TrueFreeThinker

Happy Easter!

He is risen!

Appropriately, our special guest blogger is Pastor Stephen Kingsley whose website and blog are foud at The Easter Answer.
Following is his contribution:

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When considering statements about things that are said to have happened, contradiction is a simple logical test for truth. Say you strike up a conversation with a man you meet at the coffee shop and he says, “I was in Chicago yesterday at noon.” But then a moment later he says, “I was in L.A. yesterday at noon.” You raise your eyebrows and start looking for an exit. One of his statements might be true, but one is certainly false. Not only that, his integrity is so diminished, you’re not likely to trust anything else he says.

Now what if this same truth-tester is applied to the Bible’s most important story? Dan Barker is the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. In his 1992 book, Losing Faith in Faith (FFRF, Inc.), he challenged Christians to assemble the various resurrection accounts in the Bible together as one consistent narrative. I was personally confronted with this in April of 2003 when a skeptic in a nearby university town published his own abbreviated version of Dan Barker’s “Easter Challenge” in the Letters to the Editor section of our regional paper.
Dan Barker and Nielsen’s ultimate hope is the de-conversion of Christians, or at the very least a de-spiriting of our Evangelical zeal. However, their challenge has had the opposite effect on this small town pastor-I am more persuaded than ever. Although I am not a scholar, I will add this claim too: I have succeeded in answering their challenge. This article contains a foundational piece of my argument.

The resurrection of Jesus is central to Christ, and Christ is central to Christianity. If indeed the details of the first century records surrounding the great claim Christianity is founded upon are contradictory, their reliability is tarnished. The thrust of this article is to introduce the reader to a unique way of reconciling what seems to be the most difficult problem concerning what happened on Easter morning. It is fair to examine the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances for contradiction, but given their importance, the charge of contradiction should not be leveled against these witnesses unless it can be proved with certainty. The prosecution has made its case. I’m writing to offer mine.

It should be clearly noted what Dan Barker is and is not asking for. Had his challenge limited a solver to a juxtaposition of the texts-laying them out side-by-side-and explaining the conflicts, it would be impossible to champion. Here is why. When each account is read as its own complete telling of the story, our natural assumptions are imposed upon the intended meaning of each writer’s timeline. The clearest example of this is found in Luke’s Gospel, near the end of chapter 24. Jesus appeared to the disciples on the afternoon of Easter, something no critic disputes.However, following the record of his speech to the group, in vs. 50 and 51, Luke writes, “And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” If a rule were invented that required Luke’s narrative to be considered as its own complete story, as if it were indivisible and encased in steel, we would be bound to conclude that the ascension of Jesus happened on the afternoon of Easter, immediately after his appearance to the group. That puts Luke’s record in absolute contradiction to Acts 1, which states that Jesus appeared to the disciples over a forty-day period and then ascended to heaven.

Nevertheless, on this point and numerous others contradiction can only stand as long as a rule of indivisibility might be imposed. Were such constraints enforced it would be a violation to add the data from the accounts together to form a complete picture. There really is no such rule-not here or in any learning situation. It is only natural to gather information in pieces and make adjustments in our understanding as knowledge is added to knowledge, but critics, eager to prove contradiction in the Bible, would love to make this rule a requirement. This impossibly high standard, they might suggest is justified when it comes to the Bible because it is held to be divinely inspired. Even if inspired, it is yet of human speech with all its natural limitations and cultural norms.

Considered together, it is easily observed that the literary method of the Gospel writers was to list events according their interests without noting the passing of time in-between. Here, the writer of Luke jumped from the Easter afternoon group appearance of Jesus to his ascension forty days into the future. It is evident then that his interest was not when it happened, but that it did. It is dishonest to insist that Luke’s failure to specify when the ascension happened is equal to his having begun vs. 50 with the words, “And that same day _” He did not. The same weakness exists in trying to argue that because Matthew only mentions one resurrection appearance of Jesus to the eleven on a mountain in Galilee that it is equal to his having used words to the effect of: “Jesus only appeared to the disciples once _.”
Likewise, with trying to argue that because Paul failed to list the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, the other women, or the two men on the road to Emmaus in his list in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 that this is equal to his having used the word “first” with his listing of the appearance of Jesus to Peter as the first one on his list. He did not. If he had, contradiction would be proved, case closed, and we would be left to deal with whatever that may be taken to mean. You can argue that the word “first” is implied, but contradiction is too serious an issue concerning something so important to allow the accusation to stand as valid where it cannot be proved.

When specifying the conditions of his Easter Challenge in his book Losing Faith in Faith (1992 FFRF, Inc.), Dan Barker places no restrictions which would limit the matter to one of a mere comparison of the accounts. It is as if he is saying: “Even if I allow you the greatest possible liberties, you still can not produce a successful answer.” His challenge is generous in its fairness. He writes:

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book- Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20-21. Also, read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul’s tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened. (Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith, 1992 FFRF Inc., “Leave No Stone Unturned,” p. 178.)

The method Dan Barker requires takes us beyond wrestling with the assumptions we might be prone to impose upon the timeline of each account when read separately. We are to take all the data from all the accounts, all 165 verses, and bring it all together into one list-“a simple chronological narrative.” Beyond being fair, it is the only legitimate test for contradiction that could bypass suppositions about the intent of the writers and get down to the actual details, the exact words and specific phrases the five writers used in their compositions.

Dan Barker calls himself “your friendly neighborhood atheist,” and having worked on answering his challenge for several years, his fairness in issuing the Easter Challenge is something I’ve come to appreciate. Having answered his challenge, I sent him my solution in February of 2008, fourteen months ago as I am writing now (April 2009). He has not yet dealt with whether the pieces logically fit (in his judgment) as I put them together. I hope he’ll judge fairly according to the rules he made, but I’m not sure.
He was promising to get around to a serious response, but in his latest e-mail he said that he had read enough of my book to see I had done such great damage to the intended meaning of the text that he was not so excited as to make answering me a priority. When he does respond, I can hope he will deal with the one issue his challenge concerns, the “single chronological narrative” he asked for with all the details of all the events woven together consistently.

[I, Ken, must interrupt for a moment to note that the good pastor does not seems to realize that in the eyes of pseudo-skeptical atheists Dan Barker will be victorious if he does not bother responding seeing as lack of response would mean, for him, that Pastor Kingsley is simply to far beneath him to even dignify with a response]

While the previous example about the ascension of Jesus in Luke and Acts can be resolved with simple addition, there are more difficult contradiction issues to confront in the resurrection accounts. In this article, I will deal with what many would consider the most troublesome-the problem of Mary Magdalene. The resurrection is the subject of the Easter story, but Mary Magdalene is the protagonist and tracking her footprints through the breadth of the story is challenging. At the heart of the difficulty is the difference between John’s account and the Synoptics.

The conflicts begin to pile up in classic harmonies when John’s account of Mary is taken to somehow coincide with the other records of what the women did on Easter morning. Under this common view, the women begin their trip towards the tomb together at “as it began to dawn” (Mt. 28:1) and “early _ while it was still dark (Jn. 20:1).” The angel descends and rolls away the stone (Mt. 28:2-4) and by the time the full group of women arrive at sunrise (Mk. 16:1-4 and Lk. 24:1,2) they find the stone missing. So far, no real problem presents itself. However, it is at this point where the accounts diverge into two different stories. In nearly all exegesis through history the explanation is that Mary left the other women (either upon seeing the missing stone or having entered the tomb) and ran to tell Peter the alarming news that Jesus’ body was missing (Jn. 20:2). With this, John’s storyline contains a lengthy and detailed record of Mary’s solo adventure apart from the other women. Meanwhile, per Matthew, Mark and Luke the women encounter the angel(s) in the tomb, run from the tomb, etc.

At the very least, we’re confronted with the trouble of trying to excuse all three Synoptic writers for strongly implying Mary’s presence with the other women, when clearly, under the model commonly presented in telling the story, she fled the scene after they arrived at the tomb. Nevertheless, if we are to believe Matthew (as we should), Mary is clearly implicated as being present and accounted for in all he describes. This includes her listening to the angel’s speech, running from the tomb with great joy to go tell the disciples, and even seeing Jesus with the other women and holding him by the feet as they worshipped him. We cannot simply strip her from Matthew’s account unless we are willing to say his portrayal is inaccurate and his reporting careless. This problem pleads for a solution.

