08 Jul 2012

How to Amaze Jesus

Religious 62 Comments

I read a familiar gospel passage the other day, but took something away from it that had previously escaped my notice (in bold below):

Mark 6:1-6
New King James Version (NKJV)
Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

6 Then He went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. 2 And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands! 3 Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” So they were offended at Him.

4 But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” 5 Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching.

Normally gospel accounts talk about people marveling at Jesus, not the other way around. And unfortunately, this isn’t a good type of marvel. (You do see the opposite in the famous story of the centurion asking Jesus to heal his servant, where Jesus marvels at his faith.)

Now the reason this resonated so much for me is that when I argue with some of you on these Sunday posts, I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong. The problem here is that we are dealing with the most important, foundational issues of someone’s worldview. It’s one thing if, say, you and I are both Austro-libertarians, and you say you think fractional reserve banking doesn’t cause business cycles but I say maybe it does. We agree on 99% of how to approach the problem, and we just diverge right at the moment when we’re putting the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

In contrast, if I think a loving God created all of the universe, and every bad thing happens because it fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption, and furthermore that we can see God’s fingerprints screaming out from every area of intellectual inquiry…whereas you think that we are statistical quirks in one of an uncountably infinite number of possible universes, that “the real world” consists of atoms in motion and nothing else, that there is no purpose to existence at all, and that things like love, mercy, and the aching for knowledge of the divine are at best useful behaviors that cannot be justified rationally, but at worst vestigial emotional wiring that at one point conferred an evolutionary advantage… Well holy cow, it’s going to be hard for us to have a conversation.

Anyway, back to the passage quoted above: I hope this underscores one of the main points I have made time and again on these Sunday posts. Despite the claims of the “rational, empirical” atheists, when a religious person speaks of “faith,” he does not mean “a willingness to throw one’s reason out the window.”

No, not at all. In the context of the story (which is the only way to judge this, because we’re talking about how religious people use words right now), Jesus had been going around performing all kinds of miracles. So in light of that empirical evidence, it is the height of absurdity for someone to say, “Wait a minute, this guy couldn’t possibly be a big deal. So what if we’ve heard that he healed a bunch of people, or that we’ve seen him give astonishing sermons with our own eyes. I mean, we knew him when he was 5 years old!” What kind of argument is that? It causes one to marvel. Jesus is amazed because He can see that no matter what He does or says, these people absolutely refuse to consider that He might be telling the truth.

Last thing: I know a bunch of you are going to say things like, “This is silly. Jesus never healed anybody. Those are claims in a story. Do you believe in Hercules too Bob?” That’s not the point I’m making here. I’m saying that religious people use “faith” the same way Vader does in that famous scene. The point is, it’s actually quite anti-empirical and “superstitious” for that guy to doubt Vader, in the context of the story that George Lucas is telling. We shouldn’t applaud that “skeptic” for his devotion to the scientific method; instead we should tell him that his pigheadedness and refusal to consider the wealth of evidence staring him in the face, almost got him strangled to death.

62 Responses to “How to Amaze Jesus”

  1. Jonathan M.F. Catalán says:

    But, you (or let’s say Mises or Rothbard) might clash with Krugman on 99% of economics, because he has a very different way of looking at the economy. And, Austrians like to say, “Wow, despite the wealth of evidence against him, how can he be so stubborn?” Well, he just interprets the evidence differently.

  2. Futurity says:

    “In contrast(…) every bad thing happens because it fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption”

    In the beginning God created the universe very good.
    Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
    There was no need for redemption for the world was very good.

    God is not doer of evil, bad things happen to us because of Adam’s sin.
    God does not sin, nor planned the creation to fall. Instead, God gave man freedom to choose. Adam has chosen and we feel consequences of that choice ever day.

    We all sinned in Adam:
    Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned”

    But there is a good news:
    1 Corinthians 15:2 “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

    Therefor every bad thing does not happen because it “fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption”. Bad things happen because of Adam’s sin.

    • Drigan says:

      You seem to be missing the difference between active and passive will. Both of you are correct; God does not actively will “bad things” to happen, but He does allow them. He allows “bad things” because they fit into his plan of mercy and redemption. If He didn’t allow them, then He truly would be a tyrant, but by allowing them, He allows us to have free will.

      If you’re having trouble seeing the difference between active and passive will, simply consider what a parent wants for their children versus what they will allow for their children. A parent *wants* their kid to be the best they can be at everything . . . but they typically allow the child to do things that won’t lead them to this goal.

      I like my four year old to be polite, kind, and I want him to possess self-control . . . I know that taking a nap will lead this direction on a short term basis. He doesn’t want to take a nap, so I may allow him to stay up even though I know the results will be that he becomes whiny, wild, and mean to his siblings. In the long run, staying up fits my plan for him of making choices independently, but it is not what I *want* him to do.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        Great comment, Drigan, you threaded that needle better than I think I’ve ever seen it (word for word). Futurity, would you say that Jesus’ death on the cross was not part of God’s plan? Would you say when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, that God was thinking, “Darn it! That screws up everything!” ?

        • Futurity says:

          @Drigan
          “You seem to be missing the difference between active and passive will. Both of you are correct; God does not actively will “bad things” to happen, but He does allow them”
          No I am not and I agree with you.

          “He allows “bad things” because they fit into his plan of mercy and redemption.”
          This is where I disagree. For you assume that bad things(as Bob wrote EVERY bad thing) ONLY happens because it fits God’s plan of mercy and redemption. I gave you example when that was not the case. Sin of Adam was not such an event. Suggesting that EVERY bad thing happens because of God’s plan of redemption is suggesting that Adam had no free will, therefor God planned that Adam sins, therefor God did something wrong.

          I am writing against false teaching that assumes that man was created in sinful state and man needs redemption, denying Adam’s sin. As I wrote Adam’s sin is critical to the gospel.

          @Bob Murphy
          Sure it was God’s plan, but does not follow that every bad thing is His plan, especially Adam’s sin.
          I think you picked the line “EVERY bad thing happens because it fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption” somewhere, now you know where it came from.
          I simply deny that Adam’s sin was God’s plan.

          Bad things happen to us because God’s judgment upon Adam.

          • Drigan says:

            “Bad things happen to us because God’s judgment upon Adam.”

            I’m not sure that there’s really a dichotomy here; God’s mercy and justice are inseparable. It’s God’s mercy that allowed Adam and Eve to live a life without God’s full benevolence that they had rejected through disobedience. They would learn to understand the consequences of their choice to live without Him in their lives. This mercy allowed Adam and Eve to live their lives with the understanding that they have *meaningful* choices. They *can* in fact reject God.

            Ultimately, if I understand things correctly, Adam and Eve ended up rejecting their decision to disobey God . . . but their disobedience had already been occurred, and it set God’s “backup plan” in motion.

            • Futurity says:

              “God’s mercy and justice are inseparable”
              What you are missing is the fact that not all justice is mercy.
              For example, God has never shown mercy to Satan, yet God judged him.

              Just because God judged someone does not mean he will show him mercy.

              Of course all mercy is just, because God is Holy.

