The Dating Subculture

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, I’d like to write something for a friend of mine who seems to have had some bad luck in the area of romance lately and as I discussed this with him, he asked me to write some problems on how our American culture approaches this.

One of the first things we noted together is that we place emphasis on feelings way too much. Feelings come and feelings go. For me and my wife, my main attribute that I have for her is devotion. That doesn’t deny feelings and those can be powerful when they come. Right now, she’s not feeling well and I have to keep my distance for my own health, but we had a moment where we did get close enough to stare into one another’s eyes. It was quite a touching moment.

When I talk to my in-laws, I can do nothing but express my devotion to their daughter over and over. They’ve said that usually I’m mild and easy-going, but if someone was to come after her in some way, that this Crouching Tiger would quickly turn into a Hidden Dragon.

It’s the truth. When I’m with her, I’m guarding her like a hawk and making sure no one mistreats her. The only disagreement we ever really have that we can’t resolve is the one about if we are in a dangerous situation, who will be the one to get hurt for who. Neither one of us wants to see the other get hurt at all.

What I’ve learned is best summed up in what a counselor friend told me. Emotions follow motions. Why should this be a surprise? We do it in our Christian walk every day. We don’t feel like doing something that we know Scripture commands us to do but once we do it, we end up feeling pretty good about things. The example he has given is working out at the gym. Getting the motivation to get there is hard, but once you get there, it’s easy.

When I am in class, I will often think back to how I want to go home and see my wife and I call her during the class break. As it stands, she’s sick right now and being a man to respect her as she doesn’t want me to get it and the doctor even approved of this, I’m sleeping on the couch for the time being. It was hard last night because my main desire was that I wanted to be with my wife.

Don’t look to your feelings first then. Instead, look to reality. The question I ask of my wife is if she helps me grow in personal holiness and if I help her do the same. I think others would say I do that for her and I do not want to be the one who comes and says this of her, though she would definitely say it.

For her with me however, my desire has greatly increased to be holy. I have seen ways of thinking in myself that need to change. As I was driving today, I had a green light and as I was going across, I had someone pull right out in front of me in my lane. Bothered a bit? Yeah. I wasn’t angry however. The old me before my wife came along would have been angry and I’d have been ranting about it the rest of the day.

I used to worry a lot more about my apologetics as well. I believe that is because in the past, that was where I got most of my validation and I could not accept an error then. Now, I get my validation as well from my wife and because of that, if I make a mistake in this field, I make a mistake.

Even after my bachelor party as I was walking with some friends back to our cars, I told them “Guys. Work on personal holiness now.” Just a few weeks ago at my church, I did a sermon on marriage and holiness. I emphasized how we need to return to the idea of holiness and what it means and maybe marriage will become a respectable institution again. Friends. If the world is clamoring for homosexual marriage now, that’s our fault. We dropped the ball on marriage and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

My own pastor after the wedding met with my wife and I to tell me how I’d changed since meeting her, something he’d been reluctant to share. He wanted to wait until the time. He told me I was more other-focused than I’d ever been before. I wasn’t spending time in my own world.

In fact, a friend of mine who attends church with me and happened to be my best man told me that the day after our wedding, a Sunday, my pastor referred to me in the sermon. My pastor had offered to pray with me at the wedding ten minutes before I walked down the aisle and asked how he could pray for me. My prayer was that I wanted to be more holy.

I don’t say this to lift up myself. I say this to lift up my wife. I say this to show the effect that she has had on me.

Also, love every day is a choice and that choice gets easier as time goes on. I make it a point with my wife for instance to not get angry. There are times she’s done things that she’d say I could have justifiably got angry with her over. I just pause and realize that wouldn’t do any good. She’s beating herself up enough. I’m not going to add to it. That doesn’t mean I can’t get firm at times. This isn’t done in hate or anger though. I will sometimes just tell her the way things are and that’s for her good. I always end by affirming my love for her and begin the same way. If I don’t, I at least hope I do.

I can even remember one time when my wife and I had an event and it doesn’t need to be said what it was, but I was upset and hurt and wondering why my wife could think the way she did. How could she not agree with my reasoning? It was around 10 at night that I was in bed going over this while she was asleep and then realized what we all knew I would.

I was wrong. She was right.

I do not kid you in saying that I stayed up until midnight until she woke up as I had been pacing around looking for some wisdom on the topic to deal with until I could talk to her. When she woke up, I talked to her and told her how I saw things anew and apologized and asked her forgiveness. She gave it, although she does say she probably just wanted to go back to sleep. When I gave my sermon on holiness, I referred to that and said that it was a recent night that that happened.

The reality was, it was the very night before that that had happened.

Love is a choice and anger is a choice. Disagreements will come, and how you handle them determines everything. My wife and I are still devoted to prayer and Scripture, though we haven’t been able to as much since she’s been sick lately. (And please people, do pray for my wife’s recovery)

Our culture instead thinks too much on what the other person can do for me. We should instead be thinking about what we can do for the other person. When we look at ourselves too much, we will become more prideful. I make it a point to look to my wife and before I could criticize on anything, I would want to see if the deficiency lies with me first. Is this a lack of holiness on my part? I will give her the benefit of the doubt, something a friend of mine noted. He said that whatever she does, I will bend over backwards to try to understand where she’s coming from.

I would say I am more devoted now to my wife than I ever have been before and ten years from now, I will look back and think “Psssh! I thought I was devoted then?! That can’t compare to now!”

Our dating culture I believe will work best when we stop looking for the truth of a good relationship within ourselves and look for it from the outside. By all means, seek the counsel of wise Christians, which I did. I talked to a number of people before I proposed to my wife, and some of them had a very hard time keeping it a secret. I also had good friends, like my best man, who knew where this was going very early on and the advice of several who saw this was and is a match made in Heaven.

My wife helps me grow as an apologist, as a man, and most importantly, as a disciple of Jesus Christ. To her, I am grateful and I give my love.

Am I Assuming Materialism?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’m going to take the time now to respond to Hamby who responded to my review of his article on determinism. Let’s take a look at the comment that he left.

Thanks for taking the time to dig deeply into this article. It seems that your primary objection to my position is that I have presumed materialism and therefore ruled out the possibility that sentience is “immaterial.”

On the contrary, I believe I made it clear that that is not my problem. For instance, consider this paragraph I wrote:

Hamby starts from a materialistic basis. Now I’m not going to fault him for not supplying the reason for that basis. At this blog, I obviously can’t go into a basis for theism every time. It is understood that I am arguing from a theistic perspective and I hope most realize that if need be, I can give a basis for that perspective.

Later I said this:

I want to stress something at the start. If materialism is true, I agree entirely with what Hamby has said. If there is no God and matter is all we have, I hold that there is no free will.

My problem was not that Hamby assumed materialism. My problem is that I don’t think materialism can explain free-will. Note that I stated that there was no way that this could be known even if it was true. I also stated that I believe a person at a restaurant is responding to information transmitted through sound waves rather than through just sound waves and information is immaterial. I also had an ethical problem with the position he gave on sexual matters and how I believe his view lowers us to the level of animals. (Note: I realize we are rational animals, but even Aristotle made a distinction between man and beast.)

Hamby goes on to say:

Rather than type out a long rendition of what others have already said, I’ll point you to another post which points out the problems with assuming immateriality.

http://www.rationalresponders.com/039supernatural039_and_039immaterial039_are_broken_concepts

If I disapprove of assuming materialism, why would I approve of assuming immaterialism? In fact, I believe both sides in a debate have to make their case if they are arguing for something. My inability to prove theism would not prove atheism. Hamby’s inability to prove atheism would not prove theism.

