught the very same doctrines. (The former doctrine is ascribed to him at Mt. 5:44 and Lk. 6:28, and the latter at Mt. 7:1 and Lk. 6:37.) In the same epistle he urges Christians to "pay taxes" (13:6), but does not suggest that Jesus had given such a ruling (Mk. 12:17). It is much more likely that certain precepts concerning forgiveness and civil obedience were originally were originally urged independently of Jesus, and only later put into his mouth and thereby stamped with supreme authority, than that he gave such rulings and was not credited with having done so by Paul and… by other early Christian writers. (The Historical Evidence for Jesus, p. 33.)

The end result is that Jesus is a concoction, not only in the gospels, but also in Paul’s letters.

Vytautas: “The NT writers understood that what was written in the OT and uses those passages to explain the events that were happening in the gospel days. David in Psalm 22 was writing about Jesus since the events match up with the account of the crucifixion.”

On the contrary. The later writers took elements in the Psalm, for instance, as cues for the story they were concocting in order to utilize themes and motifs which were already familiar to them. The result is to make it seem like the story was foreseen by some prophet in the past. The elements are retold, but in a new context, one that is completely fictional, but because the elements are borrowed from earlier writings, the new context now has a significance that it would not have had were it completely fresh. This is the Jewish practice of midrash: isolating verses found in the Old Testament and reworking them into a new story. The author of the Psalm nowhere mentions someone named Jesus. But the elements in the Psalm were extracted from the Psalm and reworked, so that they told a new story, a story intended to be taken symbolically rather than as history.

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I wrote: That’s not a “better explanation” by any rational measure. A better, rational explanation is that we’re reading a legend that has germinated from relatively more inert seeds. Are you saying that is not possible?

Vytautas: “When we deal with history, we cannot accept what is only possible but we should have good evidence to the events that we say happen.”

On my worldview, to suppose that something is possible already requires some evidence to begin with. While some might say, for instance, that “it is possible that there is a colony of water-breathing men living in a city on the bottom of the Atlantic,” I would say, “show me the evidence.” I wouldn’t accept this claim into the category of “possible” without at least some objective backing.

Vytautas: “A legend did not germinate since the gospels were written during the apostle’s lifetimes who were eyewitnesses to the events.”

How do you know this? We know very little about the apostles. We don’t know their birthdates and death dates. We don’t know where they lived. And even if they were still alive when, say, Mark was written, how does this indicate that what is recorded in Mark could not have been legend? It’s curious how apologists seem to think that the apostles were over the authors’ shoulders, supervising the editing process of their narratives. The evidence shows that the gospels were not in general circulation until the mid-second century at the very earliest. And, as I pointed out above, Paul nowhere puts his Jesus in a historical setting. It is only because Christians are used to reading Paul’s letters through gospel-colored goggles that they assume Paul is talking about a man who lived in recent decades. But nothing Paul gives (in the genuinely Pauline letters anyway) indicates this.

Vytautas: “Germinated from relatively more inert seeds sound curious. I think it means there is not much evidence to show the New Testament is historical.”

The New Testament itself shows a track record of legendary development. In the earliest letters we don’t find the Jesus described in the later narratives. By the time the evangelists got around to writing their gospel stories, the Jesus story had developed quite a bit from the days of Paul.

Vytautas: “There is also the testimony of Jesus who claims to be God.”

We have nothing from Jesus’ own hand to serve as his own "testimony." We only have what later writers, well after Jesus had allegedly “died and resurrected and ascended,” had inserted into Jesus’ mouth. And many of the things which he is made to say are found in the OT and in Paul’s letters, even though Paul nowhere indicates that Jesus said the things that the gospels attribute to him in an early ministry in and around Jerusalem in the first century. That’s not “testimony of Jesus.” That’s concocted narrative.

Vytautas: “He said, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58). If Jesus is a person who claims to be God and is not God or insane, then his life of healing the sick and feeding the hungry does not match up to someone who lies about being God or is insane, since liars and insane people would act in accord to what they actually are.”

And if the stories of Jesus as a healer of the sick (stories which none of the early epistle writers corroborate) are legends, then there’s no need to think of Jesus as either insane or deceptive. Quite simply, Jesus is a religious invention, nothing more.

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I wrote: Besides, in the case of I Cor. 15, which refers to a large group of people who supposedly saw Jesus, it’s important to keep in mind that this one reference does not constitute mass corroboration. That Christian apologists seem to think it does only shows how silly their position is, and how desperate they are to defend it. It is the statement of one man artificially given the weight of many. So there’s really no need to assert mass hallucination here. Although mass hallucination has been shown to be possible (really, are you expecting me to accept that mass hallucination is not possible, but resurrection of the dead is?), if the very claim that the people in question is very shaky at best, as in the case of the anonymous 500 brethren in I Cor. 15, then it’s moot to begin with.

Vytautas: “I have not heard reports of claiming mass hallucination of 500 seeing the same person at once.”

Do some research. There are some amazing firsthand anecdotes out there, many of them in recent times.

Vytautas: “Perhaps you think the 500 saw a cloud in the sky or a tree that looks like Jesus, but that cannot be shown from the text.”

The point is that extremely little can be shown from the text, at least so far as the Christian faith program is concerned. It doesn’t name one individual among these alleged 500 brethren, and does not say what they saw, what they experienced, where it happened, when it happened, etc. If there were 500 people who “saw” something, there’s no reason to suppose it was anything more than what Canon Michael Cole is said to have experienced. So even on its own indicators, there’s far too little in I Cor. 15 to corroborate anything like what we read in the gospel narratives or the book of Acts.

Vytautas: “Paul propose [purpose?] was to help solve problems for those at the church at Corinth and giving the citation of the 500 witnesses would be one of those solutions, so that the Corinthians could have checked out the matter for themselves at the time.”

What purpose did Paul have where a conspicuously scant allusion to an anonymous 500 brethren who supposedly had some unspecified experience of Jesus at some unspecified place at some unspecified time would have sufficed, but details about Paul’s own conversion experience would be inappropriate? Again, as I asked in my last posting, how can we suppose that “the Corinthians could have checked out the matter for themselves” when Paul gives none of the details they would need to follow up on his report?

Vytautas: “If it was mass corroboration, we would have 500 written accounts that Jesus rose from the dead, but we do not have these records.”

Right. We don’t even have one record of any individual claiming to be among those 500 brethren, who had some unspecified experience at some unspecified location at some unspecified time. There is zero corroboration here. Indeed, Paul never mentions it again in any of his letters.

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I asked: What “other testimony”? Where is that “other testimony”? Essentially, you’re saying that the virgin birth is hearsay for the author who put it in his biographical narrative of Jesus. Historically speaking, that’s as unreliable as it gets. Yet you want people to believe this as if it held sway over their lives forever. You’re emotionally invested in the story, just as you’re emotionally invested in the outcome of our discussion.

