Blog Posts - franz kiekeben

THE WEAKNESS OF CHRISTIAN EXPLANATIONS OF EVIL

7/6/2019

Here are a couple of the “reasonable Christian responses” (as he calls them) that apologist John M. DePoe offers for the existence of natural evils (True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism, ed. Tom Gilson and Carson Weitnauer, pp. 218-219):

(1) There cannot be free will in any meaningful sense unless the world is governed by laws that make it behave in a sufficiently regular manner. These laws, however, “are also the cause of various phenomena, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and diseases.” It follows that one cannot avoid the existence of such natural disasters without eliminating our ability to exercise free will.

(2) Natural evils aren’t intrinsically evil; they are only bad when they harm moral agents. It follows that “if people had not chosen to settle in an area prone to tornado activity or on a fault line, there would be no associated evil event.”

To the second, he adds that God may “permit natural evils in order to preserve the responsibility that comes with free agency.” If he were to put a stop to earthquakes, after all, then those who chose to live on a fault line would no longer be held accountable for their poor choice!

These excuses for evil are, like the majority of those put forward by Christians, so obviously inadequate that they are laughable. A rebuttal shouldn’t even be necessary. But for those who need one, here it is, briefly:

(1) Free will may necessitate the existence of natural regularities, but the existence of natural regularities doesn’t necessitate hurricanes, earthquakes or diseases — or anything else that causes death and suffering.

(2) There is nowhere that people can choose to live that does not carry with it some risk. Sure, some areas are riskier than others. But what about all those people who carefully avoid fault lines, tornado-prone locations, and so on, but get killed by, say, a highly infectious virus? And what about all the people who have settled in dangerous locations which they did not know were dangerous? The inhabitants of Lisbon in 1755 did not even know about fault lines. (In addition, the harms done by disease and natural disasters aren’t limited to moral agents. There are other sentient beings to consider.)

The main question Christians should be asking, however, is why most of these explanations are so bad. That they are is evidence that apologists are defending the indefensible.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

END TIMES PROPHECIES

5/30/2019

Most people realize there have been many failed prophecies regarding the Second Coming and Armageddon. A few are particularly well-known, such as Jesus’ own prediction that the end would come within the lifetime of some of his followers. Here are a few others from among the hundreds of failed attempts to predict that momentous event:

Irenaeus (2nd century), one of the important early Church fathers, said the end would come in the year 500.

Martin of Tours, a well-known 4th century bishop, claimed it would occur before the year 400, and, at the time he wrote, had no doubt that the Antichrist had already been born.

Many, of course, predicted the year 1000 would be it, including Pope Sylvester II, who was undoubtedly surprised that he lived until 1003.

Pope Innocent III (13th century) said it would happen in 1284, exactly 666 years after the founding of the Muslim faith.

Martin Luther said it would occur by 1600.

James Usher — the “earth was created in 4004 BC” guy — said it would be on October 23, 1997. (He had said that the creation was on the evening of October 22.)

Cotton Mather, famous for being one of the principal instigators of the Salem Witch trials, predicted the end would come in 1697, and then revised it twice when his predictions didn’t come through.

Jonathan Edwards, the influential 18th century clergyman, said (along with many others) that the millennium would begin in 2000. (Maybe he thought it had something to do with Y2K?)

For John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, it would begin in 1836.

William Miller, leader of a group known as the Millerites, claimed that the end times would start on March 21, 1844. After that didn’t pan out, he revised it to October 22. When that prediction also surprisingly failed, the Millerites called it the “Great Disappointment”.

One of Miller’s followers, Ellen White, co-founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, explained the great disappointment with her revelation that, actually, what happened was that on that date, Jesus began his work of “investigative judgment” — examining Christians one by one to see who does and who doesn’t merit salvation. Obviously, it’s a big task, as he’s been at it for nearly 175 years. (Though I’m sure he takes Sundays off.)

Wilbur Voliva, famous as the autocratic leader of the early 20th-century flat earth community of Zion, Illinois, after five previous failed predictions, said the Earth would disappear in September of 1935. He also predicted he would live to 120, which would have put his death in 1990. What he planned to do between the earth’s disappearance and the time of his death remains unclear.

Herbert Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God and an influential broadcaster, predicted the end for 1936, then revised it three times, all the way to 1975.

Pat Robertson, on an episode of the 700 Club, predicted the end would come in 1982. Later, he said it would occur on April 29, 2007. More amazingly, according to one of his assistants, he actually thought he might televise Jesus’ appearance in the skies.