When the details are compared in each Gospel the standard sunrise Easter story clashes like our family cat pouncing on the keyboard of the piano. The complexity is not the problem; it is the difficulty of saying with certainty what exactly happened. And if there is any single place in the Bible we could wish for clarity, it is here. Among Christian scholars, the problem has been labeled as “notorious” and for many, impossible to reconcile. It does not leave the accounts absent of historical relevance, but casts a shadow nevertheless upon the reliability of the biblical record of what really happened on Easter, the day Christianity was born.

I would like to propose a new approach to the problem and a different model, one that appears to be unique to others and offers what may be a simple solution that is more fully developed in my book The Easter Answer. Rather than dealing with a tight knot of activities piled atop one another at the site of the tomb shortly after sunrise, reasons exist to support the view that John’s narrative of Mary Magdalene’s experiences (without the other women) happened before sunrise. Then, afterwards she later met up with the other women and went along as a full participant in their famous Easter sunrise epiphany. It requires the allowance of gaps of times between some of the events and a careful re-thinking of both temporal phrases supplied by the writer of Matthew in 28:1.

The premise of The Easter Answer is that the resurrection event described in Matthew 28:2-4 happened between midnight and 3:00 a.m. on Easter morning. This position can be reasonably supported in Scripture from several angles. The exact time is not so important as is the fact that if the removal of the stone (indicative of the resurrection) by the angel happened earlier than is commonly held, it allows for John’s accounting of Mary’s Easter experience to commence, quite naturally, at the time he plainly describes in 20:1: “Now on the first day of the week [Easter Sunday] Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb.”
Commonly, “while it was still dark” is bent towards sunrise. A common explanation might go like this: “Well it wasn’t really dark, but still somewhat dark when the women began their trip to the tomb. It was likely a long walk and it was more dark than light when they started out. By the time they arrived it was just after sunrise.” But notice John 20:1 is quite explicit in that it does not say Mary was starting her trip, but rather “came early to the tomb, while it was still dark _.” Let’s start here with a fresh view and consider that John means exactly what he says, that Mary was alone and came to the tomb early in the morning when there was no evidence of daylight in the sky. For the sake of discussion, let’s assign our modern timekeeping to the plainest meaning of the writer’s words and assign her arrival at the tomb at 4:00 a.m. and place sunrise at 6:00 a.m. This 4:00 a.m. guess is consistent with John’s temporal phrase in 20:1. The next step is to examine the other Gospels for agreement.

Initially, Matthew 28:1 seems to present a formidable obstacle to this view. Quite plainly it seems to state the women (Mary Magdalene and the other Mary) “came to see” the tomb just before daylight on Sunday morning. This is followed by vss. 2-4 which describe the angel’s appearance and his rolling away of the stone. We could try to solve this problem by rearranging the sequencing, moving vs. 1 below vss. 2-4 so that it follows the angel’s rolling away of the stone. However, such a move would invalidate the case we are trying to make in favor of the accounts. Such a maneuver is unnecessary anyway once we dig deeper into the temporal phrases of vs. 1. Here it is from the Updated NASB of 1995:

(Mt. 28:1) Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave.

We are going to take a careful look at the two back-to-back temporal phrases in verse one. First things first: “after the Sabbath,” and then the second: “as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week.” A review of various English translations reveals a problem with the first phrase. It is translated two very different ways. When I first began studying this, I started with my personal favorite, the King James Version. Here is how it begins the verse:

(Mt. 28:1 KJV) In the end of the Sabbath….

“In the end of the Sabbath” has a decidedly different meaning than the “after the Sabbath” from in the U-NASB. The Jewish Sabbath ended then with the setting of the sun; then “the first day of the week,” began. This is yet true for orthodox Jews. Rabbis teach that the switch from one 24-hour day to the next happens as soon as three stars can be counted in the evening sky. This is especially true for observant Jews marking the beginning and ending of the Sabbath day. “Sabbath” is a Jewish term and must be reckoned accordingly and the phrase “in the end of the Sabbath” must be taken to mean the closing moments of the Sabbath day, just before the sun dropped below the horizon.

If we reach far back into ancient English Bible translations, this first phrase in Mt. 28:1 was supplied as “in the evening of the Sabbath” by Wycliffe and in the Cloverdale Bible. There are others to consider. For example in the 1901 American Standard Version the first phrase is translated:

(Mt. 28:1 ASV) Now late on the Sabbath day….

The original source material for the NASB was the ASV. It is not too surprising then that when the NASB first hit the market in 1971 it too supplied the first temporal phrase of Mt. 28:1 as “Now late on the Sabbath….” However, by the time the Updated-NASB was published in 1995 the translation was changed to “Now after the Sabbath_.” This is also how the first phrase appears in the New King James Version and the New International Version. Which is right, “late on the Sabbath” or “after the Sabbath”? One certainly indicates the described event happened before sunset on the Sabbath, and the other some time after it ended.

At issue for translators in Mt. 28:1 is the Greek opse, used here as a preposition with the genitive. Upon discovering the translators of the NASB had changed opse here from “late” to “after” I wrote to the owners of the copyright, the Lockman Foundation, and asked its editorial board why the decision was made. I received permission to quote their answer and put it in my book. They say translators were attempting to find reasons to justify the change so that the phrase would be consistent with the other Gospel accounts. It is obvious then they were looking at the description made by Mark and Luke of the trip by the women to the tomb at sunrise, and trying to find a legitimate way from the Greek to make Matthew agree. This is understandable, and even commendable if such a change is warranted. In Mark 11:19 and 13:35, and in the Septuagint in Genesis 24:11 opse is used to indicate evening. According to the Lockman Foundation, Greek Lexicons allow it to be translated “after” when used as a preposition, but there is no evidence in Greek literature that this appeared until the second century. What is clear from their comment is there was nothing that required the change.

Clearly, deciding how opse should be translated in Mt. 28:1 is difficult. Given the lack of certainty, it is reasonable to allow exegetical considerations and the statements of other Gospel writers to influence the decision. “Late on the Sabbath” does not fit with Mark 16 and Luke 24 (the women arriving at the tomb after sunrise Sunday morning), but what if “late,” “in the end,” or “evening” is the right translation after all? What if Matthew really was writing about a different trip by the Marys “to see” the tomb just before the Sabbath ended; a similar kind of trip, but one distinctly independent and specifically unrelated to the trip at sunrise described by Mark and Luke?

As for the Aramaic, Murdock (1851) translated the first phrase: “And in the close [evening] of the Sabbath _” Lamsa (1940) has: “In the evening of the Sabbath _” And Murdock’s revised NT reads: “And in the evening of the Sabbath as it was dusk _”

Let’s now take a look at the second phrase and see if it is of any help in deciding between “late on the Sabbath” or “after the Sabbath” in the first phrase. In nearly all English Bibles, it reads the same: “as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week.” A casual reading certainly seems to be referencing Sunday morning just before sunrise. This is the meaning usually granted the phrase, but is that what it is really saying?

The five words, “as it began to dawn,” are from the Greek word epiphosko. In Mt. 28:1 as an active participle, it is epiphoskouse. The etymology of epiphosko is easily discerned: epi-upon, phosko-light, quite literally, “upon-light.” Knowing this, it is easy to see why translators chose “as it began to dawn.” The word “dawn” seems an excellent choice here, and it is, but do not jump to the conclusion that “just before daylight” is its required meaning. Amazingly, while epiphosko could easily be used of the approach of daylight in the morning, it turns out to be quite similar to our use of the word “dawn.” We use “dawn” for the rise of any new thing; even an idea as in “it dawned on me.” We speak of “the dawn of history,” or “the dawn of a new era.” None of these common uses for dawn have anything to do with the rising of the sun in the sky. In the only other use of epiphosko in the New Testament, like our use of the word “dawn” it is used idiomatically concerning the arrival of a new period of time, a 24-hour day. It appears in a temporal phrase in Luke 23:54. Here the writer is narrating the scene of two men hastily burying the body of Jesus. Since the Sabbath was approaching, it was important that they finished the job before sunset. Luke carefully indicates the day and time as follows:

(Luke 23:54) And it was the day of the Preparation [Friday] and the Sabbath drew on.