Nevertheless, Hamby has given something to work with and if he wants to work further, I suggest he come to TheologyWeb. Naturally, I’m not going to go point by point through what he’s written, but I plan on hitting highlights.

Terms like “supernatural” or “immaterial” are broken concepts: They are attempts at reference that cannot actually refer to anything. They are broken terms because they are defined solely in the negative (according to what they are not) without any universe of discourse (anything left over for them to be). As Deludedgod states (see link to his page at bottom) these terms are eliminative negative terms, which can only denote an empty set, meaning that any further talk using these terms is incoherent.

This is simply logical positivism that tries to win by definition. The oddity is that this was dealt with centuries ago. We think best according to our mode of being, and our mode of being is physical so our thinking makes it difficult to think beyond the idea of matter.

In fact, the great philosophers have known for centuries what is meant by this term even if they couldn’t picture it. We still do this. What do you think of with the number 2 or with the laws of logic?

In good Thomistic thinking, which comes from Aristotle, we know what being itself is by removing all limitations from it. This would include the idea of matter and also the idea of limits, which should not be a problem since mathematicians today talk about the concept of the infinite.

The idea is that there is nothing left over for them to be according to Hamby. Why should I believe that? If I can think of concepts that are immaterial and I believe I exist, even if I don’t understand how that works, that is a limitation on my knowledge. It is not a limitation on reality and we do not limit reality to our knowledge.

Hamby goes on to say this:

So the problem isn’t just that terms like ‘immateriality’ and ‘supernatural’ are solely negative definitions, it is that they rule out any universe of discourse. There’s literally nothing left over for these terms to refer to, so there’s nothing left over for them to be. The terms are therefore meaningless, incoherent.

Why should I believe these terms are meaningless? I describe immateriality as being that is not bound by matter. I describe supernatural as being that is not confined to the natural world. I do have to start with my frame of reference and I am limited by it, but that’s not reason why I should assume reality conforms to it.

Hamby goes on to say this:

we may use the terms, and we may even feel that they ‘make sense’, but in reality the only way we can actually have them make sense is if we unconsciously steal from the concept of naturalism. And if you stop and think about it, this is what we do: we end up thinking of ‘immateriality’ in terms of materiality (i.e. energy), or ‘supernaturalism’ in terms of nature (something we can feel, see, hear, etc.).

What’s ironic is that this is also what Aquinas said long ago. In speaking in Question 3, article 3, and the first reply in the Summa, we read the following:

We can speak of simple things only as though they were like the composite things from which we derive our knowledge. Therefore in speaking of God, we use concrete nouns to signify His subsistence, because with us only those things subsist which are composite; and we use abstract nouns to signify His simplicity. In saying therefore that Godhead, or life, or the like are in God, we indicate the composite way in which our intellect understands, but not that there is any composition in God.

This is simply the way we think and the goal is not to conform reality to our thinking but our thinking to reality.

Hamby goes on to say this:

Counter argument: “Supernatural” simply means “beyond what is natural.” There is nothing in that definition per se which means that there is no grounds for believing it.”

My Response: Unless you can show me how saying ‘beyond natural’ differs from saying ‘not natural’, you’ve given me a distinction without a difference.

Yes. I don’t see a difference that matters, but I’ve yet to be convinced that the concept is meaningless.

And later:

Counter Argument: “To support your claim, one must introduce an additional supposition — namely, that the physical universe (nature) is all that exists. This supposition is unproven and unsubstantiated.”

Response: No such supposition is required. Materialism does not rule out your view a priori – your own definition rules out providing any ontology a priori!. You are claiming that there is something beyond materialism, something transcendent, etc. Seeing as your definition rules out any possible positive terms, the burden is therefore on you to present ‘another way’, contra materialism, to render your definitions coherent. If you want to hold that the term ‘immateriality’ or ‘supernatural’ make any sense, you must provide either an ontology or a universe of discourse. If you cannot do this, if all you have is a negative definition, without any universe of discourse, then you must concede that your terms are stripped of any actual meaning… you must concede that your terms can only point to ‘nothing’. This is a problem of your own making: ergo your attempt to blame your opponent is just a sign of the weakness of your position.

Which is again logical positivism to which I have to say that Hamby is behind the times. Logical positivism could not stand up under its own criteria.

Also he says:

We can use the word ‘nature’ to denote different senses, but, the ‘two senses’ of the term are necessarily inter-related. To have a nature is to be a part of nature. The very point under discussion is whether we can talk of having a nature, sans materialism!

To say to have a nature is to be part of nature is just not accurate. I can speak of angelic nature without seeing it as part of the material world. This is again assuming the position of logical positivism and saying that things must be defined the way a materialist accepts. I’m under no such obligation.

My basic question to Hamby would be to have him explain existence itself to me. What is necessary existence. What are its properties? What does it mean to be and is there anything that is without limitation?

Throughout the rest of this, I simply see logical positivism being argued.

Hamby is free to come to TheologyWeb to deal with this there.

I conclude saying that immaterialism is never assumed by me. It is something I argue. We both have burdens. I prefer to not rule my opponent out by definition.

Logical Fallacies: Accent

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I’d like to start tonight a look at the topic of logic, and mainly of logical fallacies. These are fallacies that can often take place in debate. Normally, when we do debates, we don’t come out listing premises and conclusions, even if we have these in our minds. Thus, formal logic will be looked at later. For now, we’re going to look at some informal fallacies that anyone can catch.

A caveat needs to be made at the start. Because a fallacy is used, it doesn’t mean the conclusion reached is automatically wrong. It just means that there is not a good idea given to hold to that view. For instance, if I said “I believe in God because most of the world believes in God so it must be true”, that would be the ad populum fallacy. Now it could be the case, as it is, that God exists, but that is not a valid reason in itself. (I would accept it as evidence however though not an airtight conclusion) Consider also if someone said “I don’t believe in God because Hollywood Celebrity X doesn’t believe in God.” Now it could be, which it isn’t, that God doesn’t exist, but that is not a good reason for disbelieving in God’s existence. As Christians, we want not only good conclusions, but also reaching good conclusions by good means.

I plan to go through a list alphabetically of these fallacies. For all interested, if you have an IPhone or IPad, you can get an application called “Cheatsheet” for a relatively low price that contains each of these. The first one will be the fallacy of accent.

This one can be harder to detect in the online world unless someone uses something like bold, italics, or capital letters. In speeches however, it’s simple to detect. The fallacy takes place when one word or phrase is given an accent as if to highlight what is meant and even go against what was meant.

Suppose you were being interviewed in a man-on-the street interview during the extensive health-care debate we had here in America and were asked what you thought of the Obama proposal. I will use italics to identify which word I am accenting in each sentence.

“I support good health-care policies for all!”

“I support good health-care policies for all!”

The first statement could make you seem like a strong believer in the Obama policy as you wish to emphasize your support of the bill. The second one by contrast could be seen as a challenge to the bill in which you are saying that you support good health-care policies, but you do not see this policy as good.

A great place to watch for something like this would be in fact, the evening news. When a word is emphasized, just watch and see why it’s emphasized. Now not all emphases are wrong. There is a place for emphasis. The goal is to emphasize where you can to make your meaning as clear as you need it to be. There are times you might want to be ambiguous, but if you want to be as clear as you can, watch what you emphasize.

We shall continue tomorrow.

