God as Author
I may have blogged about this idea before, but repetition never hurt anybody… At first glance, it seems that if people have free will, then God must not have a plan after all. In other words, you can believe that people choose to do bad things, or you can believe that God willed that they do bad things, but you can’t believe both.
And yet, the Bible seems to indicate that both propositions are true. For the former, it makes little sense for God and the prophets to tell people to repent and turn away from their sinful ways, if you don’t think they have free will.
On the other hand, you have passages like this (Ex 9: 8-12):
8 So the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take for yourselves handfuls of ashes from a furnace, and let Moses scatter it toward the heavens in the sight of Pharaoh. 9 And it will become fine dust in all the land of Egypt, and it will cause boils that break out in sores on man and beast throughout all the land of Egypt.” 10 Then they took ashes from the furnace and stood before Pharaoh, and Moses scattered them toward heaven. And they caused boils that break out in sores on man and beast. 11 And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were on the magicians and on all the Egyptians. 12 But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh; and he did not heed them, just as the LORD had spoken to Moses.
In case the context isn’t clear, Moses and Aaron are demanding that Pharaoh release the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. You would think God would want Pharaoh to do the right thing. Yet sometimes (as the passage above makes clear) we are told that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart; we’re not told that this Pharaoh was just a mean guy.
An atheist can of course just chalk it up to another contradiction in the Bible and move on. But I don’t think it’s a contradiction, and in fact I think anyone who has ever written fiction can understand why.
Suppose I ask you if Professor Moriarty has free will. Your answer will be yes. In contrast, if somebody had been drugged or hypnotized into attacking Sherlock Holmes, then we might say, “That guy wasn’t committing a crime; he was under someone else’s control.”
Those are perfectly sensible things to say, even though Arthur Conan Doyle ultimately planned out everything that Moriarty does. We can say, “Well, within the world of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty has free will.” Right, just as within our world we have free will. The really interesting thing about God’s story–history–is that the Author is Himself one of the characters in the story and communicates with other characters. (As smart as Holmes was, if you were living in one of those stories, and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in a pamphlet containing a message, wouldn’t you heed Doyle’s remarks even more than Holmes’?)
Again, this won’t really resonate with people who have never written fiction, but if you create characters and “get to know them” as the story develops, there really is a sense in which they take on a life of their own. If you have thought out the details beforehand, then you know what “has to happen,” but you also can’t “force” it by making characters do things that are, well, out of character–at least if you want to write good fiction.
When it comes to God’s story, He has invented the most interesting characters ever. And He painstakingly develops the backstory for each one of them, even minor characters that don’t seem to be that important for the major themes. Finally, God’s story is incredibly realistic, obeying an internal consistency that is so astonishing that many of the characters think there is no evidence of an Author.
Three things:
1. Your conjecture is interesting, but unsupported by the text. Why believe it?
2. The Rabbis disagree. You are not reading the text correctly. God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart, as in, he reached into Pharaoh’s mind and forced him to make a certain decision. As in, flipped the “evil” switch in Pharaoh’s head to the “on” position. It should be understood in the simplest fashion of a direct violation of free will. This is the literal, obvious, and correct reading of the passage. No unsupported analogies to modern fiction writing. This is how the passage has been understood for thousands of years.
3. Nowhere in the Old or New Testament does the text express much interest in free will. God violates it happily (the passage you quote is a prime example). Furthermore, even though he often allows choice in the pedantic sense, he threatens to and does kill people who displease him. Or just to amuse himself (see the story of Job). God has no respect for freedom beyond his own and that of the Israelites insofar as they do not violate his sometimes barbaric laws. Trying to reconcile the Bible with the modern (and philosophically vapid) value of free will is futile. You might as well reconcile it with quantum physics–and if you try to do so, you plainly reveal that you’re trying to make the facts fit with your beliefs.
It is an interesting comparison of the Bible to Sherlock Holmes. Especially since Watson qua author openly admits at times to exaggeration, and even glossing over or omitting Holmes’ mistakes.
I don’t need old books to teach me about God.
Study consciousness and you’ll find out more about God than studying the bible.
To pique your interest, there is no evidence that consciousness is a manifestation of whole brain activity (which would be an emergent property, which is logically impossible). And if consciousness was a product of whole brain activity, all actions would be deterministic (meaning we would be devoid of free will).
Clearly if you believe in free will and logic, then one can not believe that consciousness has its origins in biochemical processes.
After you wrap your head around that, go dig up some research on near death experiences.
there is no evidence that consciousness is a manifestation of whole brain activity
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
which would be an emergent property, which is logically impossible
If it’s logically impossible, prove it formally.
.
And if consciousness was a product of whole brain activity, all actions would be deterministic
Nonsense even if you assume brain activity is deterministic.
Clearly if you believe in free will and logic, then one can believe that consciousness has its origins in biochemical processes.
Google is your friend.
Simply asserting that I am wrong does not mean I am wrong, especially when you clearly do not even understand what determinism is.
Michael Suede wrote:
I don’t need old books to teach me about God.
Would you say the same thing about economics?
“Youre one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, desinged and directed by his red right hand.”
I’ve had similar thoughts wrt free will and characters making decisions while an author is making them at the same time. I think it was A Tale of Two Cities that first got me thinking about it.
A nice passage Ifrom another famous detective series,used brilliantly in Brideshead Revisited:
“I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisble line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world,and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread”
A major question that we can ask that may shed some light on free will is this: why did God create us? The only answer is love with love being the action taken towards the improvement of another. C.S. Lewis was pretty explicit in the difference between love and kindness. God is all knowing, all powerful, all good, and if he were in the NFL he would be all pro. There is essentially nothing that he lacks. In God’s perfect existence he cannot love, for nothing needs to be improved. Creating a bunch of robot humans would not give him the necessity for love. It is only in creating a perfect free will that He can love.
A perfect free will allows Him to love. We are not created as all knowing or all powerful. Nevertheless we were created as perfect (in His image). We have two choices. We can choose God or choose not God. It is His influence in our lives that tries to persuade us to choose Him that is love. If we were robots with no free will then God cannot love us as we couldn’t choose therefore we couldn’t choose Him.
God didn’t create us with the intention of winning us back after we choose evil. God created us perfectly therefore the intention was that we would choose him in the first place. That obviously didn’t happen, but His love being perfect and completely selfless is there for the sinners as well. Jesus clarified this in the gospel when He ate with sinners and preached that He did not come to the world for the righteous, but for the sinners. Of course we are all sinners, so by saying that he didn’t come for the righteous can be a little odd as nobody is perfectly righteous. This, to me, emphasizes the fact that we have to choose Him instead of us choosing ourselves. We can’t declare ourselves righteous and be entitled to eternal life, for salvation comes through God. It is through our humility and repentance that we choose God. We have to make that choice. We have to be free for God to love.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10
It is amazing that such a supreme being with every right and justification for striking down all sinners, instead chooses to show grace and mercy to His sheep that He has chosen. I know that, the only reason I love God is because He first loved me. To me, that is a wonderful blessing to know that I am not saved based on some reliance of my will, but rather, the changes He made in me and the new desires and heart that He gave that bloomed a desire for me to love Him.