“Drew on” above is the Greek epiphosko, the same word translated “as it began to dawn” in Mt. 28:1. In Lk. 23:54 other translations provide it as “drew near.” Darby has it as “was coming on.” In Luke the subject of the verb epiphosko is the Sabbath. In Mt. 28:1 the subject of epiphosko is “the first day of the week [Sunday].” Both are important temporal phrases. In Luke the action being indicated is that the Sabbath was about to begin, which we know to be at sunset. What do we do then with Matthew? It seems consistent to allow it to influence its subject (the first day of the week) in the same way. “As it began to dawn” is quite appropriate. The 24-hour day, the new day, was beginning to “dawn” with the setting of the sun.

One other point is worth noting. Knowing the day ended at sunset, if the second temporal phrase of Mt. 28:1 was really a description of the moments just prior to daylight in the sky Sunday morning, it would not say “dawn toward the first day of the week,” it would say “dawn on the first day of the week.”

Still unconvinced? Let me tip the scales further by pointing out that the women’s purpose in going to the tomb at sunrise on Easter morning as described by Mark and Luke was to complete the task of spicing the body of Jesus. However, Matthew makes no mention of spices. He describes their purpose as “to see the grave.” A minor distinction, but worth noting.

So clearly, from the Greek text we have ample reason to see the two back-to-back temporal phrases of Mt. 28:1 as standing in agreement with one another in depicting, that near the end of the weekly Sabbath, the two Marys went “to see” the tomb, just before the beginning of the new 24 hour day, the “first day of the week,” was about to “dawn” with the setting of the sun.

Assigning that meaning to the timing of the trip by the Marys to see the tomb Sabbath evening, Matthew’s style emerges as overtly choppy in manner of reporting in the first several verses of the chapter 28. Comparing his account to the others, the arrangement is complex, but it can be shown he supplied no detail that cannot be suited to the facts of the other texts. In verses five through seven, Matthew records the speech of the angel to the women, but this can easily be shown to be the identical speech (with a few added words) spoken by the angel as recorded in Mark’s account (Mk. 16:6.7).
It’s complicated, but the details from both accounts compliment one another concerning this angelic being with the appearance of a young man. At some point (Matthew doesn’t say when) he rolled away the stone and sat on it; but by the time the women entered the tomb after sunrise, he was seen (likely less fearsome in appearance) sitting on the right side (Mk. 16:5) where the body of Jesus had laid. Any supposed conflict resolves with a recognition that several hours passed between Matthew 28:1 (just before sunset Sabbath evening) and the actual delivery of the angel’s speech to the women. Mark confirms the speech as identical to Matthew’s and that both Marys were present (with other women by that time) to hear it. Matthew’s facts may be seen as true, and so can Mark’s. Both compliment, confirm, and complete one another. There is no unbearable contradiction here, only the melody of orchestrated harmony.

What was the writer of Matthew’s Gospel trying to accomplish with such a specific double-duty description of the day and time in 28:1? He is establishing an important fact-at the end of the Sabbath the women looked upon the tomb and without any reaction from them at that time we may safely infer that they found everything as expected. In 28:1, Matthew establishes the watchful concern of the women, certifies to us that they knew where the tomb was located; that they could make their way to it and identify it; and that it was sealed as the Sabbath day ended. In this way, in one verse, the writer dressed the stage for history’s most important day and the event that has affected the world as none other, the resurrection of Jesus.

As an aside, it is worth noting here that there are some Bible-studying groups around that, discerning the strong possibility that Mt. 28:1 depicts the closing moments of the Sabbath, take the position the resurrection happened then, as the two Marys walked to the tomb that evening. This theory breaks down for several reasons:

1) There is no tradition to support such a claim2) Mark 16:9 plainly states, “Jesus was risen early the first day of the week.”

3) Proponents of the Saturday afternoon resurrection theory believe Jesus died and was buried on Wednesday afternoon, but that does not square with the reckoning of the Emmaus witnesses who said: “Besides all this, it is now the third day since these things came to pass (Lk. 24:21).” Had Jesus been crucified on Wednesday, by the common reckoning of that day the witnesses would have said it was the fifth day since these things (the crucifixion of Jesus), not the third.

If it may be granted from what we know about Mt. 28:1 that Mary Magdalene visited the tomb (with the other Mary) and looked upon it at say 5:45 on the evening of the Sabbath just prior to sunset (6:00 p.m.), and from Jn. 20:1 that she returned to find the stone missing at 4:00 a.m. the next morning (Easter Sunday), when then did the angel of Mt. 28:2-4 make his earth-quaking entrance and bright showing? Matthew does not specify when this happened, only that it did. Granting that Mary found it open by 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning, there is more data to consider. Mark 16:9 plainly states: “Jesus was risen early the first day of the week_.” and this can be taken to have happened just before the angel rolled away the stone. Jewish reckoning allows that part of a day could count for a full day. Jesus died on Friday afternoon, was dead from about 3:00 p.m. until sunset (enough of the day to count as a whole), and in the grave the full 24 hours of the Sabbath, and rose “the third day.” (See: Mt. 16:21, Mt. 17:23, Mt. 20:19, Mt. 27:64, Mk. 9:31, Mk. 10:34, Lk. 9:22, Lk. 13:32, Lk. 18:33, Lk. 24:7, Lk. 24: 46, Jn. 2:1, Acts 10:40, Acts 27:19, and 1 Co. 15:4).
Pinning the angels’ rolling away of the stone to the resurrection event between midnight and 3:00 a.m. covers “early the first day of the week” of Mk. 16:9 and puts the event far enough into the first day of the week (Easter Sunday) to easily qualify for reckoning it as a day, i.e., “the third day.” If we are looking for the story to make the best sense possible (and why not?), it’s reasonable to allow that the Mt. 28:2-4 event happened long enough before Mary came to the tomb (proposed as 4:00 a.m.) for the soldiers to regain consciousness (having passed-out for fear of the angel) and to flee the scene. That too makes for a more plausible picture than if Matthew 28 is read as its own independent complete story. Doing so requires seeing the two women bravely walking through the midst of the fallen soldiers and up to the angel sitting on the rock he had just rolled away. Breaking Matthew’s narrative into pieces and weaving it in with the others, makes much more sense.

From the model I’m proposing, Mary Magdalene’s action-packed Easter morning began with her alarming discovery of the stone missing from the tomb when she came to it on Easter morning “early _ while it was still dark (20:1).” Then, all that John records of her down through vs. 18 (and confirmed in Mark 16:9-11) may easily be seen as happening before sunrise, before she joined the other women and made the journey with spices to the tomb, arriving after the sun had risen. There are other questions to be raised here and other complications to sort through, but, for now, suffice it to say that, by carefully noting the temporal phrases from the text, the greatest difficulty of the Easter story may be unraveled. The tight knot of complications under the traditional model with so many things happening among the women just after sunrise can be stretched out over a long period of time. From this beginning, it is possible, using the same approach, to ultimately bring all 165 verses from all five writers together and demonstrate the consistency that has always been there.

In closing, we would do well to remember that the ancients had no modern timekeeping devices, no easy way to measure hours or communicate the passing of time. Given our strictly regimented schedules, deadlines, and expectations for punctuality, it is difficult to imagine life without the modern 24 hour clock. However, such was their world and the writers dealt with it as best they could. As previously stated and reasonably observed, the writers listed the events that occurred to them (or that the Holy Spirit inspired) while jumping from one to a distant other without favoring the reader with any simple means of knowing such a leap through time was being made. As moderns, we expect more. We can easily criticize their style and express our disappointment, but is that really fair? Regardless of our bias, it seems our task is to honestly evaluate their words and try to understand their best meaning. Clearly, each writer gave us a partial report and each lacks specificity. The overall arrangement is extremely complex and puzzle-like. Personally, I find the complexity far more compelling and of stronger evidential value than if it was all quite simple and boring. The tension felt as the accounts seem to clash with one another when merely compared, finds resolution as they are carefully brought together into one narrative. I hope you find it as amazing as I do.

For more on reconciling the resurrection accounts visit http://www.easteranswer.com/. The “Solve It Yourself” page provides more help for Bible students, including a free PDF file with a chart from the book that lists all the resurrection appearances of Jesus, including times and Scripture references. “The Easter Answer” book is 81 pages. To see what readers of the book are saying about its success or failure in answering Dan Barker’s “Easter Challenge” see the page titled “Cast Your Vote.”

