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STEALING FROM GOD: MORALITY, PART 2

6/7/2018

As expected, Turek criticizes atheists for expressing moral opinions, for on his view that’s inconsistent with atheism. If without God there can be no objective morality, then on what basis do atheists condemn wrongs? Unless, of course, they are once again "stealing from God."

Turek begins his case by pointing out that in the absence of an afterlife, there is no ultimate justice. As Richard Dawkins (who agrees with this part of the argument) put it, “in a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice.” But if there’s no justice, Turek reasons, then neither is there any injustice — so how can Dawkins criticize, say, the actions of pedophile priests?

This, of course, is yet another example of Turek’s poor reasoning. He interprets Dawkins as claiming that the concept of justice has no application, when what Dawkins is in fact saying is that the world is ultimately unjust: We cannot expect good people to be rewarded and evil doers punished. And that has no bearing whatsoever on the issue of moral objectivity.

But supposing one does in fact deny the existence of objective moral principles: Is it inconsistent in that case to approve of certain things and disapprove of others, as Turek and so many others insist? Is it true that on the atheist view, the murder of a child has “no more moral significance than wearing white after Labor Day,” and that as a nonbeliever, “you need to suppress your most basic moral intuitions”? Not at all. That morality is not objective in no way implies that we do not have moral views, or that it is illegitimate to have them. I don’t believe in objective moral principles, but that doesn’t stop me from having opinions as to what should or shouldn’t be done.

The really strange thing about Turek’s overall argument is that, after claiming that on atheism nothing can be right or wrong, he goes on to describe the morality that he believes in fact follows from the Darwinian worldview — which of course is the view held by just about every atheist:

“If you follow the Darwinian principles consistently, you get the kind of moral outworking that [philosopher] James Rachels suggests.”

But if according to atheism there are no moral principles, as Turek maintains, then there cannot be any principles on an atheistic Darwinian perspective. Turek is confused once again. Even worse, he misrepresents Rachels’s views so as to make them look really bad. He quotes the following passage from Rachels' Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism, claiming that the doctrine being discussed is the Darwinian one:

“What are we to say about [certain brain-damaged individuals]? The natural conclusion, according to the doctrine we are considering, would be that their status is that of mere animals. And perhaps we should go on to conclude that they may be used as non-human animals are used — perhaps as laboratory subjects, or as food?”

Turek then asks his readers if they think he is “making this up,” adding: “Who could believe there’s nothing really wrong with such horrible acts? Atheists. [And] not just Richard Dawkins and James Rachels…”

I’m sure Turek’s readers were convinced more than ever of the evils that atheism and Darwin’s theory lead to. And yet Turek is in fact — whether intentionally or not — “making this up”! The doctrine that Rachels is considering in the above passage is not Darwinism at all, but rather “the idea that humans are in a special moral category because they are rational, autonomous agents” — a view that Rachels rejects in part because it leads to the above consequence! And Turek either knew this, in which case he is lying (in a chapter on morality, no less), or he could easily have checked by reading the two preceding pages (184-186) in Rachels’ book, in which case he was negligent (which also carries with it moral culpability).

Near the end of his chapter, Turek mentions that he often asks atheists, “If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?” He insists that to answer “no,” as many do, is entirely unreasonable. But it isn’t. To be a Christian isn’t merely to believe in the truth of its doctrines. After all, the devil and his minions presumably believe in the Jesus story, yet aren't part of the flock. To be a Christian, one also has to live in accordance with its doctrines. It follows that anyone who has moral objections to the religion can’t be a Christian, even if they come to the conclusion that the story is true. Turek, however, is so blinded by his assumption that God is the basis of morality that it never occurs to him that someone might have moral reasons for disagreeing.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: MORALITY, PART 1

6/1/2018

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Continuing with Frank Turek's book, Stealing from God:

What can one say about a chapter informing us that “morality isn’t made of molecules,” and that attempts to stump nonbelievers by asking such questions as: "What does justice weigh?", "What is the chemical composition of courage?", and (my personal favorite) "Did Hitler just have ‘bad’ molecules”? It’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll begin by addressing the underlying argument Turek uses tying morality to God.