              Justice is a given, because holiness of God demands it.
              Mercy is according to His good will:
              Romans 9:18 “So then he hath mercy on whom he will”

      • Dan Lind says:

        If you’d like to continue to psychoanalyze God and then judge Him in somewhat the same way we’d judge anyone, do you think you need to hold Him accountable for both His passive and active will?

        Your 4 year-old wants to do bad stuff, like stay up past bedtime. You have two choices. 1) Make him do good stuff (go to bed). 2) Let him do bad stuff (stay up).

        Just for fun let’s assume these two propositions.

        1) If You make him do good stuff then if he dies in the near future he’ll be eternally happy.

        2) If You let him do bad stuff then if he dies in the near future he’ll be eternally unhappy.

        Aren’t you faced with a dilemma? You’re a parent. You know first hand the love a parent has for his child. Would you take a chance on your child’s eternal unhappiness?

        Take it a step further and say that YOU’RE the one who created the dilemma. You set up the whole structure that results in either eternal happiness or eternal unhappiness for your child.

        What would that say about you?

        At this point we usually say something like, Well, you can only psychoanalyze God up to a point and then the fact kicks in that He’s really very different from us. If only we had sufficient knowledge or intelligence or some other faculty in which we’re deficient then it would all make sense to us.

        • Drigan says:

          I feel like this is a false dichotomy, was there more to the question than you stated?

          Almost all choices have positive and negative effects, and very few of these effects (if any) involve “Go directly to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.” If you really want to traverse that path, I’ll be happy to go with you, but at the moment I don’t think that’s your intent. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

          On to what I *think* your point was:
          If I force my young child to do something good, then I may be making his future residence in Hell more likely: when the child grows, they will lack the experience of thinking through the consequences of their decisions. This lack of experience is a dangerous thing.

          On the other hand, if I allow him to do bad things, then he’s not doing what he should be doing. I need to learn from this, and give him ways to train up in his deficiencies. Most likely, this process won’t be pleasant for him, but it will make him better in the long run.

          Thus, my *active* will is that my son *chooses* to do what is best, and learns to consider consequences while learning independence, which will show me that the lessons I’ve tried to teach him have taken root. My *passive* will is that my son learns to make his own decisions, from which I will adjust my parenting technique. Clearly one of these encompasses all the goods of the other, and has other good points as well.

          Similarly, I can create a dilemma for my kids without it causing any negative implications about myself; “would you like to do chores with me now and go to the zoo with me later, or play by yourself, now? I’d really like you with me.” These are simply choices. God gives us a similar choice: “Do you want to be obedient children now, doing all that I ask of you, and be close to me; or would you rather spurn Me, and live eternally away from me? I’d really like you to choose to be with me.”

          • Dan Lind says:

            I think you’ve got a pretty good handle on parenting, but…… this is God we’re talking about. His stance in relation to you is very different than yours in relation to your 4 year old.

            To put my point bluntly, in the case of God and His humans it doesn’t matter if He wills passively or actively, if He guides with gentleness or with heavy hand.

            The end result is the same.

            In the long run you either (your words) “(are) obedient children now, doing all that (He) asks of you, and (are) close to (Him), or … you … spurn (Him), and live eternally away from (Him).”

            Put less euphemistically, you’re either gonna be eternally happy or unhappy.

            This is no trivial matter. It’s pretty serious stuff.

            Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a good, loving, decent human being would choose to have a child knowing that the child would be at such awful risk?

            Put another way, and at the risk of sounding like a nutcase, if I believed as I surmise you do I don’t think it would be possible to have normal sex. It would scare the living, well, hell out of me.

  3. Daniel Kuehn says:

    Right, but as you say this is “in the context of the story”, and since none of us are in the story that’s not really relevant to our critiques of faith.

    If I saw miracles, the crucifixion, and the resurrected Christ things would be quite different. I know the Old Testament prophecies decently enough and I know such a thing would be wholly unnatural anyway, and I think it would be very fair to conclude that the rational thing to do would be to join the Christian faith.

    I’d say the same thing of Mohammed and his angel and Joseph Smith and his angels.

    That doesn’t get me, today, any closer to being a practicing Christian than it gets me to being a practicing Muslim or Mormon.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      DK wrote:

      If I saw miracles, the crucifixion, and the resurrected Christ things would be quite different.

      DK, I am not saying this to be mean or whatever, but FYI, I honestly don’t think you would. I think you would still attribute a 13% probability to the proposition that God exists. Landsburg admitted he saw a miracle when he was a little kid, and he “rationally” convinced himself he had been mistaken. I honestly think you would do the same.

      • Ken B says:

        I think highly of Daniel too.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        For example, there are plenty of cases of people “miraculously” being healed, in ways the doctors can’t explain, after somebody prays. You don’t find such anecdotes compelling, because you think science could eventually explain them with no need to invoke “a miracle.”

        • Ken B says:

          Billy Sunday or Jimmy Swaggart ‘healed’ more people this way than Jesus of Nazareth ever did. Swaggart even healed when believers touched his image on the screen.

          It’s ironic that in the same thread where Bob says “I marvel how can they doubt the evidence of his healing powers” he also articulates the logical get-out-of-jail-free card that produces miracle healings in abundance for every Tom, Dick, or Harry.

        • Dan Lind says:

          Maybe Daniel was influenced by a certain economist.

          This economist has used the logical fallacy of confusing correlation and causation to debunk Keynsian error.

          For example, in 2006 LvMI published an article in which our economist does exactly this.

          “Aren’t Deficits another Name for Saving? Nope.”
          http://mises.org/daily/2020

          • Bob Murphy says:

            Dan Lind, I understand exactly the cute point you are trying to make here. Please spell it out, and I will use it too in my next Sunday’s post. (Again, pls limit to 450 words tops, preferably much shorter so my post isn’t too long.)

            • Dan Lind says:

              Be glad to.

              Might take me a day or two to find time to put together something concise and meaningful.

            • Dan Lind says:

              (Copy/pasted from Word. Hope formatting holds up.)

              You asked me to spell out my point and my point boils down to simply this: You invoke a logical fallacy when arguing against some Keynesian but ignore such fallacy when it comes to your religious beliefs. The specific fallacy: deriving causality from correlation.

              Let’s say you were in the room when Jesus moved His lips over Lazarus who then jumped up and wandered around.

              If you say, “This was a miracle,” then no explanation is required except, “God willed it.”

              We’ve got temporal contiguity, a correlation, between Jesus moving His lips and Lazarus jumping up. The cause? Nothing of this world. Twas a miracle.

              A miracle by definition is a thing acting in a way that isn’t in accordance with its nature, in ways that aren’t possible. A miracle is violation of natural law, Laws of Nature, whatever you want to call it. When Bacon says that “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed,” a miracle metaphorically says, “Nonsense!”

              When you hold that a miracle has occurred you’re claiming that the laws of nature have been suspended, violated, that the impossible has happened, that a thing has violated the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction.

              You hold that no matter the future state of human knowledge, no matter what scientists may discover about the world, no matter the scope of logical brainpower brought to bear, that which you deem to be a miracle cannot be understood. This is because the miracle is not knowable. And it’s not knowable because it did not occur according to the nature of the things involved.

              The real question isn’t, “What’s the probability that X was a miracle?”

              The real question is, “Is a miracle possible?”