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With Barak Obama’s inauguration fast approaching it seemed a good time to mention the lawsuits filed by Dan Barker and Michael Newdow.

Dan Barker, of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, appears to spend his Decembers attempting to break the record for filing lawsuits. He has teamed up with Michael Newdow who is another contender for the record. You remember Michael Newdow, right? He is the atheist who claims that atheism is a religion?1 He is also a minister of the Universal Life Church and so am I, by the way, I sent five bucks in the mail and got a certificate.

Never at a loss for bizarre turns of phrases, Dan Barker stated that prayer at Presidential inaugurations and having the president state “So help me God” (a phrase that has been in the presidential oath for at least 128 years) amounts to “picking a winner between believers and those who don’t believe.”2

He further stated, “We’re challenging Inaugural Committee’s right to invite religious Christian ministers in, by the way, which is a new practice. It was not done early in our history.” No, early in our history President Thomas Jefferson attended Christian God worshipping services in the Capitol Building.

He also stated, “That is un-American. It is unfair. It marginalizes. It makes those of us good Americans who don’t believe in God second-class citizens. It’s unfair.” Yet, what is his response? He wants to turn those of us good Americans who believe in God into second-class citizens. It’s unfair.

Michael Newdow, who is up to three lawsuits on this issue alone, takes the same tactic,

“Interlarding those ceremonies with clergy who espouse sectarian religious dogma does not unite, but rather divides, our citizenry_Similarly, instead of instilling confidence in our governmental structure, it tears at the very foundation upon which that structure is built.”3

Being an adherent of a religious sect of atheism, Michel Newdow attempts to supplant clergy from the inauguration in order to preach the agospel of atheism. Yet, interlarding those ceremonies with nothing, Michael Newdow’s agospel does not unite, but rather divides, our citizenry. Similarly, by removing Christian references, instead of instilling confidence in our governmental structure, it tears at the very foundation upon which that structure is built.

Annie Laurie Gaylor employed her erudite ability to intellectually elucidate the issue at hand by stating, “We think we should win.”

She further demonstrated a trait which is, very sadly, typical of her ilk; a stunning lack of knowledge regarding the Bible’s contents, “The complaint points out that the Bible that is traditionally used in the inauguration, not only calls atheists fools, but says atheists as blasphemers should be put to death, Gaylor said.”

Firstly, in a way I cannot blame her since Christians are constantly and annoyingly quoting this to atheist. The verse “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Psalm 14 and 53) is contextually about people who turn away from God yes, but they are specifically Psalms about morality. Thus, there are atheist fools, Christian fools and miscellaneous fools. “There is no God” in reference to atheism was likely not even an issue in Israel, this was about behaving as if “there is no God” to whom one is accountable (one of atheism’s consoling delusions).

Annie Laurie Gaylor’s main misstatement is that “blasphemers should be put to death.” Note that she is speaking in the present tens. Yet, the Bible states no such thing when we read it literally which means taking it as it is intended which employs context; grammatical, historical, cultural, literary, genre, etc.
It is as if these sorts of atheists do not even understand something as basic, simple, and elementary as why Christian Bibles consist of, note the terminology and tenses here, the “Old” and the “New” testaments, or covenants. But what would Jews say who do not refer to old and new but only have the “old,” the Tanakh, or Torah? The would actually point out the obvious and be in agreement with Christianity at this point: strictly speaking, the Old Testament law was given to, agreed upon, and administered amongst a particular people, in a particular geographical locality, at a particular time-the ancient Israeli Jews who lived in a theocratic kingdom. The Rabbinic tradition and Christianity deal with such conflicts by resorting to scholarship and debate.

Annie Laurie Gaylor also stated, “There is good reason for those of us who are nonreligious to be offended by the Bible, by God being brought up at an official inauguration.” And again I retort thusly, “There would be good reason for those of us who are ‘religious’ to be offended if the Bible were removed, by atheism pushing God out of official inaugurations.”

Ultimately, this is, as is obvious already, an emotive issue, “Gaylor takes great joy in naming Rev. Warren in the lawsuit, knowing that he will be served.”

And again, “‘that is exclusionary to those of us who aren’t Christian, to those of us who aren’t religious,’ she said.” Yet, what they seek is exclusionary to those of us who are Christian, to those of us who are religious.

The lawsuit itself makes reference to those “who explicitly reject the purely religious claims that will be endorsed, i.e., (a) there exists a God, and (b) the United States government should pay homage to that God.”Good point.

After all, who ever heard of a country which declared its independence whilst referencing our Creator and Nature’s God or that the government is being established for the very purpose of protecting the rights given us by our Creator?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FYI: I posted an essay entitled, Bishop Gene Robinson, Rick Warren, Barak Obama and the Presidential Inauguration which combines the latest news with regards to the controversy surrounding the Barak Obama’s inauguration with some research I did on Bishop Gene Robinson when he first became a Bishop.

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A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.

One thing that True Freethinker has noted in our research of “The Wedgie” document is that scientists whose research conclusions go against the accepted orthodoxy de jour are being blacklisted. We noted that the peer review referees are more like goalies who are playing for their preferred team in purposefully stopping the other team’s balls from getting though; and then, self-servingly conveniently, triumphantly claiming other side has not scored any points.

Further confirmation of this comes to us from a portion of Rochus Boerner’s essay, “Some notes on Skepticism” as he considers the fallacy of “Accusations of Selective Reporting (the ‘File Drawer Effect’).”

Following are his observations:

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One of the standard criticisms levered by pseudoskeptics against unconventional research that relies on statistics (primarily parapsychology) is that only successful experiments were reported and the unsuccessful ones were suppressed (by burring [sic] them in the “file drawer”). Unlike the previous criticisms, the file drawer criticism is valid in principle, but I mention it in this list anyway because pseudoskeptics obsess only about the (largely imaginary) file drawers of the parapsychologists while ignoring the large file drawers of suppressed conventional science.

To cite just a few examples of what has been buried in those file drawers: fundamental criticisms of relativity are a priori ineligible for publication in the mainstream scientific journals. That’s why most physicists are not aware of experimental evidence that apparently refutes special relativity. Positive results on cold fusion are similarly banned from publication, as are papers that radically question the accepted time line of human evolution. Cremo and Thompson’s Forbidden Archeology contains several hundred pages of archeological discoveries that have been left to be forgotten in that particular file drawer. Veteran astronomer Halton Arp, who has been made a persona non grata in astronomy due to his discovery that modern cosmology is catastrophically wrong, describes how most of his own papers ended up in the astronomical “file drawer” instead of the astronomical journals as follows (Arp, Seeing Red, 1998):

“In the beginning there was an unspoken covenant that observations were so important that they should be published and archived with only a minimum of interpretation at the end of the paper. Gradually this practice eroded as authors began making and reporting only observations which agreed with their starting premises. The next step was that these same authors, as referees, tried to force the conclusions to support their own and then finally, rejected the papers when they did not. As a result more and more important observational results are simply not being published at the journals in which one would habitually look for such results. The referees themselves, with the aid of compliant editors, have turned what was originally a helpful system into a chaotic and mostly unprincipled form of censorship.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the file-drawer of medical and other profit-oriented research that has been suppressed due to economic conflicts of interest is at least as thick as the body of published research. The tobacco industry had suppressed evidence that smoking causes cancer for decades, and the chemical industry has likewise suppressed evidence of public-health risks caused by its products. Examples of manipulated drug trials in medicine are legion. On July 25, 2002, The Nation published a special report titled Big Pharma, Bad Science that gives the following devastating assessment of the quality of modern medical research:

“In June, the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical journals, made a startling announcement. The editors declared that they were dropping their policy stipulating that authors of review articles of medical studies could not have financial ties to drug companies whose medicines were being analyzed. The reason? The journal could no longer find enough independent experts. Drug company gifts and “consulting fees” are so pervasive that in any given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been paid off in some way by the industry. So the journal settled for a new standard: Their reviewers can have received no more than $10,000 from companies whose work they judge. Isn’t that comforting? This announcement by the New England Journal of Medicine is just the tip of the iceberg of a scientific establishment that has been pervasively corrupted by conflicts of interest and bias, throwing doubt on almost all scientific claims made in the biomedical field.””Unknown to many readers is the fact that the data being discussed was often collected and analyzed by the maker of the drug involved in the test. An independent 1996 study found that 98 percent of scientific papers based on research sponsored by corporations promoted the effectiveness of a company’s drug. By comparison, 79 percent of independent studies found that a new drug was effective. This corruption reaches from the doctors prescribing a drug to government review boards to university research centers.””Increasingly, the industry has converted academic research centers into subsidiaries of the companies. The billions of dollars of academic government funding essentially pays to flush out negative results, while private industry gets to profit from any successful result.”