The Rational Response Squad and Free-Will

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! A very good friend of mine recently linked me to an article written by hambydammit at the Rational Response Squad. I will be referring to the writer of the article as Hamby from now on. His post was “Free Will: Why We Don’t Have it, And Why That’s A Good Thing.” For all who want to make sure I represent Hamby’s views fairly, the link can be found here.

Hamby starts from a materialistic basis. Now I’m not going to fault him for not supplying the reason for that basis. At this blog, I obviously can’t go into a basis for theism every time. It is understood that I am arguing from a theistic perspective and I hope most realize that if need be, I can give a basis for that perspective.

Hamby’s argument is essentially that everything is matter in motion and that objects will not violate the laws of motion. Matter will move as it is predetermined to and that will include everything else that is taken along for the ride. This means that your brain is responding as it should under each circumstance due to the laws of matter at work. Now I do have some objections to this all, but I want to stress something at the start. If materialism is true, I agree entirely with what Hamby has said. If there is no God and matter is all we have, I hold that there is no free will.

This doesn’t mean that if there is a God however, that we have free-will. It could be some hyper-Calvinists are right. Of course, I have an objection to Hamby’s view however and one that I think the hyper-Calvinists can avoid for reasons given when I get there. I just want to say at the start that I think Hamby’s conclusion follows naturally from what he has said.

Now it’s time to raise some questions.

For instance, Hamby at one point says this:

At some point, though, we’re going to have to address the philosophical leap that comes with the existence of what we call “sentience.” For our purposes, it won’t matter precisely what sentience is, but it is important to note something of critical importance. Whatever sentience is, it is that way because there are genes within the sentient animal which, according to the law survival of the stable, caused chemicals to interact in completely predictable ways to “build” a being capable of sentient thought.

At this point I was thoroughly stunned. It doesn’t matter what sentience is, but whatever it is, it has to be material. My problem at this point is that this is an objection someone could raise to his thesis. They would be saying “But we do possess free-will for we have sentience. Sentience is not material.”

Hamby has given a naturalism of the gaps. Whatever the case may be, we can be sure that sentience is possible by naturalistic means. Now it could be the case that that has happened. However, why should I assume that such is the case? Why should it also not really matter what sentience is? For dealing with one of the strongest objections, more should be said.

Hamby goes on to say this about the spirit of the free-will argument:

When I speak of the spirit of the free will argument, I mean this: humans possess consciousness and sentience, which allow us to control ourselves in any way we desire, and to enforce our “will” upon the universe. What I want you to see is that this kind of thinking is backwards, for it assumes something existing independently of the law of survival of the stable. For us to be conscious, impulses must move through neurons in our brain. These impulses exist before consciousness. They must. The inescapable conclusion is that our brains cause us to be conscious.

At this point honestly, I have the impression of a small child making his case saying “They must!” I also wonder about the difficulty of what is being said. “Our brains cause us to be conscious.” Are we something other than our brains? What exactly are we? Before I can decide “Do I have free-will?”, I need to know who and/or what I am.

He goes on to speak about individual choices saying the following:

Let’s think now about what happens when we humans make a choice. Suppose I am at a restaurant, and am offered the choice of chicken or fish. The waiter asks me which one I want. My ears receive the vibrations caused by the waiter’s mouth and vocal cords. Without any external “will” causing it to happen, the vibrations are translated into nerve impulses which travel, completely on their own – because they are obeying the law of survival of the stable – to the part of my brain which, through no conscious will of its own, processes sound. I cannot help but comprehend the waiter, for my brain is doing what it must do. It is sending neural impulses to and from various parts of my brain, all of them unavoidably doing what they must do because they are matter and they are seeking stability.

Once my brain has translated the vibrations into a concept, I cannot help the reality that follows. My brain is now in a state. Either I desire chicken, or I desire fish, or I desire neither. I cannot change this state, for I am matter, and my brain has done what it had to do, and my preference is now a reality in time. I cannot help but move forward in time, and I must act in one the thousands of ways potentially available to me. If you think about it, there are probably hundreds of thousands of things I could do in the next second after entering the state of being aware of my preference.

I will do something in response to the question. Most likely, I will speak, expressing my desire for one or the other. The important question is this: Did I decide to speak, or did I speak because my brain caused me to do so? Here is where the survival of the stable plays its trump card. We really have two choices here. Either my brain caused me to have a preference, and then caused me to speak, or something else caused me to have a preference and then speak.

Hamby says that it cannot be something else for in that case, something else would be acting on matter. Now I agree that if matter is all there is, there is nothing outside of matter to act on that matter. However, my main question is what caused someone to have preference A over preference B? What is there that is genetic that determines that? I will say more on this later.

Hamby’s first objection he deals with is that if there is no free-will, why have laws? I believe Hamby is right when he says that these laws can be the means through which it is registered in us that we ought to behave a certain way. The laws can change attitudes. What I’m wondering about however is why the laws are made in the first place? Why does matter believe matter needs to be a certain way? As Dawkins would say “DNA neither knows nor cares. It just is, and we dance to its music.”

Hamby then goes on to say this:

Another common objection I hear is that scientists cannot prove that humans are not different than the animals. Perhaps we do actually have something that has risen above the level of animal consciousness. Maybe we really are different in kind. Of course, this argument commits the same fallacy as the argument that atheists can’t disprove the existence of God. In all cases, the burden of proof is on the claimant, and anyone who claims that human consciousness is different in kind from any other animal has a brobdingnagian task set for himself. Certainly we can do mental tasks that other animals can’t, and our powers of abstraction and conceptualization are unrivaled, but this is no justification for the statement that we are not completely under the control of our genes, just like every other animal. We must remember that any mental ability we have is the direct result of our genes building us this way. If we have the choice to act in illogical ways, or contrary to the dictates of our nature, it is because it is in our nature to be able to do so!

On the contrary, I think both sides have a burden to prove. If I have an inability to prove theism, that does not prove atheism. If someone has an inability to prove atheism, that does not prove theism. Since Hamby is advocating a case, it is up to him to provide evidence for that case. However, I also agree that if someone wants to raise this objection, they should also have evidence on their side.

Next Hamby says this:

When the previous objections fail, people often say that lack of free will makes life meaningless, since we’re just mindless robots running around doing exactly what our programming tells us to do. This is a good example of finding the nearest pool and taking a belly flop into the deep end. Our programming gives us consciousness, and our consciousness gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. We get up in the morning because we’re programmed to have sleep cycles, but we also get up in the morning because we want to make money at our jobs. We want to make money because we want to have a house and attract a mate and be able to buy status symbols and gadgets to make our lives easier. Purpose comes from living, regardless of what causes us to live.

But if our programming gives us consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning, what does this mean exactly? Is the meaning something outside of us or something entirely within us? We think that such and such is meaningful, because it is in our genes, but is it really meaningful in itself?

Also, could a career criminal not say he is simply acting according to his genes? Why should my genes have authority over his? As soon as one reason is given, a moral standard has been evoked and that will have to be something that is beyond the genes. Otherwise, we’ll just have “might makes right.”

Of course, I see appeals to a moral standard with statements about society getting better and speaking about ideas that Hamby believes are harmful. A favorite was when he mentioned abstinence-only education and how unrealistic it is.

Well it seems my wife and I pulled off abstinence just fine until we were married.

Also, Hamby says that sex is in our nature, but we ought not go out and have orgies every night. That’s not in our nature either! While I agree we are sexual by nature, I would ask Hamby “Why not?” If I am simply an animal, as I believe Hamby is stating, then why not act like an animal? An animal does not have rules for sexual conduct generally. Animals just mate when they’re in heat. Why can’t I do the same?