If you can make this argument about God, then you should have no further trouble understanding why materialism does not imply a deterministic purge of meaning or free will.
You have a good point Daniel, unless I don’t understand Bob’s point.
An alternative to Bob’s embrace of the paradox, is to say that free will is not always and libertine. The vast majority of the time, man has free will, but at certain points in time God chooses to suspend that liberty to accomplish his plans.
Are you an indeterminist? Or a compatibilist? I know you’re a fan of Dennet, but I’m not familiar with his views on metaphysics.
Not familiar enough with those positions to take a claim.
DK can you elaborate?
Simply to say that whether all reality has an author or an underlying mechanism based on material interactions, we’re dealing in both cases with determinism.
However – in that deterministic system we’ve still somehow ended up with wonderfully complex brains that can perceive freedom, choice, attribute meaning, etc.
That is a paradox indeed – no less for the theist than the materialist. Explaining it is hard. But if you can accept free will and meaning in the context of theistic determinism it seems like you should be able to understand free will and meaning in the context of materialistic determinism.
A more negative way of putting it is that skepticism about meaning under materialism is no different than Hitchens’s (misplaced) skepticism about how much meaning or will your life has in a “celestial North Korea”.
DK, I definitely understand why you are saying that, and I agree it is true that my attempted resolution would open the door for other such resolutions. I’m still not sure I think it works for the specific case of someone who is a materialist, but I am admittedly biased (now) against that position, since I abandoned it.
I like Hoppe’s and Roderick Long’s arguments on this subject.
Hoppe:
“In order to assimilate confirming or falsifying experiences – to replace old hypotheses with new ones – one must assumedly be able to learn from experience. Every empiricist is, of course, forced to admit this. Otherwise why engage in empirical research at all? But if one can learn from experience in as yet unknown ways, then one admittedly cannot know at any given time what one will know at a later time and, accordingly, how one will act on the basis of this knowledge. One can only reconstruct the causes of one’s actions after the event, as one can explain one’s knowledge only after one already possesses it. Indeed, no scientific advance could ever alter the fact that one must regard one’s knowledge and actions as unpredictable on the basis of constantly operating causes.”
“One might hold this conception of freedom to be an illusion. And one might well be correct from the point of view of a scientist with cognitive powers substantially superior to any human intelligence, or from the point of view of God. But we are not God, and even if our freedom is illusory from His standpoint and our actions follow a predictable path, for us this is a necessary and unavoidable illusion. We cannot predict in advance, on the basis of our previous states, the future states of our knowledge or the actions manifesting that knowledge. We can only reconstruct them after the event.”
and
“It is simply by virtue of acting and distinguishing between successes and failures that the a priori validity of the principle of causality is established; even if one tried, one could not successfully refute its validity.”
“In so understanding causality as a necessary presupposition of action, it is also immediately implied that its range of applicability must then be delineated a priori from that of the category of teleology. Indeed, both categories are strictly exclusive and complementary. Action presupposes a causally structured observational reality, but the reality of action which we can understand as requiring such structure, is not itself causally structured. Instead, it is a reality that must be categorized teleologically, as purpose-directed, meaningful behavior.”
“In fact, one can neither deny nor undo the view that there are two categorically different realms of phenomena, since such attempts would have to presuppose causally related events qua actions that take place within observational reality, as well as the existence of intentionally rather than causally related phenomena in order to interpret such observational events as meaning to deny something.”
“Neither a causal, nor a teleological monism could be justified without running into an open contradiction: physically stating either position, and claiming to say something meaningful in so doing, the case is in fact made for an indisputable complementarity of both, a realm of causal and teleological phenomena.”
Long:
“In Newcomb’s Problem, the case for choosing both boxes seems rationally decisive, and the case for choosing one box only also seems rationally decisive. Attempts to deny the decisiveness of one or the other are motivated by the assumption that they cannot both be decisive. It seems clear to me that they are both decisive, given the conditions laid down in the Newcomb setup. Hence I follow George Schlesinger in taking Newcomb’s Problem as a pragmatic reductio of those conditions. What Newcomb’s Problem shows is that no one can coherently take herself to be in a Newcomb’s Problem situation (since if she were, she would have to take herself to have decisive reason for mutually incompatible courses of action, which is pragmatically incoherent).”
“The two-boxer will point out, correctly, that the opaque box has in it now, and has had in it for some time, whatever money it has in it. The money isn’t hovering in a halfway state of almost-there-ness like Schrödinger’s Cat; it’s either there or not there, and no choice of mine can make such money magically materialise or vanish. Whether the money is there or not is already settled, and I cannot unsettle it. In other words, I must regard the presence or absence of the money as naturally prior to my choice. But on the other hand, the one-boxer will point out, correctly, that as the conditions have been set up, my choosing the opaque box only is both necessary and sufficient for the money’s being in it, so if I want the money I should choose the opaque box only, like a Calvinist performing good works in order to ensure that he is already one of the Elect. If I can control my choice, and the money’s being there or not tracks my choice, then can I not control whether the money is there? I am choosing the one-box strategy in order to make it the case that the money be there. In other words, I must regard the presence or absence of the money as naturally posterior to my choice. To take myself to be in a Newcomb’s Problem, I must take one and the same fact to be both naturally prior and naturally posterior to my choice. That is why one cannot coherently take oneself to be in such a situation.”
My view is, if there is going to be something in the universe that acquires the attribute of free will, then it is necessary that this thing must come to learn it has free will through introspection. I think the presence of something knowing that reality external to itself is causally structured, fulfills that requirement.
Analogies:
In order for X to know that Y is smooth, X must consider itself to have an attribute of jaggedness, and vice versa.
In order for us to know that reality is causally structured, we must consider ourselves capable of learning this in unpredictable ways, and so we must consider our thoughts, and hence our actions, to be non-causally structured.
I think it’s important to distiguish between free will and autonomy. We are not autonomous in that, we may want to fly like a bird, but we are not able to will such a thing. We have free will in that, our decisions that we make are always based on the cumulative forces of incentives. I always do what I want to do, else it would be impossible for me to do it.
Now, in the case of Pharoah, we cannot say that God worked sin into Pharoah’s heart. That would make him the author of evil and that just won’t do. However, thoughout the bible, God often talks about giving people over to their own sinful lusts and desires and of removing His hand from them. It is my belief that, God’s hardening is his removing of his hand and turning us over to our sinful desires. So that, we freely choose to become more sinful.