“And the results are expensive and sometimes tragic for the public. Experimental clinical drug trials are hazardous to participants and, more broadly, critical to those with life threatening conditions who need to know which treatments are fruitless to pursue. Yet researchers on industry payrolls end up pressured to suppress negative results. At the most basic level, researchers who defy their corporate sponsors know they may lose their funding.”

Writer John Anthony West and geologist Robert M. Schoch have uncovered commanding geological evidence that the Egyptian Sphinx is thousands of years older than conventionally assumed, but their data has been, and is still being ignored by conventional Egyptology. When confronted with this research, Egyptologists have no explanation for it, but they insist that it cannot possibly be correct, because it contradicts their theories.This site contains many more examples of suppressed and ignored discoveries spanning virtually the entire spectrum of human sciences. By the standards set by the pseudoskeptics themselves, therefore, almost all of science would have to be invalid. Pseudoskeptic Michael Shermer writes in “Baloney Detection” (Scientific American 11/2001, p. 36)

Watch out for a pattern of fringe thinking that consistently ignores or distorts data.

But “Consistently ignoring and distorting data” is pervasive in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, psychology, archeology and paleoanthropology. The “file drawer effect”, while not uncontrolled per se is therefore in practice an uncontrolled criticism. Due to the broken peer review system and massive conflicts of interest in commercial science, it applies to and invalidates much of accepted science.

Considering that Richard Dawkins’ new book is entitled “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” which brings to mind Barnum and Bailey’s Circus one can only wonder if there is a correlation between P.T. Barnum’s statement “There’s a sucker born every minute” and Richard Dawkins’ modus operandi: perhaps a more apropos title would have been The Greatest Sham on Earth: The Evidence for the Evolution Delusion.

Yet, we will have to see what the book actually contains. Richard Dawkins has claimed that “it is not intended as an antireligious book” but what does “intended” mean? Is he even capable of positively affirming something that he believes without premising it on anti-theistic sentiments? These and other questions will hopefully soon be answered.

In an upcoming post we will see that Peter Williams wrote,

Dawkins makes the most compelling case against the truth of belief in God; but that’s partly because, despite being such a poor logician, he is a good rhetoritician, and partly because the other new atheists are even worse on this issue!

This reminded me that when reading those activists who wrap their particular worldviews, in this case Dawkins’ atheism, in the thin veneer of science, it is of the utmost important to constantly parse the text. In other words; one must distinguish between, in this case, mere observations of bio-organism’s that anyone could make-on the one hand-and accretions and interpretations based on worldview bias-on the other.
Richard Dawkins, the “good rhetoritician,” is as famous for weaving tales that make biology interesting (legitimate elucidations) as he is infamous for twisting biology into an anti-theistic campaign (atheist activism).

Recall that Richard Dawkins accepted the Darwinian theory of evolution because he was taught it before he ever read it-or because of the manner in which he was taught it and because he recognized the, according to him, convenient byproduct of making God unnecessary:

Jonathan Miller: “So when, at the age of 16, you became acquainted with Darwin, was it because you were taught about Darwin, or you began reading The Origin of Species?”

Richard Dawkins: “No, it was because I was taught.” …

Jonathan Miller: “How soon in the lessons did you begin to see that it did have theological consequences – that it more or less knocked the idea of design on the head?”

Richard Dawkins: “I do remember that I understood the principle of Darwinism before I really believed it was big enough to do the job. So I understood the principle of it and realised that yes, that is a candidate explanation for doing this job but I still don’t think it’s a big enough one…it was only later that I decided yes – it is big enough.”1

One can only wonder what the child Dawkins was taught as evidence for evolution (whatever “evolution” may have meant at the time or what Dawkins means by it today) considering that one generation is taught that evidence for “evolution” is “A, B and C” then the next generation is taught that (if they even admit it-think peppered moths, human gill slits, etc.) “A, B and C” has been discredited and the real evidence for “evolution” is “D, E and F” then the next generation is taught that “D, E and F” has been discredited and the real evidence for “evolution” is “G, H and I,” etc.

Indeed, just what Richard Dawkins promulgates as “evolution” will have to be seen.

Is it in reference to the mythical creature: the common ancestor?

Is it as the textbook Biology defines “evolution”,

All the changes that have transformed life on Earth from its earliest beginnings to the diversity that characterizes it today.2

With which no one would disagree.

It is a neo-preemptive-evolution elucidated by Dalhousie University cell biologist Michael Gray,

“You look at cellular machines and say, why on earth would biology do anything like this? It’s too bizarre,” he said. “But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there’s a need for them, then it makes sense.”

Or, __________________ (fill in the blank).

In any regard: do be vigilant, discerning and aware of the concoction of scientific observations and atheist activism in anything that Richard Dawkins purports to be writing as a biologist even when he claims that it is not intended as an antireligious book.

As Libby Purves noted:

Talking about evolution, he is terrific. But every few minutes he spoils it by announcing that natural selection means there is, categorically, no God. Not needed as wildlife designer – ergo, non-existent…it is not fair to use Darwin’s beautifully evolved brain to bang the drum for your private conviction that there is nothing out there. Nobody knows. Not really. Teaching children real science is one thing, making them choose God or evolution is another.3

‹ Richard Dawkins’ New Book – The Evolution Delusion up

Merry Paganism and Happy New Year?

Dan Barker wrote:

“What Christmas tradition is expressly forbidden in the bible?…Christmas trees. -Many other Christmas traditions have their roots in pagan practices, such as the holly wreath, a fertility symbol. Even the date of Christmas, near the winter solstice, is linked to sun worship. Modern Christians have stolen Christmas from the pagans.
‘Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not….They are altogether brutish and foolish.’ (Jeremiah 10:2-8)“1

The claims to correlations between pagan practices and Christmas traditions are simply irrelevant. If we were to rid ourselves of all pagan influences we would have to do away with a variety of activities, words, architecture, sciences, etc., etc. The point is not necessarily one of influence but of utility-not what did this mean as far back as it can be traced but how is it viewed or practiced today.

Note that Dan Barker cites Jeremiah 10:2-8 but only quotes 10:2-4 and then skips to verse 8 separated by his insertion of ellipses points. Why did he choose to selectively quote? One again, I do not know the reason but do discern that actually quoting the entirety of verses 2-8 would have discredited his claim. Verses 5-7 state:

“They are like a rounded post, and they cannot speak. They must surely be lifted, because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them; for they cannot do evil nor good, for it is not in them. There is none like You, O Jehovah; You are great, and Your name is great in might. Who would not fear You, O King of nations? For fear belongs to You, because among all the wise men of the nations, and in all their kingdoms, there is none like You.”

This is very odd, assuming that Dan Barker’s claim is true and the text refers to Christmas trees: they cannot speak, cannot walk and cannot do evil nor good. But who ever thought that the nice little tree they just brought home from the sales lot would begin to walk around, talk and be either naughty or nice? Let me state that this text does not apply to me because my Christmas tree is not made of wood but of plastic.

Moreover, these people were not celebrating Christmas since the description in the text refers to a time circa 626-586 years before Jesus was born. Clearly, the reason that it is pointed out that “They are like a rounded post, and they cannot speak. They must surely be lifted, because they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them; for they cannot do evil nor good, for it is not in them” is that the text is discussing the pagan practice of making idols that were to be worshiped as gods. God wants His people to understand the futility and irony of having to make a god for yourself. As verse 11 states “So you shall say to them, ‘The gods who have not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.'” This is why Christmas trees have nothing to do with this text since they are not brought into the house and adorned in order to be worshipped.

