A little while back, I commented on God, gods and religiosity in a small piece on this blog. Much to my astonishment, at least one person saw fit to read the damn thing all the way to the end. My correspondent replied in some detail with a fisking of godlike proportions and, being the magnanimous chap that I am, I published her reply. With, of course, my own fisking.
My correspondent requested anonymity and so I selected the pseudonym ‘St Withburga’, largely for comedic reasons. My correspondent, among other points, objected to the chosen nomme de plume, largely on the basis that Withburga was a nun. So, as a prefatory matter I must select a new nickname. As tempting as it is to dub my correspondent God-botherer-in-residence, I shall call her Phoebe.
The original article covered some discussions I had with chaps of a religious persuasion. My article bemoaned their insistence on believing against evidence. The article attracted more attention than usual and I followed it up with another, commenting on this attention. Soon after that article was posted, I received the fisking email from Phoebe, taking issue with many of the points I had made and, along with my own fisking, I posted that here.
I’ve received another email from Phoebe and you’ll find it below along with my own comments. I’ve left all the original comments in place for context. When a comment is from me, I’ll prefix it with S1 or S2, depending on which post is was from. My newest comments will be labelled S3. Same for Phoebe, P1 being the earlier email and P2 being the most recent response.
I frankly doubt that anyone except Phoebe or me will read the damn thing, so let me include a preamble here.
What if there are no gods?
The question of god is a vexed one for the remaining believers in the world. For several thousand years the question of whether there was a god was barely asked, it was more a matter of the nature of god and, in the early days of humans wandering around the planet, the winner in those particular debates was usually decided by who had invented the club first. Later it was decided by who the most clubs and then by who had the largest army. Navies got involved later of course. This was all very interesting, but hardly bore the hallmarks of scientific enquiry despite some lingering similarities to modern day mathematics conventions.There was little doubt that at least one god existed and quite possibly more and we all got on with life. Then, around the time that Genghis Khan was attempting to introduce Japan to the joys of grilled lamb, a chap in Europe called Thomas Aquinas wrote down five ‘proofs’ of a god’s existence. He was specifically thinking about the christian god, but the most interesting thing about all this is that he was one of the earliest folks to feel that it was in any way necessary to prove the existence of god.
It was a few hundred years later, around the time that a chap called Bill Shakespeare was writing some very popular plays and a chap called Tokugawa Ieyesu decided that Japan would close for a while, that a few chaps in Europe started to seriously speculate on the idea that maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t a god at all. These chaps were called ‘heretics’ and some other chaps decided that a thing called The Inquisition might be necessary to protect all the innocent proles from hearing untruths. This would not be the last time that a governmental organisation was established to protect the great unwashed from hearing contrary views.
The Inquisition fellows held the view that contrary views were best stamped out early and so decided that while atheism was certainly evil, any questioning of official doctrine was deserving of punishment. For example, a chap by the name of Giordano Bruno was unwise enough to speculate that stars might be distant suns and might have planets of their own. He even suggested that the earth was not the centre of the universe. For his trouble he was tied naked, upside-down and burned to death in the Campo de' Fiori.
The Inquisition continued its good work in rooting out deniers and exposing them to public ignominy, largely in the form of being deprived of their right to breath oxygen. Giulio Cesare Vanini suggested the possibility that humans were descended from apes and got strangled for his efforts, Kazimierz Łyszczyński suggested that maybe there was no god and had his tongue pulled out, his hands burned and his head cut off. These guys were thorough.
Christopher Marlowe was summonsed to trial for having an atheist pamphlet in his house, but disappointingly for our friends at the inquisition, he was murdered before the trial concluded. When Thomas Hobbes was accused of atheism, he took the novel approach of saying “No, I’m not” and the whole thing went away.
Then there was an especially annoying chap by the name of Baruch Spinoza. Commonly known as the father of the enlightenment, Spinoza had the good fortune to be born Jewish and so the Inquisition couldn’t really touch him. I told you he was annoying. In Spinoza’s case it was left to the Jewish community who, being less advanced than their Christian counterparts, merely expelled him for his “evil opinions and acts” and failed altogether to light a fire under him either literally or metaphorically.
Spinoza’s influence on and contribution to philosophy in general and atheism in particular was too grand for a quick summation, but I’ll say that it was big. Like really big. Spinoza is to modern secular thought as testicles are to a tanuki. Outstanding, large and a defining feature. Among other things, he laid the groundwork for a world where holding a particular idea was unlikely to get you toasted by over-enthusiastic clergy and as a result we had the enlightenment, a period where the world decided that finding out what was true was more important that ensuring it was explained by reference to an imaginary friend.
These days most of the world’s great thinkers, those that hold premier positions in their chosen academics fields, have religious views that would see them roasting on an open fire if they were expressed at around the time that Bill’s play had King Richard offering his kingdom for a horse. Many are outright atheistic, but even those that are not hold highly nuanced views of the possibility of god or god(s). There are none that I know of that believe in an interventionist god in a way that would have satisfied our roast-happy friends at the inquisition.
So what are we arguing about?
One of the tricky things about arguing with the religiously inclined is that it’s never clear what the argument is about. As you’ll see in the exchange below, the conversation wanders from discussion over the historicity of Jesus Christ, the infallibility of the bible and the intelligent design of life.
The difficulty for the religiously inclined is that proving that there is the possibility of *a* god does not really advance their argument that their particular god is the one to be bothered about. If we take for example the argument from causation (one of the five Aquinas arguments and an argument to which Phoebe alludes in our discussion below), the argument goes that everything has a cause and so the universe must have a cause. BUT, that cause must also have a cause, so there must be a special cause and that special cause is God. QED.
The problem with this line is that, even if you accept it, it says nothing about the specific versions of religions that exist today. It contains no evidence that there is a god that has any sort of involvement in the day to day affairs of people, it contains no evidence that this god created anything after the creation of the initial big bang. It’s basically a meaningless god that kicked off the universe and then return to whatever he/she was doing beforehand.
There are many rebuttals of the Argument from Causation, but the point is that even if there weren’t, the argument does not further the Christian cause once iota.
