Isn’t it meaningful that all the disciples died for their beliefs?

William Lane Craig (one of the most passionate defenders of the resurrection as a historical event) and many other Christian apologists use this argument from martyrdom with stubborn regularity. It makes sense to some degree, because if it is true, it’s a very powerful argument for a transformative experience outside of themselves. But there are two problems with this argument. The first one is pretty huge; there’s no real solid evidence I could find that any of the disciples did die for their beliefs at all. And it’s not just because I was only looking at skeptical sources; even the Christian websites I found couldn’t come up with anything better than “second-century church tradition.” The lack of historicity for this claim should be made clear by the fact that Craig himself (who’s fond of using arguments from authority to bolster his claims) doesn’t even try to back this one up with a quote from a scholar or a blanket statement of scholarly consensus. Generally, the only specific evidence he cites for this claim is a passage in Josephus about James, as seen here:

According to the first century Jewish historian Josephus, James was martyred for his faith in Christ in the late AD 60s. Now most of us have brothers. What would it take to convince you that your brother is the Lord, such that you would be ready to die for that belief? Can there be any doubt that this remarkable transformation in Jesus’ younger brother took place because, in Paul’s words, “then he appeared to James”?

Even in a written piece like this (which doesn’t have the time restrictions of formal debates), Craig can only provide any actual citation for a single one of those many disciples who supposedly went to their deaths refusing to deny their belief in the risen Lord. As far as I’ve ever seen, there is no historical evidence that most of the disciples were martyred, prior to second-century church tradition. And yet, Christian apologists keep right on stating this as fact, without bothering to ever produce any sources that can validate such a high level of confidence in its historical accuracy (seemingly, because they don’t actually have any). That seems intellectually dishonest to me.

Now, I think that in itself should be enough to cast serious doubt on this point, but there is a second factor that needs to be considered. Even if some of the disciples were killed, it only has significance to the strength of their belief if they were killed after being given a chance to recant. If someone puts a gun to your head and says, “admit you were lying or I’ll kill you,” and you stick to your story, then that’s pretty strong evidence that you really believe it. But if you’re walking down the street, and someone just shoots you without making any such challenge, then it says absolutely nothing about whether you really believed whatever it was you were claiming. So, for this claim (that the disciples went to their deaths unwilling to recant) to be substantiated, there has to be historical evidence not only that they were killed, but also that it only happened after they were given a chance to recant. Now, let’s look at the passage from Josephus about James that William Lane Craig offered as such profound evidence for this argument. It fails that criterion on both levels. It does not indicate that James was given a chance to recant his belief that Jesus rose before he was executed, and it doesn’t even indicate that this belief was why he was executed in the first place. Contrary to how Craig describes it, there is no indication in Josephus that “James was martyred for his faith in Christ,” or that he specifically did “die for that belief.” It’s actually remarkably vague about the reasons for his execution, which makes it easy to read between the lines that his seditious faith in Jesus as his savior was the real reason, but only if you already believed that going in. Assumption is not evidence.

In my perception, the passage about James in Josephus is the most oft-cited evidence of martyrdom by one of the disciples who allegedly saw the risen Christ, and yet this is how thin it is. It’s like saying that someone who claimed to be an alien abductee was killed in a mugging, so that must mean he really believed he was abducted. It’s an argument that sounds very dramatic and compelling at first blush, but doesn’t hold up when you actually look closer at what evidence the proponents of this argument are citing to substantiate their claim.

Do you think religious people would change their beliefs if the existence of alien life were proven?

I couldn't disagree with that idea more strongly. You have to understand the psychology of belief, that when religion is a deeply-integrated part of a person's identity, they don't change their beliefs when provided with new information; they filter that information through the beliefs they already have and refuse to give up.

I'll give you two anecdotes which I think illustrate how some religious people would react to this (and that's not even considering the people whose religious beliefs are legitimately compatible with the existence of aliens). The first is personal, the second is a public figure. The personal one is myself; I used to be very religious. I remember one time back in those days, I started to watch the movie Paul (by that time, I was cool with R-rated movies despite being very morally conservative). There's a point in the movie where the two guys and the alien run into a fundie Christian, and the alien says his existence "disproves the notion of the Abrahamic, Judeo-Christian God." I actually turned the movie off right then and there, not because it was blasphemous, but because I disagreed so passionately with the assertion that the existence of aliens would disprove my beliefs. Mind you, I didn't have any well-thought-out theological ideas about how the existence of aliens would coexist with the truth claims of Christianity, I basically just thought, "Christianity is obviously true, whether aliens exist or not. The end."