              If your answer is “yes,” then anything goes, and you ultimately have no grounds whatever for distinguishing between what’s a miracle and what isn’t. You’ll see potential miracles all over the place. Anytime you see a correlation of occurrences you’ve got to allow for the possibility of a miracle, of God’s intervention in natural law.

              If I saw a church group gather and pray that the mid-West’s 115 degree heat wave end and one hour later there’s a snow storm, my first thought would be, “Wow! Isn’t that the coolest thing! I wonder how that happened.” My second thought would be, “Good Lord, these folks are really going to be insufferable now!”

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        It’s not mean, but I think you’re wrong. Right now I have no evidence and that would be the defining evidence. If I could at one time be a practicing Christian because of the way the faith resonated with me emotionally (and even today I think that was genuine), actually seeing a risen savior would certainly do it.

    • Ken B says:

      DK: ” but as you say this is “in the context of the story”, and since none of us are in the story that’s not really relevant to our critiques of faith”

      This is another example of the confusion over contrafactuals Bob’s arguments depend on. We discussed that in the previous religion thread.

      Not just Mohammed or Jos Smith. There were *lots* of charismatic healers in JC’s time in the middle east. And they all built their reputations on this kind of bad reasoning:
      “For example, there are plenty of cases of people “miraculously” being healed, in ways the doctors can’t explain, after somebody prays”

      • Daniel Kuehn says:

        True – and the discussion gets into healers above too. Healing itself wouldn’t convince me someone is a god.

        It may or may not revise my understanding of the way the world looks (depending on the type of healing… if you raised someone from the dead that would make me reevaluate things… if what you did could plausibly have psychological origins, that probably wouldn’t).

        But a resurrection in line with a prophecy of a savior would probably have a slightly different effect than just a healer, I think. As you say, there are lots of healers out there.

  4. Eric Bergemann says:

    I, too, marvel at their unbelief. But I also marvel at the fact that they have no clue how much faith they put in other things. Faith is more a part of many sets of beliefs than people realize. People have faith in our government saving us, despite it’s many failures. Even many atheists have faith.

    If you were to ask an atheist “Do you believe there is no God?”, and they were to answer “yes”, then they are believing in no God in faith. While there is no scientific proof of God, there is no scientific proof in the absence of God. All these shenanigans about trying to disprove God can only, at most, disprove someones interpretation of an idea of what God did, but can never disprove forever that there is no God at all. In order for them to be without faith as an atheist they would have to answer “I don’t know” to the question and then proceed to say something like “I don’t believe in any God yet because I don’t have any proof, but I also have no prove that there isn’t a God.”

    • Egoist says:

      But I also marvel at the fact that they have no clue how much faith they put in other things.

      I don’t put faith any “thing” outside me.

      If you were to ask an atheist “Do you believe there is no God?”, and they were to answer “yes”, then they are believing in no God in faith. While there is no scientific proof of God, there is no scientific proof in the absence of God.

      It is remarkable how many times the same argument refuted countless times is still presented by theists as if they just discovered it as a “Gotcha”.

      You cannot say that atheists are using “faith” to convince themselves that there is no God, on the basis that “there is no scientific proof in the absence of God.”

      Suppose I claimed that a teapot were orbiting the Sun, somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. It would be nonsensical for me to expect others to believe me on the grounds that they could not prove me wrong.

      In order for them to be without faith as an atheist they would have to answer “I don’t know” to the question and then proceed to say something like “I don’t believe in any God yet because I don’t have any proof, but I also have no prove that there isn’t a God.”

      Showing God to be inherently contradictory is sufficient for disproving the existence of God. If I proposed the concept of a “square circle”, then it would be wrong to say that the existence of this concept cannot be either provable or disprovable, on the basis that no scientist has ever shown empirical evidence for any square circles directly, and that no scientist has ever shown empirical evidence of the entire universe that rules out square circles.

      The logician can show they don’t exist by addressing the inherent contradictory nature of them, without collecting data for square circles, and without collecting data for the entire universe that would rule out square circles.

      • Egoist says:

        I mean theists/agnostics.

      • Eric Bergemann says:

        “I don’t put faith any “thing” outside me.”

        You really don’t put any faith in anything outside of you? So, when you go to the fast food restaurant and order your burger, you know without a doubt that they didn’t spit a big loogie in your food or your drink? You know with out a doubt that when you go to the chair, that you have never seen before, that the chair will support your weight and will not break? Do you inspect in great detail and prove without any doubt that the food you eat is safe and that every chair you sit on supports your weight? How do you do that with your soft drinks before drinking them? Do you inspect your cars brake lines every time you get into your car?

        I would say that you have faith that because the restaurant wants to stay in business, and also not get sued, the food will be safe to eat and they will ensure the chair will support your weight. You also have faith that because you hopefully parked the car in a safe area and that no one really wants to kill you, the brake lines in your car are still working.

        “Suppose I claimed that a teapot were orbiting the Sun, somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. It would be nonsensical for me to expect others to believe me on the grounds that they could not prove me wrong.”

        This is true, it would be nonsensical. But because it could not be proven either way, the people who didn’t believe you would be operating on faith that you’re wrong and you would also be operating on faith by claiming the belief. You could say that some college rocket science experiment actually sent a tea cup into space in the attempt to get it to orbit the sun and, without any proof, many people could believe you on faith. If something, however crazy, cannot be proven or dis proven, then any opinion on the matter is going to be on faith.

        Faith: belief that is not based on proof.

        • Egoist@hotmail.com says:

          You really don’t put any faith in anything outside of you?

          That’s right.

          So, when you go to the fast food restaurant and order your burger, you know without a doubt that they didn’t spit a big loogie in your food or your drink?

          I don’t make certain judgments like that, because I know I cannot know such things without observing the process of making the burger from start to finish. What I do when I order a burger at a restaurant is trust the burger maker to not spit on it.

          Trust is not the same thing as faith.

          You know with out a doubt that when you go to the chair, that you have never seen before, that the chair will support your weight and will not break? Do you inspect in great detail and prove without any doubt that the food you eat is safe and that every chair you sit on supports your weight? How do you do that with your soft drinks before drinking them? Do you inspect your cars brake lines every time you get into your car? I would say that you have faith that because the restaurant wants to stay in business, and also not get sued, the food will be safe to eat and they will ensure the chair will support your weight. You also have faith that because you hopefully parked the car in a safe area and that no one really wants to kill you, the brake lines in your car are still working.

          I think you’re conflating trust with faith.

          In none of the scenarios you have suggested, do I make the kinds of certain convictions you are insinuating are implied or necessary in my statement that I put faith in nothing outside me.

          My not putting faith in any of your actions for example does not imply I am claiming to be certain of what you are going to do in or around my presence. You can however build my trust by displaying behavior that I would associate with a particular pattern of actions that I will take into account when anticipating your behavior should I decide to anticipate your behavior.

          “Suppose I claimed that a teapot were orbiting the Sun, somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. It would be nonsensical for me to expect others to believe me on the grounds that they could not prove me wrong.”

          This is true, it would be nonsensical. But because it could not be proven either way, the people who didn’t believe you would be operating on faith that you’re wrong and you would also be operating on faith by claiming the belief.

          OK, now replace the orbiting teapot with a square circle instead.