Vytautas: “If personal knowledge is reliable, and if we can report that knowledge to others, then hearsay evidence is reliable evidence if the person testifying to the event has reliable information.”

So why suppose Paul had “reliable information” when he mentions the 500 brethren in I Corinthians 15? What evidence supports this assumption? Who were the 500 brethren? Where were they gathered when they “saw” Jesus? When did this happen? What specifically did they “see”? What “information” does Paul himself even give of the event itself, let alone his sources? To call this reference threadbare would be an understatement. Also, if Paul is reciting a creedal formulation (such as Christian apologist Craig Blomberg insists), then why suppose there is any “personal knowledge” of the event on Paul’s part? At this rate, it wouldn’t even be hearsay, but essentially a propagandizing slogan, as reliable as a verse from a pop tune.

Vytautas: “If we do not allow for hearsay evidence, then we cannot be sure if knowledge can be communicated from one person to another.”

Let’s not also overlook the content of the hearsay in question. If an acquaintance of mine returns home after a trip overseas, and he mentions how he heard of 500 people who saw a 900 foot tall giant walking through the rainforest, do you think we should trust this account as “historically reliable”? Where’s your judgment, Vytautas?

Vytautas: “So if you have knowledge of history, it can only be if you seen the event yourself.”

I’ve never argued this. Indeed, you’re taking an all-or-nothing approach here. Either we accept every statement as historically reliable, or none at all. I do not ascribe to this policy. Rather, I ascribe to the policy that rational judgment decides all. This would entail rejecting irrational accounts, including claims about “the supernatural.”

Vytautas: “But communication of ideas is reliable when people share a common language and live in the general area during ancient times.”

Notice how minimal this criterion is. It allows no room for rational judgment. On the basis you endorse here, if the account of 500 unnamed persons witnessed a 900 foot tall giant walking through an unspecified rainforest at an unspecified time were conveyed to me in “a common language” and the person telling me about it is a contemporary who lives in the same general area as I do, I would have to accept this “testimony” as “reliable communication.” Thanks to the choices I have made in life, I have more judgment than this.

Vytautas: “Plus Isaiah prophesies of the virgin birth (Isa 7:14) that Matthew and Luke record. The Hebrew term can be translated young woman, but it can also be translated virgin.”

If it is the case that “the Hebrew term can be translated young woman,” then why suppose that Isaiah was talking about a virgin? What in the Isaiah passage itself indicates that he was writing specifically about a virgin? Also, what in the Isaiah passage indicates that he was writing specifically about an woman named Mary who lived several hundred years after Isaiah? What gives the author of Matthew the warrant to suppose that Isaiah had Mary in mind? Again, what we have here is a case of midrash: either the author of Matthew, or a source which he incorporated into his elaboration of Mark’s gospel, took the Isaiah passage and reworked it so that it would have reference to a contemporary individual that is nowhere in mind in the original Isaiah passage. Since this is one way how legends are nurtured along, it should be no surprise why Paul never mentions the part about Jesus being born of a virgin. For Paul, Jesus wasn’t born of a virgin. When he has occasion to mention Jesus’ birth into the world (cf. Gal. 4:4), Paul fails to corroborate the later story element that Jesus was born of a virgin.

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Vytautas wrote: “[The author of the gospel of Matthew] sensed the people who witnessed the event [Jesus’ virgin birth] that gave the testimony.”

I asked: So, what people did he sense? Who are these “people who witnessed the event that gave the testimony”? Why didn’t those people record their testimony themselves? And think of the time span here. Earliest dates for the writing of the gospel of Matthew put it to 70 AD, if not later. When was Jesus born? At least 70 years prior to Matthew’s writing. Whoever these “people who witnessed the event” of Jesus’ virgin birth would have been adults at the time it allegedly happened. So some 70 or 80 years later, they’re telling this guy Matthew that Jesus’ mother was a virgin when she gave birth to him? Come now, Vytautas, surely you don’t expect me to believe this, do you?

Vytautas: “Matthew was one of the 12 apostles, so that he had contact with Jesus who would have obtained information about his birth from Mary and Joseph.”

Where do we learn this about Matthew’s sources? What supports these assumptions about the author of Matthew? You seem to assume it’s simply not possible for the author of Matthew to have either invented the virgin birth story, or that he got it from an unreliable source, or that the story of Jesus’ virgin birth was not inspired by a midrashic reworking of an unrelated passage in Isaiah. Why is that?

Vytautas: “Paper was scarce during the gospel days, so that people did not write as much as people today who could write on blogs.”

Okay. So? Is it supposed to follow from this point that everything we read in the gospel of Matthew is historically true? The scarcity of writing materials does not in any way argue for the truth of what is written with them.

Vytautas: “A late date is given for the gospels, since scholars assume that the theology had to develop over time,”

A relatively later date is given to the gospel of Matthew because it was obviously modeled on the gospel of Mark to a very large degree. This means the gospel of Mark had to have been written earlier than Matthew. Scholars generally put the date of the writing of the gospel of Mark around AD 70. Thus the writing of Matthew, since it drew heavily on the gospel of Mark, would have come later, perhaps by a decade or more.

And indeed, the theology evolve over time, and in different directions in different communities (a comparison of theological points between those in, say, Paul’s letters and those in the epistle of James, for instance, or those in the different gospels, or between those in the early epistolary strata and the latter narrative strata, will show this). We see the evolution of theological points continue beyond the documents of the New Testament, and well into the third, fourth and fifth centuries, even to this day, they are still evolving. This evolution follows a ping-pong course, resulting from the antiphonal discourse that takes places in every generation. Just as today, we see different strains of apologetics (see for instance the book Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Cowan & Gundry), we also see the continued, further splintering of the Jesus cult into thousands of different divisions, sects, denominations, etc. It is a never-ending process of evolution producing a never-ending cornucopia of takes on the Jesus motif.

Vytautas: “but we can see internally in the gospel of Matthew that there are several references to money and taxes because Matthew was a tax collector and would have interest in these things (Mat 17:24-27, Mat 18:22-35, Mat 20:1-16, Mat 22:16-22).”

A few “references to money and taxes” are not sufficient to mean that the author was actually a tax collector. There are several references to money in the gospel of Mark, and if Matthew were modeled on Mark, it would not be surprising to see references to money in Matthew also. There are numerous mentions of money in Luke-Acts as well. Would this indicate that the author of these narratives was a tax collector instead of a physician? In fact, a search of the keyword “tax” reveals several mentions of “tax” in the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. On the reasoning you offer here, Luke at least should have been written by a publican. No?

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Vytautas wrote: “But you would prefer that we dismiss this and accept, for apparently no good reason whatsoever, that Matthew took drugs.”