The argument from Intelligent Design (called the ‘Teleological Argument’ by wankers in pubs with laptops and glasses of red wine) is another that started with Aquinas and another that really doesn’t work. There is little in nature that genuinely designed and much that, if it were designed, is designed rather badly indeed. Women suffer badly from this bad design, having a birth-canal located far too close to close to the anus. With all the trouble that modern medicine goes to ensuring that newborns are protected from disease and infection, wouldn’t an intelligent designer have thought, “hang on, they’re going to defecate from here and have babies from there! Better move those farther apart.”?
Nonetheless, the Teleological Argument gets trotted out regularly and is usually accompanied by the ‘Argument from Incredulity’, an argument that goes “well this thing is just so astonishing, I can’t believe it’s true.”
So what are we arguing about? For me, my basic argument is that there is no evidence of any god that has had any involvement in the physical world since immediately after the big bang. My first request to Phoebe, in the unlikely event that she can actually summon the strength to reply at all, is to respond to this question or, better still, formulate her own position that we can focus on.
The exchange
As I mention above, I’ve left all the original comments in place for context. When a comment is from me, I’ll prefix it with S1 or S2, depending on which post is was from. My newest comments will be labelled S3. Same for Phoebe, P1 being the earlier email and P2 being the most recent response.For further assistance, I'll bold the most recent responses for both of us.
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S1: The bible is very clearly a book written by men and men with an agenda. The New Testament's agenda is the promotion of Christworship and more especially of the Pauline branch of Christworship. The 4 main stories of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were chosen from several to form what we currently call the gospels at (I believe I don't have my Internet at present) the Council of Nicaea in around 300AD.
P1: It was written by about 40 different men over a period of 2000 or so years. Given that all these were of different backgrounds and lived at different times in history, and that from the first verse to the last the 66 books form a harmonious whole with a central theme are we saying that they all had the same agenda and if so what was their motive for this?
S2: That the set of books we call ‘The Bible’ was written by a number of different men over a long period of time is undoubted. That the 66 (or 73 or 81) books of the Bible “form a harmonious whole” is very much doubted and even the most charitable reading would find that “harmonious” is a sympathetic adjective to use.
P2: Not really, as above. Why did they want to promote Christ worship?
S3: I don’t know why they wanted to promote Christ-Worship, but I suspect that it was the same reason that other people promoted sun worship or Zeus worship or Woden worship. Men (largely men) have been using religion or superstition as a tool of power and control for long as there have been people.
P1: I am also not sure what ‘Pauline branch’ means as throughout the NT Christians are urged to be unified in belief and purpose. Worship of Christ is nowhere promoted, Christ himself did not allow or encourage worship of himself (or his mother for that matter) but only ever directed worship to God.
S2: The Pauline branch of Christianity (ie that version of Christianity promoted by Saul of Tarsus, later St Paul) is the branch that we consider to be Christianity today. There is little doubt that there were competing interpretations of Christ’s teaching and of what Christianity should be. The major sect competing with Pauline Christianity appears to have been that championed by James the Just (Jesus’ brother) along with Jesus’ closest disciples and (possibly) his wider family. Not a great deal is known definitively, probably because they lost the battle, but it does appear that James saw Christianity as a renewed form of Judaism whereas Paul saw Christianity as a completely new and separate religion. Much of the argument centred on the extent to which Gentiles were expected to keep the Mosaic Law.
P2: Yes, I agree that many had trouble letting go of the Mosaic Law. However, as for James competing with Paul, Read Acts 15 where Paul actually deferred to James and others in Jerusalem about just such a matter. Paul, Barnabas, Peter and James were all in agreement.
S3: Here’s where I start to feel a bit confused. Let’s say for a moment that you’re right. What difference does that make to your central theme? My position is that there were competing factions in the early church, something considered unremarkable by most bible scholars, but let’s say they’re wrong. Who cares? You’ve conceded that there was trouble letting go of the Mosaic Law, don’t you think there would have been groups and factions based around that?
S3: As for Paul agreeing with James in Acts, that’s hardly evidence that they agreed on everything. In the link above you’ll see that Acts 15 actually underlines a point of disagreement between James and Paul.
S2: Not much of this is contested by Bible scholars and I think it would be fairly non-controversial. My reference to “the Pauline branch” might be unnecessarily specific, but I think accurate. Think of it as a literary flourish.
S2: As for the divinity of Jesus, he certainly never says that he is god, but he does allude to it. He says, for example that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58).
P2: John 10:30 is a favourite of supporters of the trinity doctrine (not a biblical teaching). In John 8:58 Jesus is referring to his pre human existence - see also Proverbs 8:22; John 17:5; Philippians 2:6,7; Colossians 1:15-17.
S3: Labelling it a favourite is hardly a rebuttal.
S2: Each of these is open to interpretation I suppose, but less easy to deny is that Jesus encouraged worship of himself. At several points, Jesus is worshipped and does not discourage it (Matthew 2:11, 14:33, 28:9, Luke 24:52, John 9:38). Beyond that, it’s a little disingenuous to claim that the CHRISTian church is not based on the worship of Christ.
P2: CHRISTian means follower of or disciple of Christ, we find expressions like “imitators” and “footstep followers”. In the references above the Greek word proskyneo from a root “kiss” is also translated as ‘did obeisance to’ or ‘bowed down’. Context is important, I could go into more detail on this but for now suffice to say that Jesus was quite clear on the matter of worship at Matthew 4:8-10. It still has to be acknowledged though that he is God’s son, the promised Messiah with divine authority.
S3: Jesus is a central figure in the religion of CHRISTianity. Arguing over whether followers should ‘do obeisance’ or ‘do worship’ is little more than semantics. The point is that Paul (and others) were creating a new religion based on Christ as the prominent earthly figure.
P1: The idea that men in the church decided upon the bible canon at the council of Nicaea is historically not correct. In Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome he said at Romans 3:2 that Jews were entrusted with the sacred pronouncements of God, indicating that Jews believed that they were custodians of the holy writings. The Muratorian Fragment dated between 170 and 200 CE lists most of the books of the Greek scriptures (New Testament) including these 4 gospels which shows that the canon was already set before then, so long before 300 CE and more likely by the Jews than the church.