There is no doubt that God’ common grace is present everywhere. After all, none of us are as sinful as we COULD be. I mean, even Hitler didn’t kill his own mother. God works in such ways that his hand is upon people, providing them with a certain measure of grace and keeping them from turning completly over to their natural sinful lusts. This is where we realize that, while we have free will, our will is still subordinate to God’s will. Much like a parent and a child. If a child and a parent disagrees, the parent has the authority to make the final judgement. You may set out to kill your neighbor, that is your will, but God may will that your neighbor lives. In such a case, He is free to strike you with a lightning bolt or heart attack the moment you step out the door.
I think the Old Testament is tricky.
I am reading Reed’s, ‘The Controversy of Zion.’ It lays out the case that the Torah is the creation of the Levites, and that the result interweaves the known peaceable, God-for-all leanings of the northern Israeli tribes with the hostile, isolationist, God-only-for-us diktats of Judah (southern tribe). I find the explanation plausible. Rereading the Old Testament, I see the contrast between the two perspectives: Dt 2, 3 (hostile, isolationist Judah) — “At that time we seized all his cities and doomed them all, with theri men, women and children; we left no survivor.” Dt 5, 17 (peaceable Israel) — “You shall not kill.”
I am a practicing Catholic, and have always taken the Old Testatment figuratively, not literally. I have always taken the Old Testament as a subsidiary work, whose purpose is largely to lay the groundwork for Jesus and the New Testament. Looking at present day Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and reading books such as Schafer’s, ‘Jesus in the Talmud’, I am revisiting my (and my church’s) assumption of a harmless, figurative Old Testament.
An atheist can of course just chalk it up to another contradiction in the Bible and move on. But I don’t think it’s a contradiction, and in fact I think anyone who has ever written fiction can understand why.
and
Again, this won’t really resonate with people who have never written fiction, but if you create characters and “get to know them” as the story develops, there really is a sense in which they take on a life of their own.
Did anyone else giggle?
Finally, God’s story is incredibly realistic, obeying an internal consistency that is so astonishing
I truly hope that by “astonishing” you mean astonishing in the sheer number of violations of internal consistency.
GE 1:3-5 On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
GE 1:14-19 The sun (which separates night and day) wasn’t created until the fourth day.
GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.
GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.
GE 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.
GE 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
GE 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.
GE 1:28 God encourages reproduction.
LE 12:1-8 God requires purification rites following childbirth which, in effect, makes childbirth a sin. (Note: The period for purification following the birth of a daughter is twice that for a son.)
GE 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
GE 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.
(Note: That God should be displeased is inconsistent with the concept of omniscience.)
GE 2:4, 4:26, 12:8, 22:14-16, 26:25 God was already known as “the Lord” (Jahveh or Jehovah) much earlier than the time of Moses.
EX 6:2-3 God was first known as “the Lord” (Jahveh or Jehovah) at the time of the Egyptian Bondage, during the life of Moses.
GE 2:17 Adam was to die the very day that he ate the forbidden fruit.
GE 5:5 Adam lived 930 years.
GE 2:15-17, 3:4-6 It is wrong to want to be able to tell good from evil.
HE 5:13-14 It is immature to be unable to tell good from evil.
GE 4:4-5 God prefers Abel’s offering and has no regard for Cain’s.
2CH 19:7, AC 10:34, RO 2:11 God shows no partiality. He treats all alike.
GE 4:9 God asks Cain where his brother Able is.
PR 15:3, JE 16:17, 23:24-25, HE 4:13 God is everywhere. He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from his view.
GE 4:15, DT 32:19-27, IS 34:8 God is a vengeful god.
EX 15:3, IS 42:13, HE 12:29 God is a warrior. God is a consuming fire.
EX 20:5, 34:14, DT 4:24, 5:9, 6:15, 29:20, 32:21 God is a jealous god.
LE 26:7-8, NU 31:17-18, DT 20:16-17, JS 10:40, JG 14:19, EZ 9:5-7 The Spirit of God is (sometimes) murder and killing.
NU 25:3-4, DT 6:15, 9:7-8, 29:20, 32:21, PS 7:11, 78:49, JE 4:8, 17:4, 32:30-31, ZP 2:2 God is angry. His anger is sometimes fierce.
2SA 22:7-8 (KJV) “I called to the Lord; … he heard my voice; … The earth trembled and quaked, … because he was angry. Smoke came from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it.”
EZ 6:12, NA 1:2, 6 God is jealous and furious. He reserves wrath for, and takes revenge on, his enemies. “… who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and rocks are thrown down by him.”
2CO 13:11, 14, 1JN 4:8, 16 God is love.
GA 5:22-23 The fruit of the Spirit of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
GE 4:16 Cain went away (or out) from the presence of the Lord.
JE 23:23-24 A man cannot hide from God. God fills heaven and earth.
GE 6:4 There were Nephilim (giants) before the Flood.
GE 7:21 All creatures other than Noah and his clan were annihilated by the Flood.
NU 13:33 There were Nephilim after the Flood.
GE 6:6. EX 32:14, NU 14:20, 1SA 15:35, 2SA 24:16 God does change his mind.
NU 23:19-20, 1SA 15:29, JA 1:17 God does not change his mind.
GE 6:19-22, 7:8-9, 7:14-16 Two of each kind are to be taken, and are taken, aboard Noah’s Ark.
GE 7:2-5 Seven pairs of some kinds are to be taken (and are taken) aboard the Ark.
GE 7:1 Noah was righteous.
JB 1:1,8, JB 2:3 Job was righteous.
LK 1:6 Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous.
JA 5:16 Some men are righteous, (which makes their prayers effective).
1JN 3:6-9 Christians become righteous (or else they are not really Christians).
RO 3:10, 3:23, 1JN 1:8-10 No one was or is righteous.
GE 7:7 Noah and his clan enter the Ark.
GE 7:13 They enter the Ark (again?).
GE 11:7-9 God sows discord.
PR 6:16-19 God hates anyone who sows discord.
GE 11:9 At Babel, the Lord confused the language of the whole world.
1CO 14:33 Paul says that God is not the author of confusion.
GE 11:12 Arpachshad [Arphaxad] was the father of Shelah.
LK 3:35-36 Cainan was the father of Shelah. Arpachshad was the grandfather of Shelah.
GE 11:26 Terah was 70 years old when his son Abram was born.
GE 11:32 Terah was 205 years old when he died (making Abram 135 at the time).
GE 12:4, AC 7:4 Abram was 75 when he left Haran. This was after Terah died. Thus, Terah could have been no more than 145 when he died; or Abram was only 75 years old after he had lived 135 years.
GE 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 32:30, EX 3:16, 6:2-3, 24:9-11, 33:11, NU 12:7-8, 14:14, JB 42:5, AM 7:7-8, 9:1 God is seen.
EX 33:20, JN 1:18, 1JN 4:12 God is not seen. No one can see God’s face and live. No one has ever seen him.
GE 10:5, 20, 31 There were many languages before the Tower of Babel.
GE 11:1 There was only one language before the Tower of Babel.
