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STEALING FROM GOD: TUREK'S CASE FOR CHRISTIANITY

7/21/2018

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Having established the truth of theism to his satisfaction, Turek next attempts to demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion. He thinks this can be done provided one shows that the answer to four questions — “Does truth exist?”, “Does God exist?”, “Are miracles possible?” and “Is the New Testament historically reliable?” — is yes. And he believes he’s already accomplished the task with regard to the first two. Nevertheless, he summarizes his argument up to this point in the book, which gives him the opportunity to introduce further mistakes. For example, in his defense of objective truth, he makes several false statements, such as that “Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote a five-hundred-page book filled with talk about God to tell us that all talk about God is meaningless.” (Note to Turek: It is not a good idea to present falsehoods whenever making a case for truth.) 

He then moves on to the other two questions. His argument in favor of miracles starts by pointing out that everyone, whether theist or atheist, believes (as a religious blogger whom he quotes put it) “something unbelievable.” And he lists several things on each side to make his point. Among the “incredible things” believed by theists are the virgin birth, resurrection from the dead, Jesus walking on water, angels, and Jonah surviving for three days inside a “great fish.” Among those on the atheist side are “random mutations producing the raw material for new organs,” the multiverse, “speciation by unguided, natural selection,” lacking an immaterial soul, and the existence of alien life forms. I’ll let the reader be the judge of which list actually contains unbelievable things. And yet, Turek complains, “somehow just theists are viewed as unreasonable” for their beliefs. 

All of this shows (what everyone who has read the previous posts in this series should already know) that Turek just doesn’t get it. But it is once he begins making his positive case for the existence of miracles that Turek’s lack of understanding really manifests itself. For, in order to show that there is no problem about God being able to “overpower natural forces” — and thus no problem with the notion of miracles — Turek makes a truly astonishing claim (though it is clear that he has no idea how astonishing it is). He argues that, not just God, but all intelligent agents can “interrupt” the operation of natural laws. The forces of nature, he tells us, can be stopped on their tracks by the actions of a human being — and that, “in fact, we do it all the time.” For instance, if an object is falling to the ground, we can catch it and thus stop the effect of gravity on the object. 

This of course follows from an error in Turek’s reasoning already pointed out last time, that of making a distinction between “natural” and “intelligent” causes. For, in his view, the laws of nature merely tell us “what normally occurs when nature is left to itself” (emphasis added). When intelligent agents get involved, he believes, physics no longer completely applies. In other words, Turek failed to grasp the meaning of the physics he was taught in high school. 

This is all the funnier (or sadder, depending on your perspective) when one realizes that he didn’t have to make any such claims to merely argue that a God who created the laws of nature can alter or interrupt those laws. If there were such a being, of course he could perform miracles. The real question, though, is whether we have any reason for believing in the actual existence of miracles. And in answer to that, Turek says very little. He merely attempts to explain why we never see them these days. The reason, he tells us, is that miracles have to be rare in order to have any kind of impact, and that they were more common during biblical times because people back then needed to be shown signs that they were receiving a new revelation. He also adds that the atheist’s view is much harder to accept, and in fact “takes far too much faith to believe,” because it supposes that “every miracle… in the history of the world has to be false.” Why it should take faith to believe that isn’t explained. 

Turek wraps up his chapter with a defense of the reliability of the New Testament in which he makes many of the usual claims — e.g., that there were eyewitnesses to the events in question, that there are non-Christian sources for those events, and so on. Some of the arguments he presents are reasonable, but at most show that there really was a preacher named Jesus who had some followers and who was the basis for the stories later told about him. There’s nothing unbelievable about something like that (though if you want to read such arguments, I recommend Bart Ehrman over anything by Turek). 

He also makes the common argument that Jesus’s followers had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by making things up. And he adds that anyone who thinks “for more than thirty seconds” about it “will realize how stupid” the claim that they made anything up is. For, he tells us, they simply had no motive for doing so. All it got them was “excommunicated from the synagogue and then beaten, tortured, and killed!” But in that case, how does Turek explain the many other religious preachers at around the time of Jesus who also had followers and who also were strongly disliked by the religious authorities, yet made different claims — claims that are incompatible with those made by the Christians? Obviously, they couldn't all have been telling the truth. And for that matter, what did the Mormons have to gain by following a made-up religion that led to their being run out of town, eventually all the way to Utah? Does this mean we should accept Mormonism? Will Turek convert? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. 

(I had originally planned to cover Turek’s final two chapters in one post, but there was just too much in them. There will therefore be one more entry in this series.) 



[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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STEALING FROM GOD: SCIENCE

7/10/2018

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The idea that the mind is somehow independent of the natural order is, as I’ve previously mentioned, at the root of all theistic thought. In most cases, this is something that appears to be assumed subconsciously. Turek, however, states it explicitly when he claims that there are two types of cause: “natural and nonnatural (i.e., intelligent).” This is already bad enough. After all, why think that minds aren’t natural entities? But what he then does with this nonsensical claim is far worse: he uses it to make a truly absurd argument against methodological naturalism. 

Turek reasons that, since atheists accept methodological naturalism — and thus only believe in natural causes — they have no way of accounting for the existence of anything that is the result of intelligence. After all, intelligence isn’t natural, so how could they? It follows that on the atheist’s view, “geologists would have to conclude that natural forces (not intelligent sculptors) caused the faces on Mt. Rushmore,” and “detectives would have to conclude that Ron [Goldman] and Nicole [Brown Simpson] were not actually murdered, but died by some natural means.” 