S2: It’s probably not wise to use the New Testament’s say so to decide on the historicity of the New Testament, but in any case, the holy writings being referred to by Paul are almost certainly the Jewish writings that we think of as the Old Testament.
P2: Why not? Regardless of belief, It is an important ancient document. Many ancient documents have been and continue to be found and their historicity is not questioned. Further, you initially noted that religious bods are afraid to go there - I'm not afraid to go there.
S3: I suspect you haven’t thought this through. How can the book say when it was finished? The best it could do is provide an earliest possible date.
S2: As for the Council of Nicaea deciding on the canon, you are correct, I misremembered. Certainly the canon was beginning to be finalised around then but the Council made no specific decree on the matter.
S2: The Muratorian Fragment is actually dated to around 600-700CE and mentions only two of the gospels by name (Luke and John) although it appears to be saying that there are four in total; it refers to Luke as the third and John as the fourth. The original text is often dated earlier as it refers to Pius I as having “recently” been Bishop of Rome (ie Pope). Pius I died around 155CE, hence the dating. S2: I find this fairly flimsy evidence that the NT canon was settled so early.
P2: It mentions Hermas’ Shepherd which is dated between 140 and 155, as having been written “recently” in Rome. Why do you consider this evidence flimsy?
S3: Once again I am wondering what the point is. On the most charitable reading, you could say that this document was written at around 170CE. It does not list the gospels, although it appears to consider that there are four, the last two being Luke and John. It also mentions some (but not all) of the epistles and makes reference to controversies around the Apocalypse of John (Revelation) and the Apocalypse of Peter. It include the “Book of Wisdom”, which is not canonical.
S3: So on the most charitable reading, we know that the final form of the bible was not settled at around 170CE. My original contention that it was not finalised until around 300CE stands.
S2: By the seventh century the canon was certainly well established, at least in terms of the gospels. The translator would have known this full well and would have been unlikely to accurately translate a document that contradicted established beliefs.
S2: Titus Flavius Clemens (Clement of Alexandria) certainly did not consider that the 27 books that we use today were canonical. He is known to have used the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Revelation of Peter among others. Clement died around 215CE, which, for me, is another reason to doubt the accuracy of the Muratorian fragment.
P2: Clement of Alexandria was indeed influenced by Gnosticism and also philosophy. Didn't he also believe in eternal torment in a quenchless fire?
S3: If he did, it would not be the strangest thing that Christian figures believed.
S2: Certainly by 400CE the currently accepted NT canon of 27 books had been largely agreed with the addition of Revelation being the final step. What is certain is that the four books we think of as gospel today were chosen from several that were written in the period from about 50CE to about 150CE.
P2: Again, Are you referring to the gnostic writings?
S3: When I say “several that were written in the period from about 50CE to about 150CE”, I am referring to a rather impressive list of gospels that includes the gnostic gospels along with several others.
S2: That is to say that the final story of the Nazarene's life was not agreed until nearly 300 years after he died. Rather like concluding the definitive biography of JS Bach around about now. It would, for instance, be a struggle to interview any of contemporaries.
P1: ‘Agreed’ by who though? Matthew and John were apostles therefore among Jesus closest friends, they accompanied him, were directly instructed and trained by him, they were there, they compiled eyewitness accounts.
S2: There are very few left that would argue that the gospels of Matthew and John were written by the disciples. In the case of Matthew, it was almost certainly originally originally written in Greek and it’s unlikely that the disciple Matthew spoke Greek.
P2: It was originally written in Hebrew and subsequently translated into Greek. Since Greek was called the ‘common’ language before Latin and would still have been widely spoken, what draws you to this conclusion?
S3: It’s commonly accepted that the attribution to Matthew was a later addition and that it was written in Greek. See for example, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: “Almost all scholars agree that our Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek and is not a translated document. Matthew’s Greek reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation.”
S2: There is no early evidence of it being attributed to Matthew, nor is there any claim by the author of being an eyewitness to the events described.
P2: Papias of Hierapolis; Eusebius; Origen; Jerome
S3: These are some early Christian figures who claim to have seen a Hebrew version of Matthew. I would be more impressed by modern day scholars who claim this. There must be one or two. For each one you name that believes it, I’ll name three that don’t.
S2: The authorship of gospel of John is a little more problematic. There are five works attributed to John; the gospel, three epistles and Revelation. There is some consistency in the style of the works with the exception of Revelation which, it’s generally agreed has different authorship from the other four works. S2: The scholars most sympathetic to a direct link to the apostle John seem to contend that the gospel and the epistles were written by a community of John’s followers with some input from the ageing apostle himself. Dating of the book is fairly consistently agreed to be around 90 – 120CE, which would have seen John at a very advanced age indeed.
S2: Even if we concede that John was written by, or at least had input from, an eyewitness, we are then left with the problem of this gospel differing widely from the three synoptic gospels both in terms of detail and in thematic terms. Just to pick one example, the gospel of John has Jesus referring to himself much more often than the synoptic gospels. The synoptics emphasise the works of Jesus, whereas John emphasises faith in Jesus himself. It’s problematic, especially if John is the only book with input from an eyewitness.
P2: They were independent accounts, they did not plagiarise.
S3: And you know this because?
S2: We know with some certainty that the books were written in the order Mark around 50-70AD, then Matthew and Luke at about the same time around 70-90AD and finally John around 100-120AD. When you know this and you read them in the order they were written rather the order that they are usually published, you begin to see something interesting; the stories gets progressively more fanciful over time.
P1: The end of some manuscripts give 41 CE as the year Matthew was written so just 8 years after Jesus death. At Acts 1:1 Luke refers to his earlier account, being his gospel. Since Acts was written around 61 CE while Luke was in Rome with Paul, that puts the date of his gospel earlier, likely 5658 CE after accompanying Paul on his 3rd missionary trip. Without going into too much detail here, Mark’s association with Paul and internal evidence suggests 6065 CE for his gospel and John wrote his about 98 CE.
S2: I’m not sure what you mean by “The end of some manuscripts give 41 CE as the year Matthew was written”. The widely held view among scholars is that Matthew was written sometime after 70CE with very few opting for a date before that.