Unsurprisingly, Turek maintains that in a godless universe, there can be no objective moral principles. Now, I happen to agree with that — but then I also think that there cannot be objective morality in a universe with a god. God’s got nothing to do with it.

Turek is — again unsurprisingly — also a proponent of the modified divine command theory. This is the new and supposedly improved version introduced as a way to avoid a problem with the older theory. Only it doesn’t.

In the original version, something is good because it conforms to God’s desires. So kindness is good because God desires us to be kind. But that means that if God desired the exact opposite, the exact opposite would be good. If he desired us to kill one another, murder would be right. And a divine command theorist cannot escape this by claiming that God only desires what is good (and thus would never desire murder), for that implies that there is a standard of goodness that is independent of God.

In the modified version, something is good because it conforms to God’s nature. So love and justice are good because God is loving and just. But now the exact same problem arises: If God were hateful, hate would be good. And once again, a divine command theorist cannot escape this by claiming that God’s nature is good (and thus could not be hateful), for that implies that there is a standard of goodness that is independent of God.

Proponents of the view might object that God is necessarily the way he is — so that it is impossible for him to have had a different nature — but that misses the point. (And if that objection worked here, it would work for the original version as well: One could as easily maintain that God couldn’t have desired anything other than what he does desire. So why invent a new theory to avoid that problem?) The reason this misses the point is that it fails to address the underlying question: What makes something good? Is it because it conforms to God’s nature irrespective of what that nature is, or is it because it conforms to God’s good nature? If the former, then the original problem remains. If the latter, then goodness doesn’t depend on God. For in that case, there must be something that makes God’s nature good other that it simply being God’s nature.

We can also understand the problem this way: In order to find out what is good on the modified divine command theory, we must first find out what God’s nature is, and then adjust our behavior accordingly. Now, we may think that we already know what that nature is. But if tomorrow we discover that, actually, God is by nature a liar, not only would we have to regard truth-telling as evil, we would also have to now do the opposite of everything he commands. After all, that stuff about him wanting us to love our neighbor would have been just another one of his deceptions.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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Stealing from God: Intentions and the Laws of Nature

5/23/2018

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So far, we’ve covered causality, reason, and information in Turek’s C.R.I.M.E.S. acronym. But there is another “i” he mentions: intentionality (by which he simply means the characteristic of having intentions, rather than what that term means in the philosophy of mind). Acting intentionally is acting with purpose, or toward some goal. Most of this section of the book, however, is concerned with a more fundamental idea: That there are goals or purposes in all of nature. This is an idea that Turek learned from religious philosopher Edward Feser, who in turn got it from Aquinas. In fact, it’s the basis of Aquinas’s fifth way of proving the existence of God.

It’s easy to find purposes within living things. The organs of animals serve certain purposes for their owners. But what about in the nonliving world? What purposes or goals could possibly be found there? I was initially surprised by Turek’s basis for claiming that even inert matter is “directed toward an end.” The reason he offers is simply that nature behaves in a regular, law-like way:

“Electrons reliably orbit the nucleus of their atom; atoms consistently form certain molecules but not others; and planets follow a precise orbit — they don’t fly off into oblivion or start and stop randomly.”

But what could this possibly have to do with purposes or goals? Turek never says, but in The Last Superstition, Feser explains it this way:

“In each case, the causes don’t simply happen to result in certain effects, but are evidently and inherently directed toward certain specific effects as toward a ‘goal’.”