He admits that geologists and detectives, as well as archeologists, don’t actually rule out intelligent causes as explanations of phenomena. They realize that the Rosetta Stone wasn’t the result of wind and rain (though how he thinks they can arrive at such a conclusion if they happen to be atheists isn’t explained). Most biologists, on the other hand, do reject intelligent causes, he says. And that, of course, is why they conclude that the obvious design found in living systems wasn’t really designed. 

But if biologists really do reject all intelligent causes, they must believe that the human mind plays no role in the world. They must therefore believe that things like the Empire State Building and the U.S. Constitution were caused by something other than human intelligence — maybe by wind and rain? Turek doesn’t say so, but something like that must follow if we accept his reasoning. It never seems to have occurred to Turek that methodological naturalists actually regard intelligent causes as natural — a very simple point that completely destroys his entire argument. Or could it be that it did occur to him but he wanted to fool his readers into thinking how stupid those like Richard Dawkins must be? 

Turek doesn’t stop there. He goes on to claim that what distinguishes most atheistic scientists from those “open to intelligent causes” is that the former do not accept the principle of the uniformity of nature. This is the principle which states (roughly) that similar causes lead to similar effects. Since we do not see nonintelligent causes inscribing Egyptian hieroglyphs into rock today, “it’s reasonable to assume… they couldn’t have done it in the past.” And since we only see such things today if they are the result of human effort, “we conclude intelligent humans made the Rosetta Stone.” Atheists, however, cannot do this, as he’s already shown. Therefore, they must not accept the principle of uniformity: "scientists should look for the best explanation by using the principle of uniformity — that causes in the past were like those in the present. Scientists open to intelligent causes do that, while most atheistic scientists do not.” 

Turek makes many other crazy claims in this chapter. Among the more amazing is that only those who believe in actual design in nature can accept the field known as biomimetics, which models machines on biological systems (since “we’ve discovered that ‘Nature’ does it much better than we do”). Thus, “being open to design will advance, not hinder, technological progress.” I guess if you don’t believe biological systems were intentionally designed, you just cannot model machines on them — though why that might be is, once again, left unexplained. 

Turek's criticism of science shows, even more than the rest of his book, that he is dealing with concepts he just doesn't have the ability to handle. Parts of it read almost like a satire of creationist thought. He concludes by stating that “science rightly understood can point to our Creator, who has the answers” (emphasis added). But then why don’t religious scientists simply ask the Creator to give them all the answers? Why bother doing science at all? 



Next time: the concluding chapters


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: EVIL

7/2/2018

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In chapter five, Turek repeats some of the points he made on morality. Nonbelievers are being inconsistent, he says, when they complain about evil, since on the atheist view there is no evil. His argument for the latter is simple, and can be restated this way:
 
1. Evil only exists as a lack of something – it is a deficiency of good.
2. So evil only exists if good exists.
3. But good only exists if God exists.
4. Therefore, evil only exists if God does.

I’ve already criticized the third premise a couple of posts back. The other premise this argument depends on is the first one. But this premise Turek simply asserts. Like many theists, he seems to think it’s just obvious. I personally don’t think it is obvious at all — and certainly not any more so than the opposite claim, that good is the lack of evil. 

Having made his case that evil is actually evidence for, rather than against, God, Turek then proceeds to the actual problem of evil. For, even though he maintains that evil cannot count against God’s existence, he does admit that there is still a puzzle as to why a perfectly good and all-powerful being would allow it in the first place — as well as why he would issue what appear to be evil commands, like the slaughter or the Canaanites. 

Unfortunately, Turek’s excuses for Biblical evil are so bad, they're laughable. Among other things, he points out that Yahweh didn’t merely order the deaths of Canaanites, “but also of thousands of Israelites for idolatry.” In other words, the fact that God was willing to have many of his own chosen people slaughtered too shows that he wasn’t as bad as all that! Turek also informs us that “people never go out of existence, they just change locations” and so God is “perfectly just to move you from this life to the next life at any age he chooses.” This, of course, raises the question why murder is wrong. Turek doesn’t address that, however, other than by claiming that we aren’t allowed to “play God.” 

As to the evils in this world, such as disease and natural disasters, Turek argues that “in our fallen state, communing with God and becoming more like Jesus often requires pain… Some people will never lay down their arms and surrender to Christ unless they are first awakened by pain and suffering.” 

Notice the reference to our fallen state. We live in “a fallen, broken world where bad things happen.” And why is that? Because of “a freewill choice of Adam,” of course. This is supposed to get God off the hook: it’s all really our fault. Or Adam’s fault, perhaps. But what this still leaves unexplained is why sin should lead to a “broken world.” That it does so is God’s choice, and fault. So as a solution to the problem of evil, this one fails miserably. (I also wonder why it is Adam’s sin, and not Eve’s, that led to our fallen state. Fundamentalists don’t deny that Eve was every bit as sinful, so they’re not in any way making excuses for her. What they implicitly deny is that her sin counted the way Adam’s did. But this is just sexism. Eve sinned first, but since she’s just a woman, it’s not as important.) 

Toward the end of the chapter, Turek makes the surprising claim that “Christianity has a reasonable explanation for evil and a solution to it. Atheism has neither.” But why should atheism need an explanation (much less a solution) for it if given atheism there is no such thing as evil? Which, after all, was the point Turek made earlier. This echoes the mistake in the previous chapter, where he argued both that according to atheism, nothing is right or wrong, and the killing of mentally handicapped people is right. 


An earlier blog post on the reverse problem of evil:
MORALITY AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

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[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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