P2: I would have to do more research on this but am wondering why the view is after 70CE. Interesting that Matthew records Jesus’ prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem, but nothing about the fulfilment of it, a pretty catastrophic event in Jewish history. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70CE.
S3: There are several problems with the ‘prophesy’, but rather than list them here, I’ll refer you to Mr France.
S2: As for Luke and Acts, there is very little sympathy for the view that they were written by Luke the Evangelist, a companion of Paul.
P2: Muratorian Fragment; Irenaeus; Tertullian
S3: Burkett
S2: The most optimistic assessment would be that they include some portions of an earlier text written or contributed to by Luke. The earliest possible date for Acts would be 63CE, when Paul was imprisoned in Rome, however I struggle to imagine someone pounding away on their laptop late one afternoon in 63CE to be sure that they’ll meet the evening edition. These texts were not generally written in a short period of time, which would mean that “earliest possible” becomes more like mid 60s CE. Most scholars tend to a later date, generally 80-90 CE for the pair.
P2: As above, no mention is made of Jerusalem’s destruction in 70CE nor of Nero’s persecution of the Christians around mid 60’s. In my research I'm still finding 61 as the date of Paul’s imprisonment.
S3: Charlesworth
S2: The most commonly adopted theory today is that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke both drew from Mark and from an unknown source (generally referred to as “Q”). I find the whole “Q” business problematic – surely we would have found scraps of it at least – (I agree) but scholars more dedicated that me are insisting that this is the case.
If you do hold that Matthew predates Mark, do you believe that Mark had access to the gospel of Matthew? If so, can you explain why Mark chose to leave out so much of Matthew’s gospel?
P2: Independent accounts, they didn’t plagiarise
S3: Ok, well then why did Matthew include pretty much all of Mark?
S1: Perhaps the most important and most fanciful of the gospel stories is the story of the resurrection, so perhaps this is the one place where you would expect to see a fairly strict concordance between the four gospels but alas, no.
P1: It needs to be acknowledged that the 4 writers wrote in their own style, from different perspectives and with different audiences in mind. Considering and comparing all four in piecing together what happened gives a clearer picture of Jesus life and ministry.
S2: Indeed there were four different styles, but facts are not subject to stylistic differences.
S1: The first gospel, Mark is the shortest and in it's original form (the verses after 16:8 are a later addition) it says the two Marys and Salome went to the tomb and found that .the rock had been rolled away. Some kid is sitting inside and tells them that Jesus came back to life, which gives them the screaming heebiejeebies, and they don't tell anyone what happened. That's it. The question of how Mark found out about it is left unanswered. Presumably he developed a close enough relationship with one of the ladies in question that they let their secret be known.
P1: I agree that Mark is the shortest gospel and ends with 16:8. He names Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Since Mark’s style is action packed and fast paced throughout it’s not all that surprising that it ends so abruptly. Perhaps someone didn’t like the abruptness of it and therefore decided to add a short and long conclusion after vs 8? Mark’s relationship with one of the ladies sounds like a wild guess. Mark was with Peter in Babylon and in 1 Peter 5:13 Peter calls him “my son” my common sense says it was more likely Peter, another apostle and eyewitness, that told him.
S2: My speculations on Mark’s relationships with the ladies was not only a wild guess, it was meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek. My point was more that the ladies didn’t tell anyone and yet Mark got to write about it.
P2: Yeah I got that, just trying to be honest in my approach
S1: The second and third gospels (Matthew and Luke) tell a story that is a little more elaborate. Matthew says that two Marys (he's not sure which ones) went to the tomb and there was an earthquake and an angel rolled the stone away. The angel told them that Jesus came back from the dead and while that did give them the willies, they were pretty happy about it too. They rushed off to tell the disciples about it. Luke leaves the names out of it and just says that these women and those women went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, angels being unnecessary in that case. Two blokes wearing shiny clothes turn up and tell them that Jesus has come back from the dead and these women don't get the willies at all but are pretty much down with the whole thing. They rush off to tell everyone about it.
P1: Matthew and Luke can’t be called ‘more fanciful’ than Mark as they were written first, so clearly not embellishments. Matt 28:1 names Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and Luke 24:10 names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James also the rest of the women....etc. Like Mark both report the women feeling fear.
S2: You’re in a very small minority if you believe that Matthew and Luke were both written before Mark.
P2: Given that the majority are not interested in this stuff anyway, I’m not convinced I’m in a small minority.
S3: Noted. Perhaps, as I suggested above, you could let me know of bible scholars that believe in the primacy of Matthew and I’ll match you 3 to 1.
S2: Matthew indeed names Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” which I find lacks a little in specificity. Luke doesn’t specifically name the women that went to the tomb, but does list out some of the women that went to the disciples to tell them what had been found at the tomb. You can infer I suppose, that these were the women that went to the tomb in the first place, but Luke’s not clear on that. In either case, there are fundamental differences in the accounts of the three synoptic gospels on the question of who went to the tomb and what they found when they got there.
S1: Then we come to John, who is to gospels what James Cameron is to movies. According to John, the story is much more elaborate with only one Mary finding the tomb empty but then she rushes off and brings back a couple of the disciples. One of these disciples is named only as the one "whom Jesus loved" which is either a dead giveaway of Jesus' sexual preferences or a suggestion that the big J wasn't fond of most of the disciples. John goes on to detail several fascinating factoids on the location of various bits of cloth before sending everyone but Mary home without any of them thinking to look into the tomb. Doh! We then have two angels appearing magically to Mary and then Jesus himself rocks up disguised as a gardener.
P1: Not sure I understand the James Cameron analogy. Most of the material in this gospel supplements the other 3, but even so in 21:25 John says there was even so much more to write but if all the details were included the world would not be able to contain the scrolls written.
S2: I understand that John may have been pressed for time when writing his account, but surely he could have noted who the eyewitnesses to the empty tomb were? We’re left with a fundamental difference in the four gospels on the key question of who the eyewitnesses were.
S1: So we can already see that the gospels can't all be infallible because only one of them can be right on the subject of the resurrection, but you can see the same progressive elaboration and exaggeration in many of the bible stories that are shared between all four gospels (there are many that aren't) and you can't help but wonder whether they were simply trying to go oneup on the guy who'd written the gospel immediately prior.