In other words, the fact that every time water reaches 100 degrees C at sea-level pressure, it begins to boil means that it “aims” at boiling under such conditions. Or so Feser and Aquinas claim. (Feser says that Aristotle also claims this, though I don’t think that’s the case. But I don’t want to get side-tracked here. I merely mention this because the entire argument is based on Aristotle’s concept of a “final cause,” by which Aristotle meant that for which something exists. Thus, the final cause of a hammer is to pound nails, the final cause of the heart is to pump blood, and so on. According to Aristotle, not everything has a final cause, however.)

The problem is that the above is at best a very misleading way of putting it. I don’t know why anyone would want to describe the fact that water always boils under conditions C as water having the “goal” of boiling under conditions C, or “aiming” to boil under such conditions. But if one does so, one can’t then use such a misleading description to conclude that therefore there must be some intention behind it — which is what Aquinas, Feser and Turek proceed to do. For, as Feser further explains:

“…it is impossible for anything to be directed toward an end unless that end exists in an intellect which directs the thing in question toward it. And it follows, therefore, that the system of ends or final causes that make up the physical universe can only exist at all because there is a Supreme Intelligence or intellect outside that universe which directs things toward their ends.”

Aquinas’s argument, then, is basically this: There are causal laws in the physical universe such that identical causes lead to identical effects. This means that someone intends those causes to produce those effects. Therefore, God exists.

And so the whole thing really turns out to involve intentions. But the problem, of course, is that the mere fact that there are causal laws doesn’t lead to this conclusion at all. There is nothing incoherent in the idea that the world just is law-like, so that whenever conditions C are present, effect E occurs. It doesn’t follow that the effects must in that case be “aimed at” by anything, or be the “purpose” of the cause in question. Hence, it doesn’t follow that someone must have aimed them.

And even in those cases where it makes sense to talk of actual purposes existing in the nonconscious realm — such as in the inner workings of organisms — there is no reason to talk of intentions. Nature is capable of producing such organization without anyone having planned it beforehand. Aquinas never heard of Darwin. Feser and Turek, however, have no excuse.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: TUREK’S FLAWED INFORMATION ARGUMENT

5/14/2018

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In chapter three of Stealing from God, Turek asks us to imagine walking along a beach and seeing the words “John loves Mary” scribbled in the sand. We would never think that a crab making random marks on the ground was responsible. And the reason we wouldn’t, he says, is because “John loves Mary” contains information: That’s how we know that someone with a mind was responsible. But, Turek goes on, DNA also contains information. In fact, it contains far more information than “John loves Mary.” Therefore, we should conclude that a mind was responsible for it as well.

There’s just one problem with this argument: The reason it makes no sense to believe that “John loves Mary” might have been scribbled by a crab is not because it contains information. Rather, it’s because it is extremely unlikely at this level of complexity for an accidental pattern to end up matching a given pattern — just as it is extremely unlikely for a shuffled deck of cards to come out in perfect suit order. It is because of this that we can conclude that the scribbles contain information, and not the other way around.

Scribbles in that particular pattern do not necessarily mean what we take them to mean. If, by some amazing coincidence, we saw a crab actually scribbling such a pattern, it wouldn’t be informative — at least not in the same way. We could not conclude, based on such markings, that there is someone named John who loves someone named Mary.

So Turek has it backwards. We don’t start with the fact that there is information, and then conclude that a mind is responsible. Rather, we start from the fact that such a pattern was almost certainly created by something with a mind (as anything else would be extremely unlikely), and then conclude that it therefore contains information.

But, someone might counter, when it comes to DNA, we already know that it contains information. After all, DNA is basically a complex biological “program” — one that, in the words of Bill Gates, is “far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” So doesn’t it follow in this case that a mind must have been responsible?