          Would someone who bases their conviction that there is no orbiting square circle there, on the a priori argument of the impossibility of square circles, would they be operating on faith in making that conclusion?

          You could say that some college rocket science experiment actually sent a tea cup into space in the attempt to get it to orbit the sun and, without any proof, many people could believe you on faith. If something, however crazy, cannot be proven or dis proven, then any opinion on the matter is going to be on faith.

          Faith: belief that is not based on proof.

          What constitutes proof? Are all truths observable? Or can some truths be understood? What about the truths of my uniqueness? Can I observe me as I am? Certainly not. For observations can only ever reveal a part of me. I will never be able to observe my own consciousness for example. It is something I understand for being me. Even if I scanned my brain pattern, such a scan can only be a visible representation of what my brain activity was in the past. It can never SHOW me such things as causality, goal seeking behavior, nor any of the economic laws. At best, they can only ever show me movements of matter and energy.

          Causality, as Hume pointed out, is not observable. It is understood. Understanding is a valid source of certain knowledge for us actors.

          So if you want to talk about proofs of what is true for ME, indeed of all humans, you have to distinguish between theory and history and realize that the validation process for each type of knowledge, are different, and not the same. You have to distinguish between the observer and the observed. Observing me can only ever give you knowledge of my behavior, my movement. Observing me can never give you the knowledge that I am acting. I can be sure I am acting, because I can self-reflect. You can be sure you’re acting, by self-reflecting. I cannot observe you acting, and you cannot observe me acting. You infer that I am acting because you yourself are an actor, and you infer that because I look like an actor, I am acting. If you were not an actor, but you still were able to receive sensory data from me, you could never infer I am an actor.

          As a corollary, the concept of causality is something you infer in reality, on the basis that you are an actor. Action is interfering with the “natural” world to bring about certain desired effects that would not have occurred without the action. This presupposes causality. This is something understood, not observed.

          An actor cannot use the same technique for knowledge acquisition on himself, that he uses on things outside himself. He can however acquire certain knowledge about himself by self-reflective understanding. Not, of course, in total absence of external stimuli, but rather, in external stimuli awakening self-reflective understanding that is not observable by the actor, but is understood a priori.

          —————-

          Take for instance the concept of observation. The validity of observation as a means to knowledge cannot possibly be grounded in observation also, lest we be begging the question, that is, of using the conclusion as a premise for the conclusion itself. The concept of observation is a categorically a priori one. Observing is an action.

          • Eric Bergemann says:

            I have been enjoying our discussion. With bringing up Hume in this discussion would you then conclude that only the actor could then be the one to claim they are operating on faith?

            If I told you then, that I knew God existed and that I didn’t have faith but had experience to conclude that, you would then, along that line of thought, also not be able to label me as having faith. If one were to try and say that I had faith because it hasn’t been proven to them, then I could then say that by others believing in the Big Bang Theory they are operating on faith because it hasn’t been proven to me.

            • Egoist says:

              With bringing up Hume in this discussion would you then conclude that only the actor could then be the one to claim they are operating on faith?

              If there is communication, and it is honest, then others can know whether or not the individual is operating on faith.

              If I told you then, that I knew God existed and that I didn’t have faith but had experience to conclude that, you would then, along that line of thought, also not be able to label me as having faith.

              It would depend on the content of our (honest) communication, specifically, in your explanation, your reasoning, and your evidence.

              If one were to try and say that I had faith because it hasn’t been proven to them, then I could then say that by others believing in the Big Bang Theory they are operating on faith because it hasn’t been proven to me.

              For me the concept of “proof” of an empirical event doesn’t rest on the individual’s mere opinion. When I say proof is grounded in individual action, I mean a common objective ground. So here, “proof” to me is the same as “proof” to you.

              But I also hold that because each individual is unique, there are certain truths the proofs of which have no common objective ground between individuals. For you and I are both more than “actors.” Action is common between us, but I am not you and you are not me. You are more than the common ground you share with me, and I am more than the same common ground I share with you.

              What are these truths? These are the truths that make you unique that nobody else can know because other people are not you. I can know at most only part of you by the fact that you share the attribute “actor”, “human”, and so on, with me. But I cannot know more than that. This part of you is what makes you you, and is manifested in your unique preferences, thoughts, opinions, desires through time. Sure, I can know the logical categories of your behavior, that you will search for gains, that you will incur costs, and so on, but the content itself is a function of your uniqueness.

              Now, since I cannot know the unique part of you (since I can only know the part of you that is common with me), and you cannot know the unique part of me (for the same reason), and since 7 billion individuals cannot know the unique parts of each other, this is part where God resides. God is in my philosophy actually 7 billion Gods, 7 billion unique egos. When you think of God, it is not the same God as what any other person thinks of God. This is because everyone who thinks of God, is connecting God to themselves as a unique individual, for everyone is unique. Or, turning this on its head, God is what I call people’s unique egos, but in understood in a specific way, namely, God is the name involuntary egoists have agreed upon to refer to their unique egos being searched out.

              It’s kind of like people looking for selfish happiness understanding each other and agreeing to call it “happiness” as a universal, despite the fact that each person’s enjoyments are unique. “Oh you have found your own “happiness”? Me too!” They’re not talking about the same happiness in content, they’re using the word “happiness” to refer to their unique enjoyments.

              It’s the same thing, IMO, with God. Theists are not actually talking about the same God. Every person is talking about a different God in the abstract, precisely because the concept of God is a manifestation of the unique ego.

              There are of course similarities between each conceived God, because humans have similarities. Drive for power (omnipotence), drive for knowledge (omniscience), drive for love (benevolence), and so on. Universal attributes among humans manifesting themselves in unique Gods with similar attributes. When I see 300 people in a church, I see 300 unique individuals exalting 300 unique Gods that has similarities with the other unique exalted Gods.

              This is precisely why we see around the world so many different Gods, and not only that, why we see so many different attributes of what people are referring to when they think of “THE God”. There is not universal agreement among Protestant Christians as to what God is truly like, because, of course, they are all talking about unique Gods: their involuntary egos. The same is true for every other religious denomination. There are disagreements because there is no reconciling unique egos through finding more and more common ground, i.e. seeking to obliterate differences.

              —————–

              This urge to obliterate individual uniqueness is universal among all involuntary egoists: Christians, Muslims, etc, to Communists and Fascists, and, now in our age as well, Humanists, Socialists, Libertarians, Statists, Rationalists, Empiricists, etc.

              They do this because they are trying to find their unique egos outside themselves. But because their egos are not there, these poor folks only find diversity, hence they feel “alienated”, hence frustrated.

      • Eric Bergemann says:

        “If I proposed the concept of a “square circle”, then it would be wrong to say that the existence of this concept cannot be either provable or disprovable, on the basis that no scientist has ever shown empirical evidence for any square circles directly, and that no scientist has ever shown empirical evidence of the entire universe that rules out square circles.”

        Are you serious? In 2 dimensional Euclidean geometry the ratios of distances from the center of a square to the outside of the square have been proven for some time (1 up to square root of 2). Since all points in a circle are to be equidistant from the center it has already been proven for quite some time that there is no such thing as a square circle. Or are you talking about some other form of space than Euclidean? Taxicab geometry maybe?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Eric, read his quotation again. Egoist is saying it would be wrong to say that the existence [of a square circle] cannot be provable or disprovable. I.e. he is agreeing with you.