Further information about Dan Barker’s atheistic-neo-Paganism is found at these posts:

Dan Barker Intruded Upon the Solstice

Dan Barker and Neo-Pagan Atheism

Addendum to “Dan Barker and Neo-Pagan Atheism”

We now continue considering the group effort by Robert Greg Cavin, Michael Martin, Theodore Drange, Robert Price, Richard Carrier, Peter Kirby, Jeffery Lowder, Evan Fales, Duncan Derrett and Keith Parsons to discredit Jesus’ resurrection?

This group, referred to as a “murder”-a term in this sense is taken from referring to a group of crows a “a murder of crows”-is refuted by one single solitary Christian, Norman L. Geisler, in his article A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave which I have parsed.

Chapter 4: “Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation” by Robert Price

Summary of the Argument:

Price argues “This periscope presents us . . . with a piece of later, post-Pauline Christianity” (69). In other words, it was not written by Paul but is a later interpolation or redaction. In his own words, “A scribe felt he could strengthen the argument of the chapter as a whole by prefacing it with a list of ‘evidences for the resurrection'” (91). Price offers the following reasons for his view. Response will be given to each argument as presented.

First, Price attempts to shift the burden of proof from those who accept the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 to those who reject it.

Response: But clearly this would unreasonably undermine virtually all ancient texts by the same argument. Further, his argument from the adage that “history is written by the winners” (71) is implausible and contrary to fact. For this is not always true. Indeed, on the accepted dates of 1 Corinthians (A.D. 55-56) by even most critical scholars, Christianity was not a political winner. In fact, it was not a winner until centuries later. What is more, it is Price who bears the burden of proof on his otherwise implausible speculation.

Second, Price’s rejects the argument that a text is “innocent till proven guilty.” Indeed, he argues just the opposite.

Response: But if this were so, hardly anything could be believed from the past or present. For life would be a chaos if we assumed that road signs, speed limits, food labels, and restroom signs were wrong until proven right!

Third, he chides B. B. Warfield for claiming that only the originals are without error. He claims this is misguided and is an unfalsifiable view.

Response: First, it was not Warfield who first claimed this. St. Augustine pointed out 1500 years earlier that only the original manuscripts are without error.1 Further, inerrancy is not unfalsifiable. All one need to do is find an original with an error in it. So, inerrancy is falsifiable in principle and could be in practice, if one found an original with an error in it. The fact that no one has yet found an error leaves open the possibility that there are none. Further, not positing inerrancy halts research for if one assumes an error in the text, then why research the matter any further. Scientists do not stop researching when they come upon an anomaly in nature, and why should we when we find a discrepancy in Scripture.

Fourth, Price lists several internal arguments against the authenticity of the resurrection. However, none are even close to being decisive. Perhaps the strongest argument is: “If the author of this passage were himself an eyewitness of the resurrection, why would he seek to buttress his claims by appeal to a thirdhand list of appearances . . . ?” (88).

Response: First of all, Price is seemingly unaware that he implies the answer in the word “buttress.” Paul did give his own first-hand experience, and then he sought to buttress it with further support from other living eyewitnesses to the event so that his readers could give confirmation. Further, even Price admits there are other possible explanations for each of his objections then. In fact, he makes a very revealing admission that his hypothesis “can in the nature of the case never be more than an unverified speculation” (93).

Fifth, Price makes the strange claim that “the resurrection of Jesus is not even at issue in 1 Corinthians 15” (96)! Thus, he thinks it is not crucial to Paul’s argument.

Response: It is difficult to see how one can read verses 12-19 and make such a claim. Here Paul lists seven disastrous consequences of denying the resurrection of Christ. Later, he calls the resurrection of Christ the “firstfruits” of those who have died (v. 20). And still later he makes Christ in His resurrection power the “last Adam” who brought life to the race in contrast to the “first Adam” who brought death (vs.46-49). Thus, it is central to Paul’s whole argument here. Finally, couple the foregoing point with Price’s acknowledgment of his view that “I freely admit the lack of direct textual evidence” (92). Indeed, one wonders why he even bothered to write the article since it gives all the appearances of grasping for straws.

To summarize:(1) He has no manuscript evidence for his view.(2) He admits it is “unverified speculation.”(3) He himself lists possible alternatives to his speculation.(4) It is contrary to some of the earliest testimony of the Church Fathers (1 Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and many others).

And (5) other verses in this same section which he rejects speak of the miraculous resurrection of Christ and believers (cf. 1 Cor. 15:12, 20, 22, 26, 42-46, 53-56). So, it is simply untrue that the resurrection of Jesus is not in view here.

Sixth, Price discusses William Craig’s contention that Paul would not have made known the resurrection to them without providing this evidence by claiming it is implicit in verse 12 which Price claims reads well as a continuation of verse 2. And as for Craig’s argument that verse 12 refers back to verse 11, Price contends it refers to verse 1. In response to Craig’s argument that the logic of the chapter demands the authenticity of these verses, Price contends that he has missed the logic of the chapter with the unlikely hypothesis that “the resurrection of Jesus is not even at issue in 1 Corinthians 15” (96).
In fact, “‘evidence for the resurrection’ is way out of place there, as Bultmann and others . . . [have] observed” (96). Price also rejects Craig’s attempt to explain why the Gospels do not mention an appearance to the 500, claiming that if it had happened, then surely the Gospels would have mentioned it (81).

Response: At best, Price offers here a faulty argument from silence. He has no positive evidence for his view. What is more, as Habermas notes, even Bultmann admitted that Paul is trying to produce evidence in 1 Cor. 15. Further, some believe this appearance may be mentioned in the Gospels (as the appearance in Galilee – Matt. 28:16). Even if it is not, there is no reason why it cannot be true. After all, almost all scholars agree, even the critics, believe that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and that it is very early – by the mid fifties.By virtue of its being written by an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8) at such an early date and which offers multiple confirmations by other eyewitnesses, it has a rightful claim to authenticity. Further, as Habermas observes, Price also uses Galatians 1 to note Paul’s comment that he received this materials from the Lord and so he didn’t go to Jerusalem to see the other apostles. This shows that Paul was convinced by his own experience that Christ had been raised from the dead (cf. 1 Cor. 9:1).

On Scientific Authoritarian Faith
On the issue of whether many people believe what scientists tell them on faith on a par with religious faith some interesting statements are made:Sam Harris states:

“I think we just touched upon an issue that we should really highlight. This whole notion of authority, because religious people often argue that science is just a tissue of un-cashed checks, you know. We’re all relying on authority, how do you know that the cosmological constant is, whatever it is? You know? So I think you two are well-placed to do this, differentiate the kind of faith-placing in authority that we practice without fear in science and rationality generally, and the kind of faith-placing in the preacher or the theologian that we criticize.”

Prof. Richard Dawkins responds thusly:

“Well, what we actually do when we who are not physicists take on trust what physicists say is we have some evidence to suggest that physicists have looked into the matter, that they’ve done experiments, that they’ve peer-reviewed their papers, that they’ve criticized each other, that they’ve been subjected to massive criticism from their peers in seminars and on lectures and things. And they’ve come through with_”

Prof. Daniel Dennett interrupts to make this point,

“And remember the structure that’s there, too. It’s not just that there’s peer-review but it’s very important that it’s competitive.”

Here we must carefully distinguish what is meant by “science” and also discern the individual opinions of scientists, there are issues of hard versus soft science, science as method, as a body of knowledge, as a profession, as a facade for atheism, there are issues of observation and reproducible experiments, there are issues of interpretation of data (such as inferring atheism from biology), another issue is that what we are told is the empirically verified scientific truism of today may be the quaint theory of yesteryear1 (many of these are evidenced in my posts under Scientific Cenobites).

One biologist, namely Prof. Richard Dawkins, denies claims of authority in science while another affirms it, namely Prof. Richard Lewontin (Harvard University Professor of zoology and biology):

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural_we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door_.scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution_In the end we must trust the experts and they, in turn, exploit their authority as experts and their rhetorical skills to secure our attention and our belief in things that we do not really understand.”2

Ultimately, Christopher Hitchens provides the most myopic statement:

“I’ll take things you and Richard say on the human and natural sciences, not without wanting to check, but I’m often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen who would have checked. If you say, ‘the bishop told me it so I believe it’ you make a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one is entitled to say so.”