Now, the public figure; Ken Ham. This blog post from AIG gained some mainstream attention when Huffington Post reported on it with the headline "Creationist Ken Ham Says Aliens Will Go To Hell So Let’s Stop Looking For Them." In fact, the main thrust of the post is that aliens obviously don't exist, because the Bible says that people and animals were created by God, not evolved, so there's no reason to think there would be any living organisms on any other planets. He even ludicrously claims that the whole reason scientists are trying so hard to find alien life is to disprove creation so they'll have free rein to rebel against God. That seems to go right along with your theory that if the existence of aliens was proven, religious people would abandon their beliefs, right? But look closer; there is a point in the post where Ham says, "Now the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space," and later, "this means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation." So, within this whole rant about how we should stop looking for alien life because aliens obviously don't exist from a Biblical standpoint, he's still not going so far as to claim that the existence of aliens and the truth of the Bible are utterly incompatible. He's essentially making a falsifiable claim, but with the back-door exit already wide open if that claim is ever actually falsified.

If "we" find out that aliens exist, then the first step for fundamentalist religious people will be to simply deny the truthfulness of that claim (just as they already do with evolution, because they believe it contradicts their beliefs as well). When the evidence becomes too strong to deny (like, if aliens live among us), then they'll shift to claiming that their beliefs were always consistent with the existence of aliens, and will even find verses of scripture that they can twist to claim that the Bible (or whatever other scripture they believe in) already told us that aliens exist, so it must be inspired by God because no human could've known that way back then.

Flat-earth theory is a good real-world analogue to show both stages of the process. There are people who still vehemently oppose the idea of a spherical earth, because they believe that the Bible indicates the earth is flat. Conversely, there are people who point to verses like Isaiah 40:22 as the Bible presciently acknowledging that the earth is a sphere, even though the vast majority of translations interpret the word as "circle," which is a flat, two-dimensional shape.

The most ludicrous example I've ever heard of this (a person trying to twist the words of the Bible to make it seem like it indicates foreknowledge of modern scientific discoveries) was from Hugh Ross. He said that the Bible talks about the universe being constantly expanding; my ears perked up when I heard this, because I've read the Bible a few times, and certainly didn't recall seeing that. So then, he read the verse that he claimed supported that contention. It was actually the latter part of that same verse, Isaiah 40:22, which says God "stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." I'm sorry, do curtains or tents continuously and endlessly expand throughout all time? Of course not, they expand to a certain size and then stop. This verse is obviously not saying anything about the universe constantly expanding. All Ross did was take what we've learned through real scientific discovery and combine it with his dogmatic belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and then interpreted what it says through that framework. There's nothing about the proven existence of aliens that would make it impossible for people like him to continue using that approach.

Do you believe morals are objective or subjective?

I’ve recently been thinking about the distinction between values being objective or subjective, while playing Football Tactics, a video game about soccer. The way the standings work in this soccer game (I'm assuming it's based on how they work in real leagues, but I'm not familiar enough with soccer to know for sure) is a points system, where a team gets 3 points for winning a match and 1 point for a draw (there’s no overtime). If two teams have the same number of points, then their ranking is decided by “Goal Difference” (the number of goals they’ve scored, subtracted by the number of goals their opponents have scored). 

Now, is this ranking system objective or subjective? One could argue that it’s subjective because the decision to use that system was just some people’s opinion; it’s not like that’s the way it has to be. Someone else could argue that it’s objective, because deciding what rank a team should have at any given time is based on hard numbers and concrete data, not anyone’s feelings or opinion about which team is better (the way college football rankings used to work before the BCS was established). What this has made me realize is that it would probably be helpful in discussions of whether a value system is objective or subjective, if we draw a line between “origin” (how a certain value system came to be established), and “implementation” (how it is judged whether something is good or bad in a value system, after it has been established). 

Even with that distinction, the more I work through this thought process, the more confident I become that the idea of objective values simply doesn’t make sense, either in origin or implementation. I can’t think of any way that the origin of a moral system wouldn’t be subjective, since it’s always just based on somebody’s opinion (or their nature, or whatever). It is never and could never be “just the way it is.” As for implementation, I think that has to be subjective too, because there’s just no way to boil it down to hard numbers and concrete data like a soccer ranking. Even if you use as concise a moral framework as “avoid unnecessary harm,” there’s still plenty of subjectivity in judging what is harmful, what is necessary, and even what is avoidable. Everything about morality is subjective, there's no way for it not to be; I can’t see any way around that.

What do you think about C.S. Lewis' "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument?

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse."

The main issue I have with this argument is that it isn't reasonable to just assume that Jesus really did say all the statements attributed to him in the gospels. Here's an example that I think perfectly captures why it doesn't make sense to just treat all the "red letter text" with the presumption of accuracy. This example isn't about Jesus claiming equality with God, but I think it does still relate to this issue pretty well.