I responded: Well, if I am expected to believe that dead people rose from their graves and walked around in a city showing themselves to many, and only one person reports this – in passing, to boot – with no corroboration whatsoever, why shouldn't I at least entertain the possibility that the person who wrote this may have been under the influence? And likewise, we have no historical evidence whatsoever that a bunch of zombies crawled out of their graves, walked through a city and showed themselves to many. But if you want evidence that someone was taking drugs, look at what they say, do and write. There’s an indication there. Of course, it could be that the author of Matthew was not on drugs, and soberly invented his elaboration of Mark’s gospel.

Vytautas: ”So was J.K.Rowling on drugs when she wrote Harry Potter? Is not Potter a subliminal message to the youth? Of course not.”

Was Rowling on drugs when she wrote her Harry Potter novels? I have no idea. Perhaps. But maybe not. It’s possible that she was, given the abundance of drugs (both those that are illicit and those that are clinically prescribed), but maybe she wasn’t. I don’t know, and I doubt she would come forward and tell her reading public that she was on drugs. I do understand that Rowling is a member of the Church of Scotland, and that she struggles with her Christian beliefs. So I can see why she has a fascination with fantasy-fiction.

Vytautas: “We have Matthew reporting the people coming out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection, and they went into the holy city and appeared to many, and also Acts 1 records that there was 120 in the upper room near Jerusalem with the rest of the remaining apostles, so that I would identify a good potion of these people as the same because they were at the around the same time and place.”

Let me get this straight: some of the unnamed 120 persons mentioned in Acts 1 are at least some of the unnamed (and unnumbered) reanimated corpses mentioned in Matthew 27:52-53? That’s a new one for me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone make this claim before. That’s quite an imagination you have there, Vytautas.

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Regarding Mt. 27:52-53, I wrote: Matthew claims that this happened. But where’s the proof? If dead people rose out of their graves and showed themselves to a bunch of people, who were those people, and why don’t we have any of their firsthand testimonies? Was Matthew among these people? Even the author doesn’t claim to have seen this himself.

Vytautas: “Acts collaborates with the event in Matthew, so that these are the people that Peter says the prophet Joel wrote of (Acts 2).”

Where does Acts at all suggest that any of the 120 individuals mentioned in chapter 2 were reanimated corpses which crawled out of their graves? If Acts does not state this, how can it be seen as corroborating Matthew 27:52-53?

Vytautas: “I don’t see the need of scores of people writing the same thing that they were witnesses of these events because they would add no new information than that which is already given in the NT.”

So Matthew’s passing reference to unnamed individuals rising out of graves, as in a famous 1980’s Michael Jackson music video, is sufficient for you. This only confirms my suspicion that the Christian mindset requires of an individual the attitude that he accept whatever he reads in the bible as truth, regardless of the absence of corroborating evidence. This can only mean that the claim that Acts 2 corroborates Matthew 27:52-53 is simply a sham. If Acts 2 could not be construed as corroborating Matthew 27:52-53 (by a most unlikely stretch of the imagination), would it really matter?

Vytautas: “Matthew was close by these people that rose from the dead (Acts 1:13).”

Where does the book of Acts number any the risen corpses of Mt. 27:52-53 among the 120 it mentions in its first chapter?

Vytautas: “Of course, Luke does not say in Acts that these were the people that rose from the dead as Matthew records, but these people were not recent converts since Peter did not get up to preach yet.”

So what justifies the supposition that they were people who rose from the grave, a la Mt. 27:52-53? Again, what text corroborates the reanimated corpses mentioned in Mt. 27:52-53? Acts surely does not. Neither does Matthew name any of these reanimated corpses, nor does Acts indicate that any of the 120 gathered on the day of Pentecost were reanimated corpses.

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Vytautas wrote: If you can dismiss historical events because there is only one person that wrote about the event, then I can dismiss your stories that you tell me.

I responded: Threatening to dismiss my stories will not make me suddenly believe what is written in the New Testament. You’re free to dismiss my stories all you like. Besides, it is not simply because the stories in the New Testament are not corroborated that I do not accept them. There are other factors. For one, they all presuppose the primacy of consciousness metaphysics, which I know is false. I’ve demonstrated this time and time again on my blog. That’s sufficient reason as any to dismiss them. Any position which reduces to a subjective foundation should be dismissed because of this. There’s also the fact that the New Testament is riddled with evidences showing that the Jesus story was elaborated on over time, growing from faint glimmers in Paul’s letters to full-blown legends in the gospels and the book of Acts. So there are numerous reasons why I “dismiss” the New Testament as unhistorical, not just the one reason you cite here.

Vytautas: “You fail to note the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature, so that what we cannot do such as move a rock by thinking it will move does not mean the Creator cannot do this.”

It is nonsensical to speak of “infinite distance” between two things, unless of course one is actual and the other is fictitious. If both are actual, then any distance we posit or discover between them is measurable, such as the distance between Flagstaff and Butte, between Munich and Tokyo, or between earth and the moon.

As for attributing to an invisible magic being a power of consciousness such that we do not find in nature, it is up to those who assert such abilities to such alleged entities to validate those claims. I have no obligation to keep something like “the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature” in mind, for such immeasurable and indiscernible phenomena are not something I affirm in the first place. Indeed, how does one distinguish such things from something he is simply imagining?

Vytautas: “So you reject the New Testament on a philosophical basis and not a historical basis.”

I don’t accept the implied false dichotomy here. I can reject it on both bases. Essentially, I reject it because it is not true. And I have shown that my criticisms of its philosophical basis and its claim to historicity sustain inquiry and the various objections you’ve attempted to raise against them.

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Vytautas wrote: “God is able to create matter out of nothing.”

I responded: Good. Let’s see a demonstration of this ability. Give me more than just the claim that a being with such ability exists. Anyone can imagine such a being. But so far, you’ve not given me any good reason to suppose your god is something other than imaginary. And, I don’t think you can.

Vytautas: “Moses gives the creation account in Genesis chapter 1 and 2. It gives an account of God creating the heavens and earth in six days, so that it explains things such as what are the sun, moon, and stars for and where man came from. The heavenly objects are given in order to keep time, man was created from dust, and woman was made from the rib of man.”

Here we have an appeal to a storybook which serves as nothing more than a red herring. None of this is a demonstration of the ability you claim on behalf of your god. As I said, anyone can imagine a being creating matter out of nothing. But it’s an entirely different thing to demonstrate it. Pointing to an ancient storybook only suggests that this whole notion is utterly imaginary and arbitrary.

Vytautas: “Existence itself does not answer the former questions, and cannot speak what the interpretation of the sun, moon, and stars are for as well as what man is here for.”

More stolen concepts here. Reason, purpose, goal-orientation all presuppose existence. However, you are using these concepts as if they had meaning prior to existence. That’s the fallacy of the stolen concept. If we start with existence (as opposed to non-existence), none of these “former questions” that you have in mind have any validity. They are complex questions, for they assume the stolen concepts which I have exposed and corrected, but to which you nonetheless still cling.