  5. joeftansey says:

    “He can see that no matter what He does or says, these people absolutely refuse to consider that He might be telling the truth.”

    Maybe the people who knew him best knew he was a fraud. Like his disciples…

    “That’s not the point I’m making here. I’m saying that religious people use “faith” the same way Vader does in that famous scene. The point is, it’s actually quite anti-empirical and “superstitious” for that guy to doubt Vader, in the context of the story that George Lucas is telling.”

    Okay, no. That’s not how religious people use “faith”. Most religious people have not personally experienced a miracle like the ones Jesus or Vader performed. The miracles christians cite, if any, are spontaneous boons thought to be “a little too coincidental”.

    I wouldn’t call an elaborate belief system built around a few charitably interpreted flukes “empirical” in any rigorous sense.

    • Daniel Kuehn says:

      “Okay, no. That’s not how religious people use “faith”. Most religious people have not personally experienced a miracle like the ones Jesus or Vader performed.”

      Exactly.

      You can’t argue this, Bob, when Hebrews 11 is the most commonly cited passage on the nature of faith. This isn’t how most Christians think about faith. That doesn’t mean that faith has to be anti-empirical. But it sure isn’t bound by empirical strictures of any sort.

      People triumphantly note the point when Jesus says that the people who have not seen but still believe are even more blessed. Belief in the absence of logic and evidence may not always be anti-empirical but it is definitely a celebrated thing. Some of us think celebrating that sort of thing is odd at best (if it’s a good thing to believe something without any evidence, why Jesus? Why not Odin?) and a dangerous mindset at worst. Credulity is a very risky disposition to have.

      • Daniel Hewitt says:

        DK, reply re. Hebrews 11 is posted below (as it is a longer excerpt) from a book discussing the author’s son’s illness and the father of the sick boy in Mark 9 saying to Jesus “I do believe. Help my unbelief.”

    • Bob Murphy says:

      joeftansey wrote:

      Maybe the people who knew him best knew he was a fraud. Like his disciples…

      Well, again, if we’re going on the New Testament accounts, these are the people who followed Him around, declared Him to be Lord, and (after an initial burst of cowardice) were willing to face death rather than deny He was the Messiah. The one of His closest disciples who betrayed Him, went and killed himself because of the guilt he later felt.

      So yes, I agree that His disciples knew Him best. His neighbor from down the street had no idea who He was.

      • Ken B says:

        ” The one of his closest disciples who betrayed him, went and killed himself because of the guilt he later felt.”

        Hermann Goering?

      • joeftansey says:

        “Well, again, if we’re going on the New Testament accounts, these are the people who followed Him around, declared Him to be Lord, and (after an initial burst of cowardice) were willing to face death rather than deny He was the Messiah.”

        If you believe Jesus is the son of god, selling him out is not cowardly. It is incredibly stupid and shortsighted, but eternal damnation is a pretty serious consequence.

        It is more plausible that Judas just… didn’t really believe in Jesus’ divinity. And we don’t know how many other disciples would have sold him out because Jesus only died once.

        “The one of His closest disciples who betrayed Him, went and killed himself because of the guilt he later felt.”

        Or he exploded spontaneously on his plantation. The bible contains multiple accounts of his death. But you can still feel immensely guilty about betraying someone, even if they aren’t the son of god.

        “So yes, I agree that His disciples knew Him best. His neighbor from down the street had no idea who He was.”

        I think Jesus’ family would know him well, but the OP says even they doubted him. Apparently faith in Jesus is positively correlated with being far away and hearing lots of miracle stories, and negatively correlated with personal acquaintance.

        • Drigan says:

          Alternatively, Judas may have thought Jesus would just escape the way he had done many times before, and he could pocket the silver. I doubt Judas really understood the full consequence of his actions.

          Interestingly, the only Chapter 6 verse 66 in the Bible is where many of Jesus’ disciples cease to believe Jesus’ words followed immediately by Judas’s falls from belief in Christ. (Not coincidentally, the belief that was so unbelievable was the teaching that Jesus could give His Body and Blood as real food . . . a teaching that most Protestants still don’t believe.)

  6. Ken B says:

    There is so much here that needs comment that I will need to leave several comments. First a minor but characteristic thing. Bob concludes “It causes one to marvel. Jesus is amazed because He can see that no matter what He does or says, *these people* absolutely refuse to consider that He might be telling the truth.” By these people Bob means JC’s home-town critics. That is a possible reading of the passage but not, if the English is a good translation, the only or even most natural one. “Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. 6 And He marveled because of their unbelief.” Bob assumes ‘their unbelief’ refers to the continued unbelief of his critics after his actions. Grammatically it refers to the unbelief of the sick whom he healed, and could refer to their antecedent unbelief. It is quite, quite consistent in the healing stories in Mark that *faith* heals. JC insists on ths srepeatedly. So this is not just a sensible reading based on pronouns: it fits Mark generally. Bob admits his reading is startling. Maybe it’s just wrong. Either reading makes some sense. What does not make sense is insisting on either one.

  7. Ken B says:

    RPM: “Now the reason this resonated so much for me is that when I argue with some of you on these Sunday posts, I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong. The problem here is that we are dealing with the most important, foundational issues of someone’s worldview.”

    Now this is ironic. Surely Bob is right. Kind of him to make one of Hitch’s points here: that believers don’t act like they *really* believe. Salvation must, for a believer, dwarf everything else in importance. And salvation depends on correct belief. So believers should figuratively move heaven and earth in their quest to know, to ferret out the truth aout what JC said. So a question Bob: I refuted the story of the woman taken in adultery. What steps have you taken to investigate the issue? When I first arrived on this board I meade points about JC as an apocalyptic prophet, quite unlike the stained glass Jesus. You admitted you did not know enough to refute me. What concrete steps have you taken to determine if or where I erred? Note that your past snappy dismissive comments count *against* you here.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Ken B. wrote:

      So a question Bob: I refuted the story of the woman taken in adultery. What steps have you taken to investigate the issue? When I first arrived on this board I meade points about JC as an apocalyptic prophet, quite unlike the stained glass Jesus. You admitted you did not know enough to refute me. What concrete steps have you taken to determine if or where I erred? Note that your past snappy dismissive comments count *against* you here.

      Congratulations Ken B., your comment here is going to be the subject of next week’s Religion post. If you want to touch it up, feel free, and I’ll quote the revised version. But, please keep it to 450 words.

      • Ken B says:

        450 words??? You have confused me with Egoist.

        • Daniel Hewitt says:

          Ken, you should consider modifying “I refuted the story of the woman taken in adultery”. That smacks of ignorance of the argument for the authenticity of that passage.

          • Ken B says:

            @Daniel Hewett: I am polishing and I did revise that to ‘refuted the provenance. I might make another wording teweak as that still isn’t quite what I want. Plus its awkward.

            I will post the full revision soon.

      • Ken B says:

        I appreciate the offer Bob. Herewith the touched up bit. If you feel I have made any substantive change let me know and we can discuss it. I have tried only to clarify, expand, or improve wording.