Not based on Turek’s argument. We may conclude that if a particular pattern was created by a mind, it contains information. But that doesn't mean we can argue in the opposite direction, from the fact that a pattern contains information to the conclusion that it must have been created by a mind. One could, of course, appeal to something else. One might use some version of the argument from design, for example — though that, too, can be refuted. But that’s not Turek’s strategy. Instead, he insists on claiming that atheists would never believe that a pattern like “John loves Mary” could occur naturally because it contains information, and thus are inconsistent when they believe that DNA occurred naturally. And that’s just false.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: REASON, PART 2

5/7/2018

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There’s a lot more to chapter two than the argument we considered last time. Turek raises several additional problems that the materialist supposedly faces, since, as he erroneously believes, “the category of immaterial reality is not available to the atheist.” Much of what he says just shows that he doesn’t have a good grasp of the subject. For instance, after pointing out that practically all the cells that were in our bodies fifteen years ago have since been replaced, he asks, “if the mind and the brain are the same, how could you remember anything earlier than fifteen years ago?” I doubt many materialists will lose any sleep pondering that one. The main issue he addresses, however, is that of the existence of logic itself.

Turek claims that the laws of logic are immaterial and therefore “would not exist if the purely material world of atheism were correct.” Thus, if there are logical laws, there must be a God.

This is a favorite tactic of presuppositionalists. The point is to immediately put a stop to any atheistic argument. If logic depends on God, then any reasoning the atheist uses presupposes that God exists and is therefore self-defeating.

Judging by YouTube, the tactic works on many. It isn’t easy to explain the existence of logic itself, after all, and presuppositionalists use this to their advantage. It’s an easy way to trip-up their opponents.

But of course the idea that it is logically possible for logical laws to not apply is incoherent. What would a world without logical laws be like? Does Turek think that if there were no God, a cat could fail to be a cat, or that two plus two might sometimes equal seven? Just as our physical laws apply to the actual world, logical laws apply to any world there could be. They describe what must be the case no matter what. It makes no sense, therefore, to claim that they are dependent on anything, including God.

The claim that they do depend on God can be understood in two ways. It can either mean that God decides what logical laws will be true, or it can mean that logical laws are part of God’s nature. The first option really makes no sense. Not only is it impossible for principles like the law of identity to fail to apply — God could not exist, or do anything, unless logical laws apply. But the second option makes no sense either if it is meant to imply — as the presuppositionalists believe — that the laws are part only of God’s nature, and not of anything else.

The confusion here is due to thinking that, since the laws of logic aren’t physical, they must be mental — and so must be the properties of some mind. (And, the presuppositionalist adds, because our minds change and don’t always agree, unchanging, objective logic cannot be a property of our minds.) But that’s a bit like arguing that, since justice isn’t blue, it must be some other color.

If logic were a mental property, it would not apply to a world without minds. And that’s simply illogical.

See also:

PRESUPPOSITIONALISM, PART 2 - LOGIC

ON MATT SLICK'S TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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stealing from god: reason, part 1

5/1/2018

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In chapter two, Turek elaborates on a point he initially raises earlier in the book, namely that given atheism, we cannot trust any of our reasoning. In a godless universe, he claims, “we are mere meat machines without free will,” and thus “have no justification to believe anything we think, including any thought that atheism is true.”

What he’s essentially arguing, then, is that the absence of free will is incompatible with reasoning — which means he’s now conflating atheism not just with materialism, but with determinism as well.

At any rate, the idea behind the argument is that reasoning only occurs when we freely accept conclusions. If the conclusions we reach are the result of deterministic laws of cause and effect, then we have no choice but to accept them — and in that case, how can we know that we’ve reached the correct conclusion? As Turek puts it, given atheism, you have “no control over what you are doing or what you are thinking.”

This argument has actually been around for a while, and many people (including many atheists) find it persuasive — as an argument against determinism. But what, exactly, does freely accepting a conclusion have to do with reasoning? Apparently nothing.

Suppose that you are asked to consider the following argument:

All women are mortal; Xanthippe is a woman; therefore, Xanthippe is mortal.