Jerry Falwell was so certain he would be raptured that he didn't think there was any reason to get a burial plot. He died in May of 2007.

If a theory is supposed to be confirmed by its ability to make predictions, the “theory” that the end of the world may be deduced from Scripture has been a dismal failure. But that, of course, won’t discourage future prophets.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

ON THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

5/15/2019

In addition to denying the is/ought gap (see my previous post), those who attempt to argue for the existence of a scientific morality often deny the so-called naturalistic fallacy. This is the fallacy of defining moral concepts in non-moral terms, as Sam Harris does when he says that “good” just means “that which increases the overall well-being of conscious creatures.” Other examples of the fallacy include defining the good as happiness, or as what helps promote human flourishing, or (to use a supernaturalistic example) as what God commands. And the reason this is a fallacy is that, no matter what one picks as the definition of “good,” someone can ask whether that thing is actually good without thereby making any kind of mistake.

Harris, as might be expected, specifically denies this: “it makes no sense at all,” he says, “to ask whether maximizing well-being is ‘good’.” Yet at one point in The Moral Landscape, he himself ends up asking this very question! In endnote 50 to the second chapter (p. 210), Harris considers a challenge to his view which asks whether “it would be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of some superbeings.” That is, if by eating us, their gain in well-being was greater than our loss (so that the overall amount of well-being in the universe increased), then wouldn’t it follow that our becoming their dinner would be a good thing? Harris has no alternative but to admit that it would: “Provided that we take the time to really imagine the details (which is not easy), I think the answer is clearly ‘yes’.”

Now, whether you agree with Harris or not (I sure don’t), the larger point is that there is a real question here. And Harris in effect admits as much when he grapples with the issue. He says that we first must “really imagine the details” and then only “thinks” the answer is yes. But if “good” just meant “whatever increases the overall amount of well-being,” then there should be no hesitation about this. Given that the aliens devouring us increases well-being, it would immediately follow that it was good. What could be more obvious? (Compare: if I were to ask you whether a particular man who has never been married is actually a bachelor, you wouldn’t have to “really imagine the details” of his unmarried existence and then answer that, as a result, you think he is a bachelor.) The fact that this thought experiment presents a real challenge to Harris shows that he doesn't think of "good" as synonymous with "increases well-being."

The naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy because moral terms do not mean the same as anything non-moral. That’s just not how moral concepts function. When someone claims that something is good, they do not mean only that it increases well-being (or that it promotes human flourishing, or that it was commanded by God). I also think it’s important to point out that the approach taken by those like Harris and Carrier (as discussed on the previous post) is unnecessary. I suspect that the only reason it ever occurred to them to argue as they do is because of apologists who claim that atheism cannot justify morality. But in order to answer these apologists, one does not need to claim that morality is objective, much less that it can be made scientific.

Moreover, atheists in particular might think twice before arguing against the naturalistic fallacy, for it is closely related to one of the most important arguments used by nonbelievers, the Euthyphro problem. This is the problem raised regarding to the Divine Command Theory, which states that what God commands is by definition good. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask of a divine command theorist whether it would be good for God to, say, command torturing babies. But that’s just another instance of asking whether something that is defined by some as good is actually good.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

“OUGHT” AND “IS” REVISITED

5/3/2019

It’s nearly as predictable as if it were a law of nature: Every few years, someone argues with me online that Hume’s Law (that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”) is wrong. And usually, the challenge comes from an atheist who is convinced that they must set this law aside in order to defend moral realism — and thus answer critics who say that atheism cannot justify morality.

There are two basic points such people should learn about this. First, that Hume’s Law is a simple matter of logic; in the sense Hume was talking about, an “ought” cannot be derived from an “is,” period. Second, that in itself this does not show there are no moral truths. It doesn’t even show that ethical naturalism (the view that there are “natural” — and thus in principle scientifically discoverable — moral truths) is false. Anyone who wishes to maintain that there are moral facts discoverable by science is therefore welcome to attempt to do so some other way, in spite of Hume’s Law.

All that this law does is point out that, if none of the premises in an argument contain the term “ought” (or some equivalent, or something that implies it), then the conclusion cannot meaningfully contain it either. And that’s just a straightforward consequence of the nature of deductive logic: You cannot derive a conclusion that isn’t in some way already contained in the premises. For example, it’s impossible to validly conclude that Socrates is mortal if none of the premises you start with mentions Socrates in any way. Similarly, if none of your premises mentions “oughts” in any way — if they are all “is” statements — then you cannot validly conclude an “ought.” It’s as simple as that. If you want to argue against Hume’s Law, at least understand that you are arguing against the nature of deductive logic itself.