GE 15:9, EX 20:24, 29:10-42, LE 1:1-7:38, NU 28:1-29:40, God details sacrificial offerings.
JE 7:21-22 God says he did no such thing.
GE 16:15, 21:1-3, GA 4:22 Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac.
HE 11:17 Abraham had only one son.
GE 17:1, 35:11, 1CH 29:11-12, LK 1:37 God is omnipotent. Nothing is impossible with (or for) God.
JG 1:19 Although God was with Judah, together they could not defeat the plainsmen because the latter had iron chariots.
GE 17:7, 10-11 The covenant of circumcision is to be everlasting.
GA 6:15 It is of no consequence.
GE 17:8 God promises Abraham the land of Canaan as an “everlasting possession.”
GE 25:8, AC 7:2-5, HE 11:13 Abraham died with the promise unfulfilled.
GE 17:15-16, 20:11-12, 22:17 Abraham and his half sister, Sarai, are married and receive God’s blessings.
LE 20:17, DT 27:20-23 Incest is wrong.
GE 18:20-21 God decides to “go down” to see what is going on.
PR 15:3, JE 16:17, 23:24-25, HE 4:13 God is everywhere. He sees everything. Nothing is hidden from his view.
GE 19:30-38 While he is drunk, Lot’s two daughters “lie with him,” become pregnant, and give birth to his offspring.
2PE 2:7 Lot was “just” and “righteous.”
GE 22:1-12, DT 8:2 God tempts (tests) Abraham and Moses.
JG 2:22 God himself says that he does test (tempt).
1CO 10:13 Paul says that God controls the extent of our temptations.
JA 1:13 God tests (tempts) no one.
GE 27:28 “May God give you … an abundance of grain and new wine.”
DT 7:13 If they follow his commandments, God will bless the fruit of their wine.
PS 104:15 God gives us wine to gladden the heart.
JE 13:12 “… every bottle shall be filled with wine.”
JN 2:1-11 According to the author of John, Jesus’ first miracle was turning water to wine.
RO 14:21 It is good to refrain from drinking wine.
GE 35:10 God says Jacob is to be called Jacob no longer; henceforth his name is Israel.
GE 46:2 At a later time, God himself uses the name Jacob.
GE 36:11 The sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam, and Kenaz.
GE 36:15-16 Teman, Omar, Zepho, Kenaz.
1CH 1:35-36 Teman, Omar, Zephi, Gatam, Kenaz, Timna, and Amalek.
GE 49:2-28 The fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel are: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin.
RE 7:4-8 (Leaves out the tribe of Dan, but adds Manasseh.)
GE 50:13 Jacob was buried in a cave at Machpelah bought from Ephron the Hittite.
AC 7:15-16 He was buried in the sepulchre at Shechem, bought from the sons of Hamor.
These are contradictions in the just THE FIRST BOOK of the bible alone. There are 65 other books that have a number of contradictions on par with Genesis. Listing them all would make a list so large it could be a new religious text in itself. We can call it “Contradictionity”.
Praise do not praise the almighty non-almighty!
I bet you think you really hit it out of the park with that one. Unfortunately the only thing you have shown is you 1) don’t know how to read the Bible and 2) don’t even understand it at a basic level.
It’s amazing that you believe that your two part cookie cutter response is in any way a response to my post. Clearly you haven’t read the contradictions above and spent time and energy reconciling them.
No, it’s “you don’t understand the bible!” to anyone who points them out.
You’re right about one thing though. I don’t know how to believe in contradictory passages and yet come out with a single non-contradictory conclusion that is “what the bible tells us.”
Only religious minded people can find a way to not intellectually reject such things.
Are you going to enlighten us all as to how to read the bible and understand it on even a basic level? Or is it just antagonize, hand wave, and move on to the next person who calls out warped texts?
Catholics use the historical critical method for reading and understanding the Bible. It contains five methods for critique. Also the Bible isn’t meant to be a historical documentation of how things transpired. The bible isn’t a history book.
What the Bible is changes over time. One day it might become just another moralizing fairy tale.
The Bible is a collection of books. What it is hasn’t changed over time. You can find people interpreting numerous books as allegorical passages from the beginning of the Church, and throughout it. The view that all books of the Bible of literal and historical books is not what people believed for most of history. Biblical literalism is perhaps one of the few heresies that basically only blossomed in modern day.
What it is hasn’t changed over time.
Actually the documents that make up the bible have changed over time.
See Bart Ehrman’s book “Misquoting Jesus”
Yes, one must treat a contradictory text as something other than a contradictory text if one is going to accept it.
The bible is not a history book. It is the inspired word of God. There are songs, poems, and accounts from all different perspectives and many different time periods. It is written in many different styles. It’s many passages are included to highlight many different points and perspectives. Simply stating that you know of several passages that contradict doesn’t make any of the passages illegitimate. In order to truly understand the meaning of each passage you have to study it with in depth criticism.
What message was the author trying to convey? What time period was the passage written in? What style was the author writing in? What was happening at the time of the writing? What was the author’s current state of affairs? These are just some of the questions that could be asked. If you could answer all of the questions that could be asked about each passage you fill find that God’s message does not contradict.
To say that you know how to read and understand any book does not mean that you know how to read and understand the Bible. The Bible is not a history book, and treating it as such will yield no meaningful results, nor will it make you a Biblical expert.
Simply stating that you know of several passages that contradict doesn’t make any of the passages illegitimate.
Actually it does. Reality, the standard of legitimacy, is not contradictory.
Contradictions means falsehoods are being presented.
If you could answer all of the questions that could be asked about each passage you fill find that God’s message does not contradict.
You mean make a bunch of stuff up in my mind while ignoring the contradictions? Sorry, I refuse to do that.
The Bible is not a history book, and treating it as such will yield no meaningful results, nor will it make you a Biblical expert.
Untrue. The bible is a history book, since every bible believer, Murphy included, believes that the events in the bible happened.
RobertH, it’s not nice to pick on the mentally retarded!
I hope I’m not the only person who LOL’d at this comment.
Major, I tried to send a message of support to your Hotmail account listed elsewhere on Bob’s blog, but it was returned as undeliverable. Do you have another address where you would willing to receive e-mail?
Bob, I am sorry for fostering any unnecessary drama on your blog. I have not commented here before, largely because I do not see the value of engaging with mean-spirited commenters. Gene’s comment above is so despicable and distasteful that today I found it necessary to respond in some fashion. As someone who has labeled myself with such socially deviant terms as ‘anarchist,’ ‘atheist,’ and ‘Objectivist,’ political correctness is not something I consider a virtue. Still, Gene’s remarks are offensive to anyone who values human dignity.
Gene, in your recent comment, you speak of Major_Freedom as though he is not a person but some object that can’t hear you. You say he is retarded, which is ostensibly some kind of fault or flaw. You implicitly mock political correctness, disregarding any value of social graces and kindness to those who truly are mentally handicapped. And you do all of this while considering yourself an “intellectual” elite.