Besides, you’re misappropriating the concept ‘interpretation’ here. Interpretation does not apply to concretes. On the contrary, it applies only in complex conceptual matters. We interpret volitional actions, statements, language, codes, not rocks, dust particles and stellar phenomena. We identify those things, not “interpret” them.

Vytautas: “If Existence was always here, then there is no ending point to history to which a goal or final cause can be given.”

That’s another stolen concept, one which is encouraged by the cartoon universe premise of theism. The idea here is that history is planned and choreographed by an invisible magic being, reducing reality to a cartoon, and human beings to characters in a cartoon. Again, it is invalid due to its dependence on stolen concepts. Besides, notice the underlying argument from depression in your remarks: If such and such is the case, then the situation is depressing, and I don’t like it. Therefore, such and such cannot be the case. That’s essentially what’s being argued here. It is mere fallacious consequentialism.

Vytautas: “If you operate with no aim, then the present can not be given a coherent interpretation, since you will talk of means to no end which explain why things happen.”

This is just more argument from depression here. And notice how it depends on more stolen concepts. While I can operate with ends in mind (since purpose is concurrent with biology), it is just more fallout from the cartoon universe premise to assume that “the present” exists to serve some supernatural goal. Indeed, it makes no sense to suppose that an immortal, eternal, indestructible, perfect and complete being which lacks nothing would act in the interest of a goal. It would have no basis for goal-setting whatsoever. It will always be what it is, nothing can change it, nothing can harm it, nothing can threaten it, nothing can deprive it, nothing can be of any value to it. It would be incapable of valuing anything. Again, we have another stolen concept here: the concept ‘goal’ (and its philosophical cognates, e.g., aims, ends, values, etc.) are affirmed in a context which denies their genetic roots. The religious view of the world is rife with such fallacies, and it is the nature of religious faith to persist in affirming them even after they’ve been pointed out and corrected. That is why I expect Christians like you, Vytautas, to continue affirming them even after their underlying error has been exposed.

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I wrote: These “reasons” not only fail to address my questions, they beg the question for they assume that the god in question exists, which is precisely what you’re called to validate. The notion of “creation” assumes a creator, which is your god (isn’t it?), so affirming that there is a creation created by the creator in question gets you nowhere. Similarly with the notion that man was “created in the image of God.” Man is nothing like the god which Christians describe, so it’s unclear in what respect man is supposed to bear the Christian god’s image. I’ve examined many attempts to validate this and will post some material on it soon on my blog, but nothing so far seems to answer the important questions. Rather, what we have here is a Christian slogan which doesn’t really mean anything and has no objective basis whatsoever, a slogan which is asserted in order to stop inquiry rather than address legitimate questions.

Vytautas: “Man made in the image of God means that God gave man dominion over the fish and animals, just as God rules over the heavens and earth. Man is given the position of vice-regent over the earth such as giving names to the animals. Adam was made in righteousness and true holiness, so that he was able to obey the law given by God but with the possibility of transgressing. Romans 2 reveals that this law is written on the heart of man explaining why people have a guilty conscience when they know they do wrong. If we were not created, then we would not be bothered the slightest when we do something wrong.”

It’s interesting to observe how different Christians explain what “made in the image of God” means. Where the bible gives no consistent explanation of this assertion, apologists do realize that it does need some kind of explanation. So you get all kinds of explanations. Here you say it means an invisible magic being’s bestowal of “dominion over the fish and animals” on man’s part. I guess lions must have been made in the image of the lion god, for they are clearly “king of the jungle.” The idea that man has “dominion over the fish and animals” would be more credible if indeed man had such dominion over them. But put any man in the rain forest by himself for a few weeks, and his chances for survival drop quite quickly. It’s certainly no easy task, and many do not make it. Dominion over the flora and fauna is something man does not automatically have. Indeed, he needs to earn it; it was not something he was born with.

Stay tuned for Part 4!

by Dawson Bethrick

The Imaginative Basis of Vytautas' God-Belief, Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

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In regard to the bible, I had written: It’s a storybook. The stories it contains are no more historical than the stories we read in a Harry Potter novel.

Vytautas responded: “J. K. Rowling does not claim that Harry Potter is real, but the authors of the gospels claim Jesus is real.”

I then wrote: That’s irrelevant and misses the point. A storybook is still a storybook, regardless of whether or not its author claims its contents are historical.

Vytautas then replied: “The point of a storybook is to say that the characters and events are not real. If the author claims that the events are real, then the book is not fiction, since the purpose of fiction is to tell a story that is not real in order to reflect the values of the author.”

And then I wrote: I don’t believe she does. But that would be irrelevant. Someone reading it and thinking it’s true could claim Harry Potter is a real person. Someone who invests his imagination in what he reads in a Harry Potter novel, and operates, as Christians do, on an epistemology which fails to provide the necessary mental tools needed to distinguish between the actual and the imaginary, the real and the fictitious, could easily succumb to the impression that what he is reading is “historical.” All the more if he *wants* it to be true, and even more if he’s fallen for various psychological sanctions (which are present in the bible, but absent in the case of Harry Potter books) which manipulate one into being afraid to recognize it’s all fiction. It wouldn’t be the first time (Christians and Muslims have been doing this for centuries), and it wouldn’t be the last time.

Vytautas: “Show me were people claim what they read in the Harry Potter novel is real.”

I don’t know any who do. But perhaps there are some who do think what they have read in a Harry Potter novel is true. To the extent that young people reading Harry Potter novels recognize that those novels are fictitious, they are indeed philosophically more mature than adult Christians who think that the stories they read in the bible are true.

Vytautas: “If you cannot, then I do not see the relevance of your claim.”

It’s very simple. I’ll explain it below.

Vytautas: “You posit people that claim the Harry Potter is real, but would it not be better to deal with the truth claims of the New Testament, since the difference is that Harry Potter does not claim to be true, and the New Testament claims to be true.”

But the New Testament’s claims have been dealt with: its stories are legends, and its philosophy is irrational. Moreover, taking it seriously requires one to ignore the distinction between reality and imagination, as I have pointed out numerous times, and as you are unable to defuse. It’s silly to take the bible’s stories as if they were truthful, and in fact heartless to boot. Imagine saying to someone who’s dying of cancer, “Oh, don’t worry. After you die, you’ll wake up in paradise. Your life is no big deal, besides, you’ll wake up in eternity.” But this is essentially what the religious view of the world teaches. And we see this modeled in the gospel stories themselves, when Jesus is made to have a conversation with the two malefactors who were crucified beside him.

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Vytautas wrote: “If Harry Potter is either real or fantasy, then that does not say anything if the New Testament is historical.”

I responded: It doesn’t have to in order for my point to stick.

Vytautas: “You point is people could claim Harry Potter is true, but they don’t, since it is a modern fiction novel.”

