A week or so ago, Jason Kuznicki noted:
The sort of god to which an Objectivist might even potentially assent is therefore quite limited. The Bible, at least as an inspired work of revelation, must be rejected. It is a work of history, nothing more, and its extraordinary claims must either be backed by extraordinary evidence or else rejected along with the equally extraordinary claims of Herodotus, Ovid, or Fu Xi.
OK. Let me ask a question then (and I guess any non-believer who thinks that statement is reasonable could answer as well).
If the events of the New Testament are accurate, what extraordinary evidence (that is missing) would you expect? That is, many atheists (Objectivists?) complain of the untestability of the claims of the faithful. This it seems is yet another untestable claim to me. If the events on that Passover week occurred as is contained in the Christian/New Testament claim, is there missing evidence that you expect? If not the objections is confusing. For if the evidence almost 2000 years later is just about what you’d expect … then what your asking for is these extraordinary claims to be backed by unreasonable evidence, not extraordinary.
N.T. Wright examined this work (the New Testament) using modern historical methods and came to the conclusion with regard to those extraordinary claims the the record was exactly what you might expect to find if the event was true (and not what you’d expect if they were false). That, of course, won’t help if you really are interested in unreasonable evidence however.
Walking into the room in the middle of the conversation, I say, “C.S. Lewis’s book Miracles might say relevant stuff about unreasonable and reasonable evidence for the miracles in the Gospels.”
And, “Tell me a tiny bit more about N.T. Wright, with a book title or URL or something?”
chw
I am going to be unfair to Mr. Kuznicki, by commenting on a single paragraph of his taken out of context by a friend of mine who is disputing with him. There. I have confessed enough improprieties to give him a “get out of jail free” card, though I don’t think he will need it. No Objectivist will need any help dealing with the likes of me.
Rhetorical flourishes, as they are called, can reveal what we would not reveal in sober argument. In this fine flourish, Mr. Kuznicki says 1) that the Gospels are, or claim to be, history; and that 2) their tales of miracles should be dismissed as are the fabulous tales in Herodotus and Fu Xi. I think Mr. Kuznicki is making a (revealing) category error and would do better to dismiss the extraordinary parts of the Gospel using another example than he has.
Herodotus wrote plain ol’ history, as about the wars between Greek and Persia that occurred about the time he was born. He also collected and passed on tales and marvels. Even in his history (in the narrow sense) the boundaries between tales and history become vaguer the farther back he goes in time.
In the Gospels there is no such separation. They claim to be history of a specific time and place, written by eyewitnesses or from interviews with eyewitnesses, after about the same delay as Herodotus writing about the war in progress when he was born. “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, and Herod was Tetrach of Galilee, and Philip his brother was Tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius was Tetrarch of Abilene, when Annas, with Caiaphas, was high priest, the word of God came to John the son of Zachariah in the desert.” (Luke 3:1-2) The Gospels tell the miracles of Jesus over the next years, culminating with his crucifixion by precisely named historical figures. No dates are given in the main part of the narratives for either ordinary or extraordinary events. Place names are given. But there is no separation here; the extraordinary events are events like any other in the narrative.
It would be as though Herodotus would say, “The eyewitnesses I interviewed said that during the battle of Salamis the Fred the Thracian, whose head was between his shoulders, walked across the water to the ship of Allen the Athenian, …”
I would suggest therefore, that Mr. Kuznicki choose other examples with which to dismiss the stories of the miracles of Jesus. I think that first-person stories by those kidnapped by UFOs would address the category error — “In the third year of the presidency of so-and-so, when such-and-such was Chief Justice and so-and-so-else was governor of Kansas, I was kidnapped by creatures from …” and so on. They have the necessary intertwining of dull-as-dishwater facts with unbelievable marvels.
As for Fu Xi? The wikipedia article linked to describes him as “In Chinese mythology, Fu Hsi or Fu X, … mid 2800s BCE, was the first of the mythical Three Sovereigns of ancient China.” No eyewitnesses. Not written down by people alive at the time of the events. No historical details. Big category error.