P2: It has to be admitted though that actually all of them are right on the subject of the resurrection as far as testifying that there was a resurrection, he appeared to hundreds afterwards. Gospel means “good news”, and they all tell of the good news about Jesus. They are also very candid about their own faults and failings, some serious ones, which doesn’t really fit with the idea of oneupmanship
S3: I was hoping that you wouldn’t mention the 500 that he apparently appeared to. It’s one of the silliest things in the bible. Odd really that there were no contemporary reports of a dead man appearing to 500 people. I would have expected it to rate a mention, but it only appears in an epistle of Paul, who was writing some years later about what he had been told. In a legal sense, this is called hearsay and carries very little weight.
S3: And that they were all very candid about their own faults and failings has little to do with their efforts to attract more followers.
S2: Pointing out that they all include a resurrection story of some sort is hardly convincing. The claim that a man died and then came back from the dead is a pretty big claim. It’s not something that happens every day. A neutral observer hearing about it might be inclined to scoff.
P2: Exactly, and that's why they took pains to secure the tomb so that the disciples couldn't steal the body then make a false claim that he'd been raised. The testimony of a few might be easy to dismiss but not that of over 500 people who may well have been inclined to scoff on first hearing the news, but then saw with their own eyes. Consider too the powerful enemies of Christianity, both Rome and the religious leaders of Judaism - if it was all a load of hooey, would they not have jumped at the chance to discredit it as such there and then? Since they would have loved nothing more than to nip this thing in the bud, the question at least has to be asked “why didn't they?” Extraordinary, yes. Made up, no. If the story didn't happen there would be no Christianity and would any of us to this day ever even have heard of Jesus?
S3: I wouldn’t hang my hat on that 500 claim. Coming back to their reporting, don’t you think the event would have left an impression? That being the case, how do they manage to get the details so wrong? As for the enemies of Christianity, do you think they might have been impressed if a dead guy turned up? I wonder why he only appeared to people that were either already followers or were anonymous (vis. The 500)
S2: Imagine for a moment that I told you that a few of us had nailed my friend Dennis to a tree and that when he died we shoved him under the house. Then we came back a few days later and he’d disappeared! Then he turned up again and wasn’t dead after all!!
S2: I suspect you’d have a few questions for me and my colleagues and the fact that we all had the same basic story might not convince you. You’d be keen to know exactly what happened and who saw it. You’d be automatically suspicions of discrepancies in our stories. You want to know who was there when Dennis was nailed to the tree, what did Dennis have to say in all this, who took him down from the tree and what did you do then, who shoved him under the house, who saw that he was missing and so on.
P2: Imagine that over 500 people then see Dennis. Sworn enemies of Dennis don't like it one bit, but even they can't deny what's happened. Made up? The enemies of Dennis would shoot you down in flames.
S3: Imagine that one of my friends *told* you that they *heard* that 500 people saw Dennis. Would that convince you?
S1: The difficulty with the gospels, even if we exclude John and only consider the synoptic gospels, is that so many of these details vary. I used the resurrection as an example, but there are many more. For example what were the last words of Jesus? Surely this should be clear but there are three different accounts depending on which gospel you read.
S1: There are plenty more examples of the bible being internally contradictory (there are TWO creation stories for heaven's sake, one after the other Genesis 1:12:3 and 2:49) and plenty where it is simply immoral (God killing children because they made fun of a prophet by calling him baldy 2 Kings 2:23-25, a raped virgin being forced to marry her attacker Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and other areas where it is simply comedic (in the space of just two verses Genesis 9:20-21, Noah becomes a farmer, grows grapes, makes wine, gets pissed and passes out naked in his tent) so you can see why none of my interlocutors are keen to argue from a biblical standpoint.
P1: There are not two creation stories, the references are the same thing, the second account being a ‘close up’ if you like of creation as regards man.
S2: I admire your enthusiasm, but I’m afraid that dog’s not going to hunt. There are two distinct creation stories that derive from separate sources. The two stories use different words for “God” and have creation in different order. In the first, man is created on the sixth day and plants on the third. In the second, man is created and then plants are created.
P2: My enthusiasm has a foundation. What is your evidence for 2 separate sources? In chapter 1 Elohim is God, the absence of the definite article denoting excellence, majesty. In chapter 2:4 is the first occurrence of God’s distinctive personal name - look up Tetragrammaton. Chapter 2 is not describing creation chronologically again, it's a history of man and the garden of Eden, the trees etc etc
S3: There is the ‘Priestly Source’ and the ‘Jahwist Source’. They’re two different accounts.
P1: If there is a God as in creator of all things, almighty of all the universe, gross disrespect for a prophet of God is a serious matter.
S2: I wont comment here except to say that you think it’s fair enough for children to be mauled to death by bears as a penalty for calling a prophet “baldy”.
P2: You've only picked part of it, what they said was “go up” they wanted him gone. Prophets were sent to benefit the people, to tell the people what was going to happen so that they could make wise choices for their own good.
S3: OK, so it’s fair enough for children to be mauled to death by bears as a penalty for saying “go up” to a prophet. Still seems a bit harsh.
P1: As regards the virgin well the man who raped her had to give her father compensation, he had to marry her and was not allowed to divorce her his whole life. This law was a protection for women I think. Imagine for a moment if our society had such a law what a deterrent it would be.
S2: Again no comment from me except to note that you are justifying a fine as penalty for rape.
P2: No I'm not. Again you have only picked part of it. Next time a “thugby” player in this country gets charged with rape watch what happens. I can tell you with confidence NOTHING because I've seen it over and over. Make him marry her - how many times in modern society do we hear of marriage being referred to as a life sentence?
S3: Maybe it’s just me, but I would suspect that the lady in question would not be very interested in marrying the guy that raped her.
P1: In the case of Noah, I personally don’t have a problem with all those things condensed into 2 verses. The Bible is a very big book and includes enough info and detail for an individual to make an informed choice.
S2: I love Noah. He was a guy that knew how to party wild.
S1: Instead what I usually hear is something along the lines of one of the following;
- This thing is a really good thing and I don't know how it happened, therefore God dunnit.