In John 2:18-19, skeptical Jews ask Jesus for a sign of his divine authority, and Jesus responds, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." This is presented as a prophecy of his death and resurrection. Such a prophecy coming true could certainly be interpreted as vindication of a claim to divine authority.

However, in previous gospels (Mark 14:57-58 and Matthew 26:59-61), ones that practically all Biblical historians agree were written before the gospel of John, there is a different version of this claim about destroying the temple. In those gospels, it's other people testifying in Jesus' trial that he said it, and they are explicitly referred to as false witnesses. If those verses in John were things Jesus really said, how could those witnesses be giving false testimony?

That's just one of many examples that the gospels show clear signs of developing legend, of a fish story that grows and magnifies over time. And though there are some verses in Mark that can be interpreted as indicating that Jesus is the Son of God, most of the key verses that people quote to defend his status as deity come from John (the latest gospel).

If we can't trust that a statement ascribed to Jesus in the gospels was actually said by the real historical Jesus, then we don't really have any idea whether he claimed to have divine authority or not. But even beyond that, there's one further point to consider; Jesus never explicitly claimed to be God in so many words (even if we do accept his sayings in the gospels as completely accurate). He just claimed things that Trinitarian Christians interpret as being things only God could claim. But if God really is the ultimate authority, I see no reason that he couldn't confer onto a purely-human Jesus the authority to forgive sins or things like that. If Jesus was essentially God's representative on earth for that time and culture, then I don't see any reason why he couldn't be the bearer of that authority without actually being the same being as God the Father.

So, basically, there are two key assumptions Lewis makes which undercut his argument. 1) That the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are accurate, and 2) that those things could only rightly be said by someone who is the Son of God. If either one of these assumptions are not true, then the argument falls apart (and that's without even considering the common flaw of all trilemmas, that there might be more options that we just haven't think of).

What’s your opinion on the Problem of Evil?

This is the type of thing that it might seem alternately arrogant or redundant for some random blogger like me to comment on, because it’s already been handled so much more thoroughly (on both sides) by people much more learned then me. So, I want to make it clear that by commenting on this issue, I’m not actually pretentious enough to think that I’m seriously breaking any new ground here. I expect that pretty much all of what I’ll say has probably been said before; at best I might say it in a slightly different way.

Still, I think this is the type of religious topic that is worthy of everyone expressing their own opinion about it. Like other religious or philosophical subjects where there’s a lot of room for individuals to have mild variations or subtle nuances in their opinion of it, I think it’s worth it to just kinda get it “on the books” where a person stands on this issue.

Personally, I don’t consider the Problem of Evil to be airtight, definitive proof that God does not exist, but I do consider it to be evidence which points in that direction. As I’ve said before, what I’m trying to do (in a persistent, ongoing fashion) is assess the likelihood that a god exists, and I believe that the existence of evil and suffering in the world make it less likely for that to be the case.

Now, I try to keep these posts fairly concise, so I’m not gonna bother restating the argument; I think it should be easy enough to find it elsewhere on the web. What I want to talk about instead are the apparent weaknesses of the argument; the Problem of Evil does have a couple key weak points that shouldn’t be glossed over, but I don’t think they ultimately discredit or defeat the argument.

The first weakness is that it only works against a specific category of god, that which is “omnimax” (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving or all-good). As long as an individual conception of God doesn’t have one of those three characteristics, then the Problem of Evil is not a problem for it. The reason why I don’t think this is a significant weakness is that it just so happens that the god believed in by most adherents of the three major monotheistic religions (and described in their scriptures) is omnimax, so the Problem of Evil still does apply to the most common conception of God.

The second weakness is that there appears to be some degree of presumption inherent in the argument; the person making it is kinda claiming to know (or even dictate) how God should behave. Personally, though, I don’t think it’s really as presumptuous as it might appear to be at first glance. When you look a little closer, it’s really just a matter of conclusions naturally following from definitions.

For instance, if we define “evil” as “the opposite of good,” then there’s no presumption required to say that an all-good god would be fundamentally opposed to evil. If he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t actually be all-good. Similarly, it’s not presumptuous to say that an all-powerful god should be able to prevent evil, because it wouldn’t meet the definition of “all-powerful” if he couldn’t.

Of course, in any philosophical debate, it’s always best to iron out the definitions with the individual who you’re debating, and then engage with the specific conception of God that their definitions indicate. But in general, I don’t think there is much presumption on God’s character required for the Problem of Evil to be a legitimate problem.

A third weakness might be that evil can’t really exist without objective moral values, but I’ve already responded to that objection here. In some ways, I almost think it would make more sense for the theist to argue the opposite of that (and in fact, I think that’s what they already are trying to do, but using different terms). Instead of saying that the existence of evil really proves God (which basically just boils down to equivocation), I think the theist really has to argue that there isn’t actually any evil in the world at all. Granted, when I say that, I’m excluding “necessary evil” from the definition of evil.