I do not envy Mr. Kuznicki arguing against Christians. We have a most annoying, perhaps damning wonder card we pull out from our deck when our backs seem to be against the wall — when we are asked why doesn’t God or why didn’t God do X or Y or Z visible and verifiable thing, we are likely to say, “God wants free believers and if He directly showed even a hint of his glory and majesty and power it would be the equivalent of coercion and therefore He didn’t and won’t.” So perhaps a better category of example to dismiss our claims would be that of a conspiracy theory — “A: There isn’t any evidence of a conspiracy! B: See? That *proves* there is a conspiracy!”
I do believe a leap of faith is required, that the intellect cannot provide a solid bridge from knowledge to belief, and that this is by God’s design and will. One statement of this claim, with neatsy-keano p’s and q’s, is Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, “Letter Six: Contradiction.”
So I have given Mr. Kuznicki even more grounds for dismissing the Christian claims of extraordinary events narrated in the Gospels, and for dismissing my notes here. I can hope, however, that in the future he will dismiss Christian claims with better, more apposite examples that are in the same category as the Gospels he is dismissing.
It is quite likely I have fallen into a much larger error than the one I have ascribed to Mr. Kuznicki — I narrowed “the Bible” to “the Gospels.” Certainly his examples better fit the Hebrew Scriptures (aka “Old Testament”) than they do the New Testament.
Perhaps we can agree to work now on dismissing the New Testament and work later on dismissing the Old Testament.
chw
Clark,
The three books by Wright are New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection and the Son of God. I can lend them to you if you wish.
None, of course; what is required is that the extraordinary events be proved out.
For many of us, this argument strikes as perverse. God’s reasoning here is the equivalent of refusing to help my wife do chores, take her to dinner, or buy her flowers, because I want her to love me freely.
Or, it’d be a bit like if I had a friend that was dying of some disease easily cured with a pill. I’ve hidden the pill, however, in a place that we used to frequent, and I’ve left him a series of clues that, if he has truly thought about our friendship, he could easily decipher.
We can imagine people doing things like that, but they would either be stupid or cruel. I leave yall to infer my conclusion.
And I think this is a fairly common objection the Christian God; while I love Christianity and its theology, I find these these problems insurmountable.
Let me add: God demonstrating his existence wouldn’t be coercive; what is coercive is the existence of hell. If he wants love freely given, he has rigged the game to short-circuit his intentions in advance. A Freudian, I’m sure, would love to get this strange creature – who structures his actions to frustrate his desires – on her couch.
jpe,
Well (obviously), I’ll try to pen a response to that, but I’ll chew for a bit first.
jpe,
I think by saying “I love Christianity and its theology” you are saying you are a Christian and find the Christian beliefs satisfying and true. Let me know if I’m wrong. I am not sure what “these problems” are.
1. The discussion in which I made the remark that included the word “coercive” was one about proofs, and in which I was saying that Herodotus and Fu Xi weren’t good parallel cases to the Gospels. Though the original author probably was referring to the entire Bible. Do you have any suggestions for better parallel cases than those two?
2. In my not-quite-serious proposal of conspiracy theories as a better parallel case than Herodotus or Fu Xi I used the word “coercive” and I paraphrased what may be a Christian platitude about the effects (or side effects) that would ensue were God to manifest Himself directly. My phrase was “showed a hint of His glory and majesty” and yours was “God proving his existence.” Actually, FWIW, I think I was almost directly quoting C.S. Lewis about the effects of a direct personal manifestation of God to an individual. I haven’t hunted for the reference.
I see two different questions here. One is about proving God’s existence; the other is about the “coercive” side-effects of God manifesting Himself. I am going to address only the latter here, so I see this a new discussion (not about the Objectivist’s objections, and not directly addressing his assertions).
I am going to dissent from your “coercion” examples in three ways. First I will open up the term so it can change and doesn’t necessarily hijack the discussion. Second I’ll point to a couple of items in Scripture. Third I’ll give an example or two that I claim better suit the situation I think the platitude is addressing better than yours do. Fourth maybe I’ll try to untangle that immediately previous sentence.
The term “coercion”: I said “the equivalent of coercion.” I would be happy to substitute some other phrase, such as “overwhelming effect” or “overwhelming influence.” I think my intent will be made clearer by my examples below, and I am happy to adjust the term accordingly.