I am a college instructor, and one of my goals is to encourage my students to retain their joy, their passion for life, and their spirit– by affirming that knowledge is possible, that philosophy is not a parlor game, that words have meanings, and that the mind is capable and competent of understanding reality and producing a beautiful world. I consider you and your ilk the destroyers of the world because you seek to destroy people’s minds and spirits; it is difficult to be exposed to your kind without becoming similarly cynical, mean-spirited, and life-hating. I am glad there are a few of us bright flames left in the world to counteract your discouraging, crippling cynicism.
Major and others like you, it is impressive that you are able to read those sorts of comments without experiencing the emotional revulsion I feel from thinking of how unhappy and bitter someone must be to say (or event think) such things. Still, I wish for you to stop wasting your valuable time on those who do not appreciate your efforts and insights. You are better than that.
(Okay, Bob, carry on. I won’t comment again.)
Thanks for your considerate and MATURE words, Carrie.
Yes, Callahan is one of the most contemptible and immature posters on this blog, indeed the entire blogosphere.. I too felt an incredible revulsion towards his presence. I got it off my chest a while back, after Callahan called for me to be tortured to death, and I have since written him off as a crazy person who should not be taken seriously.
I treat him now as a sad and pathetic sideshow who I don’t get upset at.
You said:
“I consider you and your ilk the destroyers of the world because you seek to destroy people’s minds and spirits”
That is exactly what I think about people like him too.
Gene, what a puerile response. Grow up and actually try to behave like the intellectual you *think* you are.
You sound mad about something.
How clever!
How cute!
Awww.
Yeah Gene, what’s up with that comment? (a) it’s rude to MF and (b) there are actually mentally retarded people, and if one of their relatives or friends read that, that would be upsetting to them too.
“it’s rude to MF”
Some people play in the dirt and play the victim when the other side plays dirty…
(b) seems more or less right on the money though.
Genesis uses symbolic language and it won’t make sense if you interpret it literally.
I do not have the time to address ALL of these, but just to show from the start how these are simply oversimplifications, failures to read, and misunderstandings:
GE 1:3-5 On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
GE 1:14-19 The sun (which separates night and day) wasn’t created until the fourth day.
You make the assumption that the light necessarily is the same thing as the Sun, Moon, and Stars. This created light could have been any form that God desired. No contradiction
GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.
Nope. Gen 2 simply states that no brush or small plant had sprung up yet. Why would it bother saying small plant unless larger plants existed already. No contradiction
GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.
Notice, Gen 2:19 said the birds HAD been formed, meaning they previously already existed. At this point, he simply brought them to Adam. No contradiction
GE 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
GE 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.
Again, same as above. They HAD been formed already. No contradiction
GE 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
GE 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.
Gen 1 does not imply that man and women were created at EXACTLY the same moment. Every creation account simply refers to things being made in the same day, not necessarily at the same time. It is perfectly fine for God to decree that both man and women to be made on the same day, make man 1st, allow man to realize he needs companionship, and then create woman. No contradiction
GE 1:28 God encourages reproduction.
LE 12:1-8 God requires purification rites following childbirth which, in effect, makes childbirth a sin. (Note: The period for purification following the birth of a daughter is twice that for a son.)
This purification right has nothing to do with actual reproduction itself. Sex within marriage is honoring to God. However, the purification rites are necessary because of the sin nature that is passed down from Adam and Eve’s first sin. No contradiction
GE 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
GE 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.
(Note: That God should be displeased is inconsistent with the concept of omniscience.)
Your football team, the Mighty Blowhards, are winning their current match, you are pleased with them. You know they don’t have a bat’s chance in hell of actually making it to the Superbowl, yet you still get displeased when they lose future matches. But you are pleased with their current state. No contradiction
You make the assumption that the light necessarily is the same thing as the Sun, Moon, and Stars. This created light could have been any form that God desired. No contradiction
You make the assumption that the ancients had any conception of light other than the Sun, Moon, and stars. They didn’t. The Sun, moon and stars, and light, were synonymous. Contradiction.
Nope. Gen 2 simply states that no brush or small plant had sprung up yet. Why would it bother saying small plant unless larger plants existed already. No contradiction
Genesis 2 says no brush or plant had yet spring up, “for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground” (Gen 2:5). Clearly, if the reason for why shrubs and plants (it doesn’t say small plants, it just says plants) had not yet sprung up was because God had not yet sent rain, then it follows that ANY sized plants, small or large, would not have grown either. Contradiction.
Notice, Gen 2:19 said the birds HAD been formed, meaning they previously already existed. At this point, he simply brought them to Adam. No contradiction
Notice Gen 2:18: “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Then notice Gen 2:19: “Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky.”
Clearly by saying “It is not good for the man to be alone”, it must have been the case that man started out alone, meaning in Gen 2: 18 birds did not exist before man, and Gen 2:19 birds “NOW” had come into existence. This contradicts Gen 1. Contradiction.
Again, same as above. They HAD been formed already. No contradiction
Again, you’re misreading Genesis as above. Contradiction.
Gen 1 does not imply that man and women were created at EXACTLY the same moment. Every creation account simply refers to things being made in the same day, not necessarily at the same time.
It’s easy to twist times by interpreting “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) to mean the same moment, the same second, the same hour, day, week, year, whatever. But I’ll give you this one, because there is no specific timeline mentioned.
This purification right has nothing to do with actual reproduction itself. Sex within marriage is honoring to God. However, the purification rites are necessary because of the sin nature that is passed down from Adam and Eve’s first sin. No contradiction
LE 12:1-5 states: “The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.”
The notion of purification due to original sin is irrelevant. The important point here is that God is putting a moratorium on copulation, at least for 66 days, which contradicts Gen 1:28 where God encourages copulation and reproduction. Contradiction.
Your football team, the Mighty Blowhards, are winning their current match, you are pleased with them. You know they don’t have a bat’s chance in hell of actually making it to the Superbowl, yet you still get displeased when they lose future matches. But you are pleased with their current state. No contradiction
Gen 1:31 states that God was pleased with his human creation. That means he is pleased not with particular events only, and displeased in other events. It means he is pleased with humans. Gen 6:6 states that God is displeased with humans. Contradiction.
Are you going to attempt reconciling all the other contradictions, or are you going to think that by selecting only some that COULD be construed as non-contradictory, enough for you? Sounds like you just went through the list and chose the ones you thought you could reconcile. What about the other ones?
Remember, this is just the first book of the bible, Genesis. There are 65 other books, with comparable numbers of contradictions.
MF, I will deal with these in next Sunday’s posts. For now, two quick things:
(a) You have twice said now that this is just a list from Genesis, and that are 65 other books with similar contradictions. Well, not a big deal, but most of the list contrasts something with Genesis with another book. So you should probably drop that last zinger. I.e. your list shows alleged contradictions in the Bible, not in Genesis (though some are exclusively from within Genesis).