So why do so many people think Hume was wrong? The main reason seems to be that they are unclear what his law is really about. Thus, for example, my recent online challenger argued that what we ought to do is obviously determined by our nature — and thus that oughts are derivable from what in fact is our nature. This is an old argument. Here’s Ayn Rand saying essentially the same thing in her 1963 essay “The Objectivist Ethics”:

“…the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgements is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality… So much for the issue of the relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’.”

But this merely assumes that we ought to value our lives. And that is to already start with a hidden “ought” in the premises. Rand hasn’t derived morality from non-moral facts alone.

Richard Carrier, in “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them)” — published in Loftus’s anthology The End of Christianity, though not endorsed by him — attempts a similar derivation of values from facts. His argument is that it is an objective fact that we desire certain things (e.g., that our cars run well) and also that there are objectively correct and incorrect ways of achieving such desires (e.g., in order for a car to function properly, its oil needs to be changed regularly). “And,” he tells us, “wherever both [of these things] are an empirically demonstrated fact, the imperative they entail is an empirically demonstrated fact.” Thus, that you should change your car’s oil when needed “is factually true independent of human opinion or belief.”

The rather obvious flaw here is that the “ought” in the conclusion only follows if it is the case that you also ought to desire your car to run well — or, once again, if there already is an “ought” in the premises. The mere fact that you do desire it doesn’t cut it. And it’s very easy to show why not. Suppose, for example, that Manson desires to murder a bunch of people, and that in order to do so, he needs to acquire some weapons. Then by the above logic, it is “factually true independent of human opinion or belief” that Manson should acquire weapons. Which means that when the authorities put him in jail (thus taking away his ability to go get guns and knives), they did something factually wrong!

I’m sure Manson would agree. But that certainly doesn't make it true.

(Hume’s Law is often conflated with the naturalistic fallacy, which therefore is also denied by Sam Harris, Richard Carrier, and others. Next time, I’ll point out a reason atheists in particular might want to defend this fallacy.)

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

ON THE EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION

4/11/2019

According to many Christian apologists, we have good evidence for the truth of the resurrection. Two things in particular are usually mentioned: First, that many of the followers of Jesus were willing to risk their lives in order to spread the gospel. And second, that the discovery of the empty tomb was made by women.

That the disciples risked their lives, and in the majority of cases ended up being executed, shows they really believed in Jesus’ resurrection, for who would be willing to take things that far for something they did not believe? That women were the ones who found the empty tomb shows that the story wasn’t made up, since women weren’t trusted as sources of information in those days — and thus, if anyone were making up the story, they would have said it was men who made the discovery.

These arguments are, of course, extremely weak. But rather than criticizing them directly (for that, see for example my book The Truth about God, pp. 68-72), I’d like to pose a question regarding miracle claims in other religions. Let’s take Buddhism and Islam as examples.

Here are some of the claims made about the Buddha:

Immediately after birth, he was able to walk and talk, and in addition, every place he set his foot a lotus flower immediately appeared. Perhaps more amazing, he was able to shoot flames out of one half of his body while water emitted from the other half, then switch halves and repeat. All of which shows, I'm sure we can all agree, that the Buddha was a pretty cool dude. But even these miracles cannot measure up to those of Muhammad.

Some claims made about Muhammad:

The prophet, as everyone knows, flew to Jerusalem on a winged horse (or horse-like animal), then up to heaven and back. Less known is that he could understand the language of animals and that his body did not cast a shadow. Most amazing of all, he once split the moon in two, so that one half was in front of a mountain and the other on the back.

Now, most of these claims are comparable to those made about Jesus, and to the resurrection in particular. My question, then, is this: If you maintain that the above evidence is good enough to show that Jesus rose from the dead, would you accept the same kind of evidence for any of the claims of these other religions? In other words, if it had been women who reported seeing Muhammad flying on a winged horse, or if Buddha’s original followers were willing to die for their belief that lotus flowers bloomed wherever he walked, would that convince you of the truth of those things?

Note that to reply that women didn’t report any of these things, or that followers didn’t die for any of these claims (or did they?) would be beside the point. The question I’m asking has nothing to do with what actually happened. Rather, the question is whether that type of evidence would be sufficient for such claims.