(In your “hell” comment you are taking the word “coercion” to have a threat at the center of it. Certainly that is a normal usage — “he did it only under coercion.” An aside: If we take for the moment that hell is a given, then to apprise people of its existence is no more a threat or coercion than if a doctor shows a smoker pictures of the inside of a smoker’s lung. See for example C.S. Lewis’s Great Divorce for a treatment of hell as a state the soul is in rather than as a dungeon God flings the goats into. This is of course a long discussion in itself. End of aside.)
Scripture: When God manifests Himself to individuals in Scripture, either directly or as “an angel” or as Jesus, what is their usual response? They flop down on the ground, sometimes they start shaking involuntarily, and so on. The angels always have to say “fear not” and usually also “don’t worship me.” They get a little incoherent and offer to build booths. I believe this situation is the one addressed by the platitude I spoke.
Example 1: I was arguing with someone about the immorality of Clinton doing sexual things with an intern. I said that wherever there is a great difference in power that the more powerful one has to be very careful to avoid the implicit side effects of the imbalance or inequality. I argued that Clinton ought to have ruled out any romantic or sexual intimacy with the intern because the power and aura of the presidency produces (to overstate the case) a kind of gravity well that distorts gravity and time (and common sense!) in his vicinity. One might argue that there might be exceptional cases in which this wasn’t so, but the prudent man, respecting the autonomy and personhood and free will of the woman, would have avoided any situation in which the power and aura would overwhelm the other — my “overwhelming effect.” The person I was arguing with brought up the example of Attorney General John Ashcroft having Bible study sessions in his office with staffers and said this was a similar case of danger. I strongly agreed with him — the situation was one in which the power and awe of the office, and the dependence of the others, might lead people to act as though they believe things they don’t, or focus on the Ashcroft circle instead of on God.
Yes, in both these cases there is a possibility of negative consequences as well as positive ones. I don’t think those predominate or characterize the effect. I think the primary effect is implicit and positive. If Clinton or Ashcroft did rely on express or implied threats then they weren’t implicitly falling into dangers they were actively exercising their power to influence the free will of another.
Example 2: I recently read An Introduction to Intensive Psychotherapy (Frieda Fromm-Reichmann) and a couple of case studies by M. Scott Peck. The situation of psychotherapy is two people working together for the benefit of one of them, the patient. Both writers stressed the fact that the patient will over time emotionally cast the therapist as various important figures (father, lover, mother, etc.) and this is necessary to the therapy. It’s called “transference.” They also stressed the inescapable danger that the therapist would emotionally emotionally cast the patient in some role — this is called “counter transference,” and distorts and undermines the therapy. The patient needs to become extremely vulnerable and suggestable, and the therapist is right there, able to identify and manipulate the vulnerable patient. This is a differential of another sort — the therapist is a specialist in emotions in general and also learns the particular hot buttons and levers of the patient. The patient is there as a non-professional in emotions. The therapist must exercise extreme care at all times to avoid inadvertently manipulating the patient. Healing has to come from within the patient and can’t be imposed from without, so the freedom of the patient must be respected; to manipulate the buttons and levers even “for the patient’s own good” is self-defeating. Furthermore, both therapists mentioned that inexperienced therapists will clearly see a “train wreck” coming in the patient’s life and will warn the patient, but because the information is cognitive and comes from outside rather than having been discovered and internalized by the patient, the warning will not prevent the disaster and may well have a negative effect on the progress of therapy.
Your examples, which have a strong and proper tang of nastiness about them. Perhaps they are the examples that people think about when they ask “Why doesn’t God do X?” I don’t know. To refine the wife example, let’s presume that the man is a king or a billionaire. There are many romantic comedies about the king or billionaire pretending to be a regular fellow in order that he might find true, freely given, untainted love. To give a personal, painful variant on this theme, during the years when my own divorce was coalescing several therapists independently advised me that the only way I could save my marriage, if it was to be saved, if I really loved her, was by giving my wife as much emotional and economic freedom as I could — neither to woo nor threaten nor exhort but rather to become in a sense neutral and removed and give her maximum room.