Of course, taking Prof. Richard Dawkins’ word for anything would be a very difficult pill for me to swallow for various reasons and on various topics: on religion/theology I would double check even if he told me that Islam was monotheistic considering that, sadly, he has a reputation for being demonstrably ignorant of such matters. On science, such as his field of biology, it is difficult to say since he mixes repeatable-experimental observations with his absolutely materialistic atheist worldview and so one must constantly parse the two while reading him on science.

Later on, Prof. Richard Dawkins makes this statement,

“I want to live in a world where people think skeptically for themselves, look at evidence_ if you go through the world thinking that it’s okay to just believe things because you believe them without evidence, then you’re missing so much.”

I could not agree more and it would actually be refreshing if he practiced this. This is particularly so when he is dealing with a subject such as the Bible which is not within his field of study. Rather and for example, he relies on “Hartung’s interpretation of the Bible.” He is referring to the anesthesiologist Prof. John Hartung, Prof. Richard Dawkins’ comments about certain Bible texts are discredited because he, apparently, blindly accepted what an anesthesiologist told him (I make this very clear here).

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A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.

Dennett the Mesmerist
Prof. Daniel Dennett uncovers an interestingly odd plan to hypnotize theists, in a manner of speaking:

“I think, what I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they’re doing.”

atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
I do not mean to belittle Prof. Daniel Dennett but I find this adorable. Not only is Prof. Richard Dawkins singing the praises of natural selections ability to raise our consciences and, as we shall see below, Sam Harris claims to “spread the light of criticism,” but now Prof. Daniel Dennett wants to act as our conscience, our guiding light of absolute materialistic reason. I term this the DHDH Meme (for Dennett-Harris-Dawkins-Hitchens).
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

“These are not the droids you’re looking for”
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

Atheism is Humbler and Holier Than Thou
Sam Harris states,
atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

“You raise this issue though, of whether or not we would wish the churches emptied on Sundays. And I think you were uncertain whether you would, and I think I would agree. I would want a different church. I would want a different ritual, motivated by different ideas but I think there’s a place for the sacred in our lives, but under some construal it doesn’t presuppose any bull****. But there’s a usefulness to seeking profundity as a matter of our attention, and our neglect of this area, I think, as atheists, at times makes even our craziest opponents seem wiser than we are.”

atheism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris
In this regard I will simply direct the interested reader to my essay Atheism is Holier Than Theism, in which I provide various quotations that go beyond atheists claiming to be more logical, and even more moral than theists, but holier as well.heism, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris

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A plea: I have to pay for server usage and have made all content on this website free and always will. I support my family on one income and do research, writing, videos, etc. as a hobby. If you can even spare $1.00 as a donation, please do so: it may not seem like much but if each person reading this would do so, even every now and then, it would add up and really, really help. Here is my donate/paypal page.

Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.

‹ The Quadripartite Equine Riders, part 8 of 11 up

Note: This was written by a fellow co-author named Josh when we both posted to the Atheism is Dead blog:

If salvation is the cure, atheism is the prevention.

Dan Barker’s recent book Godless contains Barker’s personal perspective on the issues between atheism and Christianity. The entire book is not a personal account per se, as his deconversion story only assumes the first 80 pages or so. While I read the entire book in about an afternoon (it is fairly short and easy to read) there were a few sections I read and re-read; In fact, I was so surprised at some of the things he wrote that I had to write down the page number and return later.

Now, I’m going to try and be as fair as I can in this review. I’ve gone through a few iterations of this book review and decided that too much of this book is too subjective to critically examine (I sincerely hope that you read this book for yourself) in entirety, so I’m restricting myself to one chapter: Cosmological Kalamity.

Don’t get me wrong here. I am not saying that the rest of this book is unimportant or un-scholarly or otherwise below a person of my intelligence. Rather, I don’t feel equipped to handle his personal life-story in a critical manner (maybe no one is). Furthermore, this is the one chapter where Dan “dives in”. From the mouth of the horse:

While Refuting God [Part 1] gives simple, thumbnail responses to most theistic arguments, Cosmological Kalamity (which you are welcome to skim if philosophy is not your cup of tea) shows how I deal in depth with one of those arguments. (xiv)

He is obviously fairly pleased with the work he did in this chapter, and because my relative familiarity with the argument dwarfs that of my familiarity with the other topics in this book I thought I’d concentrate my fire a bit. I will point out a few oddities I stumbled across in this book, but I won’t follow the rabbit trails too far.

Begging the question, begging the question, begging the question…

I hope you like reading those words because they officially represent Dan’s most favorite logical fallacy. In his chapter criticizing the Kalam Cosmological Argument he either says or hints at “begging the question” nearly a dozen times. Apparently, he thinks it begs the question. How so? Let’s look at the argument:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.2) The universe began to exist.

.: The universe has a cause.

Straight away Dan takes issue with the first premise. His claim is that we theists are hiding God by constructing a principle that would shield God from certain kinds of causal scrutiny. This is one of the oddest paragraphs I confronted in the book:

One approach has been to claim that only effects need a cause. Since a first cause is not an effect, it is exempt from causation. Another attempt conceives of a contingent cause of the universe, resting at the top of a pyramid of relationships rather than at the beginning of a chain of temporal events. But this a priori tactic of exempting the conclusion (a creator) from the causality required of everything else- with no evidence that any special “causeless” or “noncontingent” objects actually exist- makes the creator a part of the definition of the premise, which is circular reasoning. These versions fail to get God off the hook. (130)

Something ought to sound fishy to you. It isn’t his failure to recognize that a first cause is not exempt from causation (no law of causation I’m aware of says that absolutely everything must have a cause). Notice that in his desire to force the argument into a question-beggar, he has, in effect, declared that all deductive arguments are circular (and, with his last sentence, he implies that these circular arguments are useless/false). Of course, any good deductive argument will contain a bit of the conclusion in each premise. What is appalling is the fact that any first-year student of logic would be able to catch that. Further, he himself begs the question in this paragraph; he tries to use the “fact” that we have no evidence of any “causeless” or “noncontingent” against an argument that purports to show that there is at least one of these objects.

Putting all that bluster aside for a moment, let’s suppose that he is on target. Many theists AND non-theists believe that there are uncaused things that exist- numbers, propositions, forms, morality, etc. So saying that there are uncaused things does not smuggle God in anywhere, and his charge falls flat.

He claims that reality must be divided into two different sets- things that begin to exist and things that don’t. If God is the only thing in the set of objects that does not begin to exist, he says, then “things that don’t begin to exist” is merely a synonym for God. Further, this would mean that God is placed into the premise of an argument which would logically entail that we are begging the question (!). By now you are catching on to this begging the question deal, but this is really strange. Of course, there are a very large (an infinite number) of things that potentially never began to exist, so even granting his weird metaphysics one could satisfy his criteria.

He does return to this, though, and claims that there is nothing in our universe that we know of that could escape time (he claims, again, that allowing talk of “outside of time” amounts to begging the question). I assume that he means that to be in time is to have begun to exist. This is false, but we can let it go for now. He does think that causation is entirely contained within the universe such that any attempt to justify talk of God’s causing the universe to exist from observation is not allowed (I think). Here it seems plain that he just is not familiar with the literature surrounding the issues. There are many things that we can draw conclusions about that would “transcend” our universe (see here, for example). In fact, supposing he is right, he has adopted a principle (that what we learn inside the universe cannot be applicable outside of it) and defeated his own position. Does his principle apply to our universe? How does he know? Why can’t we apply the principles of causation to our universe in the same way?

He finally begins to move into the actual argument and claims that “experience within the universe shows us that many impersonal causes “create” many natural effects.” (134)

I don’t think this is true. We have never, to my knowledge, witnessed the creation of anything, but rather the rearranging of matter. This would be especially true if one is a non-dualist like Dan, in all probability, is.

He claims that Craig proves that a personal force was the cause of the universe because a cause has to be at least as complex as its cause. I’m going to say that this is patently false. I’ve never seen Craig say this before and I believe that he made it up. Unfortunately he does not tell us where he got this information, but I suspect it is not from any of his works. In light of his misrepresentation of Craig in the next section we’ll look at, it is perfectly plausible that he is getting his information of Craig 2nd hand (from the likes of Michael Martin, perhaps).