- This thing is a really strange thing and I don't know how it happened, therefore God dunnit.
- Stuff happened that nobody knows how it happened, therefore God dunnit.
- Stuff exists, therefore someone must have created stuff, therefore God dunnit.
P1: What is a devout atheists view on all the above, that BigBangdunnit?
S2: Not at all, the atheistic view is “let’s find out how it happened”.
P2: Don't we know yet?
S3: Let’s say we don’t, that doesn’t lend any credence to your argument, the list of things we don’t know it long and interesting and continues to get longer. Saying Goddunit so stop looking is not very helpful.
S1: The first three of these are what is generally known as the "God of the gaps" argument. Essentially it goes like this: I find this thing really awesome and incredibly cool so I reckon God dunnit and you can't tell me otherwise.
P1: BigBangdunnit and you can’t tell me otherwise?
S2: Not at all, having a pre-conceived notion of cause and working the evidence to meet that pre-conceived notion is strictly the purview of the religious.
P2: Not true, we all know that unfortunately sometimes science does this as well although it's not supposed to. Unfortunately, because science is amazing and we do need it. Pity about the fraud that sometimes happens.
S3: Indeed. That’s the beauty of science. It’s self correcting. I am writing another article at the moment and discussing Einstein’s annus mirabilis. I can quote from it here, secure in the knowledge that noone except you and I will read this far :)
S3: In one year, Einstein published four landmark papers and was, famously, working as a patent office clerk in Bern Switzerland. He was not part of the physics ‘establishment’ and in fact had comparatively little access to scientific reference works. Nonetheless he published four papers in the course of a year that rocked the world of physics to its very foundations.
S3: One of the areas rocked was the postulated ‘luminiferous aether’, or aether wind that was supposed to be the medium through which light travelled. Waves need a medium to travel though and sound needs a medium to travel through and so it was assumed that light also needs a medium through which it travels. Aristotle had proposed that light is a disturbance in the element ‘air’ but by the 17th century it was clear that this was not the case. In 1704 Isaac Newton proposed that light was made up of particles and was probably the first to postulate the existence of aether as a medium for light.
S3: With adjustments made for the assumption that light was in fact a wave rather than a particle, the existence of aether was unquestioned through to the late 19th Century. Various experiments appeared to confirm the existence of aether (notably Armand Fizeau’s experiment with light travelling through water) and the existence of aether was an established part of the field of physics. In 1887 an experiment was done in Qatar by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley to establish and measure the effect of aether once and for all. The experiment, ingeniously developed largely by Michelson, involved reflecting light at right angles and then bringing it back together. The aether drag, which was created by the movement of the earth, would mean that one of the beams would be out of synch with the other. However, despite all the care and precision that they used, the end result was invariably null, meaning that they were not detecting aether.
S3: The experiment became known as the most famous null result in the history of science because it overturned many years of established understanding. Neither of the experimenters were attempting to disprove the aether theory, it would have been a little like trying to disprove the theory of gravity, but unexpectedly that’s exactly what they did. The experiment led directly to Einstein’s special relativity paper, the third of the annus mirabilis papers.
S3: The point of this little story is to illustrate the major difference between science and religion. Science is never settled. We make observations and then try to figure out why they are true. We come up with theories and then assume they are wrong. That’s how science works, take the theory and assume it is wrong. It’s called falsifiability. That means that whenever you put a theory, you also have to say “If it’s wrong, then this is true.”
S3: In religion, you have received wisdom and you work your observations to fit that received wisdom. You say, “well this received wisdom is correct, so my observations must fit my received wisdom”.
S1: There are things we understand and things we don't understand. Anything we don't understand: GODDUNNIT! A few thousand years ago the awesome and cool things that we didn't understand included the Sun coming up every morning and the rain coming at the same time each year. As these things were explained and as the human race's understanding of the world increased, we began to shrink down the number of things that were assigned to the GODDUNNIT category.
S1: As our understanding of the world continues to increase, I am with Paul at Romans 1:20 that we see more clearly God’s invisible qualities (power, wisdom, love to name a few) with increased understanding.
S1: Diseases used to be GODDUNIT and cows with two heads and mountains and floods and meteors and so on and so forth. All of these have moved quietly out of the GODDUNNIT category and into the 'oh, I see' category.
P1: The Bible has explained all along why we have disease and death and suffering and genetic deformities and it has never attributed these to God. Not that long ago people thought the earth was flat while around 700 BCE Isaiah 40:22 says it’s a circle. Not that long ago people had many theories as to how the earth is held up (elephants, turtles etc) while around 1470 BCE Job 26:7 says it is suspended upon nothing. Isaiah 40:26 speaks of God’s dynamic energy I’m thinking E=MC squared? When you talk about religion and you talk about the Bible it’s not the same thing. The Bible is a book of truth therefore leaves no room for superstition
S2: Well in fact the bible does attribute disease to god, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee.” (Exodus 15:26)
P2: If you are using this as proof that diseases are attributable to God then you are saying that each sick person on the planet has not given ear to his commandments. Anybody with a degree of sanity knows full well this is not true. The rest of v26 goes on “which I have brought upon the Egyptians”. Context.
S2: As for flat earth, that’s exactly what Isaiah seems to be suggesting, that the world is a flat disc.
P2: How do you know that's what he's suggesting? The word circle is also used regarding the waters, if it means flat disc how would the waters not flow or fly off?
S3: By reading it.
S2: Job 26:7 is Job speaking, not god and seems to contradict 1 Samuel 2:8 wherein god has set the world upon pillars.
P2: Consider the whole verse. Hannah is speaking - figuratively. God does not literally pick up a poor person out of the dust or a beggar from a dung hill and put them among princes. Context.
S3: How do you know it’s figurative? Do you mean that the bible is not literally true?
S2: To draw a link between Isaiah 40:26 and the equivalence of mass and energy is, shall we say, a long bow. The same verse talks about the stars not failing which is directly in contradiction of what we now know.