        So a question Bob: I refuted the historicity of the story of the woman taken in adultery, showing it does not belong in the Gospel of John.
        I cited several links.
        What steps have you taken to investigate the issue?
        You certainly have not directly addressed the issue on this blog.

        When I first arrived on this board I made points about Jesus of Nazareth as an apocalyptic prophet, quite unlike the stained-glass Jesus.
        In particular I argued that the early sources conflict, that these sources are best seen as representing the beliefs of divergent faith communities rather than as accurate history, and that the ‘stained-glass Jesus’ is a strained attempt to harmonize the synoptics, John, and Paul.
        These are mainstream views of critical biblical scholarship.
        I cited several well-known scholars and provided links to several books.
        You admitted you had not read enough to refute me.
        What concrete steps have you taken to determine if or where I erred?
        In what way, in short, has your behavior here not vindicated Hitch’s insight?
        Note that your past snappy dismissive comments count against you here.

        • Drigan says:

          Where did you do this? I’d like to have a look in my *vast* amount of free time away from my 3.5 kids, job, schooling, and trying to start up a business.

      • Ken B says:

        Why the weeklong wait? Saving up for a 14 minute hate?

        [That was a joke Bob.]

  8. Egoist says:

    I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong. The problem here is that we are dealing with the most important, foundational issues of someone’s worldview.

    This post is just a restatement of Pascal’s wager: If we assume we can’t know for certain what will happen when we die, then there is more to lose with wagering on atheism and more to gain with wagering on theism, so it is rational to become a theist now.

    Voltaire had a famous response to Pascal:

    “The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.”

    To which Pascal replied that his argument was not intended as a proof, but rather was just a necessary pragmatic decision.

    Pascal also said something significant in his response: “Reason is incapable of divining the truth.” Isn’t it a little ironic that while you invoke Pascal, someone who said reason is incapable of divining the truth, you say in the same post that turning on faith is not a turning off of reason? That the very person whose argument you’re relying on, didn’t actually think that reason can reveal truth?

    —————

    Another criticism of Pascal’s wager is one of inconsistent revelations: It is one thing to say we ought to wager that God exists for pragmatic reasons. It is quite another to put the onus on others to choose which particular God and which particular religious doctrine and which particular stories associated with them to believe. They can’t all be right since many contradict each other. The probabilistic foundation behind Pascal’s wager should therefore include all the many religious doctrines and all the many Gods that people have claimed exist through personal revelations. The Christian (and every other theist for that matter) would be compelled to admit that someone will, statistically speaking, choose the “wrong” God and the “wrong” religion. So the wager isn’t all about gains through faith. Thus Pascal’s wager doesn’t actually have the payoff structure he initially assumed.

    In fact, we can go even further with this line of reasoning: In principle, there can be a practically infinite number of different Gods and a practically infinite number of religious doctrines and a practically infinite number of “stories” associated with them, all through personal revelations from people around the world. Assuming there is only one correct set however, on the basis that the universe is unique and must have a unique non-contradictory description, then the probability of choosing the “right” God, the “right” religious doctrine, and the “right” morals implied in the stories associated with them, is statistically not any different from zero.

    So Pascal’s wager reduces to a payoff structure in which the gain is not statistically different from 0.00, and a loss is not statistically different from 1.00. OK then, I’ll choose abstention, so as to avoid foisting myself into a realm of thoughts whose ultimate payoff by becoming a theist statistically carries a negative payoff (loss).

    ———————

    Last thing: I know a bunch of you are going to say things like, “This is silly. Jesus never healed anybody. Those are claims in a story. Do you believe in Hercules too Bob?” That’s not the point I’m making here. I’m saying that religious people use “faith” the same way Vader does in that famous scene. The point is, it’s actually quite anti-empirical and “superstitious” for that guy to doubt Vader, in the context of the story that George Lucas is telling. We shouldn’t applaud that “skeptic” for his devotion to the scientific method; instead we should tell him that his pigheadedness and refusal to consider the wealth of evidence staring him in the face, almost got him strangled to death.

    Oh come on. You’re comparing apples and oranges. If you actually show me someone force choking another, then I’ll concede it would be superstitious and anti-empirical to deny that evidence. But you’re talking as if everyone has already seen such evidence. But where is this “wealth of evidence” you speak of?

    It’s one thing to claim you once saw guy named Vader force choking someone. It’s quite another to insinuate that this empirical information was actually received by the senses of other human beings such that the onus is on them to decide whether to believe their senses or not, such that if they reject your claims, then they are somehow being “superstitious” as against this alleged “wealth of evidence.”

    I see ZERO empirical evidence for God. I don’t see anyone force choking others. I don’t see anyone walking on water. I don’t see anyone doing all these things claimed to have occurred in the bible in some distant past that has gone through translations, amendments, additions, retractions, during the hundreds of years since the events allegedly occurred.

    So when you say that the likely response of “Those are claims in a story. Do you believe in Hercules too Bob?” is not the point, I say yes it IS the point. Where is the evidence of people force choking others and atheists saying “I don’t believe it”?

    I know that theists have their thoughts. Yet I do not know of the grounding of their thoughts in action, such that I as an actor can know whether or not such thoughts represent real phenomena or imaginary phenomena.

    Tell me how having the thought of God, is truth grounded in action, and then you can say that I am being pig headed by denying it. Until then, theists are being pigheaded.

    ———————

    Most important of all, I want to address this statement you made:

    “In contrast, if I think a loving God created all of the universe, and every bad thing happens because it fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption, and furthermore that we can see God’s fingerprints screaming out from every area of intellectual inquiry…whereas you think that we are statistical quirks in one of an uncountably infinite number of possible universes, that “the real world” consists of atoms in motion and nothing else, that there is no purpose to existence at all, and that things like love, mercy, and the aching for knowledge of the divine are at best useful behaviors that cannot be justified rationally, but at worst vestigial emotional wiring that at one point conferred an evolutionary advantage.”

    This passage is incredibly crucial. For it is, in my opinion, “the” motivation for humans becoming involuntary egoists and creating sacred concepts for themselves. Just look at what you perceive the atheist position to be, Murphy.

    You recoil at atheism because there would allegedly be “no purpose to existence at all.” Notice what you are doing when you say that. You are trying to find the purpose of the existence around you. You are trying to get to the back of things. To find the idea there. Of course going about things that way invariably leads to God! God is the pure thought behind things of which you try to find the idea.

    But to be searching means you can never find it. If you believe the answer is outside you, you will never find that answer. If you believe there is a purpose behind the universe around you, you will never find that purpose. If you believe “the truth” is “out there”, then you will never find it.

    The only way to find it then, is to stop searching. Why? Because it’s been you all along. What answer? YOU are the answer. What purpose? YOUR purpose. What truth? YOU are the truth. You’ve been searching for yourself, outside yourself!

    If you ask yourself “What is the purpose of the reality around me”, you are a priori searching for how an idea can subject and enslave you. You are looking for a master to dominate you. You are looking for the extent of your egoist power and to exalt the master. You are looking “out there” for it. You search the heavens and Earth, looking for the Mighty One. Yet you don’t see that YOU are the master of your thoughts all along. God is a creature, because he was created by the creator: YOU.