If an actual infinity cannot be a part of reality, then God, is he is actually infinite, cannot exist. (135)

No. Theists do not say that God is an actual infinite. An actual infinite is numerically infinite, whereas God’s infinity is qualitative. This is why we distinguish between potential infinites, actual infinites and absolute infinites. In no way does Craig suggest that we speak of God as an actual infinite; in fact, he goes out of his way to defend himself from such allegations.

Is the Kalam Cosmological Argument Wordplay?

According to Barker, the second premise of the KCA- The universe began to exist- says that a supernatural assumption has been made in the premise. In fact, he compares the argument with this:

1. All apples that fall from trees become bruised.2. This orange fell from a tree.

3. Therefore, this orange is bruised. (140)

Apparently, his point is that a set cannot be a member of itself. Of course, Dan’s problem here is that we don’t treat the universe as if it is the set of all things. Even if something like materialism is true, it is possible that there are other members of this set (propositions, numbers, assorted abstracta). What he is trying to say, apparently, is that the universe is not able to be categorized in causal language as all the members of the universe are able to. But that would be a burden that he would have to carry; everything we know and understand is subject to causal laws. Why the “universe” should be any different is not readily apparent, and we must view this claim of his with suspicion. If it isn’t for scientific or philosophical reasons, then his denial of causality seems to stem from his unwillingness to grant a perfectly plausible principle which carried theistic implications. Indeed, Barker does not touch a single one of Craig’s arguments for either premise. He literally ignores them.

Rather, he opts for begging the question (this time he is doing the begging):

What does “everything” mean? Standing alone, it is synonymous with the universe (or cosmos). But in the cosmological argument, “everything” does not refer to “all things that exist” because it is followed by the limiting cause “that begins to exist”. (141-142)

It seems to me that he is saying that the KCA fails because the universe is everything and God is not a part of the universe. He does not allow, because of his own “wordplay”, that there could be something that did not begin to exist. And he proves this by defining the universe as “everything”.

Let me be very clear about this- the laws of causation were not invented by the KCA, or William Lane Craig or Paul the Apostle. The first premise, “whatever begins to exist has a cause” is as philosophically and empirically sound as any principle could hope to be. Even if I didn’t believe in God I would believe this principle. In fact, if Dan does not believe this principle is true (and I don’t think he does) then I would be very interested in seeing his reason(s) for objecting to it.

You see this same kind of thing all over in the book. It would be interesting for someone with a lot of time to go through the text and count all the times he says “begs the question” and compare it to all the times he himself begs the question. Here, for example:

Words like “spirit” and “supernatural” have no referent in reality, so why discuss a meaningless concept? (104)

While this old logical-positivist sentence might have flown a half-century ago, there is a near universal consensus that much of what philosophers of religion do is quite meaningful, and it is not up to Dan to partition topics into these categories (especially as a way to “refute” God).

Lastly, Dan leaves us with three questions. Let’s have at them:

1. Is God the only object accommodated by the set of things that do not begin to exist? If yes, then why is the cosmological argument not begging the question? If no, then what are the other candidates for the cause of the universe and how have they been eliminated? (143)

Firstly, I don’t think it is proper to ask why something does not beg the question. Secondly, the entire list of abstract objects did not begin to exist (in my view). But there is a consensus that abstract entities do not cause anything. Easy enough.

2. Does the logic of Kalam apply only to temporal antecedents in the real world? If yes, this assumes the existence of nontemporal antecedents in the real world, so why is this not begging the question? If no, then why doesn’t the impossibility of an actual infinity disprove the existence of an actually infinite God? (143)

Well, the logic of the KCA applies exactly to what it’s premises say it does. You can tailor the argument (see here) to fit both a temporal timeline or a timeless series of events. However, Dan’s question is severely misguided because, as we saw before, not a single theist believes that God is a quantitative collection of things. And even if God was a collection of an infinite number of things, one could further say that God infinity wasn’t formed by successive addition as a temporal timeline would.

3. Is the universe (cosmos) a member of itself? If not, then how can its “beginning” be compared with other beginnings?

I think it is better to skip over his confused understanding of set theory for a moment and focus on premise one of the argument. Either he is propounding a mysterious view of causation that I am unaware of, or he flat-out denies that events require causes. If the latter is true, then it would have been nice to see him interact with some of the literature defending causality. Craig’s own work has popularized a lot of arcane philosophy (see here) and it certainly wouldn’t be hard to find resources and tell us what his problems with the first premise are. As it stands, I don’t know how to answer this question because I don’t know what he is asking. Does he want to know what evidence there is for events having causes? Does he want to know if there have been other beginnings to other universes that we can compare ours to?

In any case, I feel very confident that if this is the best he can do against theism, I’m not to worried about the Barker salvo. He’s a one-trick pony, and his rather unusual responses to an argument that has been carefully crafted and defended over the past few decades will not replace study and substance. Are there difficulties for the KCA? Sure. There are things about Christianity and God-belief that have kept me up at night. But I’m willing to engage the best and brightest on either side to understand the issues as best I can. Unfortunately, that leaves little room for this book.

Let this one go, folks.

William Provine’s 2005 AD lecture entitled “Evolution and Intelligent Design: The Implications for Human Free Will” is generally agreed upon to have been heavy on assertions and light on facts.

Comments ranged from “He makes a lot of jumps to conclusions as if they were obvious” and “He can’t define what free will is,” to “it was an entertaining presentation” and “he was pretty amusing” with a touch of “He left a lot of questions unanswered.”

An article that reported on the lecture offer some interesting windows into the tangle web that William Provine’s atheism weaves. It seems pretty clear that his emotional perturbations lead him to read his own atheistic views into biology like so many tea leaves.

In his opening remarks he stated (as with the comments above, I will be quoting from Julie Geng, “Prof Denies Human Free Will,” The Cornell Daily Sun, August 30 2005),

I was a vocal opponent to I.D. [intelligent design] even before [the movement] began.

I am unsure whether this is supposed to be an attempt at humor or a statement about his own cleverness—or both. But let us take it a face value and simply deal with the fact that, preemptive or not, he opposes the Intelligent Design movement. Why did/does he do so?

Let us note that previously, William Provine had declared:

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear—and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me.

There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.[i]

How modern evolutionary biology implies a positive affirmation of God’s non-existence or any of his other assertions remains unstated.

So, why did/does he do so? Part of the reason is,

One of the most fascinating views of I.D. supporters, Provine said, was that the only differences between humans and chimpanzees were “human free will and immortal souls.”

And as we just saw, he infers the non-existence of the soul—via denying life after death—from modern evolutionary biology.

Just as in the essay The Desperation of the Deicidal, Memetic Eugenics and the Evolutionary Watchmen, part 2 of 2 I noted that Dan Barker has invented his very own particular and peculiar definition of free will as being “the illusion of free will” William Provine also coins a definition of free will,

Choosing doesn’t imply free will…Choices are not made freely — there are all kinds of constraints on it.

Certainly, there are all kinds of constraints on choice making but it is making a choice nonetheless and this is the very definition of free will—making the choice; no matter what constraints play upon the choice.

We thus learn that 1) he opposes the Intelligent Design movement because 2) the ID movement affirms the existence of human free will and immortal souls (this is actually questionable) 3) he infers a positive affirmation of the soul’s non-existence from modern evolutionary biology and 4) he stated, or admitted, “I hated the idea of human free will.”

It would perhaps be best to read this backwards: he 1) “hated” (past tense) “the idea of human free will” and 2) infers the soul’s non-existence and so 3) when the ID movement affirm the existence of human free will and immortal souls he 4) opposes it.

But note that he did not oppose Intelligent Design because they held those affirmations but because he was a vocal opponent to the ID movement even before it began. But why? Because he had an a priori commitment to reject human free will and immortal souls. With these ideas in mind he restricted himself from freethought and thus, rejects anything that contradicts his own concoction of an atheist worldview.

It was his emotional perturbations—hatred of free will and making an imaginary leap from biology to there is no God—which lead to his scientific and philosophic conclusions (if they may even be referred to as such).

In this, he joins many atheists, including Charles Darwin (caveats in place), who seek to do away with God—behind the thin disguise of “science” or “reason”—in order to justify their rebellion and in order to psychologically deal with their emotional perturbations. For some evidence of this see Why Atheism is Chosen.

[i] Provine, W.B. 1994. Origins Research. 16 (1): 9