My point has several layers to it. For one, it is the content of the Harry Potter novel (supernaturalism) which decisively puts it in the category of fiction; and similarly it is the content of the bible (supernaturalism) which decisively puts it in the category of fiction. Also, the reader of a Harry Potter book engages his imagination as he contemplates to understand what he is reading, just as readers of the bible do when they read the bible. Only the readers of the bible deny the fact that what they’re reading is fantasy. But the process for both is very much similar. Both require the believer to imagine things that he does not observe in the actual world. We don’t observe men walking on unfrozen water, just as we don’t observe adolescent boys flying on broomsticks. But as we read the stories and the persons and events they describe, we imagine them, and in our imagination the stories take on a kind of life which we invest in them as we envision what we read.

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I asked: So what are these other criteria which the New Testament has going for it that Harry Potter novels do not have going for them? Is it simply the part about the author of one storybook claiming his storybook is true, while the author of the other acknowledges hers to be fiction?

Vytautas: “If it is not true that historical works don’t have to claim to be true, but that people can write history and think it is fiction at the same time, then that person is not writing history but fiction. The book’s claims are the first step to seeing if it is history or fiction. If this is not the first step, then I am not sure where to begin. Our criterions for history should allow for historical works and disallow for fictional works.”

I agree with the point that a “book’s claims are the first step in seeing if it is history or fiction.” The bible is full of stories which claim all kinds of supernatural events have taken place. This puts it squarely into the category of fiction, just as the content of a Harry Potter novel puts it into the category of fiction as well. That the bible says its events are true does not make the events it describes factual. Believing it on such frail basis would be utterly silly. But there are a lot of silly adults out there. So I do agree with your point that “our criterions for history should allow for historical works and disallow for fictional works,” except to point out that fictional works produced by a community and held by that community to be actually true (when in fact they are obviously fictional) can indicate for historians what at least some members of that community believed. But their belief in fiction does not make the fiction in question reality.

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Vytautas wrote: “When I give a single criterion for history, then that does not mean it is the only criterion for history, but all the criterions work together to give a method for history.”

I responded: Understood. But you see how weak this one criterion is, don’t you? It is so weak that it does not work in concert with others. It would be silly to think it does.

Vytautas: “You are saying that the criterion of understanding what the book is claiming is incompatible with another criterion.”

It’s not a question of compatibility, but of sufficiency to the task at hand. The criterion that you had given was that the fact that the places where the events in question took place were in fact real, e.g., Jerusalem. Your argument at this point seemed to be that, since the places where the events described in the bible are real (and were real at the time), then the stories that the bible purports to have taken place in those real places must have actually happened. This is so weak that it amazes me anyone would put any stock in it.

In response to this, I wrote:

I now write a story about my encounter with a magic leprechaun in my garage. In my story about my encounter with the magic leprechaun I describe what he was wearing, how he climbed on top of my washing machine and started talking to me about a pot of gold he hid in my neighborhood. Is my story about the leprechaun true because it takes place in a place that is in the real world? Are you going to start looking for this hidden pot of gold now?

My garage is a real place – it actually exists. Does the fact that the setting of my story is a real place, indicate that the story I set in that real place is true? Of course not. Have you acknowledged this? No, you haven’t. You still hide in the closet on this, claiming to have other criteria by which the content of the bible can be validated as actual history. What are those criteria? Let’s see.

Vytautas: “For example another criterion is that the book gives real times and places. If the book says that it was written 710 A.E. in Enroth, then we would not know when and where these times and places are, and this would be a work of fiction for all we are concerned. The former and latter criterions are compatible, since they do not contradict each other.”

I was hoping you were going to divulge another criterion by which the historicity of the bible could be established. It’s disappointing that you do not come through on this.

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I wrote: How many witnesses are testifying of the event which Paul records in I Cor. 15, which claims that the resurrected Jesus was seen by some 500 or so brethren? How many people have stepped forward to corroborate this event? What are the names of the 500 brethren? Where is their testimony? What exactly did they see? Did they see an apparition? That could be a mass hallucination. Did they see an actual human being? It could be a case of mistaken identification. Did it really even happen? We only have Paul saying in passing that it happened. Was Paul there? He does not claim to have been there. In fact, the way the passage reads as a whole suggests very strongly that Paul himself was not there. Also, if Paul is simply reciting a creedal formulation, as many have suggested, then he’s simply repeating hearsay. Robert Price argues quite persuasively that I Cor. 15:3-11 is an interpolation, and is not even authentic to Paul’s original letter.

Vytautas: “The citation would be more meaningful to the Corinthians at the church who could ask the 500 witnesses to the event at the time.”

For one, this doesn’t do us any good. But would it have done the Corinthians that you have in mind any good? I’m persuaded that it wouldn’t have. The passage gives no names of any of the 500 brethren to whom it alludes in passing, so how would the Corinthians reading Paul’s letter know whom to ask? The passage does not even indicate a time or place of the alleged event. For all we know it could have taken place 20 years earlier in a location 500 miles or more away. So how would a member of the Corinthian church follow up on the claim in Paul’s letter about 500 people seeing Jesus? Indeed, what exactly does the passage say they saw? Did they see an actual human being, or did they have an experience like Canon Michael Cole? The passage gives far too little information for it to be considered reliable in any way.

As for this passage being a creedal formulation that Paul is simply repeating in his letter, this is the position of none other than Christian apologist Craig Blomberg, who tells Lee Strobel on p. 34 of the latter author’s book The Case for Christ, that “Paul incorporated some creeds, confessions of faith, or hymns from the earliest Christian church” in his letters. On p. 35 Blomberg quotes I Cor. 15:3-7 and then says that “Paul was given this creed, which had already been formulated and was being used in the early church.” So if this is true, Paul was not even recounting something he had firsthand knowledge of. He was essentially reciting hearsay, so it is of no value (even if it could be said to be of value given its dearth of detail). But what’s interesting is that this position which Blomberg endorses conflicts directly with what Paul himself tells us in Galatians 1:11-12, that he received his gospel, not from men (including other believers), but directly from Jesus. He states:

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Why does Blomberg want I Cor. 15:3-7 to be an early creed? So that he can claim that Paul was incorporating an early tradition in his letter to the Corinthian church. The rationale here is that the earlier the tradition, the more credible it is as factually historical. But this goes directly against what Paul himself tells us. For Paul, his gospel was not a tradition that he picked up from other believers, such as in the form of early creeds.

Vytautas: “A mass hallucination could not have happened, since a hallucination is an individual experience.”

So more than one person cannot have an hallucination? That’s interesting. Where is the science to support this? At any rate, I don’t see any need to posit a mass hallucination anyway. They could have had what I have come to call a waking fantasy, like what Canon Michael Cole describes, and like what I have observed many individuals in church experiencing when they are at the height of their ecstasy in worship. I have watched a church full of more than 100 persons become ravished with their “experience” of Jesus. Ask every one of them, and they’ll tell you that they’re experiencing Jesus, feeling him in their lives, “seeing” him next to them. There’s no indication in the passage in Paul’s letter suggesting that the 500 brethren he mentions experienced anything more than this. I don’t think it’s hallucination what the churchgoers I’ve witnessed experienced. It is a self-induced and communally encouraged emotional frenzy which they artificially attribute to their Jesus. In other words, a waking fantasy.