Now. The differential between each of us and God is inexpressibly greater than that between the president and an intern; if God loves each of us and is actively wooing each of us, then it makes exquisite sense that in order to respect and guard our free will He would only very rarely and in an attenuated way manifest himself directly to us. Furthermore Scripture repeatedly says that signs and wonders are to little avail — they usually produce no effect or a degenerate relationship with God rather than a free love. We have the people following Jesus around for the thrill of it and to get free bread; and we have the cautionary verse in which the rich man in hell asks Abraham to send Lazarus the begger (in heaven) to warn his five brothers who are still alive, and Abraham refuses: “‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’” (Lk 16:31)
I have not directly spoken of God proving His existence as an example of what I have called manifesting His presence. I think that the examples and Scripture references above are relevant but by no means provide a full answer. Paul tells the Greeks that God *has* proven His existence and that they will be held accountable for failing to recognize that. John’s gospel talks about belief in God differently. I guess I’ll just claim that faith is a matter of both intellect *and* will (faith is, after all, a virtue), that a “proof” speaks to the intellect, and that God’s respect for our free will is argued at length above.
My reactions as I read:
I find Christianity enjoyable but not true. Much like the film Lost in Translation, I find it intellectually fascinating but ideologically repulsive.
When it comes to saving people from hell, a moral being would be obligated to use his/her overwhelming influence. I simply fail to see virtue in God’s reticence.
To make the hypo more immediately relevant, we’d have to posit that the doctor a) invented lung cancer; and b) could at any point snap his fingers and save the smoker from his demise, but won’t because of this or that reason. The only way for the smoker to save himself is to do exactly what the doctor says.
We’re now pretty clearly in threat territory.
That’s a marvelous way to put it. Nonetheless, I am always already free, and mere knowledge of His existence cannot alter that; I still must make my own moral judgments regarding Him.
jpe,
Excellent. Please instruct me on the Christian doctrines regarding hell, what it is, how it came to be, how we can know about it, what we can do to end up in it, what we can do to avoid ending up in it. And please point me to places I can read up on these things. Much obliged.
In the absences of guidance from jpe I decided to pick out something to read, to learn more about Christian teachings regarding hell. It seemed to me quite likely that in my own idiosyncratic Christianity I might de-emphasize or otherwise skew Christian teachings on hell, and that is one reason I asked jpe for pointers to things to read. I decided to re-read Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, since it is an overall introduction for regular folk and is explicitly outside any of the major divisions of Christianity. Not only is Lewis’s own goal to lay out what is common to all of Christianity, but he is unique so far as I know in that Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant all highly recommend his writings.
So I reread it. (I had originally read it about 35 years ago and I assume I reread at least parts of it since then.) I did not discover that I had in my head doctrines or emphases significantly different from those C.S. Lewis laid out. Lewis’s heartfelt call to us is that we accept God’s help to become “Sons of God.” Lewis makes this appeal over and over in various contexts in the book. I think the following quotation correctly summarizes Lewis’s teaching on heaven and hell:
“People often think of Christian morality and a kind of bargain, in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with other creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.” (Part III “Christian Behavior,” Chapter 4 “Morality and Psychoanalysis”)
One might answer that this description of heaven and hell is okay except that it leaves out Bible passages about the final judgment in which God will separate the sheep and the goats, sending the former to heaven and the latter to hell. This is not an objection I can answer in a sentence or two.
The teachings of the Orthodox Church as I have imbibed them seem to match Lewis’s teaching very well. Far greater emphasis is put on the positive goal of “deification” or “theosis” or “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit” than on avoiding hell. Unlike what I take to the be the case in the mainline Protestant denominations, Orthodoxy often calls to mind sin and judgment. But there is very little of the notion of God reluctantly but firmly pushing the button that opens the trapdoor underneath us and sends us to Hell.
My own impression has been that western Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant) tends to focus much more than does Orthodoxy on the precise details of salvation and damnation. The question “Am I saved?” seems always in the air, eliciting what seem to me to be over-precise answers. My impression is that Orthodoxy acknowledges the importance of the question but declines to answer it in any simple way. This may say more about me than it does about Orthodoxy, however.
I don’t expect this posting will answer or lessen jpe’s repugnance at the Christian doctrine of hell. For one thing, it does not accept his statement of the doctrine. For another it does not bridge the gap between the graphic judgment passages of scripture and the doctrine as laid out by C.S. Lewis. Still, the things I have said seemed worth saying.