P2: That stars burn out or explode? When you say ‘now know’ is every scientist in the world in agreement that there is nothing more to be learned about this? In any case the discussion in the whole chapter isn't about whether stars explode or not, it's about the prophecy to free God’s captive people after 70 years, and the extent of his wisdom and ability to bring this about. He knows each star by name and if he was to command this ‘army’ none would be missing. The vivid wording reminded them nothing could prevent their return to their homeland though it may have seemed impossible. Context.
S3: We come back to received wisdom vs science. Yes, there is a lot more to learn, but there is nothing about astronomy that can be learned from 2000 year old scribblings. You were the one that raised the idea that the bible has something interesting to say about physics, don’t back away now by saying “it's about the prophecy to free God’s captive people”.
S1: We live now in and era where our understanding of the world, indeed of the universe is extraordinary in its depth and perhaps the most extraordinary thing is our detailed understanding of the things we don't know. Which in Rumsfeld speak is the known unknowns. The GODDUNNIT arguers are these days reduced to arguing that we don't know what atoms are made of or, if they are a little more savvy (we do know what atoms are made of) that we don't know why electrons behave the way they do or even that Schrödinger's cat is a dead giveaway that GODDUNNIT. Schrödinger and his cat don't have a lot to say on this case because, in the case of Schrödinger, he is dead and in the case of his cat, it is locked in a box with a pellet of poison and we don't know whether it’s dead or alive.
P1: In my brain, you either know something or you don’t. Accepting a ‘known unknown’ sounds like credulity to me. How different is this to a blind belief in God? We are all free to choose how we believe but anything anyone believes must have a solid foundation
S2: There are known unknowns all around us. To give a simple example, let’s say I give you a wrapped present. You don’t know what it is until you unwrap it. It’s a known unknown. You know the problem exists (what’s in the box) but you haven’t yet found the solution.
P2: Aahh okay, I didn't understand what was meant.
S2: The fundamental difference between the science based approach and the faith based approach is that science approaches known unknowns with an open mind. We don’t understand this thing so let’s investigate.
P2: Normally this is the case, as it should be, but not always.
S3: Indeed, so it’s a good thing that science is self correcting.
S2: The faith based approach is to presuppose the existence of a god and then to approach every problem with that solution in mind.
S2: Christopher Hitchens was fond of illustrating this point by quoting the great physicist Laplace, who demonstrated his working model of the solar system to the emperor and Napoleon said, “Well I see there’s no God in this system,” and Laplace said, “Well, Your Majesty, it works without that assumption.”
P2: I’m not computing this line of reasoning. It works with the assumption too. What we choose to assume or not assume doesn’t make any difference to how the solar system works.
S3: Occams razor, sometimes called the law of parsimony. “things are usually connected or behave in the simplest or most economical way,” In other words, if you can explain something without a thing, then it’s not necessary.
S1: I do sometimes gently point out that we have been wrong about the GODDUNNIT explanation on every single occasion in the past, so we might just be wrong about it again.
P1: As above, does the Bible say Goddunnit on these occasions referred to? I would probably need specifics to comment.
S1: I suggest gently that it just doesn't seem to stack up as a convincing argument to me. This carries little weight with the religious side and they simply insist that while there are unknowns, there is a space for their God. The incredible shrinking God I suppose.
S1: The other argument that I tend to see a lot is that stuff exists therefore someone must have created stuff. Almost invariably this line of thought leads to the big bang and when I point out that we do in fact know that all the stuff was created with the big bang, they announce triumphantly "Well what happened before the big bang?" At think stage I will generally point out that nothing happened before the big bang, because the universe was created with time not in time. I will then pause expectantly, hoping that my religious friend will either acknowledge the point and make a counter argument or will ask me to clarify further. Needless to say, I am always disappointed.
P1: The question for me isn’t so much what happened before the big bang as who or what caused the big bang? Cause and Effect, effect being the bang and cause being..??
S2: Why do you need to presume a cause? If you do need to presume a cause, what evidence can we look at to determine what the cause might be?
P2: Why do I need to presume a cause???? That's weird, I thought cause and effect was science’s own thing, perhaps I got this from school days, is it outdated now?
S3: If there is a cause and effect, if that’s a law, then it has to apply universally. Even if you posit god as the cause, you then are stuck with the effect. What caused god? For myself, the more rational answer is either to say “I don’t know” or to say that it’s eternal - and by eternal I mean outside time - which gets you no closer to proving anything about god or gods. I also note that you didn’t answer my question.
S1: I have never yet been queried on what is meant by "the universe was created with time not in time" because the interlocutor will generally ignore any point that I might make and will repeatedly leap back to the idea that the universe was created and therefore it must have a creator, repeating it over and over as if it were an incantation. They will state this conclusion with a raised eyebrow and smile brimming with confidence and it will often be prefaced with the words "ah yes" as in "Ah yes, but if the universe was created, then there must be a creator..."
P1: For me it’s more about if you examine any single thing from the minutest that cannot be seen with the naked eye to the most colossal it all shouts DESIGN (snowflakes geometric in shape and no two the same; the mathematical fraction required to makes a spiral genius; I could go on and on). You see, as soon as you use the word ‘design’ there must be a designER.
S2: Much of it shouts “very poor design indeed”, but I am going to hand over to Christopher Hitchens again here as he says it much better than me.
S2: “If this was the plan - was it made by someone who likes us? And if so, why have 99.9% of all the other species that have ever been created already died out? And part of what plan was that?; If it is a plan or a design, the planner must be either very capricious - really toying with his creation; and/or very clumsy, very tinkering and fantastically wasteful - throw away 99.9% of what you've made; or very cruel and very callous; or just perhaps very indifferent; or some combination of all the above. And so it's no good saying that He moves in mysterious ways, or that He has purposes that are opaque to us, because even that kind of evasion has to make itself predicate on the assumption that the person saying this knows more than I do about the supernatural, and I haven't yet met anyone who does have a private line to the creator, of the sort that would be required even to speculate about it. In other words, I haven't met anyone, in holy orders or out of it, who isn't also a primate. And neither have you.”
P2: What makes up the 99.9% and what has caused their extinction? Of what remains what is poorly designed?
S3: Have you ever had a urinary tract infection? Most women have. A large part of the reason is the proximity of the vagina and the anus. Any intelligent designer would have taken care to leave them further apart.