(b) It’s possible on some of these I will say, “Yeah, that looks like a contradiction to me too.” That’s why I wanted you to be fair and cull out the silly ones, since I am going to try to be fair and admit it if something looks like a contradiction. Note that if I do that, it doesn’t mean I have to surrender my faith. I have already said before on this blog (not going to dig it up) that I think there is a contradiction in the gospel accounts of the centurion about whom Jesus says, “Never have I seen faith such as this.” (There are two accounts of this, and they differ in slight details. And since Jesus says He’s never seen faith like that before, we can’t even say there were two centurions to evade the apparent contradiction.)
(a) Actually the other books have similar references to other books, which means it’s more like Genesis relates to say 25% of the other books, and about 25% of the contradiction of every other book relates to other books, and so on. They don’t all relate back to Genesis like this. You just see mostly Genesis because that’s the book in question.
(b) Fair enough. I think that is very upfront and classy of you. I just hope that you know that the amount of fervor you have in trying to convince atheists and agnostics to adopt your theism, is almost assuredly on par with the fervor I have in trying to convince theists to adopt my atheism. So note that if you do reconcile what I consider to be contradictions, as non-contradictory, it doesn’t mean I have to surrender my atheism. Let this be a fun mental exercise where at the end of the day, we remain peaceful and cordial. Yeah, that original list was rather unfair now that I think about it. I won’t apologize for it though, because after seeing so many contradictions, sometimes it’s easy to become “lazy” and call out seeming literal contradictions that are not necessarily contradictions when interpreted in a specific context. I mean, when you get flinged with poop after poop after poop, it’s easier to miss the occasional flying hamburger.
First of all light and darkness could refer to three theories that have been around. One is truth and ignorance, one is good and evil, and the other is some essence of light and non essence. There was an understanding that light and stars were different things. We have fire, and lightning, and bugs that glow. Also it’s very simple to imagine that all these light things share some common substance that causes the light, but is not simply all encompassing light. If anyone thought the stars were just simply balls of light, then how does the light get to earth. Light must be separate from the sun.
Now the rest of Genesis 1 contradicting with genesis 2 about animals seems pretty obvious, as it says i “will make”. (the plant one could deal with seeds in the ground that hadn’t sprung).
Who uses the word “copulation” these days? Anywasys, ritually unclean is completely disconnected from an actual sin, i shouldn’t even need to explain that. Also saying waiting x amount of days after birth is contradictory to be fruitful and multiply is absurd. That’s like saying i should have sex with my wife at work, or rape a women, or every day i don’t have sex multiple times a day with a women I’m contradicting it. Be fruitful and multiply doesn’t mean have as much sex as humanly possible, it means be fruitful and multiply, don’t let your generation be the last.
And pleased and unpleased, they are talking about two different events. Anything from free will, to the first generation was good, latter ones not so much, he was pleased with creation in general, and the current one was displeased, all are possible solutions. Plus the already stated complex emotion of being pleased and displeased at the same time. Pleased over all, but was displeased at our particular shortcomings. Stick with one or a few good contradiction, perhaps the animals one and the line “will make” to drive home that genesis is not a historical book. A massive list of mostly non contradictions actually helps people skim over the real contradictions.
I always thought the God created light thing referred to Mosler creating MMT.
It doesn’t say that God hardened the heart of pharaoh by suspending his free will. I think it means that he hardened his heart cause of the plagues which God brought is like saying that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart cause of God’s actions. Maybe it’s in the way the language is interpreted or the changing use of style in time between then and now.
That reply was meant to go at the end. Wasn’t replying further to the previous commenter.
Major Freedom:
I’ll make a deal with you. Go through and cull out the obviously ridiculous elements of your list of “contradictions.” For example, the fact that God asked Cain where his brother was, isn’t contradicting God’s alleged omniscience. I ask kids questions about Rothbard’s views on monopoly in my academy classes. Does that mean I don’t know what the answer is? C’mon, stop being ridiculous.
So, go through and weed out the ridiculous ones, and then I will answer what you have left. But if you think every element in this list you’ve compiled (or copied from someone else) is airtight, it shows you’re not even trying. It is analogous to DeLong’s recent attempt to “honestly understand” what Mises and Ron Paul could mean in their support for gold.
You’re right, I didn’t try 100% on this list, but my 75% is still good enough to know that the bible is chock full of contradictions,
Remember this?
http://www.campaignforliberty.org/node/12187
You wrote:
“Now things are already starting to look a little shaky for Dr. Krugman and his Keynesian allies. They have been backed into a corner, having to explain away (at least) nine historical episodes that contradict their theories. Sure, maybe one, two, three, even four of those examples really are irrelevant; but all nine? At what point should we start to question the basic Keynesian premise, namely that having politicians borrow and spend a bunch of money is a way to help the economy?”
OK, I’ll give you the Cain one and retract that. That’s one down, 54,284 to go.
I’ll be snarky and say
Sure, maybe one, two, three, even four of the examples of contradictions I posted above can be explained away, but all 54,285? At what point should we start to question the basic Christian premise, namely that the bible is “astonishingly non-contradictory”?
The way you feel and think about Keynesianism is very similar to the way I feel and think about the bible. So when you think of approaching what I say, imagine me to be you critiquing Krugman, or Keynesianism.
As for culling the ridiculous ones, why not explain away one contradiction that even the most generous understanding will see as plainly irreconcilable?
I mean surely you aren’t saying that you will be able to explain away this ENTIRE list? I mean there’s honest approaches, and then there’s desperate reaches that delve into the absurd.
MF, you threw a laundry list at me. Many of them I know off the top of my head aren’t contradictions at all. Others I don’t know off the top of my head; I will have to go look them up.
I don’t want to waste my time doing that if you don’t put in the effort to pull out the ones you will retract. I’m not interested in you throwing a bunch of stuff and hoping something sticks. There are a few of things that are clearly ridiculous. If I start going through and find that, say, the first two I research are as bad as the Cain one, I’m going to stop.
So, I don’t want that to happen and then you say I gave up because I couldn’t handle the truth. If I’m going to take an hour to go through a list, I want you to first retract the ones that even you acknowledge are ridiculous.
OK, I’ll leave these ones:
GE 11:12 Arpachshad [Arphaxad] was the father of Shelah.
LK 3:35-36 Cainan was the father of Shelah. Arpachshad was the grandfather of Shelah.
GE 11:26 Terah was 70 years old when his son Abram was born.
GE 11:32 Terah was 205 years old when he died (making Abram 135 at the time).
GE 12:4, AC 7:4 Abram was 75 when he left Haran. This was after Terah died. Thus, Terah could have been no more than 145 when he died; or Abram was only 75 years old after he had lived 135 years.
GE 19:30-38 While he is drunk, Lot’s two daughters “lie with him,” become pregnant, and give birth to his offspring.