Vytautas: “Paul knew about some the people because he says some have fallen asleep, so that Paul knew that some have died from the group of 500 witnesses.”

That Paul tells us that some of the 500 brethren had died is not sufficient to indicate that he actually knew some of them. If he were reporting hearsay (which would be the case if he were merely reciting a creedal formulation, as apologists like Blomberg insist), then Paul would have no firsthand knowledge of anything contained in that report. But let’s say Paul did know some of the people he mentions in I Corinthians 15. Then all the more we should ask why he didn’t give the Corinthian church any more details. This is one of the earliest reports in the New Testament of a sighting of the post-resurrection Jesus. Why does Paul breeze over it in passing like this, as if it were so insignificant? He never mentions it again in any of his letters, and no other writer mentions it, either. Paul devotes far more attention to matters like marriage and communion dinners than he does to sightings of Jesus.

Again, as I pointed out above, he does not give anything near sufficient information for his Corinthian readers to follow up on his claims; indeed, it is likely that the suggestion of following up on them would be slapped down as too distrusting of a venerated source. Christians then as now are supposed to believe indiscriminately and unquestioningly, to waver not, to doubt not, and accept what they are told by the powers that be without hesitation, even if they don’t understand it, even if it seems utterly incredible. That’s why you indicate that you have already strayed from the proper Christian mindset in seeking to uncover evidence in support of the biblical record to help establish its claim to truth. The Christian is supposed to treat the bible as “God’s word,” as if it were coming directly from his god’s mouth (supposing it had a mouth in the first place). Does a Christian go up to his god and say, “Well, gee, Lord, what’s your evidence for this?” And yet you treat the demand for evidence seriously, even try to satisfy it (although very weakly), and act as if you were convinced by what you propose as evidence. Meanwhile you can produce no evidence to support the claim that what we read in I Corinthians 15 is historically bankable, just as you fail to explain how we can reliably distinguish between what you call “God” and what you may merely be imagining.

Vytautas: “If there are early manuscripts where it contains I Cor. 15, but they are missing verses 3-11, then we would have evidence of interpolation.”

Yes, that would be evidence of interpolation. Other things can indicate interpolation as well. Again, see the Price article.

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I wrote: That’s more than you’ve offered in response to my challenge. But it’s moot anyway: if the gospels are fiction, then we cannot accept the claim that they are “testifying to [actual] historical events of Jesus.” It’s a storybook, just like Harry Potter.

Vytautas: “John writes that these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

So they’re written with a religious agenda in mind, not with actual historical value in mind. But we already knew this. Certainly it does not follow from what John writes that it is truly historical. The bible is clear in its urging readers to believe rather than know. You can believe all you want. I want to know, and as one pastor once told me, “You know too much.” He was right.

Vytautas: “The purpose of the Gospel that John wrote was to record the life of Jesus so that you may believe that they are true.If that was John’s purpose, then he has simply failed at it. For here I am, I’ve studied the New Testament many times, and I’m less convinced every time I examine it.Vytautas: “In other words, he is saying that these historical events that he wrote about are true. Is this another interpolation?”

There is evidence of interpolation in the gospel of John. For instance, the very last chapter of John has been widely regarded as tacked on by another writer. Burton Mack sums it up quite nicely:

Since chapter 20 provides a clear and appropriate conclusion to the gospel (especially in light of John 20:30-31, which states the purpose for the gospel as a whole), many scholars have noted that chapter 21 must have been tacked on at a later time... This means that the person who added chapter 21 also invented the fiction of authorship for the whole gospel. The author was now understood to be one of the disciples. (Who Wrote the New Testament?, p. 218)

But I’m confident that the author of the gospel of John, the latest of the canonical gospels, wanted his community of readers to believe every word he wrote in it. However, just because someone slaps the label “historical” on a fictitious account does not make it genuinely historical.

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I wrote: It would be very easy for someone putting his imaginary story into writing to create characters who “witnessed” the events of the story. If he wanted readers to believe the story was actually historical, he would probably not hesitate to insert characters who are said to have witnessed the events in that story. So if the witnesses themselves are fiction, then they’re worthless as witnesses of an actual historical event.

Vytautas: “It would be easy also to write down an actual historical event as well.”

I don’t think so. Francois Tremblay makes an excellent point in this regard when he states:

The disadvantage of following reality is that you also need to follow its complexity. Fictional positions are not bound to this restriction.

Fiction is easier than truth, especially when there’s an overt religious agenda. By its very nature religion is prone to fantasy, hyperbole, a striving to express superlatives which transcend natural possibilities. So the motive to subvert reality is not only present, but also strong. At any rate, apologists have struggled since Christianity’s earliest days to show that their stories about Jesus are historical. Unfortunately, they conflict with each other, are preciously thin on detail (as we saw in the case of Paul’s account of early Jesus sightings), and read like fictional inventions (most apparent when comparing the different accounts side by side and noting the pattern of elaboration with each iteration). What we have is a legend that grows with each retelling. When there is little or no concern for actual history, and the guidance of a worldview which blurs the distinction between what is real and what is imaginary, the writing of fiction becomes far easier than the writing of actual historical events. Writing fiction does not require, for instance, the gathering of evidence and interviews with witnesses that reporting of actual historical events requires. To report on actual history requires a lot of effort and a lot of homework, which can’t be faked. We find none of this in the storybook of the bible; there is no indication of a carefully methodical effort to ensure historical accuracy. Instead, what we find in the bible is a pervasive attitude of “believe on my say so.” If what is recorded is actual history, such an attitude would not be needed; it would simply get in the way and undermine its credibility, just as it does in the case of the bible.

Vytautas: “If some one wants people to believe a historical story, then that person does not write fiction.”

He would if he does not know how to distinguish between reality and fiction. I have shown this to be the case with the biblical worldview. From its very foundations, the biblical worldview reverses the orientation between subject and object and blurs the distinction between fact and fantasy.

Vytautas: “If a person wants someone to believe a fiction story as true, then that person would not cite people who you can go talk to in order to tell a story as if it were true, since the witness would not be in agreement with your fiction story.”

So whom does Paul cite that his contemporaries could go talk to? He doesn’t give one name of the alleged 500 brethren. Not a single detail. How could anyone reading Paul’s letter to the Corinthians know who they could “go talk to” in order to verify what Paul wrote?

Vytautas: “Conspiracies seem unlikely, since people have no motive in to believe Jesus rose from the dead if Jesus did not really rise from the dead.”

If they believed Jesus rose from the dead, as they were taught by their elders to believe, they would certainly have the basis for such motivation in place. Though I would suggest that “conspiracy” is too heavy for what went on in the early church. I suspect they were much more innocent than this, that they were simply duped. Much like today’s youngsters who go around handing out tickets for their god.