And if we do have a nature, what is it? What is this nature that we all seem to have? We have different genes no doubt, for if we didn’t, everyone on this planet would be exactly alike. However, we also all seem to call each other human. What is it that we have that makes us human? How can it be something other than our genes if all is dictated by our genes?

However, I wish to ask a more fundamental question.

Suppose that what Hamby has said is entirely true. How does he know that? Could he appeal to reason? I would just say “Your genes are programming you to think that way.” Whatever line of reason he gives, he could not escape that I could just answer with “But you respond that way because your genes program you to.” (Ironic also that in an argument against free-will, it seems a hidden assumption that I should change my mind upon reading this)

Now I don’t believe a hyper-Calvinist is in the same problem since they could at least attempt to point to a reality outside of themselves that says they have no free-will, and that would be God. This doesn’t mean that I agree with them or find the point convincing, but it would be one that could be raised.

My other question however is based on the example of being in a restaurant with a waiter. Am I merely responding to sound waves? Suppose I am at a pizzeria and looking over a menu and ask “What are your specials today?” The waiter pulls out somehow a pair of cymbals and clangs them together. I would not say “Great! I’ll try the pepperoni!”

When the waiter comes and asks “Soup or salad?”, he is using sound waves to communicate of course, but he is conveying information in those sound waves. What is being responded to is not the sound waves themselves for there’s nothing inherent in the sound waves that contains the concept of “Soup or salad?” For example, someone could come up to you and ask that in Chinese and unless you know Chinese, you’re not going to know what to say. On the other hand, someone could say “Soup or Salad?” to someone who doesn’t speak English and they will have no clue what to say either.

What is being responded to is not the sound waves per se but the information of which the sound waves are a medium. Information is immaterial. If it is passed on from one to another, the original does not cease to possess it. He may cease to have the medium that it was presented in, but he can still have the information itself. I could have a written message for me from one friend to another. I could read that message in transit and see the second friend and give them the note. I would lose the note, but I could still have the information of the message in memory.

So if that is correct, the brain is actually responding to something immaterial and thus, we now have something that is not matter acting in some way on something that is not material. It could be that I do not know how this takes place and such a question I leave for those interested in the philosophy of science. However, if information is immaterial and there is a response indicating that the immaterial information was received, then we must accept that somehow the immaterial and the material interact even if we don’t understand the process.

As for realities like sex education, the purpose of society is to produce good men and I do not believe Hamby could give a real basis for that. Of course, he is free to try, but it will need to be a convincing case not based merely on what works, but if something is really good and if there is a way it can be known.

Hamby can’t do this however because he does say morality is subjective in this essay. All the while, he says that murder and rape are empirically bad. No. If it is subjective, murder and rape empirically take place, but they are not empirically bad. That is adding a judgment on them that is beyond science. It is then ethics.

Of course, moral subjectivism is a fun topic to discuss and maybe such can be done soon.

I conclude that Hamby’s case is fine from a materialistic perspective and I wish more materialists would see it to see the logical outworkings of materialism, but I also find problems with it seeing as I find materialism does not have explanatory power as a worldview.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Conclusion

Hello everyone. It’s good to be back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! I had a highly enjoyable time at the Conference and I hope some of you were there. Tonight, we’re going to wrap up our look at Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis.”

My conclusion to this is that this book should be called instead “Stenger: The Failed Philosopher.” Now some of you might be saying “But he’s a scientist! He’s not writing philosophy! False. There is scientific data but the interpretation of that data is working out inferences to the best possible explanation. Now if he’s studying natural causes, then yeah, science is being done. He’s not. He’s talking about realities beyond matter. Now granted, he doesn’t believe those realities exist in actuality, which is his point, but to speak beyond matter is to speak out of his area. He is no longer doing science at that point, but philosophy.

Note this. I am not against science. I am also not against philosophy. However, I believe whichever one we do, we should do well. Our ability in one area does not necessarily lead to skill in another. Atheists often wish theists who are ignorant of science would stay out of the debates on science. I agree entirely. The problem is, as I have said before, that the atheists don’t return the favor. They in fact often speak on Christian theology without any understanding of it.

Do you think this is a baseless assertion? If you do, then simply go to a bookstore and get a book by the new atheists. You don’t even have to purchase it. Just open it up and look in the bibliography. Go through and see how many evangelical scholars you see listed. Contrast this by going to many an evangelical Christian work questioning atheism and see how many non-Christians they cite.

Stenger’s research methods I believe are poor. Now it could be his skill in physics is better, but as a philosopher, I question the very idea of something coming from nothing. The reason for his poor research I believe is that he is dealing with pop Christianity. If atheists think Christians believe things without evidence, we Christians must admit that it could be because several Christians have sadly given that impression.

Unfortunately, this has also led to atheists thinking Christianity is nonsense prima facie. I don’t just mean that they think it’s wrong. They think it’s nonsense. There’s really no content to it that’s worth studying. If you were an intelligent person, you’d just look and realize that it’s nonsense.

Unfortunately for them, this is not the case. I do not believe Islam is true for a second, but at the same time, I also believe that it’s important to study Islam if you want to evangelize Muslims. In fact, one of the strangest religions I know of is Mormonism, but yet, I don’t ignore the arguments of them. I have a number of books here so that when I dialogue with the Mormons, I can get their beliefs right.

The new atheists like Stenger don’t do this. This lets them go after the gullible who sadly could be Christians, Christians who have not been raised well and do not know better. This is also the fault of the Christian church. After all, if we say “Our children are not being raised Christian” who are we going to blame that on? We may not control what goes on in the school system, but we surely have some control over what goes on in our own households.

It also affects atheists who seem to repeat without considering it what the new atheists say. I don’t know how many atheists I’ve met who are skeptical that I’ve read The God Delusion. Why be skeptical? Because if you had, how could your faith survive? Isn’t Dawkins devastating? You just didn’t understand it if you read it.

The problem is I did understand it. I understood it was terrible argumentation, but the atheist has often written this off prima facie. The Christian cannot have a good answer. He just can’t! Why? Because atheism is true! Everything else is just nonsense on its face and so there’s no point in studying it!

In the end, atheism is a position of faith and frankly, the kind of faith Stenger believes in.

And in the end, Stenger is a failed philosopher and his case does not hold.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Living In The Godless Universe

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Tonight, we’re going to go through the final chapter of Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis” looking at the chapter on living in a godless universe. Don’t expect blogs tomorrow or Saturday night. I’ll be at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics. When I return I plan on a final summary.

How is an atheist like Stenger to live? (I find this interesting. If this is the way we all naturally are, why not just go with the song and just “act naturally”) Well, Stenger thinks apparently that he has to explain how to live. In a sense, he does, since life ultimately will have no meaning. However, let’s see what he says in this chapter.

He early on tells of theories about a God module in the brain or a God gene. My problem with this is that even if such was the case, that says nothing about the truthfulness or falsity of the belief. This also gets into Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. If evolution gave us the belief in religion to help us survive, then why should we not believe the same now? It is not about true beliefs then. It would be evolution is helping atheists like Stenger survive now, but we have no way of knowing if that belief is true. The only way is to look beyond the brain. Could we have a God module? Sure. I’m open to it. It doesn’t affect God’s existence either way.

He also says that if religion is a naturally evolved trait, we have an argument against God. How? No reason is given. Could it be that if God used evolution, he arranged it so that our brains would work in such a way that we would come to believe in him? If that is the case, could it be the atheists are the ones then with the faulty brains? Evolutionary belief in God could then be an argument against God. Of course, the atheist could counter that our brains are meant to give us true beliefs, but then he is bringing teleology into the picture and where does he get that from?