2PE 2:7 Lot was “just” and “righteous.”
GE 50:13 Jacob was buried in a cave at Machpelah bought from Ephron the Hittite.
AC 7:15-16 He was buried in the sepulchre at Shechem, bought from the sons of Hamor.
Dr. Murphy,
I think that God is sovereign completely over mortal affairs and that we ALSO have free will. There is a view called “molinism” that explains this. Basically God has middle knowledge, or perfect knowledge of counterfactuals. Through his use of this knowledge He knows how every human will act in a certain set of circumstances. He then places people where He wants them to accomplish His plan. This way God is sovereign over His creation and people freely make actions that they are accountable for.
Now, obviously, this was just a stripped down version. If you want to know more you can read Kenneth Keathley’s Salvation and Sovereignty or some of William Craig’s work on Molinism.
Btw, Pharaoh hardened his heart first which then lead to God hardening it further.
Two things on that line. One, maybe his heart was hardened by him being stubborn/living in the world he was in, or two maybe his heart was hardened in a passive way. Considering his pride, and his belief in being divine, the miracles maybe him angry and caused his heart to be hardened.
Good post, Bob. Butterfield compares God in history to a composer who keeps adjusting his composition in real time in response to the odd notes the musicians play that he never intended. Very like Tolkein’s “The Music of the Ainur,” which, if you’ve never read, you really must.
Sorry Bob, philosophy of agency pretty much unanimously disagrees with you. It’s either the case that free will (in the robust, metaphysical sense of Randy Clarke and Richard Taylor and not the compatibilist, psychological sense that Gary Watson and Harry Frankfurt hold it) exists, or it does not. Christian theology pretty much agrees with the former case. The existence of a “soul” marks a sharp difference in kind between plants, rocks, and physical matter – and willful agents like man.
It cannot be that God has perfect foresight of all events that must come, and that somehow humans can independently choose between alternate modes of action. Their choice, in this sense, is an illusion. Humans have just as much free will to determine their station in life as an 8Ball has in deciding which pocket it will end up in.
If you keep the position that our lives are predestined as God sees them, then free will as a metaphysical concept is meaningless and you affirm the deterministic stance. You cannot have it both ways.
Mattheus wrote:
It’s either the case that free will (in the robust, metaphysical sense of Randy Clarke and Richard Taylor and not the compatibilist, psychological sense that Gary Watson and Harry Frankfurt hold it) exists, or it does not. Christian theology pretty much agrees with the former case.
Mattheus, are you saying that Christian theology pretty much agrees that God isn’t sovereign over what happens? If that’s what you are saying, then you are wrong.
I’m saying that Christian theology holds that human beings, agents, things that have souls, etc. are not determined by other causes. That because we have an immaterial soul, our actions are not determined the way that planetary orbits are determined. To give it an Aristotelian twist, Christian theology seems to affirm that we are “prime movers unmoved” – that we have autonomous, independent choice in life. This is the libertarian (metaphysical) stance.
If the above description is correct, then there’s some problems with casting God as all-knowing. Omniscience implies a determined course, a set of unalterable events to come. I’m sure you’ve read Mises on determinism. If God has perfect foresight on the universe, then in some sense our lives are already set for us. I can’t have “perfect knowledge” that you will live to 60 years old if there’s a chance you will die before then. Knowledge denotes certainty.
“It cannot be that God has perfect foresight of all events that must come, and that somehow humans can independently choose between alternate modes of action. Their choice, in this sense, is an illusion. Humans have just as much free will to determine their station in life as an 8Ball has in deciding which pocket it will end up in.”
Have you considered the possibility that the what you’re describing is a limitation of the human mind, i.e. the paradox of “perfect foresight” and believing that that negates free will? It’s has to do with human beings’ perception, or misconception, of what time is.
I’ve always considered the possibility I’m mistaken. But there doesn’t really seem to be any way around the predicament – at least not that I, nor any philosophers I’ve talked to, can imagine.
Its analogous to the story of Oedipus Rex where the Oracle tells Oedipus what will happen to him (marry his mother, and so forth) and despite his best attempts, he invariably fulfills the prophecy. If we say that the Oracle “knew” this would happen – ie, that the probability She could be wrong was 0% – then these events must come to pass. Oedipus, as far as the stated events are concerned, has no free will. He is determined to fulfill the prophecy.
Likewise, if there is a 0% chance God could be wrong about his knowledge concerning future events, then there is no freedom for anyone to do otherwise. There are no alternative possibilities if He cannot possibly be wrong.
There still remains the issue that if God is equivalent to an author then he could just write out the bad bits and we live happily ever after — so God must have made a decision to keep evil on Earth to spice up the story a bit.
That’s the big question though, does God really communicate with the other characters? I may well have seen signs from God or even heard the word of God, but the presentation of such things is always ambiguous and fuzzy, open to arbitrary interpretation. We know that the Bible was physically written by humans, and I know that my copy of the Bible came off a common-or-garden modern printing press. So were the words themselves inspired by God? Well, if you have faith then the answer is yes, but that answer is an answer based on faith. Was it a sign from God last time I got sick, or was the real sign from God when I got better again, or both but I just don’t know how to interpret such things?
Long ago people saw an eclipse and thought it was the most amazing sign… and in the modern world they see a bit of melted ice around Greenland and they react no differently to those primitive people seeing an eclipse for the first time. Is this God trying to talk to us. or just orbital mechanics? What experiment could one devise to test for a powerful sentient being… none really when this powerful sentient being has put it about that such tests are not appreciated and faith is the objective of the exercise.
” … it seems that if people have free will, then God must not have a plan …”
I read a story today by a guy who took a meeting with Steve Jobs in the 90’s. Jobs explained his vision of Apple’s future including ideas which became the iPhone and iPad. If Jobs had a plan for Apple which 20 years later he successfully implemented does that mean Apple employees lack free will?
Steve Jobs was a lot of things, but never omnipotent.
No, it just means Jobs didn’t have omniscience regarding his products.
Are you suggesting God’s plans do not always come to fruition? That His carefully designed plans are somehow unable to be manifest?
In addition to Murphy’s “God as Author” I was proposing an alternate metaphor to explore the apparent contradiction between planning and free will, “God as Entreprenuer.” I have no answers.
Taking a different tack: Would you cite as evidence of our ascension the creation of a computer program that believes itself to be the person doing Turing tests?
“I truly hope that by ‘astonishing’ you mean astonishing in the sheer number of violations of internal consistency.”