    The correct question is not “What is the purpose of the universe?”

    The correct question is “What is MY purpose?” You, this tiny speck in a vast ocean of objects. This limited creator. This mortal, transient conscious being. When you ask the question “What is MY purpose?”, then the answer of the universe follows: the universe is yours to enjoy.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Egoist wrote:

      This post is just a restatement of Pascal’s wager: If we assume we can’t know for certain what will happen when we die, then there is more to lose with wagering on atheism and more to gain with wagering on theism, so it is rational to become a theist now.

      Egoist, what could possibly make you say that? Please point out where I said anything remotely like that.

      • Egoist says:

        It’s the whole post really. What made me initially consider that it might be Pascal’s wager is when you said this:

        “Now the reason this resonated so much for me is that when I argue with some of you on these Sunday posts, I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong. The problem here is that we are dealing with the most important, foundational issues of someone’s worldview.”

        I took your statement that the story of Jesus marveling at unbelievers really resonated with you, such that you were reminded of your own (or encouraged to begin your own) marvelling at atheist’s unwillingness to consider “what it would mean if they were wrong”, to possibly being motivated by Pascal’s wager.

        But when you then talked about how you view the implications of not believing, about the way you characterized those implications, of how you understand what it is like to think like an atheist, that was I became convinced that this is post really is motivated by Pascal’s wager. For consider how you interpreted atheism:

        “whereas you think that we are statistical quirks in one of an uncountably infinite number of possible universes, that “the real world” consists of atoms in motion and nothing else, that there is no purpose to existence at all, and that things like love, mercy, and the aching for knowledge of the divine are at best useful behaviors that cannot be justified rationally, but at worst vestigial emotional wiring that at one point conferred an evolutionary advantage”

        As an atheist who marvels quite often at the universe, of how rich and vibrant it really is, I found your characterization of atheism to be way too negative, and thus I considered your antagonism against atheism to be motivated by a particular payoff structure you have associated with the game of “atheism or theism”, in that the payoff of thinking like an atheist has a negative psychic profit associated with it.

        Look at the terms you used: “statistical quirks“, “atoms and nothing else“, “no purpose to existence at all“, that “aching for knowledge of the divine are at best useful and at worst emotional wiring that conferred an evolutionary advantage“, you are clearly believing in your mind that atheism is empty, or at least incomplete; that it is lacking something; that it is sterile, plain, mechanical, without a richness to it, without what the French would say a “Je ne sais quoi.”

        So I view this post as a Pascal wager of this (paraphrased) form of you thinking to yourself:

        “OK Murphy, atheism might be the right position to take, after all, I was one at some point, but just take a look at the outcomes of believing in it. I’ll have to view the universe outside myself as “nothing but” a sterile, dead place that behaves purely mechanically, with the (Egoist says alleged only) implication being that I myself am “nothing but” a statistical anomaly of atoms, in a dreary place of survival of the fittest, where there is no grand “purpose” to everything, and that I am just a center of pleasure and pain, living for my own sake, and then I die. What’s the point? I simply cannot accept atheism, because I would feel so empty! I’d rather live my life believing in God, so as to recognize the concepts of cosmic love, and mercy inherent in physical matter, and for these thoughts to give me meaning to my very real search for “the truth”, in this vast universe of wonder. What’s the worst that can happen if I’m wrong? I’ll die a happy man? OK, I’ll take that bet. For what if I’m right? Ooooh boy, the payoff will be HUGE! How can any atheist possibly not believe? It makes no rational sense. It’s no wonder we can’t have a productive conversation. We’re on opposite sides of the bet to end all bets. ‘I marvel at atheists unwilling to consider what it would mean if they’re wrong’…”

        ———–

        Here is why Egoism is not empty, not sterile, not incomplete, not mechanical, and not…”dead”:

        If I recognize myself as what I am, as owner of the concept of God, and owner the world, then I AM the meaning, the creator, the giver, the thinker, the lover, the mercy giver. I am more than the atoms that make up my body. I am more than the feelings of pleasure and pain. I am more than the attribute “human”, and I am more than the attribute “organic lifeform.”

        Whatever you say expresses me by name, from mechanical set of atoms, to a product of evolution, to God’s child, all of these words can never exhaust me, for I am unique. I am more than every possible name you can ever give me, for words cannot describe a unique entity, as all words imply comparison to other concepts. Uniqueness cannot be expressed in words.

        My uniqueness is what Plotinus was referring to when he invoked the concept of “The One.” He too held “the one” to be “inexpressible”. Yet he did not realize that he was speaking of himself. He, like all Christians whom he influenced, thought it was outside himself, “out there” awaiting to be discovered, awaiting revelation. All his life he looked, which is exactly why he never found it.

        You too will never find it, unless you stop looking at realize it is you all along.

        • Egoist says:

          In other words, as an atheist, you can never actually live in a universe that is “nothing but” atoms and molecules. You never actually live in universe without purpose.

          For you exist, and you are MORE than atoms and molecules. You are the giver of purpose. The purpose “of” the universe is your purpose given for the universe. The universe does not “give you” purpose. You will never find the “ultimate” purpose behind physical objects outside of yourself (which of course includes my body and 7 billion other bodies!). The ultimate purpose is what you determine for the world as it can be used for your enjoyment.

          You might not be able to do much in relation to the size and scope of cosmic activity that you can perceive with your size, but even if you could, there would still be a universe outside yourself to enjoy. Being relatively small in size and power compered to the universe of all objects doesn’t mean anything other than this is the particular limit of your power in relation to the universe of things that have their own power.

          ———-

          Do Christians not: have the thought that they are not the universe, and then make sacred that thought, after which they exalt it, pray to it, to worship it and call it God, and thus gratifying their egoism? Are Christians not doing the same thing ancient tribes did when they made sacred the thought of the power of beasts and of the things in the physical world, like oceans, mountains, floods, tornadoes, and fires? To exalt them, to pray to the power behind them, to worship that power, and in so doing, gratifying their own egos?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          OK Egoist, well, you were simply wrong. I didn’t have anything at all like Pascal’s Wager in mind. Your quotes here show, “This is what you wrote Bob, that made me think it’s what you had in mind,” when I hope even you will agree that there is nothing in what I actually wrote that implies it. You thought it might be there. But, it wasn’t.

          • Ken B says:

            “You thought it might be there. But, it wasn’t.” So since it wasn’t there he shouldn’t cite it?

            Quickly Bob — what’s my comment?

          • Egoist says:

            OK I didn’t mean that you actually had Pascal’s wager in mind when you wrote it. Things like this can be unintentional.

            I am sure people before Pascal thought about these questions in the form of Pascal’s wager before Pascal made his wager.

            Can you explain what you meant by this:

            “I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong.”

            ?

            Why should “what it would mean” matter to atheists? You are addressing this to atheists as if they should be weary of the consequences of being wrong.

            What is the reason that Jesus’ marveling at unbelievers “resonates” with your discussions with atheists on Sundays, so much so that you made a post alluding to the consequences of them being wrong?

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Egoist, by “what it would mean if you were wrong” I’m not saying, “Oh my gosh, your very soul is at stake, guys! Think carefully!”