The reasoning here is obviously valid. Does it make any difference whether you “freely” accepted that fact or did so as a result of your brain operating in accordance with causal laws? If so, I fail to see what it is. What makes an instance of reasoning correct has nothing to do with the nature of the thing performing it. Computers and calculators obviously arrive at the correct answer to a problem even though they operate entirely deterministically. And in any case, are you really free to arrive at the conclusion that Xanthippe is mortal — or does the fact that your mind works logically compel you to do so?

I think the underlying reason the above argument convinces so many people has to do with the different ways we naturally view the mind and other things, including the brain. We experience our minds from a first-person point of view, everything else from a third-person point of view. Turek believes that in order to reason, one needs an immaterial mind. The brain, on this view, cannot do so because after all it is made up of parts, and those parts must work together in one way rather than another. This appears inconsistent with how the mind feels to us from the inside. How could there be something underlying our thought processes if our thought processes are free and due only to ourselves?

Note that those like Turek never explain how the immaterial mind manages to do what the brain supposedly can’t. How does it operate? They never say. But there’s a very good reason for that: They don’t have an answer because any answer would raise exactly the same problem that they see with respect to the brain. The “magic” of the mind would in that case disappear.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: CAUSALITY, PART 2

4/24/2018

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The second main point Turek makes in his chapter on causality is that without God, there would be no laws of nature — and therefore no cause and effect:

“Have you ever asked yourself, why are there laws at all?… Why is reality governed by cause and effect? Why are the laws of nature so uniform, precise, and predictable?”

He says that “Either they arose from a preexisting supernatural intelligence or they did not.” (And he adds that “even Lawrence Krauss recognizes this” — which shouldn’t be surprising, given that those are the only two logical possibilities!) And of the two, the first of course appears to him far more likely: “After all, experience tells us that laws always come from lawgivers.”

But of course, experience doesn’t teach any such thing. Experience tells us that legal codes come from lawgivers; it does not tell us that laws of nature do. If we had a different word for natural laws — if they were always called, say, natural principles instead — Turek wouldn’t be making this all-too-common mistake.

He also asks why, given that “all physical things change,” natural laws don’t change — the implication being that materialism cannot explain unchanging laws. But first of all, it’s not necessarily the case that all physical things change. Turek is either counting on the fact that most of his readers will just accept that without really thinking about it, or he himself has not thought about it. The fact that complex entities do change over time does not imply that every one of their components does so as well. Do photons change? Do electrons? Second, and more importantly, laws of nature aren’t “things.” They aren’t physical entities. So even if all physical things did change, that wouldn’t mean the laws would as well.

Turek, like many theists, believes that atheists have a problem on their hands in that they cannot account for the origin of natural laws. Such laws cannot be explained scientifically because that would necessarily mean appealing to further natural laws, which would also have to be explained, thus leading to an infinite regress. The only possibility, therefore, is that God explains them.

However, as with so many other theistic arguments, this is just an example of passing the buck. When God says, “let there be light,” light is created — which means there are laws that apply to God’s actions. But if the existence of natural laws requires an explanation, why doesn’t the existence of divine laws do so as well?

Most theists who become aware of this problem will of course attempt to avoid it by claiming that God is an exception, a necessary being who requires no explanation, and so on. But all they are really doing is introducing the concept of a necessary being (whatever that means) along with baseless claims regarding that being (that it is omnipotent, that it is loving, and so on). The fact is that when it comes to ultimate questions, theists and atheists are in exactly the same boat. Things exist, and they have certain properties. Whether the fundamental nature of things is physical or mental makes no difference: Either way there is something that must be accepted as brute fact. Some theists admit as much. Richard Swinburne, for example, says that “Not everything will have an explanation. But… if we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do so — even if inevitably we cannot explain the existence of that simple being.” (Is There a God?, p. 49.)

We don’t have evidence that God exists. Nor do we have evidence that there is some simple being (even without all of God’s traditional properties) that is the cause of the rest of existence. What we do have clear evidence of is that the physical universe exists — and that it has certain properties rather than others. If there is nothing “deeper” that underlies that fact, then there is no explanation for it. If there is something deeper, we don’t know it yet. And if we do eventually find the “deepest level,” then that will have no explanation.