Huh? In speaking of “God’s story,” Dr. Murphy was referring to history. You then respond with a list of Bible contradictions.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian. His work as a whole is an expression of two themes — the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God’s holiness. The first is articulated in Edwards’ defense of theological determinism, in a doctrine of occasionalism, and in his insistence that physical objects are only collections of sensible “ideas” while finite minds are mere assemblages of “thoughts” or “perceptions.” As the only real cause or substance underlying physical and mental phenomena, God is “being in general,” the “sum of all being.”-Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I could go into details, but may I instead suggest that folks interested in these questions at least make a cursory study the writings of Edwards on the subject of free will vs theological determinism. Here is a good place to start: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/edwards/
In response to the problem of contradiction:
1. We know from the book of Acts the various disciples/apostles used different tactics to share the gospel message to different people. Peter acts differently with the Centurion than does Phillip with the Eunich who are both different than Paul in front of the Philosophers in Athens. The message was molded to work and be understood within the framework of those to whom the gospel message was being taught.
2. Let’s apply this to the gospels. We know that the gospels were transmitted orally prior to anything being written down (again, we could look to the book of Acts). The earliest Gospel is [probably] Mark and was written about ~30 years after the Death of Jesus. So what if the ‘contradictions’ in the NT were the preservation not necessarily of rigid eyewitness detail accounting things as they actually happened, but rather the ‘cementing’ of various traditions (or variances) of the gospel as they were preached to various people. Take the healing of the cripple through the ceiling. In one of the gospels it says something to the effect that ‘they removed the tiles from the ceiling’. Yet another gospel claims they ‘dug through’ the ceiling. What if, instead of trying to reconcile these as ‘apparent’ contradictions, one views this in terms of the story being adapted to the people in which the gospel was being preached/told. It would be much easier for a person in the city to understand the tile story, verus someone in the country who could relate to a house made of wood and mud.
In sum: I think we can view the gospels as we now have them as witnesses to how the gospel was bring preached without compromising the authenticity of it. Could an event like this have happened? Probably. Need it happen exactly the way in which the story was told? No. Oral Tradition is key to understanding the Gospels, in my opinion.
-Jake
P.S. Things get more complicated when referring to the OT, but I think again knowledge of what Oral Tradition is and how it operates is key to understanding the texts.
The grue / bleen hypothesis might be of help, or similarly Galileo’s reasoning about how, if we take the story at face value, how we might rationalize a story about the Babylonians cooking eggs with slings: Galileo facetiously reasons that we don’t lack eggs, slings, or “sturdy men” to whip them around – we just lack being Babylonians. One of the problems of empiricism is that it depends on observations to be constant, however. The grue / bleen point is that we don’t know if rules like “all emeralds are green” actually have some hidden element like “all emeralds are green, until next year.” It’s a bit more awkward, but the argument works for history as well.
There are good reasons to discount such accounts of history – it’s not very helpful to forget parsimony and just say that things maybe were “just different” in ways that just happen to provide us with as many ad hoc explanations of the past as we require to make things appear consistent again. However, I don’t see how you could actually prove, in one strict sense, that the past was always consistent. Lacking knowledge about our own past, the nature of things beyond our sphere is likewise uncertain.
I don’t know what you mean by oral tradition – some of the Bible may have been orally transmitted but a lot of it was clearly written (especially the good parts like Revelations, which may have been written by an angry ultra-orthodox refugee who like Copernicus wanted to “return to roots” and ended up being remembered for a radical work). Usually I see it mentioned that the Bible should not be taken literally – this is separate from being an oral or written tradition (oral traditions often are hard to pin down on literal accuracy but I’ve heard some Native American groups have done very well to keep specific bits of historical reporting alive for generations just by word of mouth and memorization).
Here’s something that I feel might be more helpful:
Consider the system of logic. We have our rules of inference and we can construct arguments that avoid known fallacies. They are always good arguments (at least, nobody has found a good argument that did not prove good when tested). If God is omnipotent, however, we could also say that God is not constrained to any given internal logic (I don’t mean to apply this to your argument about historiography, however), much less the one that we are constrained to use.
Some people might call this “unreason,” since it is not clear to us what value this premise holds, except to say “things could be different” and lapse into a feeling of helplessness. Nevertheless it would be a system of reason, one at God’s whim. It also appears potentially necessary; Godel’s incompleteness theorem provides one argument supporting this (nobody has demonstrated that you can have an axiomatic system which does not have some unproven axiom – Godel’s theorem denies it is possible – and this appears to be directly linked to the “first cause” argument, because we would at the least need to get “outside” our frame of reference to find a more complete set of logic to work from).
I think we are talking past each other, or maybe I simply do not really understand what you are saying. All I was trying to say is that from the very earliest times of the Christian movement, those who were spreading the gospel message tailored the message to the audience in which they were speaking. I made the claim that, given this knowledge, we can view the ‘contradictions’ in the Bible not as true contradictions, but evidence of how the gospel operated in its very earliest forms. Namely, the message was ‘changed’ to fit the community to which it was being told. So we ought not take every story as a full account of what actually, historically happened, but rather realize the authors of the 4 Gospels had a purpose in writing what they did: to preserve the teachings of Jesus and spread them to all nations.
I think that is a very reasonable way to look at it. Unfortunately, many believe that the Bible must always be literally true – or at least they wish to have a set of some claims that are supported by parts of the Bible; so they still must literally be true. When you take this approach, you must find some way to reconcile things that wouldn’t seem to be supportable, knowing what we do today, with what the Bible says. (A good example: the earth standing still – Johannes Kepler argues wisely that the biblical writer did not ‘seriously mean to have an argument with the astronomer,’ but this response will not work for everybody’s purposes throughout the whole Bible.)
My comment, vague as it is, is trying to wrap the idea of the seeming contradictions in the Bible in the way that they could be viewed as somehow still true without necessarily being consistent with what we’d see today, from the standpoint of pure reason.
I will probably spend some time at the website, but not likely to spend much time commenting or arguing. However, this subject piqued my interest, and I have to make a few comments.
First, the Bible IS a history book. It is the history book of the universe. There are many different writers, styles, types of writing, etc., and not everything is meant to be taken literally, of course, but most of it is. Context is the clue. Genesis, for example, is historical narrative, and is meant to be taken as literal history (recognizing, again, that the writers of the various books often used colloquial language. No one takes us as being 100% literal when we talk about what time the sun set, e.g.)
Second, reconciling free will with hardening someone’s heart (Pharaoh’s or MF’s, e.g.) is not difficult. Think of God as the sun – the same sun that melts wax hardens clay. Are you wax or clay?
I want to skip over all the discussion of supposed contradictions in the bible and address the original point of the blog. Being a Calvinist, I think that the Westminster Confession of faith says it about as well as anything. Chapter 3, verse 1 reads:
I. God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;[1] yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin,[2] nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.[3]
Whatever you think about Free Will, it seems pretty obvious to me that if you go to Heaven, you lose it. Or you become something that is not totally “you”, because you cannot choose no sin. And this begs the question, why didn’t God just make us that way in the first place and skip all the suffering? It makes no sense.
Oh, I know, the ways of the great and beneficent Oz are beyond our understanding blah, blah, blah…
please correct typo from ” because you cannot choose no sin” to ” because you cannot choose to sin”