He goes on to condemn Justice Scalia for the belief that government gets its authority from God saying that Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence was a deist and not a Christian.

And the point is?

Even deists believed that God was a necessary foundation for morality. Jefferson would have agreed with Scalia on that point.

Stenger also says most Americans believe the constitution is a living document that evolves as society evolves and tells us Scalia sees that as a fallacy. He says “For him, the text is fixed in meaning what it always meant.”

Well geez. You know what? That kind of makes sense. Maybe Stenger I should just say the Bible doesn’t mean what you say it means and call it a living document, or could it be you think the meaning of the text is in the text? Maybe a few years from now, I can call your book a living book and say it was written as an argument for theism in that it was a mock atheist apologist work.

Stenger even goes on to say that if slavery which was not forbidden in the Constitution still existed today, Scalia would probably vote against its abolition. This is simply an ad hominem that is entirely tasteless for someone wanting to produce a serious argument.

He finally says that Scalia believes that God rules over a society that must remain unchanged because change implies perfection in the original creation.

I have no idea where he gets this stuff…..

When asking about charitable giving, Stenger says that perhaps religious people who give would just give anyway. “Perhaps.” In other words, “Let’s just hope that that’s true because it fits in with our conceptions of the world even if there is no evidence for it.” When a Christian does that, it’s blind faith. When an atheist does it, it’s good science.

As for meaning, Stenger says that what happens now is what matters. Okay. Why? Why should this block of time be more important than the next? Why should tomorrow matter less than today and why should yesterday also matter yes. This present moment matters. For what? For what purpose?

We are told that Aristotle believed that the life of contemplation was the best because that matches those of the gods. Stenger says he supposes that he wasn’t thinking of the gods in the Iliad.

Well, no. All you have to do is read Aristotle to find he was a monotheist and he got darn close to the Judeo-Christian idea of God. You know Stenger? The one you’ve been railing against?

Stenger also tells us of the advice of Peter Singer of “We can live a meaningful life by working towards goals that are objectively worthwhile.” Who says they are? Why should I believe any goal is objectively worthwhile?

Overall, there really isn’t much that Stenger offers that isn’t simply self-help that could be true for anyone. I as a Christian could agree with much of it. I do think it’s more difficult for an atheist who accepts that as “good” without any basis.

We shall conclude Sunday.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Possible and Impossible Gods

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth! Lately, we’ve been going through some books of Victor Stenger to see what the other side has to say in defense of atheism. So far, it hasn’t been much. Tonight, we’re going to continue that look by examining the ninth chapter of “God: The Failed Hypothesis” which is called “Possible and Impossible Gods.”

Early on this chapter, Stenger says “Belief aside, at the very minimum the fact that a specific God does not agree with the data is cause enough not to assume the existence of that God in the practices of every day life.”

I agree. I agree 100%. The problem is, Stenger thinks the only way people believe in God is they just assume that he exists. It is his false definition of faith. I believe in God because I do believe the reasons for belief are sound and any alternatives fail to give explanations for what we see. I believe our belief systems should be based on good evidence and able to be lived out practically. Christianity has both.

Stenger also reviews past chapters and there are some highlights to point out. For instance, he says that there could have been given as evidence someone who would be given a date for the end of the world and it happens right on schedule. It seems however that if that happened, it would be a bit too late for everyone to suddenly believe in the God this man is a prophet for. Surely Stenger could have thought of a better example than that!

He also has this highlight:

The void might have been found to be absolutely stable, requiring some action to bring something rather than nothing into existence.

Bringing nothing into existence?

Do I really need to comment on that?

Stenger goes on to say later that:

Serious theologians not committed by faith to their own dogma have gradually begun to accept the absence of objective evidence for God and have been forced to conclude if a god exists, he must purposely hide himself from us.

Who are these serious theologians? What are their names? What writings of theirs can I read? I would love to know, but unfortunately, I can’t. Why? The same reason again. Stenger does not list any sources. As he so often does, these are referred to as some realities out there that we must simply accept by faith. For me, it’s just simply accepting that Stenger is not wanting to do proper research into the beliefs of Christians, as his work shows.

In speaking about evil, Stenger says:

The problem of evil remains the strongest argument against a beneficent God, one that theologians have grappled with for centuries without success.

Again, I want to know the names of these theologians who have tried to argue without success. Instead, I am referenced to two atheist books. I have no idea which books Stenger himself has personally read on the topic. Does he know about Augustine’s debates in his age? Does he know about Aquinas’s equating goodness with being? Does he really know about Plantinga?

Or does he only know what he reads in the atheists about them?

To continue his blind faith, Stenger says:

God does not wish to spend eternity with all human souls, but only the chosen few who, by blind faith, in the absence of all evidence, accept a Jewish carpenter who may or may not have lived two thousand years ago as their personal savior. Of course, this is hardly a new idea but was essentially the teaching of John Calvin.

What we have is once again a total straw man. One wonders also that faith is believing something without evidence, what good does it do to say that it is blind and to say that it is in the absence of all evidence, unless Stenger likes redundancies for some reason? Also, this is not just the teaching of John Calvin. The teaching of belief in Christ for forgiveness of sins is something Calvinists and Arminians can agree on. Christ is the savior of all who believe.

Stenger also says:

To Christians of this persuasion, Mahatma Gandhi is burning in hell, along with the six million Jews killed by Hitler and the billions of others who have died without accepting Jesus.

This is simply an appeal to emotion, but let’s suppose we said “Alright Stenger. We’ll play your game. You can go to Heaven if you live a life as good as Mahatma Gandhi. Any less and you go to Hell. Do you measure up? Are you as selfless as he was? Are you willing to do all that he did?

Let’s set up a point system. How many points should be allowed to receive forgiveness? How many points will you get for each action that’s good? How many will you lose for each action that’s bad? Why should the count be set where it is? Exactly how good is good enough and how will you know?

God doesn’t ask you to be better than Mahatma Gandhi. He doesn’t ask you to be better than your neighbor. He asks you to be perfect and he also realizes you can’t reach that. That’s why he actually provides a simple way for you. All you have to do is accept the work of His Son on your behalf. Essentially, for us, God made salvation easy. All it costs us is the pride we relinquish when we bow down and admit that He is God and we are not.

Personally, I’m thankful the system’s that way. If I had to be as good as Mahatma Gandhi, I would worry if I’d qualify and frankly, atheists would be saying that God is setting the standard way too high. The reality is, God set the standard as high as it could go, but he also provided the way for us to freely make it.

And if God sets the rules of the game, complaining about that won’t change it. The best thing to do is see if He exists. It’s not about whether you like that He exists or whether you agree with His system or you think He’s running the show right. It’s about if He exists and if He has revealed Himself in Christ. If He does and He has, then the best thing to do is trust Him on what you can know instead of refusing to believe based on what you don’t know.

A wise man would make a decision based on what he knows and not on what he doesn’t know.

Be wise.

We shall continue tomorrow.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: The Argument From Evil

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve lately been going through a couple of books of Victor Stenger. Tonight, we’re going to continue our look at “God: The Failed Hypothesis” as we look at chapter 8, “The Argument From Evil.”

This is the most common argument given against God, and that is understandable, as we tend to think more emotionally than anything else. Stenger in describing this rightly calls the defense of God’s existence in the face of evil as theodicy. However, he then goes on to say:

So far, this attempt has proven unsatisfactory in the judgment of the majority of philosophers and other scholars who have not already committed themselves to God as an act of faith.

First obvious problem; Stenger gives no sources whatsoever for this claim. Who are these philosophers and scholars? Where can I read their writings? I don’t know. Stenger doesn’t tell.