If the “fact” that women discovered the empty tomb, along with the disciples willingness to die for him, is sufficient to show that Jesus came back from the dead, then women reporting Muhammad’s amazing flight, along with his followers willingness to die for that claim, should be sufficient to show that there really once was a flying horse. But would it be?

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

JOHN GRAY’S CRITICISM OF THE NEW ATHEISTS PART 2

3/18/2019

Last time around, I wrote about Gray’s claim that religion isn’t meant as “a theory that tries to explain the universe,” but is instead “an attempt to find meaning in events.” And I pointed out one rather obvious problem with this claim — namely, that many do believe in religion as a way of explaining things. But even if Gray were right about the meaning of religion, there would be a problem with his view.

The way he sees it, religion gives us insights into the human condition. In this, it performs much the same function as certain works of fiction. The myth of the forbidden fruit, for example, teaches us, according to Gray, about the “ambiguous impact of knowledge on human freedom” — which he tells us is more realistic than the myth found in Greek philosophy “that knowledge and goodness are inseparably connected.”

Now, I don’t actually see any ambiguity regarding the value of knowledge in the biblical myth, but leaving that aside, if the story does contain an important lesson, that lesson comes at a cost. For, unlike works of fiction, biblical myths implicitly claim to be authoritative. They aren’t meant merely as the opinion or insights of some human author; instead, they are represented as the final word on such matters. After all, they supposedly come from God. But of course, that claim to be authoritative is a lie.

Even worse, many of these myths contain “lessons” that are morally problematic. The Garden of Eden story doesn't just say something about knowledge; it also implies that an individual should be punished for the crimes of his or her ancestors (all women for what Eve did, all humans for what they both did, and even all snakes for what the one in the tree did).

Those who defend religion as a valuable collection of insights argue that its critics misunderstand its true nature. But the claim that there is something of value in religion should be accompanied by a recognition of what is wrong with it. People like Gray want to represent religious belief as harmless, but in doing so they are watering down its true nature.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

JOHN GRAY’S CRITICISM OF THE NEW ATHEISTS PART 1

3/4/2019

In Seven Types of Atheism, political philosopher John Gray, who’s an atheist himself, takes the so-called new atheists to task for their “notion that religions are erroneous hypotheses.” Treating religion this way, as if it were a kind of “primitive science,” is a mistake, he says. Rather, we must understand it as allegory and myth, as a way of imparting truths about the human condition. “Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.” As evidence, he mentions St. Augustine’s fourth-century view that the Bible need not be taken literally, as well as Philo of Alexandria’s first-century description of Genesis as “an interweaving of symbolic imagery with imagined events.”

Religious apologists often say such things as well. But if that’s what religions are — if they are never meant to be taken at face value — how does that invalidate the new atheists’ criticisms of fundamentalists, who do interpret religion literally? If Genesis is supposed to be just a story, then those who believe the first man was fashioned out of dirt six thousand years ago are wrong in two ways: They are wrong about what their religion is actually saying, and they are wrong about precisely the sort of thing the new atheists criticize them for, namely, their belief that this story is factual. So what is there to complain about in the new atheists’ argument? On this view, Dawkins’ and Harris’ criticisms aren’t wrong, but at worst incomplete.

And in fact, they aren’t even that. Religion is not only (or even mainly) about what sophisticated believers hold. Rather, there are different beliefs, from the most fundamentalist to the most “advanced,” all of which qualify as religious.

Gray and company think the new atheists have a simplistic view of religion, as no more than what fundamentalists say it is. Yet the new atheists do discuss non-fundamentalist views, even if rather briefly. Those like Gray, on the other hand, completely ignore the fundamentalist side. In their attempt to appear more sophisticated than Dawkins and Harris, they imply that religious belief is never about worldly facts. And that’s just not true.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

DID JESUS PREDICT THE RESURRECTION?

1/30/2019

Believers claim that the resurrection not only happened, but did so in accordance with what Jesus taught his followers about himself and his mission. And there are several passages in God’s supposed autobiography that back up this claim. For example, Matthew 16:21 states that Jesus told the disciples he must go to Jerusalem to be killed “and on the third day be raised.” And in 27:63-64, the priests tell Pilate about the prediction, and suggest that the Romans guard the tomb lest someone steal the body to make it look like it came true. Supposedly, then, Jesus’s followers expected the resurrection, and many of his enemies knew about this.

But now imagine that that had indeed been the case. What would have been the result? I think the answer is obvious: There would have been quite a few people hanging around the tomb waiting to see what would happen. Even the disciples would most likely have come out of hiding for a chance to see the wondrous event — the single most important one of their entire lives — especially if they could have done so by blending into the crowd. And Mary and the other women who came to the tomb afterwards would definitely have been there earlier.