S3: If you have given birth, you will know that it is a painful experience. Until relatively recently, it was often a fatal experience. Until the 20th century it was the leading cause of death for young women. It remains an incredibly dangerous thing for a woman to do as the sixth most common cause of death for young women even today. Why is it so dangerous? Bad design.
S1: The last two paragraphs actually cover a lot of ground in a very small period of time and they need to be explained further. Before I do though I would caution you that at this point I do not generally devolve the discussion into violence and rain down upon my foe a volley of punches. I leave that sort of thing for the Christian God to do. No, at this stage my usual reaction is to remind myself of the adage that one should not argue with an idiot as they will bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
P2: Okay, I would hate to be the cause of lowering you into an idiot.
S3: Very droll.
S1: The first point is that the idea that the universe was created with time, not in time is a tricky one. What it means is that time itself did not exist before the big bang. When I think about this for a long time it gives me a headache, so I caution you to use an egg timer to ration the amount of time you spend thinking about it. Time (apparently) is the fourth dimension, meaning that we have three dimensions in space and one dimension in time. This gives me an even worse headache. Physicists of note assure me that there is no special reason why there can't be more dimensions in both time and space. Thinking about this for too long generally leads to heavy drinking and psychotropic drugs followed by a long period of rehab.
P1: Yes tricky, but if there was no time before the big bang are we saying the bang was a definite beginning? So whether we say Creator or Big Bang are we saying that the first few words of the Bible “In the beginning” are not actually wrong?
S2: I tell you what, for brevity I will concede that there are three words in the bible that just might be correct.
S1: In terms of what happened at the time of the big bang, we actually know a great deal. A large number of physicists with goatee beards, Star Trek tshirts and poor social skills are quite fascinated with what happened just after the big bang. I should explain here that while you and I might consider "5 minutes later" to be the same as "just after" and anything less than "one minute later" to be the same as "immediately after”, these guys are pretty full on. We know with a great deal of certainty exactly what happened immediately after the big bang where "immediately after" is defined in seconds by writing a decimal point followed by writing zeroes until your hand is tired and then writing the numeral 1. At present there are about 50 zeroes. That’s 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds.
P1: Yes, my brain hurts trying to comprehend numbers like this. I have seen these big numbers before in relation to the improbability of life occurring spontaneously.
S2: Don’t go there, it will be nasty for you.
P2: I’m not afraid to go there
S3: It’s called abiogenesis and you’re welcome to try to convince me that god(s) were necessary. Still won’t prove anything about Jesus, Zeus or Muhammad.
S1: So we know what the universe looked like one gazillionth of a second after the big bang but what about one gazillionth before the big bang? Well we can't know because there was no time then. See? I told you it's headache inducing. The universe, including all three dimensions of space and the single dimension of time were created all at the same time. We know about the universe a gazillionth of a second after the big bang because the universe has left us plenty of clues. We don't know about it before because any possible clues are wiped out by the big bang and the creation of time. It means, among other things, that even if there was a cause, there is no way to know what it was because it is completely outside our universe.
S1: So the argument from the religious will go that we can't know and therefore GODDUNNIT. They will prevaricate on this point by using terminology such as "higher power" or "supreme being" but there is no question that they really mean GODDUNNIT and I have to concede at this point because it is indeed possible I suppose that a being from outside our dimensions was involved in some way with the creation of the universe. Whether that being was supreme or otherwise and indeed whether the act of creation was deliberate or accidental cannot be known at all.
P1: I personally struggle to believe that the perfect order and precision timing in the universe, plus design, artistry and that the right kind of proteins and just the right kind of amino acids coming together to form life etc etc could be accidental. In any case none of this answers life’s most perplexing questions that all people ask regardless of belief, race and so on whereas the Bible does. Nor does it tell what’s going to happen in the future, most people the world over are interested in what the future will be for their children and their children’s children and for this exquisite planet we call home.
S2: What you or I personally believe or struggle to believe is of little moment. What we can demonstrate to be true is what matters.
P2: Just expressing where I am coming from, I’m allowed to reason on stuff and draw conclusions same as the next person.
S3: yes, but be careful of ‘argument from incredulity’
S2: I’d be very interested to hear of any perplexing questions that the bible answers clearly and unambiguously.
P2: Pick one, happy to tackle one at a time. You need to have a longer attention span than most though.
S3: Wikipedia has a list of unsolved problems. Pick one. If you really want to impress me, pick one of the physics questions.
S1: What we can be pretty certain of is that this supreme being, if it in fact exists, bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the gods that mankind has created over the last 10,000 years or so.
P1: Of course he doesn’t, the gods mankind has created don’t exist, they are not real. (There is a passage in the Bible that speaks of the absurdity of a man who chops down a tree half of which he burns to cook food and the other half of which he makes a god that he bows to and says save me for you are my god)
S2: So we agree that gods don’t exist?
P2: No we don’t. There is only one.
S1: It is a supreme being that made no imprint of the world beyond kicking off the big bang and continues to have no impact on our lives. There is not the slightest shred of evidence that the being is in any way interested in our tiny lump of rock let along the carbonbased bipedal life forms that roam around it wondering whether the being exists.
P1: Strongly disagree, very much interested and very much in control Huge subject but the Bible explains all this also. The carbon based bipedal life forms are also made of many things that are abstract in nature. I LOVE life and roaming around here.
S1: Whatever people believe we can agree that there is indeed much that inspires awe. There is indeed much that inspires awe, but in the words of Douglas Adams, “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
P2: But thinking people don't just accept as enough that the garden is beautiful do they? We automatically question - ‘who did this??’ Clearly it didn't get there all by itself.
S3: I'm afraid you've missed the point. The point is that the garden doesn't require anything supernatural to be beautiful.
S1: Indeed the only evidence that I have yet been able to find for a supreme being is the fact, faithful reader, that you have read this far. Thank you so much for your attention.
P1: I have enjoyed dissecting this blog immensely. It is as an ancient proverb says ‘as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens his friend’
Photo courtesy By The Council and Representatives, convened in General Assembly, of His Majesty's PROVINCE of the MASSACHUSETTS-BAY in NEW-ENGLAND [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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