Second, I thought this was about science. Interestingly, Stenger does not refer to scientists but to philosophers and scholars. Now some scholars could include scientists, but if this work is supposed to be about science, then shouldn’t we see arguments from scientists instead?

Third, his statement implies that if the non-believers are not convinced by the arguments of theodicy, then those arguments are not good. Okay. Believers are unconvinced by the arguments of unbelievers. Does it follow that those arguments are invalid? When you look at an argument, a valid appeal to authority can be done based on who believes or doesn’t believe an argument or why, but most important is the argument itself.

Fourth, he poisons the well by saying that some have committed themselves by an act of faith. Implicit in this would be his belief that faith is believing something without evidence. I believe in the existence of God based on evidence so that even if I don’t understand evil in the world, I understand there is primary evidence for God’s existence. For instance, because I might not be able to explain something like the Haitian earthquake, it does not follow that God did not raise Jesus from the dead. Those are separate questions. If God raised Jesus, Christianity is true and even if I can’t think of an answer to the question of the earthquake, I know there is one. Even if I knew of a good reason for the earthquake in reverse, it would not follow that God raised Jesus from the dead. When dealing with this argument, the burden is on the atheist as the one saying this is a defeater and he must prove that there is no good reason to allow an evil.

Stenger tells us that the argument from evil begins with an empirical fact. First, evil exists, which he defines as “bad stuff.”

Very good definition….

I wonder if I could define good as “good stuff.”

Second, he considers the existence of evil a scientific statement.

What is scientific about it? It is a philosophical statement, unless Stenger wants to posit evil as a material reality such as a property of matter or a way of describing relationships between matter qua matter. I agree that evil exists, but that is a metaphysical statement. It is not scientific.

Let’s look at the reasons he gives why people believe in God in the face of evil and how he responds. The first is that evil is a result of human free will. Stenger however says not all evil falls under this category and there is unnecessary suffering as a result of natural disasters.

Unnecessary? Really? Is Stenger going to demonstrate that there is no good reason to allow some suffering? Remember, the burden is on him to prove this. For a look at my answer to natural evil, I recommend this.

The second is that some suffering is necessary to help us develop. Some moral values exist only in response to suffering. Stenger’s answer is “This could be accomplished with a whole lot less suffering than exists in the world.”

To begin with, not all suffering is of this type. However, if Stenger wishes to have this as his viewpoint, then by all means, let’s see it demonstrated.

The third is that good and evil exist as contrast and one cannot exist without the other. This is not a Christian position so it will be skipped. The fourth is like it and will be skipped as well.

The fifth is that perhaps God has different concepts and what we think of as evil is really good.

This is not a view I would put forward and I don’t think Christians should, as God has told us His views. I want to note what Stenger says in the response however.

“Good” and “evil” are our words and they name our concepts. It is confused thinking to suppose that some God’s opinion would make any difference in our concepts.

These are our words, yes, but are the concepts ours? Do the concepts derive from us or from something beyond ourselves? Also, if God exists and is omniscient, which is the view Stenger is arguing against, what sense does it make to speak of God’s opinion? He does not have opinion. He has facts.

The sixth is that perhaps there is some purpose and we don’t know it. Have faith.

This is a straw man. We should not ask people to believe blindly. Believe based on the miracles that have taken place and the evidence of the empty tomb. However, Stenger asks why God would give us a nature that finds His actions so reprehensible? The truth is, He didn’t. The problem lies with our falling from what we were meant to be. Also, despite what Stenger says, we are not to blindly believe there is no good reason. We believe there is good reason because we have independent evidence outside of this that God exists.

The final arguments speak of the devil as the cause of evil or as God being limited somehow. I do not think any of these arguments are plausible and so I will skip them.

Stenger continues to describe God as evil in the Bible. We saw this yesterday so there’s no need to repeat much here. He does bring up Isaiah 45:7 in the RSV saying “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe. I am the Lord, who do all these things.”

Well yes, it says that. The idea is of a parallel. God can bring blessing on a city or judgment. It’s always the same with the problem of evil it seems. People like Stenger complain about why God doesn’t do anything about evil. Then, when He’s done something about it, they accuse Him of genocide.

This chapter is surprisingly short. Stenger has claimed to make a scientific case, but there is nothing scientific in this chapter. That’s fine with me because I don’t believe it’s a problem of science. Stenger may wish to say it’s science, but saying it is doesn’t make it so.

We shall continue tomorrow.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: Do Our Values Come From God?

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve been going through some books of Victor Stenger lately. Right now, we’re on “God: The Failed Hypothesis.” Tonight, we get to discuss the topic of morality, one of my favorites!

The chapter is titled “Do Our Values Come From God?” In a sense, I’m going to agree with Stenger. No. Our values don’t often come from God. Values is a more subjective term. I value many things that I ought not to value, I value some things more than I ought to value them, I value some things less than I ought to value them, and I don’t value some things that I ought to value. We’re all in that boat. Values refers to our subjective stance on the world outside of us. Of course, I value something because I perceive it as a good, but that is very different from it being good in itself.

However, if you ask “Does our morality come from God?” then I will answer “Yes.” By our morality, I do not mean American morality or Western morality, but the objective moral law that we all submit under, even if we don’t know every in and out of it. We all know that some actions are good and some are not.

Stenger first looks at public data and says that the Federal Bureau of Prisons says that Christians make up 80% of the prison population

Now I will grant this for the sake of argument, but I see a number of problems anyway with such a statistic. To begin with, the number of Christians is vastly more than the number of atheists in America. It makes sense that in a general look at the population, there would be more Christians.

Second, we are not told here about the religious lives of these Christians. Are they ones that are devoted to their faith or are they Christians in the sense that they grew up in a church and would just if they had to choose a religion to identify themselves with, would choose Christian?

And third, and probably most important, how many of these became Christians while in prison? I did at one time work for a ministry that interacted with prisoners and I found that a number of prisoners come to Christ after they come to prison, as they have often hit rock bottom and are willing to put their faith in Christ.

Finally however, this would not say anything about the truth of objective moral laws being based on God. Stenger could easily win the battle here and lose the war. It could prove a lot of Christians are hypocrites. Very well. (To some extent, we all are) What does that have to say about the source of the objective moral law? If we found that 80% of accountants cheated on tax forms, would we conclude the problem was with the tax laws?

Stenger next goes to common standards and says that preachers tell us that morals can only come from one source, and that’s God. He then goes on to say “The data, however, indicate that the majority of human beings from all cultures and all religions or no religion agree on a common set of moral standards.”

I’m sorry. Is that actually supposed to address the argument? In fact, there is a great source that agrees with Stenger’s argument. It’s called “The Bible!” Here’s what Paul said in Romans 2:

14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)

So thank you Stenger for agreeing with the Bible! No one is saying you have to be aware of God in order to know the moral law. It is being said instead that morality comes from Him even if one does not know of Him. How we know the moral law does not say anything about the source of the moral law. We expect people to have agreement on general revelation. It’s special revelation that we have exception on.

Stenger tells us that stealing and lying were seen as virtues, then the results to society would be terrible. I agree. He tells us that this knowledge does not require divine revelation. I also agree. The problem for Stenger is he thinks he’s making a point, but he isn’t because he doesn’t know the side he’s arguing against. This is especially evident when he says “The only precepts unique to religion are those telling us not to question their dogma.”

No source is listed for this. Let’s see what Scripture says. Why were the Bereans in Acts 17 considered more noble than others?

11Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

What about 1 Thessalonians 5:21?