Swinburne is wrong, but at least he recognizes we’re all in the same boat. Turek and most theists don't even realize that. They are out at sea, yet believe they’re on solid ground.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD: CAUSALITY, PART 1

4/18/2018

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Note: This is my second post on Frank Turek’s book, Stealing from God and the first one on his chapter on causality. Since he covers a lot of ground in this chapter, I’ll only deal with his major points.

As we saw last time, Turek conflates atheism with materialism. He therefore claims that atheists must say everything is physical. This of course includes every cause — and from that it follows either that the cause of the physical universe is itself physical, or that the universe doesn’t have a cause.

The first one can’t be true, however, since there would in that case have to be something physical before there was anything physical. And the second can’t be either, he says, since it makes no sense for the entire universe to just appear causelessly out of nothing. The only option that makes sense is the one atheists reject, namely, that the universe has a non-physical cause.

Moreover, he continues, atheists’ rejection of non-physical causes is self-defeating. Why? Because their own arguments contain non-physical causes. In case you're wondering what the hell he's talking about (and you should be), he explains what he means with the following jaw-dropping claim:

“...there is a causal relationship between the premises and the conclusion [of an argument]. In other words, true premises result in valid conclusions.”

Yes, he actually confuses logical implication with causation. He goes on: “If the law of causality only applied to physical things, then no argument would work because premises and conclusions are not physical things. For any argument to work — including any arguments against God — the law of causality must apply to the immaterial realm because the components of arguments are immaterial.”

But let’s return to the main argument above. Has Turek succeeded in demonstrating that the universe has a non-physical cause? Of course not.

Turek maintains that there are only two options here, either that “no one created something out of nothing, which is the atheist’s view," or that "Someone created something out of nothing, which is the theist’s view.”

But to begin with, it isn’t certain that the universe had a beginning — which it would need to have in order to be created. (It is important to realize that in this context, “universe” means all of reality other than God, if there is a God. That is why the question of a beginning is supposed to be a problem for atheism. Thus, if there is a multiverse, then that is the universe.) Furthermore, even if it did have a beginning, the “atheist’s view” isn’t that the universe was created out of nothing. It is true that some atheists believe that. But that doesn’t make it the view of atheism — nor does it make it right.

According to atheism, the universe is everything that exists, has ever existed, or ever will exist. Thus, unless self-causation is possible, the universe cannot have a cause. Nor can it come from anything else (as there isn’t anything else). The universe just is. And that’s the case whether or not it had a beginning.

Moreover, the same thing applies in the case of the theist’s worldview. The totality of existence (whether that’s just the universe or is God plus the universe) cannot have a cause. It did not come from anything.

But to say it did not come from anything is not to say that it came from nothing, if by the latter one means that it "popped into existence" from a prior state of nothingness, as Turek and many other apologists like to say. The very idea that something came from, or was created out of, nothingness is actually nonsensical, for the very simple reason that nothingness isn’t something — and therefore isn’t something from which anything can come! And note that only in the case of "coming from nothingness" does the universe come into being at all; to say that the universe did not come from anything is to say it simply exists — even if there is a first moment to that existence.

Those like Turek, who confuse the claim that the universe did not come from anything with the claim that it arose out of nothingness, are making the same mistake as the King in Through the Looking Glass, who, when Alice said she saw “nobody on the road,” replied: “I only wish I had such eyes. To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”

For more on the mistake Turek is making here, see:

The Reification of Nothing and Follow-Up to Previous Post

[This is a slightly revised version of a post originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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STEALING FROM GOD?

4/11/2018

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A while back, I was told by a religious critic that I really needed to read Frank Turek’s Stealing from God. Well, I’ve finally accepted the challenge (even if it isn’t much of a challenge) — and thought it might be interesting to write a series of posts as a sort of running commentary on it.