It seems to me, that phrase is just idiomatic anyway. If something which seems evil is truly necessary to achieve some greater good, then it isn’t really evil. If it’s “necessary” to the person who’s doing it to achieve some selfish ends, rather than some greater good, then it’s simply evil, not “necessary evil.”

So if we were to exclude “necessary evil” from the definition of “evil” (which I think is a quite reasonable exclusion), then it seems to me like the theist’s only way to defeat the Problem of Evil is to argue that evil does not actually exist in the world. After all, isn’t their usual line of criticism that the Problem of Evil doesn’t disprove God, because the evil and suffering in the world serves some higher purpose (such as allowing people to have free will)? They’re arguing that it is “necessary evil.” So if necessary evil doesn’t count as evil, then what they’re really saying when you get right down to it is that there isn’t any evil in the world at all.

But, you know, I find that really hard to believe. I won’t pretend that I can prove it definitively, or that my incredulity counts as evidence, but I would say that someone claiming that evil didn’t exist in the world at all would bear a pretty heavy burden of proof. And I contend that when theists dispute the problem of evil, that is effectively what they’re saying, whether they put it in precisely those terms or not.

If God did exist, would you want to know, and would you follow him?

If the truth be known

Do you really wanna know?

--“Truth Be Known – Everybody Gets a Shot,” Newsboys

These are really two separate questions, but I put them together because the first one has a very short answer. If God actually did exist in reality, then yes, I would want to know about it. I want my beliefs to be consistent with reality. While it’s unlikely that will ever be the case for all of my beliefs at any given time (as is true for all people, since we’re all drawing our conclusions from limited data sets), I still want it to be true as much as humanly possible. So the answer to the first question is an unequivocal, unhesitating yes.

That was the easy part. The second part of the question is harder, because it’s actually incomplete. To answer the question of whether I would follow (or submit to, obey, worship, etc.) God once I became convinced that such an entity really exists, it would be necessary to have a much better understanding of what his (or her, or its) characteristics were, before being able to make any decision whether they were worthy of my praise, respect, or submission.

Of course, if there were a theist in the room right now actually asking the question, they would probably say, “well, obviously, the God that I believe in would be the one who turns out to be real.” But then, you ask ten theists (even just among the three major monotheistic religions) to describe the characteristics of God, and you’ll get ten at least subtly-different answers.

But those subtle differences can have a significant effect on how I answer this question. If the god who is actually real loves everybody, then of course I’d worship him, why wouldn’t I? But if the god who is actually real “loves” everybody, in the narcissistic sense that they get a free ticket to paradise only if they happen to believe in him (regardless of anything else they’ve done), and everyone else gets tortured for all eternity simply because they belong to the wrong religion, then no, I don’t think I could worship such a monster.

Granted, if I was truly convinced that a god like that was real, then I might still knuckle under and submit to him out of the sheer visceral fear of unending torture for all eternity (how’s that for free will?), but I wouldn’t really love or respect him. And since God is supposed to be all-knowing, he should be able to see through that, so I doubt it would make any difference anyway (unless that God really does only want people to pay him lip service).

So ultimately, as with many theistic questions, it does very much depend on “which God?” But, since there are some readers who will probably want more of a straightforward answer, I’ll fall back on my upbringing and culture making Christianity the default setting for me. At present, I don’t feel that the god described in the Bible is one I would feel morally justified in worshipping or giving my allegiance to. A God who commits genocide (over and over again) in the Old Testament, and then condemns non-believers to infinite torture for finite crimes in the New Testament, I simply cannot see that as a just and loving god.

On the other hand, if we were talking more about a C.S. Lewis type of god, a wild and fierce, but ultimately loving and truly good Aslan-type god, who only keeps hell as a place of separation for people who don’t want to be with God in a perfect paradise for all eternity, then yeah, I could see myself being able to love and respect that type of god.

But unfortunately, I don’t see that as being what the Bible describes. 

Weren't the worst dictators in modern history atheists?

This is just a quick reply I made to a reddit post; if I were still actively updating this blog, I would try make a much more thorough reply to this common argument...

It's true that two of the dictators with the highest death counts in modern history (Stalin and Mao) were atheists, but you know what else they had in common? The biggest populations they were ruling over. If a dictator is ruling a country with only half a million people, there's really no way they can kill 20 million like Stalin did. So I'd love to see someone calculate percentages of the population that various dictators killed, instead of just raw numbers. Because, let's be serious here, ISIS (the worst theocracy in Islam) would be more than happy to kill 20 million people if they had that many people to kill and still have anyone left to rule over.