21Test everything. Hold on to the good.

And Proverbs 1? Why was Proverbs put together?

1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
2 for attaining wisdom and discipline;
for understanding words of insight;

3 for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life,
doing what is right and just and fair;

4 for giving prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the young-

5 let the wise listen and add to their learning,
and let the discerning get guidance-

6 for understanding proverbs and parables,
the sayings and riddles of the wise.

7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

No Stenger. My religion tells me in fact to examine everything and think critically. I have no problem with questions. In fact, I don’t have a problem with people who question Christianity. I have a problem with people who don’t question it.

Stenger also says that when Christians decide what is right and wrong. They go to the Bible. Well that’s true Stenger, but we are not saying morality comes from the Bible. We are saying moral statements are found in the Bible. It would be like saying that mathematical truths come from Math textbooks. They can be FOUND in those books, but those books are not the source of the truths. The truths exist independently of the books. A lot of it comes from sound moral philosophy.

Stenger in looking specifically at the Bible however says that many killings were performed under God’s orders. He says the only way that can be squared with the sixth commandment is to say assume that the command must be restricted, such as don’t kill within your own tribe instead of applying it to all of humanity.

Or we could try the other route which two minutes of research would have given and said that killing and murder are two different things. Murder is an act of hatred. It is also the taking of life where there exists no right to take that life. Killing is often restricted to just war, self-defense, and capital punishment.

Stenger moves on to the second commandment and asks how many believers realize they are breaking that commandment when they take a photograph or draw a picture.

Stenger is apparently unaware that great workers of art were commissioned to do work for the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of the Lord. No Christian has a problem with that. The only time your camera is a problem is if you take a picture of something and bow down and worship that picture. If you’re not doing that, you’re okay.

What about slavery? Slavery was a staple in the society at the time and was akin to our job agency. Jesus did not speak out against it because His message was about spiritual salvation and not political salvation. His teachings would however lead to the establishment of a society that would eventually abandon slavery, as they did with Clovis II. For more on the issue of slavery, I recommend this.

Stenger also says the church taught oppression of women. His prooftext? It’s from Ephesians 5:

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

When I told my wife I was oppressing her and cited the text Stenger used, she just laughed.

Did Stenger look at what the passage said for the men?

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

So as a husband, what am I to do?

I am to LOVE my wife. (Hint Stenger. If I am truly loving her, I won’t do anything she won’t mind submitting to and I won’t use submission as a bludgeon.)

How? As Christ loved the church. How did he love the church? He was willing to die for the church and indeed did.

I am also responsible for the holiness of my wife. If she is falling into sin, I am somehow responsible. If she has unholy attitudes, I am somehow responsible. Granted, she has her own role, but the Word says I am the spiritual leader of my family. I’m not only responsible for my spiritual well-being but hers as well.

I am also to present her to the throne. That’s right. I don’t have to give an account to God of just how I did in my own life. I am to give an account of my family and how well I did.

And finally, my love again is to be compared to the love of my own body. When I look at that, that is a serious call and I am very much daunted by it because I honestly see how fall I far short.

By the way Stenger, my wife believes in biblical submission and she knows I do not use submission as a bludgeon. I can’t think of anything I’ve done in fact that she’s had trouble submitting to.

Stenger also wants to bring up biblical atrocities, saying that Jesus said he didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword. This is the problem with Stenger being a wooden literalist. The sword was not a literal sword. It was saying his message was divisive and people would divide in families based on how they responded to Him.

There is one issue worth looking at. Stenger says “Of course, no one of conscience today would think it moral to kill everyone captured in battle, saving only the virgin girls for their own pleasure.”

Stenger refers to Numbers 31. Some problems.

First off, the Midianites had seduced Israel earlier in Numbers 25 and come from a great distance in order to do it. They literally went out of their way. This was judgment on a people whose only purpose in doing what they did was to lead Israel astray from their God.

Second, this was also not a total annihilation. In fact, the Midianites were still around in the time of the Judges to war against Gideon.

Third however, nowhere does the text speak of the women being captured as sex slaves. The virgins were spared because they obviously weren’t responsible for seducing the Israelites seeing as they hadn’t had sex. How was it known they were virgins? Because virgins wore special garments back then to identify themselves.

For an in-depth treatment, I recommend this .

Stenger’s explanation of morality is to look to natural morality. What does he say?

Vampire bats share food. Apes and monkeys comfort members of their group who are upset and work together to get food. Dolphins push sick members of a pod to the surface to get air. Whales will put themselves in harm’s way to help a wounded member of their group. Elephants try their best to save injured members of their families.

I’m not going to dispute any of this. However, notice some traits Stenger left out? Cats, for instance, can eat their own young. Would Stenger like us to adopt this practice as well? Animals will also urinate in public places and eat their own waste. Would Stenger like us to adopt this?

It is fascinating that Stenger is suggesting we look to the animals for examples of morality. If he says they come from our common humanity, which he does, then why point to animals?

Also Stenger, what makes us all common in our humanity?

Stenger says we have taught ourselves right and wrong. Hold on to that for now. I wish to comment on it at the end.

Stenger refers to the fourth way of Aquinas which says “There must be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection, and this we call God.”

Now let’s bring that point about teaching ourselves right and wrong. Aquinas is not giving the traditional moral argument. He’s not talking about goodness. He’s talking about perfections, that is, grades of being. There must be one who is pure being who embodies what it means to be. For him, goodness, truth, and beauty were identical with being. As far as you are, you are good, true, and beautiful.

Morality then is based on what IS good in itself first and then the proper response to that goodness in relation to how it stands in the chain of goodness.

I support this simple idea. Let’s take this position.

“It is wrong to torture babies for fun.”

Now I want to examine the truth-content of this claim. It is either true, false, or nonsensical. How could it be nonsensical? It would be if a term was not understood.

If there is no objective morality, it is nonsensical because wrong really has no meaning. If there is however, the statement is either true or false. If you say “It is wrong!” you are appealing to an objective morality since wrong has meaning. If you say “It is not wrong!” you are doing the same since wrong also has meaning. (You also need to seek counseling.)

These are moral truths and we either create these truths or discover them. If we create them, then like any other rules we create, such as rules of a game, we can change them. If we discover them, they exist independently of us.

Truths exist in a mind.

Which mind would you say they exist in Stenger?

We shall continue tomorrow.

“God: The Failed Hypothesis” Review: The Failures of Revelation

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters, where we are diving into the ocean of truth! We’ve lately been going through Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis.” Tonight, we look at the title called “The Failures of Revelation.

Stenger’s point in this chapter is the failure of revelation in Scriptures to give information that can be empirically verified. He states that there are three areas. He first states that no information has ever come through a religious experience that could not have been known beforehand by the individual. Second, there are gross errors of scientific fact. Third, not a single risky prophecy can be objectively shown to have been fulfilled. Unfortunately, the term “risky” is not defined.

The first problem is that Stenger says he’s going to use scientific criteria to measure these. That might have some possibility with the first, but with the second, he’ll also need to make sure he has good skill in studies of literature to make sure he’s not reading like a fundamentalist. As we have seen however, he usually is. The third one is not scientific however but is rather historical and he will need historical information to determine the truthfulness or falsity of the claim that a Bible prophecy has been fulfilled.

Stenger even says “Personal testimonials and anecdotal stories have little or no value as evidence for the truth of extraordinary claims.” Why should this be the case? For instance, suppose I played the same lottery numbers every week and a friend knew those numbers and he came up to me one week and said “I was watching the news! Your numbers got picked!” That would be just his personal testimony on what has happened, but I would accept it and be ready to cash in my ticket.