Vytautas: “If you say money and power was the motive, you must understand that the early Christians were persecuted for their faith.”

Many early Christians were persecuted, but by outsiders. Within the church, however, their leaders held instant sway over their adherents. For some people, especially those who are willing to sacrifice their own integrity, such authoritative power could be intoxicating. And as for the adherents who subordinated themselves to early Christian leadership, they were propagandized into believing they were doing “God’s will,” just as today’s Muslim suicide bombers believe in the context of their religious views. The belief that a supernatural, omnipotent, omniscient and sovereign deity is pleased with a person’s actions and life, can be a powerful aphrodisiac for religious conformity.

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I wrote: So why accept the claim that there are witnesses to the events described in the bible? Who witnessed Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus as recorded in the book of Acts for instance? Paul does not describe his own conversion in the same manner that Acts does in his own letters. So who witnessed this? The author Luke? Was he present then? Would you claim that he was reporting what Paul had told him? Where’s your proof? How do you know that Luke was infallibly reporting firsthand reports, especially when Paul himself, when he takes the opportunity to describe his own conversion, fails to corroborate what we read in Acts?

Vytautas: “The reason we can trust the Bible is because it is reliable because it depends on God who is truth itself.”

Do you recall what you had stated about numbers? You stated:

Consider the natural numbers. They do not have the property of love, since love requires a will, but the natural numbers do not have a will, since they are not a person.

My response to this was to point out that numbers are conceptual. I stated that numbers “are the form in which we understand the fundamental values of measurement,” and that they “do not possess consciousness.” The fact that numbers do not possess consciousness accounts for the fact that “they do not have the property of love.”

But now you want to say that your god “is truth itself.” But just as numbers are conceptual, and thus do not possess consciousness, truth is a property of concepts, and similarly does not possess consciousness. If concepts themselves do not possess consciousness, why suppose that a property of concepts possesses consciousness? Truth is not an entity which possesses a will of its own. Truth is not even an entity. To assert an invisible magic being, call it “God,” and then equate that being with truth as such, is to confess a most desperate ignorance of the nature of concepts and how the mind works. Indeed, I don’t think you affirm the Christian adage “God.. is truth” because you really think this to be the case, but because “it is written” and, as a Christian, you are supposed to affirm whatever is written in the sacred storybook. It’s all part of the robotic reflex that has been cultivated in your psyche as a result of Christian propagandizing.

Vytautas: “If we need the witness to write about the event themselves in order to for us to accept their witness, then we can only accept first-hand accounts of what actually happened in history.”

If the event in question is something quite fantastic, then I look for the reliability of the witness reporting it. If the person reporting it did not in fact witness the event in question, then it’s quite possible that what he has reported is misinformed, mistaken, garbled, exaggerated, or simply false. If the report is not corroborated by other individuals whom we would expect to corroborate it, that’s another big strike against it. And if the report conflicts with other reports, that’s another big strike. But this is what we find all over in the New Testament – a series of major strike-outs.

Vytautas: “That is, we can only accept the experience of the person writing and not the experience of people that the person writes about.”

If Jane writes about Melissa’s experience of Drodt’l, how do we really know what Melissa actually experienced? If it turns out that Jane wrote about Melissa’s experience decades after the time when Melissa is said to have experienced what she experienced, then how reliable should we assume Jane’s account about Melissa’s experience of Drodt’l to be? And if we have Melissa’s own writings, and in her own writings she fails to corroborate what Jane says she experienced in her writings decades later, how reliable is Jane’s account? I’d say not at all reliable. There are just too many holes in it.

Vytautas: “But the person’s first-hand account of the experience of the people he writes about is only as good as the people he writes about.”

What if it turns out that Jane never even knew Melissa? Perhaps Jane does not even mention a person named Melissa, but simply refers to someone anonymously. For instance, Jane refers to Melissa as “a sister,” where “sister” is supposed to indicate relationship by sorority affiliation rather than by bloodline, familial or biological relationship. Is Jane’s account of this anonymous sister’s experience of Drodt’l still credible at this point? And what if Jane just mentions this event in passing, giving no details about what this anonymous sister supposedly experienced? Again, more holes.

Vytautas: “So if we accept an historical account, then we also accept the persons and events that the historian writes about.”

Note the camouflaged circularity here: to accept the one, you must first accept the other; and to accept the other, you must first accept the one. Meanwhile, where’s the corroboration? Is there any other mention of the 500 brethren that Paul mentions but fails to identify in I Cor. 15?

Vytautas: “The people who witnessed Paul’s conversion were Jesus, Paul, and the men who were traveling with Paul.”

Is this Paul’s conversion as related in the book of Acts? The conversion account which Paul himself, when he mentions his conversion (cf. Galatians 1), nowhere corroborates? So, the author of Acts was surely not there. So where did he get the story if he didn’t make it up? Apologists like to say that he “would have” gotten it from Paul himself. If we had any corroboration of the event from Paul’s own hand, I would say this position might have at least some credibility (though it would not be enough to show that the author of Acts was actually a traveling companion of Paul; many scholars have shown reasons why this is quite unlikely). And it would still be possible for someone who knew Paul personally to exaggerate about what he supposedly experienced. The imagination of the believer is a wild beast that is hard to tame. I know this, I’m a former believer.

But not only does Paul fail to corroborate what Acts says about his conversion, Acts’ account further conflicts with things that Paul does say in his letters. For instance, Acts portrays Paul immediately subordinating himself to the Jerusalem church upon his conversion. But in his letters Paul indicates quite clearly that he operated independently of the Jerusalem church, and didn’t even contact them until three years after his conversion, and even then for only a fortnight. While Acts wants to portray Paul and the Jerusalem apostles as working with one accord (one big happy family of apostles), Paul’s letters shows that there were some major conflicts between him and the Jerusalem elders.

Vytautas: “The purpose of Paul’s letters was not to give another historical account of his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.”

This is a classic post hoc. Since Paul in his own letters does not corroborate the story of his conversion as we find it in the book of Acts, it must be the case that his purpose was not to do so. This approach could be used to explain away any failure to corroborate legendary intrusions. But even this objection misses an important fact: Acts was written well after Paul had written his letters. If Paul describes his conversion in his letters, he would not be giving “another historical account of his conversion experience on the road to Damascus,” for the book of Acts was not yet written. Similarly with the virgin birth: many apologists have told me that Paul was not interested in repeating the account of Jesus’ virgin birth that we find in Matthew, and this is supposed to be taken as sufficient reason for Paul’s silence on the matter. However, this kind of dodge misses the fact that the gospel of Matthew was written well after Paul had written his letters, so if Paul did mention Jesus’ virgin birth, he would not have been “repeating” it. And it seems extremely unlikely that, had Paul known the tradition that Jesus was born of a virgin, he would have failed to mention it. Paul was eager to tell people about his Jesus, not suppress important details about him.