Instead, according to the scriptures, no one went to see if he would come out as he supposedly predicted. Not a single person could be bothered to do so.

Why not? And why, when they found the tomb to be empty, were all of them in disbelief? Could it be that the stories of Jesus predicting his coming back to life were made up later? Could it be that some of this stuff isn’t actually true? Shockingly, the answer appears to be yes.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

RELIGION AND MORALITY

1/12/2019

It is often claimed that morality comes from religion — that without the Ten Commandments and such things, we would not know right from wrong. On this view, atheists can be moral, but only because we “borrow” our values from the religious principles that permeate society. Even some who aren’t religious, or aren’t in any sense orthodox about their beliefs, sometimes say such things. Thus, the influential psychologist Jordan Peterson argued not long ago that Sam Harris is “fundamentally” a Christian because “he doesn’t rob banks, doesn’t kill people, doesn’t rape.”

Yet there’s a simple argument that shows morality doesn’t originate in religion: If it did, we wouldn’t find anything in religion to be morally problematic. In other words, if we learned right and wrong from the Bible, then we wouldn’t find any of the moral pronouncements there to be disturbing. The religious wouldn’t struggle with how it could be that God commanded the mass killing of infants, for example. They would simply accept that as yet another instance of God’s perfect justice and goodness.

Now, one possible objection to this argument concerns the fact that the principles one finds in the Bible, at least if taken at face value, are inconsistent with one another. God says, “thou shall not kill”, yet also sometimes commands us to kill. Might this not be the explanation why we find the command to kill disturbing? No. If we truly viewed the Bible as the source of morality, the contradictions would be disturbing only in the sense that they would raise questions regarding what really should be done. We might have a problem figuring out what constitutes an exception to “thou shall not kill”; we wouldn’t be disturbed by the fact that in some cases infants can be killed in mass numbers. Moreover, there would be no reason to consider one commandment as more problematic than its opposite. If we learned morality from the Bible, then after learning of the killing of infants, we might wonder how it could be a good thing for God to command us not to kill!

Perhaps some will say that the great majority of God’s injunctions are of one type (against killing, for example), and that the problematic ones are those that appear to go against the majority. But actually, most of what God commands is rather bad, so if we go by this logic, our reactions should be the exact opposite of what they are. We should be disturbed by the fact that God sometimes commands us to love our neighbor. How could he command such a thing, when it goes against most of what he teaches?

(The Jordan Peterson claim can be seen here, starting at about 22:10.)

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

DOUBT AND THE "EVIL" OF NONBELIEF

12/16/2018

Many believers admit to having doubts. In fact, probably most do. It is so common a phenomenon that whole books have been written about it, and in The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel interviews the author of one of them, Lynn Anderson.

Strobel asks him, “Can a person be a Christian and nevertheless have reservations or doubts?” Anderson’s answer is a definite yes: “where there’s absolutely no doubt, there’s probably no healthy faith,” he tells Strobel, adding that he rejects “the ‘true believer’ mentality — people with bright smiles and glassy eyes” who never have any questions about their religious views. Strobel also mentions other thinkers who claim that “having doubts isn’t evidence of the absence of faith; on the contrary, they consider them to be the very essence of faith itself.” Neither Anderson nor Strobel, then, see religious doubt as a problem.

In another chapter of The Case for Faith, however, Strobel asks Ravi Zacharias how it could possibly be fair for a serial killer like David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz — who like so many former criminals has now “found” Christ — to go to heaven, while someone like Mahatma Gandhi is presumably suffering in hell.

Zacharias’ reply is that “there are worse things than death or murder.” According to Zacharias, “the worst thing is to say to God that you don’t need him.” In other words, those who aren’t followers of Christ are effectively telling God they can do without him, and that’s worse than anything Berkowitz did. (Keep in mind that Berkowitz merely shot and stabbed innocent people at random. Gandhi, on the other hand, shockingly did not believe Jesus was God!)

Strobel approvingly quotes all of this — which means that on his view, nonbelief is worse than mass murder. How, then, can he and others like him have no issue with doubt? If failing to believe is worse than murder — if it is, as Aquinas held, the greatest sin one can commit — then questioning those beliefs should at the very least be a reason for great concern. Presumably, Strobel would view someone who doubted the wrongness of going on a killing spree as a person with a very serious problem. Shouldn’t he think of all believers who have doubts as more worrisome than that?

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]