Now to an extent, I don’t think testimonies alone can seal the deal. I think there is something definitely to the power of Christ to change a life, but several people can point to Buddhist teachings changing their lives or a self-help seminar. I believe in what C.S. Lewis recommended. Let your arguers go forward first in evangelism to break down the walls blocking belief, and then send forth people with testimonies to show the practical value of Christianity.

Stenger’s look at religious experience is lacking. Discussing such stories of foretelling the future he says “Despite many stories, however, no such report has stood up under scientific scrutiny.”

I wonder at this point if I was to write a chapter in a book defending inerrancy how it would be if I just said “Despite many objections, no supposed biblical contradiction has stood up under scrutiny.” Then, I just left it at that. No sources. Nothing. Would Stenger accept it? No. I wouldn’t blame him. Would you? I hope not! Stenger however does just that here. He gives no sources for these claims. Where were these studies done? Who was studied? Who did the studying?

There is nothing. Stenger doesn’t even cite a single source. If I wrote the above in a chapter and at least provided a footnote or endnote with books listed, you could grant me that I at least pointed to references. With Stenger’s work, I don’t even know where to go for more information.

In looking at creation stories, Stenger says there are several but just a few will be selected, to show the Bible is not the sole source of creation narratives.

I wasn’t aware any apologist was making that claim….

That Stenger doesn’t know something like that tells me that he is indeed not researching his opponent’s opposition.

It’s a fair objection seeing as when Stenger even goes on to list some folk narratives from other cultures, he does not give a single source.

So what about the biblical account? Stenger tells us that the Bible teaches the world was created around ten thousand years ago and all kinds of things were created that remain immutable and the universe sits as a firmament above a flat, immovable, Earth.

His source here is to point to various Scripture passages. Gone is any mention of a commentary. In fact, the first reference early in this chapter was a quote from Gleason Archer in the Encyclopedia of Biblical Difficulties. Naturally, Stenger did not consult said encyclopedia on these passages.

To begin with, the firmament does not refer to some metal canopy, but rather to an expanse, as Archer himself says. Stenger did not bother to check and likely is banking on the hopes that his readers are ignorant. Other passages do not speak of the Earth being unmovable in a physical sense, but rather that God’s intention will take place.

For example, 1 Chron. 16:30 (Stenger only has Chronicles. One wonders if he knows there’s a first and second of that book.) says that the Earth cannot be moved. However, before that, it is speaking about it being established. The Psalm is not speaking about geographical movement but about God’s sights as it were being set in a favored position on our planet and how God is focused on what’s going on in our world. It would not make much sense for David to say “Praise God! The Earth is not moving through the universe!” It would have been nonsensical to those around him. The same is going on in Psalm 93 and 96 and 104 is clearly full of symbolism, seeing as the Hebrews did not believe God literally rode in a chariot. I frankly do not see the issue with Isaiah 45:18. As for Isaiah 40:22 describing the Earth as a circle, the Hebrews simply had no word necessarily for a sphere at the time. The same word was used for any circle.

It seems more likely that Stenger just went to a website like Skeptics’ Annotated Bible and didn’t bother doing his own research on the topic.

Not like such hasn’t happened before.

As for these references to immutability in species, again, I would love to see the references for that.

Stenger later goes on to cite the objection of how the Bible says the value of pi is 3. Ironically, in the same paragraph we find the following:

Ancient peoples cannot be expected to have understood the language of modern science or have needed an exact value of pi (except for the builders of great monuments like the pyramids).

Here, Stenger is actually correct, but then he fails to apply this to all he said. It gives the impression that Stenger is more interested in having a certain interpretation that he can easily prove wrong, rather than seeing if there might be a truer interpretation that fits with the literary and historical context of the passages. The Bible must be taken in a wooden literal sense for that is the only way it can be debunked so easily. Let’s not risk actually studying it.

For more information on Pi, I refer the reader to this.

For prophecy, Stenger believes that there should be something esoteric in the Bible that is not understood until a future date when it becomes true. (Yet ironically, he says prophecies have never been fulfilled. By his demands, maybe he should just wait longer?) He gives this example. Suppose the Bible said:

Before two millennia shall pass since the birth of our Lord, a man will stand on another world within the firmament and he will smite a tiny orb with his staff such that it will fly from sight.”

Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what Stenger was referring to until he went on to talk about how men in Jesus’s day could have anticipated men being on the moon nor known anything about golf.

So Stenger would have a saying remain in Scripture for 2,000 years that would be absolutely nonsensical and handed down. Personally, I prefer Jesus’s idea. Speak to the people in language that they understand so that when the events happen, they can be sure of their fulfillment.

Stenger cites Genesis 3:15 as its often used a fulfillment of the birth of the Messiah and says “I am not sure what the prediction is here; that Jesus was to be born of a woman?”

Any commentaries cited? Not a one. Stenger says “I’m not sure.” There’s nothing wrong with being unsure of what a passage means. The best way to remedy that is to go to those learned in the Bible and find out what they say about what the passage means. Stenger doesn’t do so. Had he done so, he could have found out that seed is often attributed to a man and Jesus is said to be of the seed of woman rather than the seed of a man, a hinting at his virgin birth.

In a statement even more humorous, Stenger says “I would not be too far off base to note that Jesus sitting on God’s right hand has not been verified scientifically.”

It’s hard to imagine how someone can even think that way.

Heck. Whether I’m sitting in my own chair is not verified scientifically. You don’t have to do repeated experiments to see if I’m sitting at my computer as I write this. I wonder since Stenger is married if he says the same thing. “Well, when I scientifically verified that I loved my girlfriend at the time, I proposed to her and today, she is my wife.” Does he say “I know my children are special because I’ve scientifically verified it.” ?

The statement of Jesus at the right hand of the Father is not a scientific statement. It is a theological statement and a specifically ontological one as it describes a relationship between the Son and the Father. Of course, a literalist like Stenger is probably wondering if anyone has counted the number of fingers on God’s right hand.

In looking at fulfilled prophecies, he brings up the account of Jesus being born in Bethlehem and says “We have no reason outside the New Testament to believe Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”

There’s this great double-standard in history that if any other source makes a claim, that claim can stand on its own, but if that claim is found in the Bible, it has to be backed by something else in order to be verified. The gospels were written in the time of the eyewitnesses. Had Luke and Matthew made it up, witnesses could have said “You’re changing the story! We know where he was born!” Stenger needs to have a reason for thinking the Bible is wrong other than “It’s the Bible!”

His source for his criticism is Randall Helms’s “Gospel Fictions.” Helms is not accepted as an authority among mainstream historians. For more information on Helms, I recommend a start with this particular book here.

Stenger also brings up the slaughter of the innocents of Bethlehem and asks why it wasn’t mentioned elsewhere. The reason is that Herod was simply a bloodthirsty king who regularly murdered possible threats to his throne. This slaughter would have killed about a dozen boys. With all that was going on at the time with Roman occupation and the Jewish wars, this was something small not worth mentioning.

Stenger also treats seriously the pagan copycat thesis. His source for this? “The Jesus Mysteries.” This is a book I have as well and a critique of it has been written by the Bede that can be found here and also includes other links within it. It’s sources like these that tell me Stenger is just looking for sources that agree with him and going on from there. The above books mentioned are cited again by Stenger throughout the rest of this chapter. He will not cite mainstream historians, Christian or non-Christian.

In conclusion, Stenger does not make his case. There is nothing scientific in this chapter, odd for a book supposed to be about science.

We shall continue tomorrow.