In fact, Paul’s letters are not written with just one purpose in mind. He set out to accomplish many things in a single letter. But one thing that was at the forefront of his mind in each letter, as we can tell by reading them, is that he wanted his readers to believe that he was deliberating on whatever matter he touches in his letters with the authority of Jesus. At many points in his letters he is anxious to establish his credentials as an apostle. Had he had the kind of conversion experience which Acts gives him, he would have not hesitated to cite it, for Acts characterizes Paul as being handpicked by Jesus himself to carry out his missionary work. Indeed, it is because Paul was so determined to establish his apostleship to the budding churches he founded that the silence of this important detail is all the more deafening. It cannot be dismissed by the canned excuse that you give here, that it was not Paul’s purpose “to give another historical account of his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.” Had Paul told about his conversion experience in his letters, it would have been the first time it was put down in writing. It would not have been a repeat of something that was already circulating in written form.

Besides, if Paul’s conversion happened the way it did, what keeps Jesus from appearing to all men in the same manner? I have raised this question in my blog The Problem of Saul. So the apologist hoping to validate Acts’ account of Paul’s conversion may think he’s won the battle, but at that point he loses the war itself.

Vytautas: “The author of Acts is Luke, since if you compare the opening paragraphs to Luke and Acts, then you will note that they are of the same author.”

I understand that the author of the gospel of Luke and the author of the book of Acts are most likely the same individual. I’m open to the possibility that the author of these texts did not actually have the name Luke as well, but that a known companion of Paul was later ascribed as the author of both.

While you suggest that I “compare the opening paragraphs to Luke and Acts” in order to “note that they are of the same author,” what I have always found most curious is the comparison between the end of the gospel of Luke and the beginning of Acts. In the last chapter of Luke we read how the resurrected Jesus met with his disciples on the day of his rising, and on that same day, after evening, Jesus ascends to heaven (see Lk. 24:51). But according to Acts (1:1-9), Jesus lingers around with his disciples for some forty days, and only after this span of time is he taken up by a cloud into heaven. Apologists like to say that the author, who wrote both Luke and Acts, would not have contradicted himself like this. But if he were writing stories which were to be understood for their allegory and symbolism, this would not be a contradiction in their minds. But today’s believers are overcome with hard literalism, and want all this to be historically true. But this forces the contradiction.

Vytautas: “Luke joined up with Paul when he met him at Assos, then sailed to Mitylene (Acts 20:14). So Paul would be the main source for Luke’s information.”

For specifically which information? For Paul’s conversion? Again, why would we expect more detail about Paul’s conversion from a text purportedly written by a companion of Paul, than from the hand of Paul himself? And why the many contradictions between Acts and Paul’s letters?

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I asked: Who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection? It took place in a sealed tomb. You might say that people who knew Jesus saw him after he died on the cross and therefore must have been resurrected. Sounds like a made up story to me, and you’ve given nothing substantial to counter otherwise.

Vytautas: “The apostles are some witnesses to Jesus resurrection.”

Which apostles were in the tomb where Jesus allegedly came back to life, such that they could be “witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection”? And where does any gospel account put any apostles in the sealed tomb with Jesus when he allegedly came back to life? According to the stories themselves, no one witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. I defy you to show me where anyone in the canonical gospels is portrayed as having watched Jesus’ incarnated body come back to life.

Vytautas: “If the story was made up, then the Jews and the Romans could just point to the tomb with the body of Jesus in it to show the Jesus did not rise from the dead.”

This response assumes historical reliability of the gospels by supposing that the events they portray up to and including Jesus’ crucifixion are true, which is what you are called to prove in the first place. Thus your objection begs the question. In tandem with this error, it constitutes an argument from ignorance: why suppose that contemporary Jews and Romans did not “point to the tomb with Jesus when he allegedly came back to life”? Perhaps many people did, but their testimony was never recorded, or if it were recorded, it was censored by later Christians.

Vytautas: “If the body was stolen, then the 11 of the 12 original apostles would not have seen Jesus,”

Even if the body were stolen, the eleven remaining apostles could have claimed to have experienced Jesus, just as Canon Michael Cole claimed, just as hundreds of thousands of Christians today claim. Even in Luke (24:37), the apostles are made to wonder whether or not they saw a spirit when they allegedly interacted with the risen Jesus. Also, the earliest accounts, as I have pointed out, are preciously thin on detail, giving no indication of what exactly the earliest “witnesses” supposedly saw or experienced. Furthermore, a later writer could come along and pen a fictional narrative portraying 11 of the 12 apostles as seeing the resurrected Jesus. Given what he sought to portray, such a writer would be motivated to ignore the fact that the body was stolen. Readers coming along later, not realizing that the body was stolen, might be prone to believing the fictional portrayal they read about the 11 of the 12 apostles. At any rate, I do not argue that Jesus’ body was stolen. Indeed, that would presuppose that Jesus actually existed, and I think there are many very good reasons to suppose that the Jesus we read about in the gospels is a mere legend.

It’s interesting, incidentally, that you specify “11 of the 12 original apostles.” For in I Cor. 15, Paul specifies that Jesus was seen by “the twelve.” This is the only instance in any of his letters where he mentions “the twelve,” and it’s noteworthy that he does so only in passing. Many commentators have tried to explain this nearly complete absence of mention of “the twelve” as being part of a creedal formulation which Paul was reciting. But if “the twelve” were an important leading body in the early church, why does Paul mention it only once, and only in passing? Acts likes to portray Paul as having subordinated himself to the Jerusalem elders. Why don’t his letters reflect this? Again, more holes in the holy storybook.

Vytautas: “and the apostle Paul would not hear the voice of Jesus at the Road of Damascus.”

Where does Paul tell us that he heard any voice on the Road to Damascus?

Vytautas: “It sounds made up to say Matthew was on drugs, the witness had mass-hallucinations, or the witnesses of the resurrected Jesus were all mistaken who saw someone look like Jesus.”

Let me get this straight: Stories about a god-man coming to earth, being born of a virgin, receiving baptism from a mere mortal human being, performing miracles and miraculously curing individuals suffering congenital afflictions, being crucified by the Romans and resurrected three days later in a sealed tomb, do not sound “made up,” and yet the proposal that the authors of such stories (even though they conflict at many points, and fail to corroborate each other where we would expect them to) may have been under the influence of narcotics which were readily available at the time and often incorporated into religious practice in the areas where these writings are thought to have been written, “sounds made up”?

Vytautas: “Historical accounts are better than possible delusions of the witnesses to the events.”

Historical accounts are quite valuable. I grant this. Nothing I have stated indicates that historical accounts are worthless. But if you assume that the gospels are historical accounts, then you beg the question. It’s your call, Vytautas.

Stay tuned for Part 3!

by Dawson Bethrick