Turek, though he doesn’t come right out and say so, is a presuppositionalist — he believes that, in order to make any meaningful claims, atheists have to appropriate concepts that only make sense if there is a God. That is why we “steal” from God — and why on his view atheism is self-defeating.

But even though presuppositionalism strikes me as rather desperate, I have to admit that the idea behind Turek’s book is pretty clever. In six chapters, he considers six areas in which the atheist supposedly steals from the Christian worldview: causality, reason, information and intentionality, morality, evil, and science. These six form (well, almost) the acronym CRIMES – the crimes against theism.

The problem is that Turek is a very bad judge of the evidence, and that that’s the case is obvious right from the start. In the introduction, he claims that atheists “must make a positive case that only material things exist” — something that would come as a surprise to such atheistic critics of materialism as David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. Worse, he then lists eleven things that, according to atheism, must be “caused by materials and consists only of materials”:

The beginning of the universe
The fine-tuning of the universe
The laws of nature
The laws of logic
The laws of mathematics
Information (the genetic code)
Life
Mind and consciousness
Free will
Objective morality
Evil

The idea that materialists (much less atheists) must claim that all of these things are caused by, and composed out of, matter is so confused that it’s hard to know how to respond. But since we'll be covering these things in greater detail later, for now I’ll just stick to a few simple points.

To begin with, materialists don’t have to accept all of the above as real, and many do not. But if there is no such thing as, for instance, objective morality, then obviously objective morality doesn’t have to be explained.

In the second place, several of the above can in fact be explained in physical terms. The genetic code and life certainly are physical. Presumably, Turek is merely claiming that they cannot have a physical cause. But that, too, is wrong.

Finally, the idea that given materialism, such things as the laws of logic or of mathematics must be caused by, and be made of, matter is so off base, it’s laughable. But that’s a topic for a future post.

So far, not a very good start for Turek’s book.

Next time: Causality.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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BAD ARGUMENTS IN THE BIBLE

4/4/2018

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In The Truth about God, I discussed three kinds of problem in the Bible: its internal inconsistencies, its falsehoods, and its immorality. But bad arguments should perhaps be regarded as a fourth category — smaller than the other three (there aren’t many arguments in scripture), but nevertheless just as problematic. For why would God’s inspired word contain bad logic — especially when the topic is of the highest importance?

Here are three bad arguments, all supposedly from Paul.

1. The resurrection proves that a day of judgment is coming:

In Acts 17:30-31, Paul tells the Athenians that “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead [emphasis added].”

But even supposing the resurrection took place, would that give assurance to all that Jesus was God’s appointee? Would that mean that we are no longer living in times of human ignorance and therefore have no excuse? Obviously not. The resurrection isn’t sufficient; it must also be the case that we all have clear evidence of it. Since we do not, it is simply wrong to claim that the resurrection provided “assurance to all” of anything whatsoever. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Paul himself did not believe in Jesus until the road to Damascus episode. So why didn’t God’s raising Jesus from the dead provide him with the assurance that he later claimed others had?

2. The resurrection proves we all have an afterlife:

This one’s even worse. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul asks, “how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? … If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.”

But of course even if Jesus was raised, that says nothing about the rest of us. In fact, the original idea of the resurrection was to set Jesus apart, as someone who was able to defy death itself — thus supposedly proving he was divine. And most Christians still claim this.

It is true, as Paul also implies, that if no one has been raised from the dead, "then Christ has not been raised." But it doesn’t follow that if Christ was, it is because everyone is. A little bit of Aristotelian logic would have helped Paul’s muddled mind.

3. Nature demonstrates there is a God:

Romans 1:20 declares that “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature… have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So [non-believers] are without excuse…”

This is the design argument, of course, and even though it isn’t quite as bad as the first two, it is still a bad argument — and even many believers admit as much. So once again, why is it in scripture?

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity. All quotations are from the NRSV.]

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