              No, what I meant was, “If you were wrong, and the Christian God existed, then we would predict to see things like XYZ. And we do see XYZ. So stop citing XYZ as evidence for atheism.”

              • Ken B says:

                The problem is that you want XYZ to cover *everything*. For example, you have often argued that if there IS a god then we cannot know his plan, so anything we see could be part of his plan. In this very post your words suggest that it covers Auschwitz and drone warfare:”In contrast, if I think a loving God created all of the universe, and every bad thing happens because it fits into God’s beautiful plan of mercy and redemption.”
                But you have argued even more broadly for a plenary exemption from logic and reason: anything can be part of the plan of a god who is inscrutable.

                What you mean is “Stop citing ANYTHING as evidence for atheism.”

              • Egoist@hotmail.com says:

                I wasn’t really thinking about “souls being at stake” when I mentioned Pascal, so my bad, because his wager was one of souls being at stake.

                I was rather referring to just the consequences in general of not believing. Of “what it would mean” if atheists were wrong, as if the consequences of not believing should worry atheists in some way.

                what I meant was, “If you were wrong, and the Christian God existed, then we would predict to see things like XYZ. And we do see XYZ. So stop citing XYZ as evidence for atheism.”

                I am having tremendous difficulty parsing “I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong” and how it could mean that, but I get what you are saying now.

                It looks as though “I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what it would mean if you were wrong” just means “I marvel at your unwillingness to believe in God, because if God existed, then all the things you’re looking at which show God does not exist, would be predictable by theists who do believe.”

                Which leads me to asking, how can the bible be a source of making predictions?

                What are these XYZ’s you’re saying both theists and atheists can observe and agree are taking place, but you say they can be, or are, predicted in the Christian faith?

                Why should atheists use the God as cause prediction (assuming you can even show a God as cause prediction), rather than a “natural” phenomenon as cause prediction?

                Who has the better prediction record for the phenomena that occurs? Atheists or Christians? What are the Christian’s predictions anyway? Please don’t say “Everything that takes place is predictable by Christians, because we say God did everything, and everything that takes place, is by God’s doing, hence our record of predicting is 100% accurate. Take that atheists! All the data you think is predictable according to natural laws, is predictable by Christians who have faith.”

                This is why I am having difficulty with “What it would mean if atheists are wrong.” It screams some sort of undesirable consequence of being wrong is being referred to here. Certainly the undesirable consequence of atheists being wrong cannot be merely the state of being wrong, is it? Is that what “it” would mean if they’re wrong? That they’d be wrong?

                Your last response seems to suggest that the “it” in “what it would mean” just refers to “being wrong”:

                “I marvel at your unwillingness to even consider what “being wrong” would mean if you were wrong.”

                Well OK, sure. But woah did you throw me for a loop by saying “Atheists are unwilling to consider what it would mean if they’re wrong”….dun dun duuuuuuun!!!

                I had no idea you meant they’d….be wrong.

                ———–

                Why should atheists be worried about “being wrong” here? Suppose atheists are wrong. That every physical law they are using to predict natural phenomena, were caused by God. OK, and? Where’s this going? If it’s not about any undesirable consequences of being wrong, if the consequences are the same regardless, then why should atheists worry?

                Are you sure you’re not talking about any undesirable consequences of atheists being wrong? If not, then I hope it’s clear why atheists are “unwilling to consider what being wrong would mean”, since for atheists to even consider themselves as wrong in your view, they’d have to become theists!

  9. Daniel Hewitt says:

    We have the idea of what faith must be, and that definition of faith has no room for doubt; no room for questioning. Who can blame us? After all, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, according to Hebrews 11:1. That is the definition of faith in Scripture.

    And yet the people the writer of Hebrews holds up as examples of this kind of faith had questions and doubts. Abraham wondered how God could possibly make a couple so old have a son. Jacob had so little confidence in the promises of God that he tried to physically trap God into blessing him. Joseph was not content to wait on the plan of the Lord but took matters into his own hands to secure his release from prison. And yet these people are commended for their faith.

    What if our definition of faith is wrong? What if we have been putting our faith in our own ability to have faith? What if real faith is not necessarily absent of questions and doubt; what if real faith is more about what we do with doubt than whether we have it?

    I learned that real faith is not necessarily the absence of doubt; it’s about coming to Jesus with what you have. In honesty. Admitting where you fall short. And yet when you come, even though you don’t meet the “requirements,” you acknowledge something about the One you are coming to. You say that He is bigger than your questions. He is bigger than your unbelief. He is bigger than doubt.

    That, friends, is where the gospel enters our prayers. The incredible news regarding faith is that from start to finish, God is in the business of making up for what we lack. And we lack much. In base sense we lack anything that could possibly merit the love of God, and yet in the cross Jesus makes up for what we lack.

    Michael Kelley – Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal

  10. Drigan says:

    “Isn’t it a little ironic that while you invoke Pascal, someone who said reason is incapable of divining the truth, you say in the same post that turning on faith is not a turning off of reason?”

    Not at all. It would be ironic if Bob had been trying to prove that God could be *reached* through logic. Instead, he was simply arguing that God could not be *disproven* through logic. Logic can get you to the point where it’s more reasonable to believe in God than otherwise, but it can’t *prove* God’s existence.

  11. Jacob AG says:

    This post seems to suggest that context matters a great deal, especially with respect to empiricism.

    Would you agree that the context today is very different from what it was 2000 years ago, or however long ago Vader strangled that fellow? Given that context, and the empirical evidence available, do you think Jesus would be amazed by unbelief?

  12. knoxharrington says:

    “5 Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.”

    Does this strike anybody else as odd? “He (Jesus) could do no mighty work there …” seems incongruous with the claims about Jesus divinity and power. Why couldn’t he do mighty work in Nazareth, exactly? Jesus can bring people back from the dead, drive demons into swine, feed the masses, turn water into wine and yet, in his hometown, he can’t perform mighty work (carpentry being ordinary work).

    One possibility is that everyone in Nazareth knew Jesus as an ordinary man with flaws and when he attempted to become a leader – of whatever variety – the people of Nazareth weren’t buying it. This would explain, in part, the unbelief at which Jesus marveled (for no apparent reason).
    __________________________________________

    As with many of Bob’s Sunday posts he takes the Bible as being a true and accurate account of Jesus’ life and foregoes the step of “proving the document up.” I won’t go over this argument again in detail but, briefly, given that the gospels were written some forty years after events depicted how can we know that any of the events transpired as written? Before you pull out the divine inspiration argument remember that there are errors – beyond scrivener’s error – in the gospels which mark their unreliability.

    • Ken B says:

      Indeed. And not only are the gospels late they are prety clearly tendentious in that they are preaching materials used by a particular community of early christians, freighted with the theological beliefs of each community. So each gospel is different in important ways from the others, and from other non-canonical gospels we have. They were only collected into a bible much later, anf folks like Bob just assume they must all be telling the same story.

      In this regard the non-canonicals are interesting. They all pre-date “the new testament”, were all accepted by amny early christians — who might well have had their own martyrs — and yet are soundly rejected by Bob and most modern christians. And the question is, why are standards applied here that are not applied to MMLJ? And the reason seems to be theological: the vision of god and Jesus presented in the canon is more congenial to modern believers.

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